Sons of Loki

One exam down! Two more to go! This morning I had Civil War and Restoration Literature, my English module for last semester. I actually stayed up until 2am last night cramming, which is quite late for me. I never generally make a big fuss about revision, because I figure you either know it or you don’t (and I usually don’t, hence bad grades), but this time I knew I had to compete with proper English students. Being joint honours means I’ve done all of two English modules in my three years here, while single honours have done at least six, so they’re far, far ahead of me on practical exam skills. (Joint honours really is half a degree. Let this be a warning to you.)

So I sort of picked up that what proper students do is study a few topics in depth and then apply that knowledge to the exam. A cursory glance at past papers revealed that a) sex and b) authority were likely to come up, and I find those two subjects far more interesting than ‘time’ or ‘pastoral’ or ‘nature’ and the other themes on the course. So I flicked through a few books and made notes and went into the exam really having no idea what I was going to do.

Always three hours seems like an impossibly long time, and the blank white pages stretch on forever, and you have no idea how to answer any of the questions. But the time and pressure and stress sort of squeeze something out of your brain and you start writing and before you know it, time’s up and you’ve done a half-decent job.

the face of a dirty, dirty man

My first question was:

9. Be judge yourself, I’ll bring it to the test:
Which is the basest creature, man or beast?
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey
But savage man alone does man betray. (Rochester)

Does the literature of the period make us feel uncomfortable about being human?

To which I was like, you know Paradise Lost is all “humans are beautiful things but then it all went a bit wrong, look at the poor wretched things.” Then I threw Pepys in there, perhaps a bit too vigorously (it’s all too obvious that I just crammed Pepys because it’s full of extraneous detail about him, like his gallstones and what he does in church). Pepys is a fascinating character: a kind of lecherous prude, a man enamoured by the pleasures of the flesh but deeply ashamed by them; a man genuinely upset when his wife catches him fondling the maid but then who does it again the next day; a man who reads filthy French books and is all like “this is a disgusting book, but a learned man must remind himself of the sin of the world so I’ll take it don’t tell my wife yes a brown paper bag please”. He’s attracted to sex like a moth towards a flame, but when he gets there he burns up in shame. Finally I threw in Rochester to make the same point – humans are disgusting and we feel uncomfortable reading about it, but at the same time there’s a certain joie de vie, a kind of we’re-damned-anyway-so-let’s-party. And then something from Locke, which unfortunately I could barely remember.

Kind of the worst king there ever was, Charles II.

Then I twiddled my thumbs for a bit before embarking on my second question:

‘There were kings long before there were any laws. For a long time the word of a king was the only law’ (Sir Robert Filmer)

Write an essay on the relationship between law and Royal authority in the literature of this period.

Jackpot! Except I screwed it up by confusing Waller’s “St. James’s Park” and Denham’s “Cooper’s Hill”, but they are practically the same poem (except Denham can write poetry and Waller can’t). Still, I think I got across nicely that Charles is a king ruled only by himself and his own whims, with God his only authority,who allows himself to be fettered by law only for the good of all concerned. His temper is barely restrained, and if the commoners tried to restrain him further he would burst like an angry river and flood the country with destruction, as Denham put it. I could – should – have been harsher and pointed out that Charles II barely gave a damn about anything beyond where his next mistress was coming from, but I’m not sure where that would have fit into the essay.
So then I was went on to Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel” and explained how Dryden, rather sneakily, turns Charles’s promiscuity into a virtue, making out that having ten children by five different women is the sign of a powerful and deeply masculine man – ahahaha check out his tights there – and therefore how he don’t need no ‘law’ to have authority, but Dryden backtracks and adds ‘but he is also lawful because if not he could be a tyrant and Charles could never be a tyrant, except for that time his goons hunted down a guy who said something bad about him and cut off his nose, and all those times he pardoned his buddies for murder and rape.
And then some more John Locke, and the exam was done. That’s that for another year!

All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on,
From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.
(Rochester, “A Satyr on Charles II”)

Things are settling down pretty well here, I guess. For the first time, I’m in Leeds to see all the freshers and wow, they really do look so young and fresh-faced. They wear their college’s “class of 2010″ hoodies and are born in 1991 or even 1992 and don’t know where everything is and ask taxi drivers to take them to Opal Three and have those conversations which go “So what are you studying?” “Joint Honours International Biomedical Frangilistics and Exportation Studies” “wow I have absolutely no idea what that is” and the scariest thing is that they were us, once. No, that’s not the scariest thing. The scariest thing is that every single one of them seems to be having more fun than I am. Bah.

