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Tonight, I went to one of my favorite restaurants, Shiki, and had some great sushi for dinner. As I sat at the sushi bar, I overheard the sushi chef talking to another employee (or perhaps he was a co-owner) in Japanese. I recognized a few sounds here and there -- I wouldn't call them complete words -- but just enough to deduce that they were talking about someone's age.
It was another depressing reminder of one of my greatest regrets: I never learned to speak Japanese -- despite having a Japanese mother and once having lived in Japan.
There are several reasons why I never learned, though they aren't excuses. For one, I spent the better part of my childhood traveling with my family from Air Force base to Air Force base with each transfer my dad received. We managed to settle at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, for several years. I went to kindergarten through third grade there. Now I may have lived in Japan, but I lived on an American military base, and all of my teachers, friends and classmates were other Americans. I never had to speak Japanese to anyone; no one else I knew spoke Japanese, either, other than my mom, and she speaks fluent English. (OK, I define fluent as being knowledgeable in words and grammar. She never has a problem speaking, but she does have a thick accent.) There obviously was Japanese TV, but the military base broadcast English-language programming as well.
Apparently, my mom tried several times to speak Japanese to me when I was little, but I refused to listen and insisted she spoke English. Growing up, I never really fit in with the other kids. I don't look "American," thanks to my mom's genes, and that led to a fair amount of teasing in school. So when my mom would attempt to teach me a few Japanese words, I would belligerently ignore her, because I didn't want to be any less "American" than I already looked. The other American kids didn't speak a foreign language, so why should I? Somehow, by a kid's twisted logic, I thought that just speaking English would make me more "American" and ease the teasing. My mom eventually gave up.
I regret that more than ever now. But as a youngster, you don't reflect on your actions; you're just acting emotionally.
Of course, I've managed to pick up a few words here and there, mostly Japanese prepositions, directions, greetings and such that my mom somehow sprinkles into her English. I'm sure only my dad, sister and I can decipher her sometimes. That's how I can recognize Japanese when I hear it, even though I don't necessarily know the words. I'm just familiar with the sounds associated with it. Growing up, and still now, it seems like the only Japanese I know for sure is, "get down," "be quiet," "are you hungry," "time to eat," and short phrases like that that any mom would say to a child. I still spin around whenever I hear someone speaking Japanese, because I know it's Japanese.
Even though my sister and I never learned Japanese, we were never far from a small bit of Japanese culture. We always had weird Japanese food in the house, things American kids would cringe at, such as shrimp-flavored crackers; osembe (oh-sem-bay), or odd-shaped rice crackers; and nori (noh-ree) in the fridge, which is seaweed, dried or as a paste. One day I came home from school to find a whole octopus, tentacles and all, in the kitchen sink. Even I couldn't stand that.
Living in Japan, I also got cool Japanese toys in addition to all of the other "normal" toys American kids got. One Christmas, I got a toy pachinko machine as a gift. (Pachinko is a huge game in Japan, much like slots. The pachinko machine accepts coins, and shiny, chrome balls fall down the machine, bouncing this way and that as they hit metal pegs. You get money or tokens back depending on where the balls fall.) Anyway, mine was a toy, obviously. It was much smaller than a real one, but it was still nearly half my size. Imagine one of those plastic toy pinball machines you would give a 6-year-old, and that is roughly what it would have been like. It was forest green, and on the face were pictures of big red ladybugs. My dad, who was in his early 30s at the time, ended up playing it more than me. I would stand next to him and watch him play it, mesmerized, for hours.
Someday, I'll learn to speak Japanese. I want to go back to Japan and speak Japanese to some of my relatives. It's one of the things I will do before my time's up.