7 April 2006 (9 Nisan 5766)
When I was still a doctoral student here in Jerusalem years ago, I lived in six languages: Japanese, Hebrew, Yiddish, Esperanto, English and Russian. When I left Israel in the summer of 1993, I feared I would not have enough occasions to speak Hebrew and Yiddish back in Japan and my Hebrew and Yiddish would become very rusty. To my surprise and joy, I spoke them quite frequently, partly because I lived near the synagogue in Kobe and participated in quite a few communal events there, including Sabbath services. It was Russian that really deteriorated in Japan because my Russian was not good enough to be kept in memory without being practiced regularly, and unfortunately, I was too preoccupied with my survival to continue studying it.
I characterize these languages as follows: Japanese - my mother tongue; Hebrew and Yiddish - languages for my soul; Esperanto and English - languages for my brain; Russian - language for my heart. Of these six languages Russian is the only one that I started learning without any prior emotional attachment but for purely academic reasons. Quite unexpectedly, this language opened for me a totally new world: the world of the (Jewish-)Russian intelligentsia. I was impressed not only with their intellectual depth but also with their interpersonal warmth. I am also impressed with the language per se, especially its phonetic beauty (I know that many people will disagree with me, but for me Russian is the most beautiful language I have ever heard) and its structural richness to coin new words from native elements.
When I came back to Jerusalem in the summer of 2004, my Russian was (and unfortunately still is) in a very miserable condition. So my life here, which used to be hexalingual, became quintalingual. But I feel that I have too many Russian-speaking friends here to remain incapable of speaking their language more or less reasonablly; in addition to my old Russian-speaking friends I have made friends with some others. Although I generally speak with them in Hebrew, Yiddish or Esperanto, I feel like communicating with them in Russian, too. Somehow I feel most comfortable with these Russian-speaking people from the former Soviet Union. So I have finally decided to brush up my Russian.
I have another, though only secondary, reason to improve my Russian. This July I am visiting Moscow for the first time to read a paper in the 8th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies. I would like to take this opportunity to get rid of the frustration I have with bookstores in Israel. Moscow seems to be the only city in Europe where there are bookstores (e.g., Biblio-Globus and Moskva) that are big enough as in Japan (e.g., Kinokuniya and Junkudo); I remember being disappointed with bookstores in major cultural capitals of Western Europe.
14 April 2006 (16 Nisan 5766)
There is at least one serious defect in the education I received in Japan from elementary school through graduate school. It is the fact that we were never taught systematically how to express our ideas in speech and in writing, though oral and written communicative skills must be among the most important for every one of us as homo loquens, whether we become scholars or work for companies; as far as I know, this defect still remains in the educational system in Japan. I am really sorry for and suffer it as I struggle to learn through trials and errors how to express myself clearly and convincingly in oral presentations and papers.
Most of the time in Japanese classes in primary and secondary education was dedicated to two passive activities, i.e., learning to read and write Chinese characters and "analysis" of literary texts, probably with no time left for acquirying skills to use the language actively.
Japanese is a very efficient language for passive written use; if you know Japanese and, let's say, English equally well, you can read texts in Japanese much faster than in English because content words, written mostly in Chinese characters, and function words, written in hiragana, are visually distinguished, and you have only to follow the former. But in order to benefit from this, you have to spend a lot of time of your schooldays remembering about 2000 Chinese characters in daily use and their various combinations and readings and sacrifying opportunities to learn how to use the language itself actively. This writing system of Japanese is an enormous burden on memory, which could be better used for something more creative, but unfortunately, words of Chinese origin and Chinese characters are such an integral part of Japanese that you cannot express anything abstract without them with its word-formational potential choked in the beginning of its history and kept undeveloped.
The only occasion we were asked to use the language was an annual event of writing an essay about a book each of us chose for ourselves or the school chose for all of us. I am still sorry for and angry about the time wasted for this because we were never taught how to express our ideas and were thrown into the water, as it were, with an erroneous assumption that being native speakers of the language, we must be able to express ourselves without any prior training.
Is the tertiary education any better in this respect? It was not, at least when I was a university student, though things may have changed for the better. The same false assumption seems to have been there, too, together with an expectation that we write well, especially in graduate school. I strongly believe that academic writing, in Japanese (and probably in English, too), should be obligatory for every student in Japanese universities.
What is no less important is to teach students how to express themselves orally. The total neglect of this skill in Japanese schools and universities may have something to do with the fact that Japanese is highly dependent on script, which makes many people think that the spoken language is secondary to the written language. To claim that the latter is secondary to the former is naive and equally wrong; they are simply two different modes of expression, though they are influenced by and dependent on each other.
I feel this defect of mine not only in absolute terms when I make oral presentations in conferences and struggle to write papers but also in comparative terms when I hear and read my American and Israeli colleagues, who must have been better trained to express themselves. But in order to survive in the Israeli academia I have to be more constructive by trying to rectify this defect somehow instead of continuing to deplore it.
21 April 2006 (23 Nisan 5766)
Not only have I not studied systematically how to express myself academically in speech and writing but also have I failed to learn how to market myself to people I meet for the first time. This first skill may not be important for everyone, but the second must be crucial for everyone. Even if you have much to say and know how to express it, you have to advertise yourself so that people may take an interest in you and what you have to say in the first place. Generally speaking, it takes me and those who have eventually made friends with me more time to get acquainted with each other than people who know how to market themselves, sometimes in a manner that seems too pushy. There are probably two reasons why this skill of mine has remained under- or undeveloped.
The first reason is the fact that I was rather pampered by my parents and my classmates when I was a child. That is, I simply did not have to make extra efforts to market myself so that they might approach me. The second is my lack of self-confidence that lingered in my consciousness until around my high school days and may still remain in my subconscious. It derived from the fact that I was born prematurely and was much smaller than my classmates until I graduated from high school. Physical inferiority complex led to general inferiority complex, though I tried to get over it by excelling in study.
Nevertheless, this skill of mine has improved, especially after living years in Israel, as it is more crucial here than in Japan. Although it may be better to know how to market oneself than not to, there is a limit to the manner and extent of doing so. I am sometimes bothered by aggressive self-marketing of certain people in that they always draw water to their own mills, as it were; this can even be a kind of conversational "spam" as they say only what they want to market regardless of what others respond to them. I prefer contenting myself with poor self-marketing to such aggressive one.
28 April 2006 (30 Nisan 5766)
Ever since I moved to Jerusalem in the summer of 2004, I used to speak with someone at length almost every day about each other, including such banal things as what each of us did every day. Two months ago we quarrelled bitterly, mainly because of my stupidity, and stopped speaking completely, until we started speaking again this week. It is often not until one loses something that one truly appreciates it. For these two months I missed our almost daily conversations by telephone, by email or face to face, to which I seem to have been so used. Now I can appreciate not only these conversations but also this relationship in general.
Nor only are the conversations interesting intellectually, but also have I noticed that they can keep ourselves - at least me - mentally healthy. Speaking seems to have the effect of therapy. When I have some problem, the very act of talking about it with someone who understands me in general or with that specific person in particular helps me a lot, even if it is not solved; I hope that this feeling is reciprocal.
"Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure." said Ben Sirah. I should add as a lesson for myself, "Treat an old friend with due respect." The danger inherent in old friendship is that we are liable to take it for granted and allow ourselves to do disrespectful things that we did not dare to do when we made friends. I am ashamed to say, but this is how I damaged our relationship. I only hope that the damage has not been irreversible.