Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.2

Part.1 of this series is here: Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.1

In the last journal, I explained why it is important not to use a dictionary when you read.
If I rephrase what I tried to say, it goes like this:
"Instead of trying to understand all the words in front of you in your own language, we should let 'your' Japanese words explain what others mean."

It's tricky in a way that knowing exactly what it is in your language seems very convincing and means a lot more to you, but for real, your words actually work separately in your mind and they in fact explain very little to you.

But when you start reading without a dictionary, the words you have already known would actually try to tell you what others mean. Although they seem to mean so little to you at first, and although it may make you anxious by so reading, they start to bind themselves together and get stronger each time they succeed to explain what the other words are, and the newly learnt words join in to your vocabulary to tell you more eloquently by collaborating with others which you'd already known.

Anyways, that's pretty much how reading without a dictionary works.

So, reading is a way for you to be exposed to hundreds of thousands of different ways to describe things, but when it comes to actually speaking it, what should we do? This is when writing comes into place.

2. Writing

When I say "writing", you would probably imagine you would try to write down the right words and feel what a terrible writer you are, compared to the expression you would be using in your own language. No, I don't mean that.

Instead of trying to write the correct sentences, you just go on and on with writing down what you are thinking at that very moment in Japanese.
Do not worry for making mistakes, it really doesn't matter what it is about, all you need is to write down what pops out in your head in Japanese.

Probably you would be thinking; "it's impossible because I can't think in Japanese". Okay, then when do you think you would ever start thinking in Japanese? Does it happen in your mind all of a sudden? NO WAY!

When you start writing like this, your Japanese would exactly be how your speech sounds like. Yeah, it's what your current level really is, you kinda have to face it.

If we think about it, have you ever seen kids in age of 4 or so who never makes grammatical mistakes, not a single wording? If you ever do, try capture that kid because he is an alien (Again, just messing around. Please do not take it seriously. I'm just trying to make a sense here).

Rather, probably the kids would go off and keep telling us ridiculous fake stories with lots of grammatical mistakes. In a way, how they create ways to use words they just learned is astonishing, although it still may sound stupid.

I believe they are (and we once were) just trying to have fun by making all sorts of mistakes, and by listening to themselves how stupid they sound, compared to adults' speech. And I also believe this is why they like dirty words. They are just playing around by saying those bad words to hear how inappropriate and funny they sound.

And we all have to admit that we had fun that way when we were kids.

But wait here. If you say out loud things like "O-Chinko" in Yamanote line just like a 4 year-old-kid does, there's a slight chance that you may end up in jail. I know there's some strange people in Tokyo, but you don't have to be so just to learn Japanese, absolutely not.

Instead of violating common wellness of good Japanese societies (or others around you), you just need a notebook and a pencil to write down whatever you are thinking at the moment. You may sound stupid or inappropriate, but it's all alright. It's just a notebook after all. It takes whatever you say.

The teacher at the English institute I went called this "journals". And, I was told to write down for at least ten minutes a day. On the first day, you would probably feel a drop of sweat going down in your butt crack after writing "journals", but you need to keep trying. The more you write, the better you would come to feel ease.

So, give it a try? It goes like this. It's me writing what I was thinking in English for about 3 minutes.

*****************<me writing a journal>*******************
I am watching a news and it's about "Yuru-chara", and they are saying about how city employees manipulated the vote for choosing the best in Japan. hmmmm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking... What's the point making their characters the best in Japan is all about the money. It's sad that the characters so cute are used to sell more of their things.
Anyways, I am writing a journal since so long ago, and kind neat that I can even think so clearly in English like this. Things were not so easy back when I was studying English when I went to the U.S....
*****************<the end of the journal>*******************

I intentionally left all the mistakes I made. I was drunk when I was writing this, and thank God I didn't curse in this example, but it's so embarrassing that I was bragging about my English.

Also, I found how my English sucks by this example, and exposing this is so embarrassing, although I bet this series of journals still have tons of mistakes. But, you don't have to show off like I did. You just need to write down on a notebook, not on the web site.

Please note that this method only works with reading books on day-to-day basis. And let me explain a little bit more of how this works.

Unfortunately, your writing skill would not make any progress just by writing the same thing over and over. You just remember the words you write. In order to become good at writing (and speaking in turn), you need input from somewhere else. Yeah, that's to read books.

When writing what you are thinking in Japanese, you are unintentionally referring to what you have read by then and strengthen what you have learnt by far by writing that down in your own way.

Still it doesn't make any sense to you to write down this way at your level? Let me put how ridiculous writing the correct sentences and memorizing them would sound to me this way.

Let's say I was learning English to try to have a girlfriend in the U.S. or Canada. I would have google'd "what are some examples of flirting conversations" and have started to memorize:
****************************<quote>**************************

Me: Hey, Jake

Jake: Uh…h-hi. (His stutter is adorable)

Me: What’s new with you?

Jake: Same. Mom still hate-messages me, school is boring, Tyson is awful.

Me: I’m sorry.

Jake: Nothing I’m not used to. Sorry, am I being annoying?

Me: No, relax. (I put my hand on top of his and he turns red). I like talking to you.

*****************************<quote>*************************
I hope you would be kind enough to stop me right there.

Instead, what I would actually have to do is to go for a dinner with a girl and try to describe how beautiful she is in many different ways even though I may sound stupid. I would rather give it a try, and hopefully she may think of me as adorable.

Or, there's this one guy studying Japanese by answering English questions on a tape like "I have three children and a dog" and what you are supposed to say, and the only given answer would be "私には三人の子どもがいて、犬も一匹飼っています" and the tape goes on like this. Hey, I can come up with at least three different ways to say the same thing in Japanese, and it's the fluency you want to achieve, isn't it? Memorizing only one answer would not allow you to reach that goal, sorry to say this, but it NEVER happens.

Quite honestly, it really sounds stupid for me to memorize one sentence in just one right way by saying it over and over again. Dude, for me, it almost sounds like you memorize one "haiku" to remember one "kigo" so that you can explain what Spring is like in Japan. Let us face the reality, "kigo" itself has more than 2,000 different words to describe the seasons about which you make a poem (or namely, "haiku").
Then, why not express yourselves in many ways instead of trying to find the right sentence you memorized that matches the situation?

