Tag: blog

My Gaijin Life

On By rmillerLeave a comment

I have launched my new project.  Well, “launched” is a pretty hefty word.  Perhaps it would be better said, I have thrown my new project at the world, while holding out a faint hope that the world doesn’t throw it right back.

It can be found at https://mygaijinlife.com.

In the beginning, I fully expect I will be making liberal use of Google Translate and jisho.org.  I will not be using Google Translate to translate English phrases to Japanese, as that would be cheating and contrary to the purpose of the site.  But I will be using it to make sure that the phrase at least passes a “smell test”.  I assume I will need it less and less as I become more proficient in the language.

I think this may be the best way for me to learn.  The lessons are helpful, but I’m stuck.  And maybe this will help me get out of my stuckness.

The point of the blog is to describe life in Texas to a native Japanese person, from the viewpoint of a native American (as opposed to a Native American, which is a different thing entirely).  I’m hoping the entries will become more interesting and complicated as I learn how to express myself better.  But I guess you have to start somewhere.  I think I have just enough knowledge of Japanese to start to bootstrap this.

Japanese people can watch me grow in the language, I suppose.  Or ignore me.  Probably better off doing the latter, honestly.

Anyway, that’s my new project.  Enjoy or not.

Note:  I mentioned before that I use the word gaijin deliberately, even as some gaikokujin find it offensive.  I understand the difference.  I do not see myself as a gaikokijin.  I see myself as a gaijin.  And not just when it comes to Japanese culture, either.  I’ve posted about this before.  Just wanted to clear that up.

It is time.

On By rmillerLeave a comment

It is a stormy day in Round Rock, Texas today.

My Japanese teacher has decided that she now only wants to speak to the small group of people I learn with, in Japanese.  I don’t like this, but I think it may be necessary.  I’ve been feeling a little stuck lately – and I have no confidence in anything but the most basic written and spoken Japanese – so I don’t want to.  But I’m going to see what I can do.

That means, I think that it’s probably time that I pull the trigger on the project I’ve been wanting to do for a while.  I want to create a blog, in Japanese, from the perspective of a gaijin living in the US.  The intended audience:  Japanese people.  In Japan.

It will be broken Japanese to begin with, but as I learn it’ll become less broken, hopefully.  There will be a lot of word looking up and probably a little help from Google translate too, but as I get better, hopefully my dependence on those tools will lessen and I will gain some amount of fluency.

I guess the only way to do it is to do it.  Let’s go…

Visitors

On By rmillerLeave a comment

Every now and then I check my site stats to see who’s visiting what and where they come from.  In something that is perhaps not a surprise and is totally expected given the crap quality of what I create here, there are not many visitors, though there seem to be a little more lately.  Perhaps the most highly trafficked page is one where I call out Akimoto Yasushi for being a bit of a…  not so nice person.  Perhaps the second most one is the one where I say why I think J-Pop sucks.  Not perhaps the finest foot forward on this site, but it is what it is.  I’ve never been one to moderate my opinion just because it might piss someone off.

But what has always, since I started this page, befuddled me is how few visitors I actually get from Japan.  In fact, I get far more visitors from the US than Japan.

Perhaps this is because I don’t write the page in Japanese, and that would be completely reasonable.  Perhaps it’s because people in Japan aren’t really interested in what I think about their country, culture, or language, which would be completely reasonable as well.  Perhaps it’s just because they hang out elsewhere and don’t use WordPress, which is also understandable (I wish there were better options, as I’m often wondering when WordPress will go the way of Patreon, etc., and start censoring people).  There are many likely reasons, but the simple fact is this:  they’re not interested in, can’t find, or understand what I have to say.

I suppose that’s fine, but in some ways, it’s rather boring, dontcha think?

Or perhaps I’m not talking about anything interesting to the Japanese.  I mean, they live with their culture every day, and I’m not saying anything particularly new, am I?  They know how to speak Japanese, they know what sakura trees mean to them, they know about J-Pop and other media, far more than I do in many ways.  And my perspective is probably not very useful to anyone but me.

Maybe someday I’ll say something interesting to the Japanese, and they’ll come here, and tell me something interesting back.  Maybe someday.  But right now, I guess I’ll keep yelling into the wind.