7 September 2007 (24 Elul 5767)
If one's stupidity is measured by the number of times one repeats the same mistake, I must be incurably stupid. I must have learned a lesson not to lend books to others. Every time I was asked by someone to lend books in my private library, however, I naively tried to convince myself that he or she would be exceptional, but almost every time I was disappointed by them in some way or other (and got angry with myself). Some people never returned books they had borrowed from me, some disfigured them, and others had to be reminded a number of times until they returned them after a long time.
Lending my books to others is like sending someone precious to me to a battlefield. I can never be sure whether they will return to me safe and sound, if at all. But on the other hand, I find it very uncomfortable to remind borrowers of the books. I have no true repose in my mind until they are returned by some miracle.
For this very reason I never borrow books from other individuals as I do not want them to suffer from the same lack of peace of mind; then I as a borrower would feel even more uneasy. Borrowers are supposed to feel that they owe me, but I often feel as if I owed them, which is of course ridiculous. I cannot understand how so many people do not feel distracted or bothered by not returning the books they borrowed within a reasonable span of time, which for me is a month at most.
12 September 2007 (29 Elul 5767)
I wrote the first issue of this online journal ("foreword") on the eve of Rosh Hashana seven years ago when I was still in Kobe, Japan. Since then some drastic changes have taken place in my life. One of the most significant changes among them is without doubt the fact that I was offered a full-time position as a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, which put an end to ten years of a precarious and frustrating life as a part-time lecturer and enabled me to live in Israel.
Before I started to live here this time three years ago, I had an illusion that it would be easier to get acquainted with new people in Israel than in Japan, but I have realized that there is no essential difference between the two countries. It is true that Israeli society as an ingathering of immigrants from the four corners of the world is far more open in general, but it does not always mean that there are more opportunities to get acquainted and make friends with new people, especially with those of the same or younger age.
In both societies and probably in many other societies in the world eating and/or drinking together must be one of the most typical contexts for socialization. The only occasions for meeting new people are Sabbath and festival meals to which I am invited very frequently. This way I have acquainted with quite a few people, but naturally, those who kindly invite me as well as other guests they invite tend to be much older than I. Of course, I cannot thank their hospitality too much, but I often wish I had other occasions to meet people who are of my age or younger. In this respect I live on a kind of "saving". Almost all the people with the same or younger age with whom I am in touch are those with whom I made friends when I was still a student here in Jerusalem years ago.
In Israel the interpersonal distance is far shorter than in Japan when strangers meet for the first time, but it tends to remain the same after years of acquaintance. Unlike in Japan there are few or perhaps no opportunities here for going out to drink together with your teachers, colleagues, students and discussing things that have nothing to do with your work over a glass of beer or wine. I really miss these opportunities, especially after academic conferences and classes. Shmoozing with your colleagues and teachers in an informal setting can often be more profitable than listening to their formal lectures. This is also a good way to get acquainted with people you knew before only by name and/or by face.
21 September 2007 (9 Tishrey 5768)
Some people care more about visual aspects, i.e., written words, in learning a new foreign language, while for others auditory aspects, i.e., spoken words, are more crucial. Unlike many people in Japan, I definitely belong to the second type. Although it is also important for me to learn to read and write a new language, I have to listen to its sounds, including not only consonants and vowels but also accents and intonations. This is why I find it very difficult to begin and continue to study a classical language that has no living oral tradition or a modern language whose recorded or live sounds are not easily available, whether online or offline.
For this reason I felt rather uneasy about the way I pronounced Esperanto when I started to learn it by myself in the beginning of 1986 with the help of cassette tapes recorded by famous Esperantists. It was not until I heard the language spoken for the first time in a meeting of Esperantists in Kyoto a few months after the start of my self-study that I felt more secure about its pronunciation. I took part in their meetings regularly for a few years, until I left for Israel in the summer of 1988, where I spent five years and also took part in the meeting of local Esperantists in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Back in Japan I went to some meetings in Kobe, where I lived.
At the whim of my destiny I find myself again here in Jerusalem since the summer of 2004. I met again those whom I remember from my student days here and also got acquainted with new Esperantists. Since I and a few others are planning to revive regular meetings in Jerusalem and I have been writing a paper on Esperanto for the past two months, I find myself speaking and thinking more in this language than before and than in other languages, except for Hebrew.
Although it is more than 20 years - I cannot believe! - since I became an Esperantist, I am still amazed from time to time to witness that Esperanto is functioning as an oral means of communication here in Israel, and that among people who share another lingua franca, Hebrew. There is a huge difference in the daily oral use of Esperanto between Israel and Japan. Here more or less experienced Esperantists speak (and correspond) with each other almost exclusively in Esperanto, and even novices try to use the language within the limit of their (hopefully growing) knowledge. On the other hand, I was not lucky enough to be in a situation where only Esperanto was spoken among its followers with the presence of no foreigners; I often heard more Japanese than Esperanto even in formal settings such as congresses and regular meetings. I used to repeat there ironically that if Esperantists did not speak Esperanto, who would.
This difference between the two countries in the oral use of Esperanto seems to derive from difference in mentality. Back in Japan I have noticed that many people have an insurmountable psychological barrier to speaking a language other than Japanese with those whom they perceive as native (or at least very fluent) speakers of Japanese. It is true that Esperanto was initiated as a means of communication among speakers of different languages, but in normal settings your sole interlocutors are those who share the same mother tongue or at least another lingua franca used commonly in the society where you live. For historical and other reasons such a psychological barrier could not be formed in the mind of the majority of people in this country. As a linguist who likes to speak in different languages I appreciate this "barrier-free" Israeli (and Jewish) approach to the oral use of languages.