The other anxiety you might still have before you start writing this way is the grammar, I guess. Yeah, we may have so many tenses and appropriate manners of connecting words.

If I were your Japanese teacher, I would of said "Fxxk it, fxxk the grammar!" But since I am not teaching you, I might have to be more explicit why grammar doesn't matter at this point.

Would you think all Japanese people know all the grammars about how and when we use suffix? If you have Japanese friends, go ahead and ask them when to use "は" and "が" and what the difference would be, and the answer you would end up with is something like "it just doesn't sound right" in most cases.

Or, let me ask you something similar about your language. What are the grammatical explanations when to use "on" and "in", and "at", and what would be the difference among them? Do the explanations you would give fit all situations? Probably they don't but yet you still know the right answers. How did you get that skill in English?

We probably learned what sounds right and wrong way before we studied grammars when we learned our mother tongues. But, when it comes to learning other languages, we suddenly start trying to memorize all the grammars before enjoying playing around with the language. There's no such easy way out when you learn other languages, I would say.

When you read books, say suffix like "が" and "は" would be something you would read at least ten thousand times in a book, even without realizing it. That is to say, we quite naturally get used to what it should be like in real Japanese in ten thousand different ways.

Instead of learning perfect grammars, what we did to learn our own languages was reading or listening to so many articles and phrases and kept trying to express ourselves by trials and errors using what we'd read or listened to. So, what's wrong with doing the same thing over in learning the language we are about to learn right now?

I have written so long so far, but all the above explanations and analogies tapered to this one point:  Do not think in your language when you learn another. And the method I presented above is merely just one of examples of how you do that.

Learning Japanese in Japan, especially for English speakers would be really difficult, because there are so many Japanese people who are eager to answer your questions in English, probably because of ethnicity, or of your accent, etc. etc... But if you ever face this problem, please just ask them to talk with in Japanese and tell them why it is important to you. I bet most Japanese people would be kind enough to do as they are told.

Thank you for reading these lengthy posts, even though my English sucks like hell. I suppose you would have more questions than you get out of this series. Please feel free to leave a comment or two if you feel like so. I would put as much effort as I could afford to answer your questions.

And, I hope you enjoy learning Japanese, I really do. Peace :)

Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.1

The topic on this journal is more like "How English speakers need to learn Japanese to become fluent: from a Japanese perspective".

In this journal, I would make some suggestions that MAY work for English speakers (or other Western language speakers). So, please read on if this topic rings a bell somehow.

As a Japanese, I learned English a while ago, and well, my English is not perfect, but I can say I am fluent enough to express myself in English to the natives to the point where they would understand what I mean almost 100% if they have some time to chat with me.

For Japanese people, learning English is far more difficult than English speakers' learning Spanish. So, I suppose the other way around could be true, or maybe even more so. And, it was hard for me to learn English as well.

Well known difficulty in learning Japanese is the number of characters we use. 2 sets of 46 basic characters and well over 1,000 Chinese characters (in a way, it's countless number because I heard there may be 10,000 or more, which I don't even bother to research).

But hey, don't complain! You guys have so many words as opposed to characters, and have you ever even bothered to count the number of words you guys know or even use in everyday life?

I took an MBA program, a well known word as "Master of Business Administration", and most Japanese back in time went like "What?! You played basketball at NBA in the U.S.? It's the top league in the world, d'oh!" (This was somewhat true. I came back home and had to explain what I learned by telling them the difference between M and N almost all the time).

Or like one day when I was watching NEWMAX TV, they were talking about Kyle Rittenhouse case, and they used the word "vigilante", which sounds pretty much French or some other languages. Now I have a question, do you guys even use the word, even once in your life? But still you guys manage to know what it is. And there's another word "vigilant", looks pretty English, please imagine how complicated

it could be for English learners as a second or so forth language?

Or, ROI, ROE, IOU, etc... What's up with that?

This may be a little too extreme as an example, but you know what I mean. In the world today, we have to condense words so that we could shorten the sentences, and squeeze some precious time out of it. And, Japanese essentially is an extremely efficient language to import and digest new ideas and words and to concentrate what they mean to our society (and that's why we have so many sets of characters. It's the historically proven fact, I think).

Well, these are the complaints Japanese English learners would have, and it's pretty much the same when I read comments on how difficult Japanese is, by English Japanese learners (or other language speakers learning Japanese).

So, here's some suggestions I would make. It's from my experience when I learned English.

1. Reading

2. Writing

That's it. Yeah, I hear you say "What?! I've already done those for so long and it ain't gave us nothing, you moron!".
Okay, just calm down and listen to me for a little bit more. It's not what you do is wrong, but it is how you do is wrong. Let me explain.

1. Reading

By reading, I meant "without a dictionary".

When I went to the U.S. and started studying English, my daily task was to write the whole chapter of the assignment in English, and look up all the words in a Japanese dictionary and wrote them down in the following row, then I translated the sentences into Japanese and wrote them down in the last row. It took 4 to 5 rows in notebooks to do the above and the neat looking notebooks gave me some awkward satisfaction.

Do you think I made any progress with that? The answer is a huge "NO".

Probably Japanese teaching method (Or, maybe Asian's) is totally cursed and that's why most Japanese teachers recommend to do the same thing like this, but think about this: Did you come over all the way down to this tiny little islands to become a translator? Well, even so, become fluent first.

Let me ask a question here. Have you looked up words when you read articles in your own languages when you were kids? Probably no.
Even for Japanese speakers like me, it would be a rare occasion to even pick up a dictionary in any case.
A Japanese dictionary was something we needed when my brother and I fought over which of our definition of things is right, or else, hit him in his head with the dictionary.

When I was a kid, reading was something fun in that my mom used to read me books right before going to bed and I begged for the next sentence when she stopped until I fell asleep. Reading was something so addictive that I couldn't even stop reading until 4 o'clock in the morning when I was reading a novel in which a mysterious thief was about to grab treasures and when a hero came out from middle of nowhere.

Yeah, you need to get to the certain level to read novels, but this is the level probably the most learners would start complaining about how hard the Japanese is to learn. I suppose you already hit the point where you need to move on if you can read hiragana, katakana and say, 200 Chinese characters or so (yeah, you can include numbers in that number as well).

Let us dig a little bit more into why it is wrong to look up a dictionary in your own language when you are studying another language.