I’ve been bumping into old friends all over the place, and eating my old friend the ‘Wedge (now, scandalously up from £1.79 to £2.20). We dine at semi-fancy restaurants and catch up on how we’ve been doing and have heated arguments about how bloody expensive the Union co-op is, especially with the Tesco’s just across the road. We have people over for poker and video games. We go into uni and the guys go to the gym and I go to the swimming pool, because I’m too cheap to pay the membership fee and it’s only £3 for a swim and use of the sauna and steam rooms, then we come out and study Japanese in the library because we are awesome and are not swayed by Domino’s offers of free pizza (seriously, it’s like sixteen-fucking-quid for Domino’s pizza – sixteen pounds! – and Milano’s down the road do a gorgeous BBQ pizza with your choice of three toppings and free delivery for £4.10).

I come back and write my stupid novel and think about what I’m doing for NaNoWriMo this year (concept: taking the Totoro shinigami urban legend and running with it, making a proper story about a girl who disappears into the forest and meets Death and has to save her little sister or something – shades of Mort and the old Death and the Maiden tale) listen to the Beatles (getting into Let It Be and Abbey Road right now) and drink coffee and read Baudrillard, who like all French philosophers (and all philosophers) takes a chapter to say what he could say in a page, but nevertheless makes me nod my head:

In the same way science and technology were recently mobilized to save the mummy of Ramses II, after it was left to rot for several dozen years in the depths of a museum. The West is seized with panic at the thought of not being able to save what the symbolic order had been able to conserve for forty centuries, but out of sight and far from the light of day. Ramses does not signify anything for us, only the mummy is of an inestimable worth because it is what guarantees that accumulation has meaning. Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.

Et cetera. I’m a little worried about getting back into English, because my first module is Civil War and Restoration literature and it’s going to (probably) be all about dashing rogues and tartish ladies (probably) and I really can’t wait until third year (fourth year for me) when the modules on modern literature turn up. Japanese I still can’t speak, but I’m going to get a language partner(s) and reading it seems to be going alright.

And my Dickish (as in, er, Moby Dick) struggle with the stripped screw in my laptop has succeeded after I wrenched the broken keyboard off by practically bending it in two until it became detached from the fixing bolt, then very, very slowly and strenuously removing the bolt with pliers (getting confused about the direction – bolts spin clockwise to come off) then getting the screw out backwards with said pliers. Finally, the new keyboard slotted securely into place, and I can finally type on the go again.

There’s a huge spider in the bath. I may never be able to shower again.

After an impromptu meeting with Suzuki-sensei at 6pm today, it was established that due to my low mark of 63.9 (C) I will be repeating level 300 instead of moving up to 400 with everyone else. Also, I think I was advised to do all the auxiliary lessons (the speaking, listening, reading and writing classes) and the kanji class too. There goes my free time!

That’s not set in stone. I could still push for 400, I reckon. But, I dunno. It might be best to cut my losses and concentrate on the Leeds exam.

I’m doing joint honours English and Japanese at the moment. I am informed that there is a possibility of applying for straight BA English in May, which would entail basically dropping Japanese and reverting to my remaining two years of English in 2010/11 and 2011/12.

Do I want to do that? Not really. I do want to finish Japanese, but at the same time, in all honesty, I’m just not putting the work in.

Suzuki-sensei asked me today why I’m doing Japanese, and for the first time I gave the honest answer: I like living in Tokyo. I adore this city. I always tell people “Well I liked anime when I was younger,” or “I like Japanese culture”, but the simple truth is I like living here more than England. (In some respects. I do miss home.) No crime, great transport, exciting events, the bustle of a megapolis; it’s everything I want. I mean, you can walk the streets at 3am and never, ever feel threatened. You know how much more pleasant that is than in England? I don’t want to go all Daily Mail, but it’s little things like that.
And I don’t really need a degree to live here: obviously it would help with getting a job but right now, I know enough Japanese to survive here. I realised that when I went to get my bike fixed – just a minor errand, and my Japanese went off without a hitch, and it was sorted. I know enough to get anything done. I’m pretty much illiterate beyond kids’ manga and I can’t really hold an interesting conversation, but I can Get By.

So if I can get by, the question becomes what am I learning Japanese for? I’m not really sure. Obviously if I could be fluent I would. If I had a roadmap for fluency, I’d follow it. But that seems an awful long way away (and it is) and right now I’m sort of okay and I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to get better, but that doesn’t really bother me, y’know? (And yet it does…)

Here’s your linguistic paper of the day – an analysis of English-Japanese code-switching.

Code-switching is what happens when speakers who share two or more languages switch between them, like if I was to say to you “It has a certain je ne sais quoi“, that would be English-French code-switching. It gets more complex than that, but those of us doing Japanese here kind of find ourselves doing it as a joke, or to better explain something that can’t be done in one language, or even unconsciously at times.
For example, one thing that crops up in the academic literature is the way bilingual speakers will express sums of money in Japanese even when speaking English, and I’ve realised I do that all the time without even realising it: “How much does it cost?” “A return ticket is 五千円。” [Five thousand yen.] As another example, I sent Rob a message the other day saying ”多摩から [I'm coming from Tama], meeting at 吉祥寺中央口 [Kichijoji station Central Exit] at 2130 if that’s cool.” I mean, there you have one benefit of code-switching – it’s easier to type “多摩から” than “I’m coming from Tama”.

