Let's begin!

Right, so... here we go!

Let me begin by saying what this blog is about. One of my new year's resolutions was that I'd like to learn how to communicate better, and after a lot of research, it seems that the best way was to force myself to write more. A lot more. With a kinda long trip to Japan coming up (almost 5 weeks!) I think it was the best time to do so.

On this first post, I'd like to explain my feelings and thoughts about having planned this trip, why I took the decisions I chose, and my fears.

The plan was simple: been fascinated at how different the culture in Japan was, since I was a small kid (I think I was 13 when I saw the main differences. Maybe even through anime?) and now that I have more possibilities in life (having funded a successful company, providing a satisfactory and stable income, engaged but no kids, being a house owner...), the time has come to go deeper.

Last year I went to the Kansai region (home to amazing cities, like Kyoto and Osaka) on my own, after a bit of a spur-of-the-moment, I just made a backpack, bought plane tickets, and off I go! The objective was to spend a week learning and working in a soba restaurant whilst having a full-immersion experience by staying in a Japanese home, in rural Japan (in Seki) and spending another week or two travelling the region, eating as many different things as possible.

I absolutely loved the experience. People were friendly, very clean and varied cities and landscapes, and of course: the food. You don't know how important eating well is for me. Ramen almost every day, with some pork cutlets to add some variety. I'm pretty sure I didn't step in a sushi restaurant in my time there, as Kansai is the region of the most amazing beef. Ah, wagyu, how I miss you...

It's so incredibly difficult to describe what Japan is like, but let me try: knowing that the country had a massive economic boom in the 80s (where the rest of the planet used their electronics), they kept that bombastic mentality, where everything had to be bright, big and loud. Now let 30 or 40 years pass almost in a vacuum (it's an island, after all) and keep growing the society with that mentality; wherever you look there will be enormous signs, neon lights and grating music coming out of every store. It's oddly tiring and intoxicating (in a good way: can't have enough). After coming back to Europe, everything seems so mild in comparison.

Let me get to the point: why am I going to Japan for such a long time?

Here's a minor piece of trivia: the Japanese language is not easy (please note my subtle sarcasm). I guess I'll rant a lot about it in this blog. I tried for 3 years to learn it on my own, academies, intense courses, 1:1 lessons... it's difficult. I lack the self-motivation to force myself to study at least an hour every day, and without doing that, you'll never learn anything. I'm consistently inconsistent. Because of this, I made the completely normal thing any other sane person would do: spend thousands of euros in a trip to study 5 hours every day, of every week, for a full month. I wish I could do it for a full year, but my fiance would be slightly annoyed at the idea.

Difficult you say? Can't be that hard, if you just have to say "desu" every 5 seconds, and everything is either "kawaii" or "sugoi", right?

Here's a silly example, or what I'm currently struggling with: counters. In English (and every other language I studied) has just two of them: simple (one, two, three...) and the ones used in order (first, second, third...). Obviously it doesn't matter if you're counting chairs, cats or people. Well, for some obscure reason, in Japanese there are hundreds of them, each with their own words, and most of them are irregular. Hope you like memorising stuff!

As you can see, it's almost impossible to learn a language on your own, where even the numbers are so mind-boggling. Had to find a nice academy in Japan and spend some time there to get the full experience. The search had begun.

A lot of Googling later, I found out that most academies are like universities, where you need to go there for the full scholar year (shocking!), but a few stood out where you can join at any time and get down to business (note: no huns were defeated during the writing of this blog). Out of all of them, I saw that only one had a good representative here in Spain: EF (Education First). Let's discuss it in depth in the next post.