The first stage of language learning process is two folds, I believe. First you need to understand what each word means by recognizing the image which represents the word.
Say, what red looks like, what water is like, sort of words which cannot be described just in words. At this point, you probably need to write or say the words over and over again.

By the way, even doing so was not a painful experience when we were babies. We just pointed pictures and have our parents (or others) express them in words and giggled. The same response for the same picture was such an exciting moment, I guess. It may not be a painful thing even after we became adults after all.

Second, when we achieve the point where we have enough vocabulary to describe other things in words we know, then that's when we start reading by ourselves. And, this is when you guys feel how stupid you are, unfortunately.
Remember, you are not. You just need to change what you do to learn further, instead of keeping remembering what each word means.

At this point, what you need to do is to let the words explain other words and accumulate the meanings by each other. To do so, we used to read something we were eager to proceed to the next page without knowing every single word to know what the ending would be like, don't you think?

I looked up the word "作る" and it came up with:
1. to make; to produce; to manufacture; to build; to construct
2. to prepare (food); to brew (alcohol)
3. to raise; to grow; to cultivate; to train
4. to till...
and this goes up to 13! This word may be a little too easy because it only means "make" in your language, but do you intend to look it up in your dictionary to find the right match every single time you encounter the new meaning of it? NOOOOOOOoooooooH!

In this example, the word "tsukuru" is a verb to describe when you form a thing from other thing(s) or something like that. Probably initially it was just making a pot or something, and because the meaning fits, it came to mean other things like "to have sex" by saying "子作り", yeah, we say it.

By the way, the word "作る" symbolizes the act when a person cut off branches from a trunk according to this site. It's amazing how far this word could stretch its meanings to even "try having a baby".

The whole idea of reading in this method is this:
Try read and add meanings to words you already knew in Japanese, instead of pointing out what they mean in your own languages.

This is pretty much why reading is so important in learning Japanese. And, well, it was really important for me to learn English.

So, just seal your dictionary and go get some Japanese books that look interesting to you. We are so lucky we have so many options here, even adult books (not recommended) would be fine if that's what you really want.

The important thing to remember when you read in this method are follows:
1. Any book that you are interested in is fine, but I would recommend novels because it would be easy to follow the plot without knowing meanings of all the words. Comic? Yeah, but you probably tend to end up with less vocabulary compared with the time you spend and all the words you would know would be about how we communicate with each other. And, you may also end up with becoming a regular at a "Maid cafe", or wearing "gothic lolita" fashion. If that's what you really want, go ahead (I'm just kidding).

2. If it's possible, read the same book twice or more. In each other time you read, you would appreciate more by knowing what to come, although how boring it may sound. From my experience, the excitement of realizing how much more you can learn by doing so would exceed just following the plot.
It's like you would understand 40% of the novel in the first run, 60% in the second, and so on.

3. Use Japanese dictionary (instead of English, or your own languages) every once in a while when you have to stop because you don't understand.

4. Keep reading the novel without thinking what each sentence would mean in your own language. Just keep going on. This might be pain in the butt when you start, but when you reach 20 to 30% of the novel, I would say you would be urged to go forward, not backward.

5.When you reach 20% to 30% of the novel, and if you don't have any clue of what's going on in it, the novel is way too above your league. The novel can wait for you. Just grab an easier one.

Thank you for reading this by far. And, this goes on a little more, so I wrote the second part of this series in Part.2.

Reading itself would really work better for your language skill, but it's not enough to become fluent. Writing in a certain way is fundamental.

Days at home 6: the 4th patriarch, and another story begins?

（日本語のエントリーはこちら）
It was the day before I came back to Tokyo, the island held a festival, which has the event in that children could catch fish with bare hands.

The last year, my nephew said he didn't want to go that kind of childish event, but I scolded him and forced him to go by saying "you can't even earn money for what you do. If you can get something for free because your are a child, get it for the family ( ﾟДﾟ)", but this year, I took him to let him help our tasks.

It's the picture of my nephew worn by the worker's cloth.

I wrote this before but my brother is a doctor. Though, I thought he would take a house because he is the first born.

With an incident, we fought and I had never talked to him since then till my father's death.

The year before he passed away, I was told that my brother borrowed a huge amount of money and made a doctor's office near his wife's home. Also, my father told me to support my mom as much as possible and to go home whenever I got tired of living in Tokyo. About my brother, he sadly said that my brother never made it to take our house because he already had his own house.
He was on an artificial ventilator at the time, so he told me that much of his orders with his writing and leaking of his breath from his throat.

After that, it looked like she was synced with my father's will but my mom started to gather all the family heritage and let me have it. After a bit while later, I agreed to take the house.
(Picture: The nephew timidly tries to scratch the ground with a pickaxe of which one claw was broken, which probably used to belong to the first patriarch. He is preparing to be a doctor to take my brother's office. I don't know about the nieces who at the time were catching fish in the event, but I suppose he is going to be another house's patriarch.)

One thing I recalled. My father's will was "go to work 15 minutes before it starts, and do not hesitate to do dirty tasks." Sorry father, I almost forgot.

The day my father passed away, we had a big fight again, and at the time my brother said "I can't force my kids to take a house or anything. People should live in liberty", or something like that sort of bull shit. Well, it makes some sense but he was better off being a doctor with his lack of consideration like how the father would have to think of the circumstances of his doing whatever he wants at a time as a result.

(Picture: This was actually  the first time I myself lead construction tasks, so it was totally experimental, but we probably make the way wide enough for the agrimotor to pass by. The wall on the left of the picture is that the nephew dug, and the right is of my work. He sometimes stopped working when he found lizards came out of the ground, but well done, buddy, I praise you.)


At the moment, I really don't have anything on hand, but when it comes to think about it, the nation is made of the families in it. The growth of nuclear families weaken it, and may be the reason of less children in the developed countries.
If there's something I could do to the nation, it's me keeping a family, I came to think that way. Well, I don't even have a girlfriend who may possibly be my wife yet though lol.

(Picture: We dressed the fish the nieces got from the event and made a dinner with them. The guts of 7 fish became a soy-sauce cooked dish and it's something you got to have alcohol with it. At the time my nephew and I tried to make the way wider, they really enjoyed the festival.)


