More than Your Average First-Day-of-School Jitters

Pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017965&id=1230390045&l=fe935f12ae
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School starts tomorrow, Thursday the 24th. Not as excited as I hoped to be - the language barrier is starting to bother me a lot. So much is going right over my head. I still trip up over basic things, my brain freezes, I get embarrassed, and I feel like I've failed. Every day.

I met up with my friend, Jasmine, who I have not seen in eight years (it's a long story and the fact that we both ended up in Japan at the same time is beyond phenomenal) and after a dinner of delicious yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick), we went to her favorite bar called Orange County. It's full of American paraphernalia, (American) 60's/70's music and very friendly people. Jasmine told me ahead of time it's a great place to practice Japanese. I tried talking to the bartender. It didn't really work. I didn't understand what he was saying - it was all too fast. I looked to one of Jasmine's friends constantly for help, as she is much better. I felt so pathetic. And when I finally figured out what he was saying, it was a lot of piecing things together in my head to sound like a functional human being.

I know, everyone says, "you must think in Japanese" - telling me that isn't going to help me anymore. It's hard. Despite how long I've been trying to do this Japanese thing, I haven't managed to get it down. I'm pretty bummed about it. I'm worried about taking classes in Japanese. If I can't understand conversational Japanese, how could I possibly understand it in an academic setting? I just don't know what to do. The first few days of classes starting, like I said, are a look-and-see period. So, I guess I'll do just that.

And along with that issue, as you can imagine, I feel pretty out of place and more self-conscious than usual if I'm traveling on the train alone. It's not like I want to fit in but at the same time....I do. I sometimes wished I didn't look like so much of foreigner...or maybe, I wish Japan had more of them so I didn't look like such a random piece of the scenary. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I feel like everyone is watching me. Thus, I worry about every single thing that I do. I stand out too much. At least I think I do.

Maybe it's just because I'm in a lousy mood. Oy vey.