I am pleased to meet you...

Ladies and gentlemen, that lovely thing swooshing past us would be my comfort zone rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

This summer I decided to make a bigger commitment to actually learning to speak Japanese. I've been stabbing at it on and off for awhile, but haven't really given it my best effort since I've been busy the past few years. This summer, with nothing else to get in the way, I re-dedicated myself to learning.

I looked over my textbook. I wrote exercises. I looked at the textbook again. Then I started keeping a blog in Japanese. About this time it occurred to me that I'm not really going to learn a heck of a lot about Japanese by sitting in my room and talking to myself.

So, I started browsing the web for some sort of tutoring exchange. I mean, I could study WITH someone else or maybe even bake cookies or something in exchange for some practice. In my searching, I found a language exchange program where you can fill out a profile and look for other people who are interested in learning your native language and helping you learn theirs.

Throwing my usual caution and shyness about such things completely to the wind, I gambled and signed up. And then proceeded to spend several days agonizing about what a bad idea it was because I'm really insecure about my Japanese skills and the idea of speaking to anyone in Japanese turned my blood cold. Good grief, I said to myself, what on EARTH am I doing leaping out of my comfort zone with such wild abandon? Do I really enjoy terror this much?

So, gritting my teeth I accepted an offer to meet this evening at a coffee shop to begin the trail of furthering my Japanese education. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a lot of fun. My language buddy and I chatted for awhile in a mixture of languages as he tried to establish how much Japanese I actually know. (His English is WAY better than my Japanese!) I discovered simultaneously how little I really know, but also how quickly the bits and pieces I do know are starting to come back to me. Much more quickly than they had been by pouring over a textbook.

So despite the fact that I spent all of today dreading the evening as I might dread a final exam I hadn't studied for, the evening turned out to be fun. I'm left knowing that my Japanese skills are better than I had thought, but not nearly what they could (or even SHOULD) be...and a strong desire to keep working on my Japanese so that I can actually hold a real conversation someday!