Tsunoshima became a big sightseeing spot after the bridge was made, and the road would be filled with people who have nothing else to do other than drive. We were not able to move from the house and we had nothing to do, so I made my nephew to help me chop woods. He never lived in the countryside, it was rather a rare experience for him. I remember it was around the same age when I got the first permission to chop woods.
The day after right before I came back to Tokyo, I instruct him how to chop one other time then I took Shinkansen. On the way to the apartment in Tokyo, I went to a motor cycle shop to pick up my motor cycle I dropped before going back home.
I got my motorcycle's front wheel and its brake pad replaced and rear brake overhauled because it was not working.

The story of me as the 4th patriarch has just begun, and I'm still working on to make things work out to live half the time in hometown and the rest in Tokyo.

Days at home 5: the 3.5th patriarch

（日本語のエントリーはこちら）
By the May second, we finished cutting the path to our fields in the abandoned area and cultivating the field on the hill.

She has kept saying that she wanted to use the tractor in these fields, but I said "no" because it's dangerous with stumps like in the pic below and with the way narrow. But my mother never gives up on things. She kept saying it enough times for me to give up on convincing her any more.


Like I said, my mom never gives up on things she wants. Just like her bringing my father back to the world so many times, I have to admit that the reason I could earn for what I do now is totally because of this behavior of hers.

I heard it's totally not something unusual these days, but I didn't talk or walk even when I reached 2 years old. The home doctor in the town said to my mom "be prepared, because he will be retarded".
(Picture: We removed the stump by cutting it with an ax. It's difficult because it's on the ground.)


She completely denied to accept the old fashioned statistics which had somewhat majestic power like Shamanism back then.
(Picture: After removing just one stamp. It took us for good 30 minutes to remove just one. We still have 4 or 5 more, and I already regret that I made a promise to her.)


Since then, she laid me down facing up and pushed my feet one after another saying "this is how you walk" every night, and she also read books whenever she had spare time.

Thanks to her, I started to walk and talk, and I became able to somehow communicate with other kids until I realized my language was so fucked up enough to confuse others in the age of 10. I probably had a light speech impediment, so my growth was a little weird indeed.

(Picture: I got tired of chopping the stump in the ground, so we started to cut grasses on the footpaths. The number of the fields she opened up so far is 6, and the picture is of the first one. It's maybe difficult to tell where the footpath is, but we cut it anyways. By the way, we still have another field left untouched, and that is as large as the fields we got so far altogether.)


In addition to my developmental disabilities, my brother used to have atopic dermatitis, and I was allergic to eggs. My brother was healed gradually after he moved from Tokyo to Shimonoseki, but my allergy was so bad that I used to get hives all over my body even with a bit of egg. If we think about it, foods that have eggs in them are so many, so it is unbelievable how she managed avoiding such ingredients. And at this point as well, she never gave up.

(Picture: After cutting the first one, we started to cut the second one which is a little higher in its level. The latter fields other than the first one were not so rough probably because they were used until the end of the total abandonment. My mom recently had lung surgery, and she was forbidden to cut grasses with a cutting machine, so she just cleaned the grasses I cut and left all the other tasks to me.)


She fed me eggs little by little and examined all of my body after the meals, and she increased the amount gradually over ten years.

I remember when I was a student in the U.S. and took the first health examination, there was a query asking "do you have allergy to anything?". I asked the nurse "I was allergic to eggs but it's completely healed by now. Do I have to put it on the report?" and she looked so shocked. I don't know how difficult it is, but it's totally healed. I even eat an raw egg with Natto everyday and have no problem.

(Picture: The second field. The plants on the left are made up one which were combined broccoli and a Chinese plant. My mom thought it would be nice to have yellow flowers all over the place and planted them last winter. I heard the field was filled with bright yellow in the spring this year.)


My mom started to work at hospital as a nurse when I was ten. She graduated a nurses' school which was probably equivalent to a college now (the school changed its name several times, so it's difficult to tell what it was at the time) and she got the license, and then she met my father and quit the job when she bore my brother. But she decided to get a job again, thinking my brother and I would need some money in the future to go colleges.

Once I became able to eat eggs, she taught me how to cook from cooking rolled omelets, and I became capable of cooking descent foods. I used to feed my brother back then, which I think is weird because usually the elder feeds the younger.

(Picture: The second one is vertically long. When the flower flourished, I suppose it was like the Crescent Moon. She is thinking about planting more next year to surprise the island's people.)


When I was eleven, my brother and I got high scores on Intelligence quality test. That was when my teacher back then said to her "it's your responsibility if these kids become bums".

Yeah, indeed I became a bum, but thanks to her having worked since then, my brother could graduate a doctor course and I could take an MBA program. The rude expression the teacher said to her actually worked totally the opposite way, and it worked very well eventually. Oh, by the way, my score on the IQ test was way better than my brother's, I should add that point for my honor.

(Picture: It's the fifth field before cutting. The fifth one faces to the path, so she wants to take the tractor into this one, so that she could improve the efficiency of the farm. The tall grasses are thatch, and they are really hard in their roots and make the cutting difficult. In about half way to the end this time, my mom was thinking if I was going to give up. Yeah, I was almost there, mom.)


After a bit later, she started working at a bigger hospital, and she became the head of nurses in the end there. Although, she really hated the work environment there however she maybe had liked her job itself.

(Picture: The fifth field. Once the grasses are gone, you can finally tell it was a flat field. After opening up these fields, she periodically cut grasses around the fields. A tip to continue cleaning is to work on it little by little.)

Then my mother kept adjusting how and where to work after we found the cancer in our father, and she pretty much concentrated on my father's recovery.

When my father passed away, she was totally exhausted and lost, but we started to upload cooking videos I once used to do because just by calling on the phone we would have had less to talk about with each other.

I made her pay for the PC parts and assembled, then I told her how to take videos on her mobile, we have been keeping to upload videos every week with weekly meetings.

This was the first time for her to use a PC intensively, but for her, it's not tiring to challenge new things like this.

(Picture: She gathered watercress and dropwort after the job. She looks pretty content with the success of planting new seeds in the field.)


She happened to go back to my father's home where she had nobody to talk to, but she was worried that the number of people has been decreasing drastically and nobody took any action for it.

Having heard of her story about that so many times, when I went back home to gather sea urchins in 2017(ish?), I told her "if nobody works on it, you yourself have to do it. People would not try if the outcome is so uncertain" and I succeeded to ignite her motivation who once had nothing but a lot of free time.

