Meeting the Ex-pats
Friday, February 26th, 2010 in: News, Travel
Sean and Anton are American and Canadian expats, having lived in Japan for 10 and 5 years, respectively. Sean’s been married almost his whole time here, has two children and just bought a parcel of land to build his first house. Anton is recently married and like Ryan, is hoping for a kid sometime in the next year. It was really interesting to talk to them about their experiences living here. Their triumphs and frustrations, the same kind of junk families go through anywhere. Some cultural quirks unique to Japan that make life easier or harder for them.
Surprisingly, they’ve managed to live here for years without seriously taking on the language. Ryan has been trying harder lately, but works in an all-English office at Ikea. English teachers get by on their language, so I guess it’s not so important for them to know more than the basics in Japanese… but I couldn’t imagine living in a country where I felt lost in translation… I couldn’t marry someone if I didn’t have a firm grasp of her native language, if I couldn’t communicate with her family. A lot of culture is imbued in a language; from language study you learn a lot about the people who speak it. I might get frustrated with myself for not being able to communicate on a high enough level, after all the efforts I’ve put into learning Japanese, but I would hate to get frustrated with those around me because of my failure to try to understand them… That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the lives they’ve carved out for themselves here, but I don’t think I could live my life in that way. I’m glad there are so many people in this world to teach me the value of variety of perspective. I learn a lot more about myself through them.
Yeah… but it’s not as uncommon as one may think. You see that almost everywhere, and especially here in California. I know a ton of people who have never been able to fully learn the English language, even though they have lived in the U.S for 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years.
A lot of the time it has to do with age and how many languages you speak. The older a person is, the harder and harder it will be for them adapt to a new language compared to a younger person. The people in your photographs look to be in their 40’s – one of them has only lived in Japan for 5 years, I would be totally surprised if he could learn to communicate effectively in that short amount of time.
If you have ever only spoken one language, it is very difficult at a certain point to be able to adapt to a completely new language.
The other thing that I see a lot is people gravitate and put themselves in situations where they don’t need to learn the new language. Ryan, for example, works at an all english-speaking office – He has one less reason to learn Japanese.
I came to this country very young, around 11 years old. I quickly picked up English, and literally never thought twice about it. I would watch TV in English, I would only hang out with English-speakers at school and took all English courses (no ESL type classes). I am now 28, and I can barely remember a time when I didn’t speak English – I consider now Spanish a secondary language I speak only when absolutely necessary.
My dad is a different story, he was in his mid 30’s when he brought me here, and to this day he still considers Spanish his main language. He has learned English well enough to communicate, but not well enough to carry a high-level conversation, and still carries a very heavy accent.
I agree with you completely, I couldn’t live in a country where I didn’t know the language, I couldn’t marry someone if I couldn’t communicate myself effectively either.
very interesting perspective, thank you for your input Cesar!
Yes, I do see a lot of people living long term in a country where they don’t fully grasp the language, and many of them do arrange their situation so as to avoid depending on their language skills to get around. In fact, I see that even here with Japanese people learning English. The truly motivated students will go out of their way to surround themselves with opportunities to practice, while the ones who care less will just go about their business, and leave the English in the classroom.
To be fair, Ryan didn’t really choose his situation per se; he came here without knowing anything about Japan and fell in love. He taught English for a while, and only within the past couple years came into this corporate job, where his coworker are all Japanese but speak English all the time. He really wants to improve his language skills but his circumstances don’t afford him enough opportunity. His wife also speaks English, and although she’s patient, sometimes it’s just easier to stick to English to get the point across (heck, that would probably be true even if he were fluent in Japanese 😉
And I think Sean and Anton are in their 30’s; the exceptionally poor lighting in the bar did not treat them well. I need to play with my camera settings more to get it to perform better in low light!
Thanks for your comment though, it’s really interesting to hear about immigrant experiences, especially across generational gaps. How people of different age groups adapt to new situations is of particular interest to me…