{"id":75,"date":"2008-06-02T08:49:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-02T15:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=75"},"modified":"2008-11-07T08:41:59","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T15:41:59","slug":"japanese-enigma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/japanese-enigma\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese enigma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As I&#8217;ve mentioned elsewhere, for the past year or so I&#8217;ve become a bit obsessed with Japan and relearning and improving my Japanese. I haven&#8217;t really stopped to wonder why, but last night, as I was reading, the answer came to me. I suppose part of the answer is simply that if you are going to be living somewhere for a significant period of time you become more interested in it. But there is more to it than that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/multifaceted-approach-to-learning-and-improving-japanese-language-abilities\/><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-76\" title=\"mangajin\" src=\"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/mjin_s.gif\" alt=\"mangajin\" width=\"118\" height=\"58\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>I was reading <em>Mangajin<\/em>, No. 19. The feature story was interviews with translators. Gerry Harcourt was asked (page 19), &#8220;What do you like most about the Japanese language?&#8221; Her response was a bit of a nirvana moment for me. She said, <strong>&#8220;It&#8217;s so different from English. It jolts my way of thinking. I enjoy the surprises.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And just like that I realized why the thought of moving back to Japan has caused my mind to think of little else. I&#8217;ve been jolted. And I enjoy the daily joltings and surprises that Japan and its language provides. After all, I can already speak, read, and understand Japanese good enough to have a great time in Japan. So I&#8217;m not really studying it to get by. I&#8217;m doing so because it is such a rewarding and interesting challenge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Without the challenge and joltings I&#8217;m quite sure I wouldn&#8217;t be expending the time and effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve mentioned elsewhere, for the past year or so I&#8217;ve become a bit obsessed with Japan and relearning and improving my Japanese. I haven&#8217;t really stopped to wonder why, but last night, as I was reading, the answer came to me. I suppose part of the answer is simply that if you are going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[89,161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}