My mom started to break through the once abandoned path since the August 2017(ish), and with her friend, she made the path alive by connecting to the other side of the road. She actually cut grasses with the height taller than her which laid for 400 meters.

(Picture: After going back to the house, I ate and took a nap, then I started to make fire with the grasses I cut right after I came home. Gathering grasses on the ground around our house.)


After breaking through the path and the field we have, she started investigating what kind of plants would be good for selling and what sort of them would fit to the soil and its condition now.

She made her mind to plant Soba, which may be the original of the island, and pumpkins and red beans for her experiment.

(Picture: There are lilies naturally grown on the way from our barn to the main road in front of our house. When we burn them, weird smell comes out and they usually are just smoky for so long. On the right bottom corner on the pic, it's the furnace I made from a rice can. It's the second one I made.)

In the winter of 2017, she gathered camellia seeds because it was too cold to do anything else, and she made camellia oil by herself. We tried to sell the oil, but we then found out that we need a license to make and sell cosmetics, so we are thinking how to handle the situation.

(Picture: The first furnace on the main road. I relocated it because my mom wanted to make fire after taking for a walk with her friends to get warm. This time I used this to burn grasses in front of the house.)


Recently, my mom got a dealership at the famous shop around the town. She would be selling stuff like citrus which are naturally grown around the house and other things which require less effort.

For now, I could not go back home right away (2022 addition: I made my decision to come home in 2019), so there's no time to let her live on just her pension. If I go back, I need her to expand the market and to make at least 20 thousand dollar an year. With that much money, we could at least live with the low cost around the region and the house we have. If we can add some other earnings to it, we would be well off in my calculation.

(Picture: On this day right before the so-called Golden week (in Japan, there are so many National holidays thanks to Americans who complained about the hard work of Japanese back in 80's, and we have three days off in a row in May, which can be added up to 5 days off including Saturday and Sunday), my brother wanted to come back home after my niece's stupid ballet lesson, and we had to stay awake until 23:00 on which they would be back. I was thinking not to drink that night because of it, but the best friend of my father gave us a yellowtail, so I waited until 21:00 and made a supper for myself. Usually my mom finishes her supper at around 19:00. I ate watercress just as is in a salad bowl, and my mom made sesame salad with dropwort. The fish tasted far better than I usually eat probably because they know how to kill fish.)


She cut vegetables for me to cook later and fell asleep. I sautéed beef, onion and garlic sprouts with Soba sauce. When I finished half of it, my brother finally made back and ate the rest.

Why the fuck you keep eating my dishes, damn useless bro ! ( ﾟДﾟ)
The mother of his wife also came along without notice, so futons were not enough for all of us. So, I had to sleep aside of my mom.

Her cats kept scouting around her all night, while I was trying not to bother her sleep. The two small feline would save her well while I'm gone. It's relieving.

Days at home 4: the 3rd patriarch

（日本語のエントリーはこちら）
The picture was taken on May the first, the day after the 3rd ceremony of him having gone to the other side of this world. My mom and I went to the highest hill of the island to farm, and this year we were so lucky it was all nice and dry because it had been raining in the past two years in a row.



I am not even sure if I could complete my father's story in just one entry, but one thing for sure I could say is that our relationship was wild until right before he passed away. You may ask how much, and I would say it was enough me breaking his leg with my Judo move and him hitting my head with his fist right after he got his leg broken. (2022/01/05 addition: and his ribs, I heard from my mother.)
I remember the flash right in front of my head when he did it. Damn dad.

Quite honestly, I thought he hated me (I believed he really did at the time) and that I had to kill him in order to be alive.

Recently, I talked with my mom about it and she told me that my father and I were too much alike, and he sometimes became too emotional when it comes to me. He was all cool with my brother because he could step back, that's what my mom said.

After the fight we almost never had talked with each other, but only once he talked to me and asked me a favor except for one other time later, and it was after I graduated the high school miraculously. I was thinking to study some more for another year to go to the better college I wanted to go because the college I could go was the least I wanted to go.

This was the first time my father asked me a favor to go to the college I passed accidentally.
(Picture: After me cutting the grasses, my mom chased me farming the land with an tractor. She used to ask my father or my uncle who gave me a ray the other day when she needed to use tractor, but right after my father passed away, she asked me to tell her how to use it by herself, and voila, she became able to ride one. She challenges new things even in the age of 67, and now she's pretty content with riding it by herself.)


During the college, my father and I barely talked to each other, and I was about to graduate. Right after the graduation ceremony, I was preparing for the party when I got a phone call from my mom. She was so upset that she couldn't make any sense to me, and it took me almost 20 minutes to figure what she was trying to tell me (She used to be a nurse who even used to grab patients' heart directly when she was working at the emergency room, so I have never seen her so upset). She said, my father puked black blood in the morning, and was told that he had a lung cancer which was in the terminal state.

He took a medical examination a half year before we found out his cancer, so this meant that the cancer invaded his 3 fifth of his lungs in half a year. The doctor sentenced 95% of death probability in the next half year. He was like, fighting with a pawn against a rook and queen.

I called my brother and ordered to move out from his apartment and go home right away.

Three days later, we both went home and were announced that he was not going to take any cure for his cancer from his own mouth.  Three relative families then gathered to say farewell a little early of his death by visiting several hot springs around the town.

(Picture: It's the next morning of farming, but the field after cultivation. The tractor had a trouble so I did the half of it, but she says she is going to plant some red beans and stuff. She said red beans are really no fuss, so they fit to the elders in the island, plus she already came up with a marketing idea to sell.)


We stayed one of the hot spring spots we visited and had a party after bathing, and after a bit while I found a Go board in the place. I asked my father if he could play and he replied that he never played but he could. I thought it could be a revenge match to beat him up in a peaceful way ever, so I drank a glass of water to sober up and played against him with all of my knowledge, but it turned out he occupied 3 fourth of the board and defeated me completely.

I asked him how he learned to play without playing, and he answered "when I stayed in hotels on business trips (he used to trip half the time for his job), I woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning and had nothing to do, so I read every single article on papers but I still had some more time to kill. So, I traced moves of Go on the paper and that's how I learned." So he was saying he learned from just watching the diagram like below pic.


When I think about him, he was incredibly smart. I myself have somewhat confident on my intelligence, but after his death he became someone I could never get over with.