With bilingual children, as evidenced in the paper, things get interesting:

Kye (a young boy confident in both English and Japanese, doing origami): エミリ、これ持っといてstick-onするから。[Emily, hold this, because I want to stick on something.)
Emily (his sister, less confident in Japanese): はい。[Yes.] Two more.
Kye: No, that’s enough.
Emily: (realising) かぶと！[A samurai helmet!]

This stuff’s weird, isn’t it? I was thinking about perhaps doing a dissertation in my second or third year of English, if I can do one in joint honours (from the website I think I could, but I’ve heard otherwise). Code-switching is more a linguistics thing, though, and not much to do with English. Still, I might be able to work it into a topic.

Today was really good, in that quiet, unassuming way that days can be. I got my article published in Metropolis (tried tracking down a paper copy, but I think they haven’t hit the racks yet) and finished my second one (fingers crossed it goes in). To celebrate sort of becoming more of a writer, I bought myself a new watch for a disturbingly low price (it’s either a knock-off or stolen, except no one has ever been mugged in Japan). I finished off my homework for once, had a wander around Kinokuniya bookstore, posted off my registration for proxy voting (I’m a good citizen, me) and paid my health insurance bills (apparently despite being three months late there are no ill consequences) at the post office, bought some sandalwood incense from the panhandlers outside Shinjuku west exit, and strolled down the street listening to King Tubby’s prime dub cuts and trying hard not to think about this Onion article.

Okay, I’m not seriously considering giving this thing up. I guess for the sheer inconvenience of it I won’t be quitting Japanese. Plus I would feel really bad about it. But I will reflect on the struggles of learning this damn language.

Stuff I like about Japanese
I get to live in Japan. No, seriously, I love it here, from the vending machines to the punctual transportation to the delicious milk. Obviously speaking Japanese makes it much easier to live in Japan, which is the best motivation I can think of.
I get to use Japanese. That’s kind of obvious, but still, it’s a pleasing feeling. I can sort of read manga and play video games, and engage in conversation occasionally. (Actually getting speaking practice is harder than you’d think.)
The language itself. I guess there’s a certain neatness to the language, a pleasing logicality to it. I like kanji too, sort of, once I’ve learned them, the way radicals combine to create aesthetic and semantic beauty from a few lines.

Stuff which makes it difficult to learn Japanese and leads to frustration
I’m not fluent. Okay, this is largely my own impatience, but I’d thought that after a year and a half (more, if you count pre-uni study) of Japanese I’d be at a point where I’d understand most day-to-day stuff. I do not. Even trips to the convenience store are fraught with confusion because I have no idea what they’re asking me. I like the pretty pictures on TV but I only understand it about 5% of the time. It makes you feel so impotent and useless, to have done so much work for no tangible benefit, and it puts you off further study.
In Tokyo everyone speaks English. Not so much frustrating, but it definitely hampers my actual daily use of the language. Either shop staff will just use English straight off the bat when they see me, or I’ll try Japanese, flounder horrifically, and the assistant will step in with English to sort me out and I’ll be too panicked to do anything but mumble back in English.
I can’t read manga. I think manga is a great way to learn Japanese, but I’m not quite at the level you need to be to get the benefit. I know I said I could up there, and I can to an extent, but it’s a hard slog which saps all enjoyment out of the experience. By the time I’ve finished looking up all the new kanji and vocab on Japanese on my iPod, it’s taken me ten minutes to read a single page and I’ve forgotten the plot. Same for video games.
Everyone else is better than me. Well, I imagine. My fellow students are lovely to a (wo)man, and no one ever flaunts their ability in my face. But when I hear someone else speaking Japanese fluently (or at a level that I can’t understand, anyway) it kills me a little inside. It shouldn’t. I should pay no attention to whatever level they’re at. But nevertheless.
I don’t have the knack. Well, who does? But it feels like a lot of my fellow students seem to find it considerably easier to pick up new vocabulary and grammar than I do. When I learn new words, it feels like it goes in one ear and a few days later out the other.
The classes are… I feel like I may as well not turn up to classes for all the benefit I get out of them. They’re 90 minutes long, and I just can’t concentrate for that long in English, let alone Japanese. And the classes are entirely in Japanese, and I’ve said this before, but I don’t know enough Japanese to learn in Japanese. The textbook is no help, because it doesn’t explain anything, and all we seem to be learning is … Actually, I have absolutely no idea what we have been studying over the last three months. I think we did keigo honorifics, and a million different ways to say は, and … I’m at a loss, I really am.

But as I said, what else am I gonna do?