Actually it took him for 4 years to graduate from junior high (in Japan, it's normally 3 years). The reason was that he used to help dragnet fish boats when the net got caught in the bottom of the sea in about 15 meter depth. He went to the bottom with holding an anchor, and one of the relatives who used to do the same thing said "blood used to come out of our ears".

After the junior high, he went to a marine technical school, and graduated as a top student. Then he became a sailor in Nihon Yusen, one of the biggest companies in Japan at the time. He indeed was a top student, but my grandpa had to go to the school to apologize for his mischief for several times. My grandpa brought sea urchin bottles every time he went, but his mischief was like "to help junior students who got beaten up by the senior from quitting the school all by himself, he escaped from the school involving all 2 younger grades of students". My grandpa almost never brag about anything, but he looked so honored when he was saying about this tale.

When he was a sailor, he went all around the world, and sometimes he had to run away from mafias with 10 thousand dollars which he got from gambling in his belly band (it's the pic below underneath the Easter eggs. The brothers of the family have each for them in difference color, and now my father's is mine.). My mom used to say that he spent all the money as soon as he earned at the time.


The other story that I can brag about my father's smartness goes like this. He met my mom in Tokyo and my brother was born in Tokyo. He said it's unbearable to leave the first born because the child (my brother) was so cute, so he quit the job as a sailor and changed his jobs several time. He finally became an electrician near the hometown, and he took all the licenses he could take in the field. He was one of only 10 people who had them all in our entire country.

When my brother was in the high school, my father was working on a license and I remember him asking my brother to teach him Pythagorean theorem. I got really surprised by him asking a favor to his child, because he was really severe to us.
(Picture: Me wood chopping. My mom wanted me to chop a tree she got from removing a tree which was leaning to our house. It's tiring, so just one for a day.)


However, the farewell party was not persuasive enough to give him up for my mom. She asked my brother and me to search for remedies to cure his cancer. My brother just became a doctor and I could search the Internet a little at the time, and we found chitosan and bracket fungus. She then persuaded my father to drink 15 tablets at each meal. I guess my father couldn't deny her feelings, but it would have been really painful to drink that much of medicine after meal.

A half year later, a pleasant surprise happened and his cancer once disappeared. I don't know if the remedies actually work or not, but I saw X-ray picture myself. I couldn't find a spot on his lung.

Although, the death never loosen the prey once captured so easily. Three months after that, my father once again was sentenced death in half a year. I guess it was a curse of the doctor who got humiliated by his recovery without any conventional medical treatment.

He was probably glad right when the cancer was gone once. He decided to do whatever it takes to cure this time. He took radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and finally agreed to take the cancer away surgically.

My brother was allowed to attend the surgery because of his doctor license. He told me that my father was cut in half from his neck to the belly and 3 fifth of his lungs were removed, and the surgery succeeded.

When he came back conscious, the nurse at the time asked him what his dream was, and he answered "I wanna be a fisherman". The nurse laughed at him nihilistically, probably because she thought he would never make it.

A while later the surgery, he quit his job but got a deal to let the company use his name for monthly payment so that the company could retain the criteria to receive orders from the country. And, he got a ship (not a boat!) for 80 thousand US dollars with the money he got from selling the house in a city we used to live and went back to the island, and he started fishing.

My mother used to say his lung capacity was 8 liters, just because there was no way to measure more than that. He lost the 3 fifth of his lung, but it only meant he still had around 3 liters or possibly more. I don't know if the measurement works like that, but he surely had enough strength to be a fisherman for over the next 10 years, on and off when he almost died and my mom brought him back using her nursing experiences and all of her willpower. His method of making fishing gear actually works very well and fishermen in the island still use it.

While he went through all this, I was away from home for so long, almost enough to forget about my father, and it was when my mom called. About a half year before that day, she called me up when he was about to die and I said to her "call me when he's completely dead", but this time, she was crying and asked me "please say the final farewell to your father while he is still conscious".

With about 5 years of absence from home, I didn't know if I could express myself well before him and I was all prepared for a fight. When he saw my face, he went "he hasn't changed at all, you see dear? He hasn't changed at all!" with the biggest smile I never saw before in my entire life, and his smile broke the switch of my eyes and tears and roars came out against my will.

At the time I first wrote this story in Japanese, I still couldn't stop crying. And this was the second and last time he asked me a favor, "Could you take my ship?". I have been in Tokyo and couldn't decide right away, and I had to decline the offer on this point, saying not all families could find the patriarch. Smiling sadly to me, he gave me some orders after his death and I was almost dehydrated for just three hours, then I came back to Tokyo.

An year later, when I went back home with the bad news at 5 o'clock in the morning, I was a little relieved seeing his tranquil face.
When I went back home this April, my mom told me that right after I left, which is an year before his death, she said to him "dear, I can live by myself. I can handle", and he was so glad like he never did. That's my father, and I heard from my mom he used to say "I did everything I wanted".

(Picture: Me hitting the tree with an ax. I learned that the impact from hitting something really hard is a good workout to my forearm. I think I can use that in some ways.)


I said to my mom that I want to eat fresh salmon with the lettuce she made, and she made the dinner in the picture. Chicken with bamboo shoots she gathered from somewhere really was good with alcohol as well. The little white things right behind the beer are bums with red bean jam. They are so small and fit to little plates for Buddhist ceremony.

My brother built his doctor's office with 3 million U.S. dollar liabilities around his wife's home and there's no way he could make it back to home, so I became the 4th patriarch. Well, this family started off from the branch one, why not the second son takes it.

Two days after my father's death, his ceremony was on my birthday. I felt something hatched in me. When I talked to the carpenter uncle, I said "my father was always right" and he went "you two are so..." and couldn't finish the sentence, with tears.

In the future, when I go to the other side, I wonder what kind of expression I can make on my face when I meet him. The day I am writing this article, I saw a dream of my father's death ceremony. I don't know if it was because I went back home for the third ceremony, but the fortune tells us it's the implication of independence from parents. But I wonder what I could be independent from. When I meet him, I would just kneel before him and apologize, for I couldn't achieve anything before he died even though I am so alike him, and for I couldn't take his ship.

For the rest of my life at some point, I would try to buy a ship and name "ship name the second" after my father's ship. The name was taken from my mom's name and his first grand son's. Let's say I get one, is it just for my self-satisfaction? I don't want to think that way.

Days at home 3: the 2nd patriarch

（日本語のエントリーはこちら）
The picture below was taken on the April 29th. We continued cutting grasses to the fields.


The 2nd patriarch, my grandpa, used to live until I went to the U.S. and started taking an MBA program there. I bet most people like grandma over grandpa, but I liked grandpa better. The reason was simply she was really harsh to her grand children, although she was really nice to my mom. Actually, she probably used to hate kids in general. She used to row a boat, which used to be the task for the first son, for the head boat of dragnet fishing guild. I guess she grew up in a really severe environment, but it could not be a reason for her to say directly to us "that's why I hate kids" all the time.
(Picture: The path of the picture above actually is turning to the right, and the picture below was taken from the turning point. On the left, there's the only rice field which is still active around here, and the path goes right beneath it. From the starting point of the path, here is about 80 yards and there's about the same distance from here to the edge of the fields.)


By the way, my grand mother passed away on the day I graduated from the high school. If I summarize, she used to be really kind in heart and feminine in certain ways. She used to curse all the time, but I guess she tried to discipline us.
Oh, it was not about my grand mother, this was about grandpa. He had three sons, and I had 7 cousins (2 of them actually were born almost 10 years later) so 5 of us used to go fishing with him in summers, and I didn't hear even a complain about taking care of the kids from his mouth. He just kept smiling all the time and took care of the children without our parents.
(Picture: It's around the way right underneath the active rice field. The dent in the middle is the right edge of the path.)


My grandpa was a drunkard for sure, but his drinking habit was like one cup for the breakfasts, another for the lunches, and three for the suppers. Not like the 1st patriarch who drank and slept on every single street in the island, he never fell asleep while he was drinking, and I suppose it was because he was a soldier in the world war 2.
I heard he used to be a corporal in the army's intelligence unit. When he got drunk, he always used to sing war songs back in WW2. At nights, he used to play Japanese chess with us while drinking.
For lunches while fishing, he used to skillfully dress small fish on a small wood plate and made Sashimi, and to drink a cup of liquor hidden in the bottom of the boat. I still remember the taste and it was really yummy to bite rice balls with Sashimi on a small piece of a wood covering a fish cage.
He perhaps didn't like talking about the war, but the only exception was the story about him having proposed to a Chinese lady and tried to take her back to Japan back then in front of my grand mother. If I think about it, the proposed lady probably was a so-called comfort woman, and he was unique enough to do that kind of stuff quite seriously. Well, he might have been just simple to live like that.
(Picture: The path after cutting. Thatch tends to grow easily on the way once it was rice field's footpath, and they are really hard to cut. In addition to that, 3 inches diameter trees stop the cutter blade from spinning. My mom opened up the path like that. It looks just greens on a canvas of kid's drawings, but it's still a path.)


When I became around 12 years old, I used to go to grandpa's and help him gather and dress sea urchins every year. I used to do this until I graduate from the college, and my grandpa, my cousin and I used to gather 5 to 6 kg of them for a day.
It's kinda fun to gather urchins, but it is really the pain in the ass to take out the meat out of them, and we used to wake up at 2 in the morning and do the same thing over and over again until 7 o'clock while listening to the radio.
I think it was 600 dollars in total for a day in average. And, this was about when I started drinking and smoking every night with my grandpa. During the season, grandpa's daily 3 cups went up to 5 and he started trying to moralize me every time, but I always taught him over and made him sleep being defeated just like my grand mother used to do to him. In the next morning, he just ate peeled tomato with a cup of Shochu just like everyday while watching and smiling at my cousin and me eating urchin rice bowls (he didn't have enough teeth to bite down tomato with skin).
(Picture: The path we cut in the morning. You can barely tell it is a path after cutting cleanly, but it is a descent path, and you would realize if you walk along.)


My mom always told me that the war destroyed everything, but my grandpa never has taken the leadership of navvies like the 1st patriarch. He just lived as a fisherman, and he passed away.
I would suppose he was the only normal patriarch (except for the war) among 5 of us who just spent his time just as it was. What great about him was that nobody could take as much turban shells and abalones from the boat using his sticks, and he never bragged about what he could do, but he probably was a great mason at the time.
My father once had a job in the island and had to break a stone wall that was on his way thinking he could build it back in seconds. However, it turned out that even using 5 men for 5 hours could not make a wall that would not fall apart as it was.
My father, nothing left he could do about it, finally took his father and grandpa took a glance on it and put it back in 30 minutes. The wall became strong enough to stand just still even with the stompings of 5 men all over it.
(Picture: a wall that my grandpa made. They are everywhere along every paths of the fields, and they haven't moved even a bit for so long. The path my mom opened up was perfectly preserved from falling apart.)


My grandpa passed away on the date I started my MBA program. I suppose he never changes his 5-cups-a-day drinking even in the other world. I hope he would sing war songs when I go where he is in the far future, drinking the fifth cup.
When my grandpa went to stay in the hospital for the last time of his life, I heard he was bringing the literal crap in a bucket and broke his shoulder, which was invaded by cancer, by the stick to carry the shit.
He was someone who was really difficult to describe in an entry because of the lack of stories that I can brag about of him, but he was probably strong enough to normalize even the pain that would break his shoulder bone in the middle of shit.
When I was about to leave to the U.S. to take an MBA program, I went to visit him in the hospital. I thought it was the last time to see him alive, but my older brother said that my grandpa said "this is the last time I see him" even though nobody told him he was terminal. He knew when he was dying.
Grandpa, when I go where you are, I would bring some fish and Shochu fresh enough for us to drink a little more than usual, so please prepare for the war songs to sing for your fifth.

Days at home 2: The 1st patriarch

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We went to cut grasses on the path to our fields on April the 28th. My mom said, they just grew at once during a few rains after she had cut all the way around the mid April.


I don't know the exact name of it, but she told me it's called "radish flowers". These little pretty flowers and their grasses coil around the cutter blade and are pain in the ass.


I'm the 4th patriarch of the family. The 1st one, that is my grand grand father was born in one of the biggest farmers in Tsunoshima, a small island, as the second son. And, I don't know if it's the tradition of the region, but the second and latter children usually used to take over other houses or to become priests. So, he as well was adopted to the other house once.
(Picture explanation: The path to our fields. The fields were totally abandoned, but these used to be nice rice fields. My mom broke through the path with her friends in the last year.)


However, he was way too prodigal for the house to let him take it, and I don't know exactly how prodigal he was but I guess it was surely enough to be expelled.
(Picture: After passing the woods above, we would face a straight path for about 50 yards. This is off course not our fields but just the path to them, meaning nobody's. Far away stands my mom.)


If we think about it, we may have been so lucky he was the way he was, but he was allowed to establish a branch family which was rare at the time, and he got some fields from the head house. Even now, our family is called the branch family when we attend certain gatherings.
(Picture: After cutting grasses in the picture above. We decided to go back home and go for a walk to get some turban shells like the day before. My mom walked before me. Once having been cut, we would notice it was a path, but when she first broke through the path, the height of the grass right next to her were all over the place.
She opened up the path I cut this time in three days at the first time. She is almost 70 years old and it is unbelievable how strong she is. When I cut the same height of grasses, even 10 yards was hell of the chore and I almost fell down.)


But, I myself would be called as a son of my father, or the younger brother of my older. We would find out why in this series little by little.
(Picture: The path before the woods after cutting.)


My grand grand father was a mason and the head of navvies when he was alive. He used to get so much money at the time, but I heard he drank almost all of it.
(Picture: The starting point after cutting. It looks nice and clean once it's done.)


As a kid, I grew up being told the two thirds of the wells of the island were made by him. Actually I heard 80%, but wells should be so many even when he was born so I decreased a little.
(Picture: My mom looking for turban shells in the ocean.)


But, I think the story that he drank almost all the money he got was real. I heard that he passed away because of alcohol when my father was 17. The reason why I think it was real is that I heard so many 1.8-liter Sake bottles were found on the roof of our barn after his death even though a doctor told him not to drink or else he would be dead.
(Picture: Old lady that I do not know. She knows who I am but I don't even understand how and I can't even remember her name although my mom told me who she was.)


Also, we could guess how bad he was by the fields that I would take. The fields are so far away from the house and difficult to farm, and the entrances were owned by the head family just because "he would sell them otherwise". If the entrance was owned by the other, the price would fall down to almost none, that I heard.
We could tell how he was not trusted at all, and he was the first head of the family. No wonder I am like this now.
(Picture: We don't have so much money and our fields are almost abandoned, but I at least inherit the right to take stuff in the ocean around the island, so we could gather so many kinds of shells and stuff.
This time, my uncle who is a carpenter (not the one who sucks at fishing) made a deal to craft a step for the terrace my mom asked him to make for mussels from the coast. So I gathered mussels using the tool which looks like just a stick in a basket in the pic below, sort of being picky to get bigger ones so that the uncle would not bitch about their size later. It took me a good while, and he was all happy about the deal.)


Our house was made by the second son of my grand grand father, and the great uncle made this one and the second one, then he quit because he was scolded for the crappy second one. After that, he had just drifted away from home. I heard there are some Yakuzas in that side of my family. Only people who are living normal lives are ladies, I heard.
(Picture: When we got home, cats were scouting the road in front of the house. The new terrace may have been a little peculiar for them.)


My mom is working on letting me inherit all the heritage, but she says it's damn difficult because most of the great uncle's family members' whereabouts are unknown. My grand father once tried to let my father inherit, but the great uncle asked for the money and it didn't work out.
(Picture: This is the terrace my mom asked the carpenter uncle to make. She looked so happy to have this. In addition to make this, the wavy roof became straightened by being supported by the terrace.)


Fields which worth almost none and the crappy house the great uncle made are all I got, but I should appreciate yummy meals I could get from the nature, which we could probably not get in cities.
I got a Kingfish from the best friend of my father that night, so I ate Kingfish sashimi and soy-sauce-cooked shells, which we got in the coast, and fresh veggies from my mom's little field and baked lotus root with cheese we made for a youtube video.

Days at home 1

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When I got home it was raining, so I was thinking maybe I can't make a fire for the first day of home as usual. But mighty God probably said I should in the end, the rain stopped and I made a fire this time as well.


Then, the first meal at home was like this ( ﾟДﾟ)

It's not very fresh or anything, but bonito sashimi went very well along with beer and Shochu.

The next morning, my mom ordered me to cut grasses around the house, but my cousin called up my uncle and asked him to let me go fishing with, so I happened to go fishing around ten o'clock.

My cousin waiving to the uncle's boat.


The way we fished this time was to pull and release the 40 yards string for 2 feet every 2 to 3 seconds. For two hours, I kept pulling the string...


Let's see if you could find one. So many dolphins came along the boat and we couldn't catch any. When I used to go fishing with my father, we always caught something. This must mean the captain (my uncle) sucked at leading the boat.
By the way, seeing dolphins means you barely can catch fish, so fishermen hate them. Although, we don't eat dolphins like in Shizuoka...

So I came back to home and started cutting grasses, but...


My uncle probably couldn't stand with the fact that he was just a stinking fisherman, so he gave us a ray instead. Our Youtube videos had accumulated up to 99 by the time, so we decided to upload the video how to eat rays for the 100th. Oh, actually my aunt told us how to though.

＜How to dress rays＞

My uncle may suck at fishing, but he has a given talent in how to get stuff with less efforts. He told us to go to the coast, so my mom and I went there in the evening.



It may be really difficult for people who do not use to look for turban shells, but we can gather so many of them when it is on the ebb tide. We already had yellow tail fish and a ray for the dinner that night, but we got some turban shells in addition to them. We got the dish for the alcohol for the day after. BTW, turban shells could live for a day or two in room temperature, so we could just leave them in the sea water.

On our way back in the middle of the hill, I found rocks that looked somewhat artificial and was told that was the Jizo shrine my grand father made.
Once upon a time, there was a lady who accidentally slipped and was drowned, and passed away, then my grand father made the shrine for her.
The first and second (my grand father) patriarchs were masons, so it was probably not difficult for him to make one, but it took him the whole day. The one who got pissed off with his absence was my grand mother and she scolded him so madly, that I heard.
After several days, she was told what he was doing on the day by neighbors, and she said "why did he not say that earlier?" but you would understand she wouldn't have listened to him if you knew me personally.


And, this was my dinner that night.
Fresh ray and yellowtail fish with beer and Shochu may have been too much for the little tasks I did on that day.