And now, effectively, I'm screwed. Living in Japan, I feel the way Superman might feel after a large piece of Kryptonite has attached itself - via a piece of chewing gum, perhaps - to the bottom of his shoe. I can't read anything. Not a road sign, not a train sign, not a sandwich packet, not the buttons on my washing machine or rice-cooker, not my gas bill (if that's what it is: I haven't been able to work it out yet) and certainly not any novels or plays. I can't speak: I walk around in a vacuum of silence, because all I can say is "thankyou," "sorry," and "where is the toilet/subway/convenience store/nearest rice ball". I therefore can't charm, I can't argue, I can't make jokes, and I can't reason my way out of hostile situations or work out where I am when I'm lost. Worse still, I can't listen. It's like watching the world through one way glass, because I can see people but I can't really hear them; I can tell that they're making noises, but I don't have the faintest idea what any of them mean. The joy of sitting in a crowded cafe and listening to a hundred conversations and a hundred different lives is gone: I sit in a crowded cafe, and it's just me. Me, and a hundred lives that I can't even begin to wonder about, because they are all completely unknown to me. Just like that, my power has evaporated, and the way that I process the world has evaporated, and I am simply floating around in a confusing, silent little one-way bubble. A bubble I can't pop, because - even if I could convince somebody to talk to me, or sit next to me, and even if I could learn the questions to ask that would help me to break through it - I wouldn't understand the answers. And so I am utterly and completely alone, apart from the handful of English, American and Canadian friends I have made, who have simply joined me in my bubble and float around in it with me.
Which, on one hand, is not what I want. I came to a different country to experience a different culture; not to simply float through it, buying English muffins and expensive butter and pretending I'm actually back in England. I want to understand people; I want to hear things. I want to know what people are thinking and saying; I want to begin to comprehend what is going on around me.
But, on the other hand, my senses are being stretched in entirely different directions. I have spent so long focusing on the power of language that I have entirely forgotten the importance of everything else. In my silent little bubble, I am suddenly noticing facial expressions, gestures, the shade of somebody's cheeks when they're embarrassed. No longer able to express myself verbally, I have suddenly become very aware of the way I stand, the way my mouth is set, the expressions I make when I'm tired, because I'm suddenly very aware that these are the only things I can be judged by. Like watching a silent film, or watching a foreign film without subtitles, the world has suddenly changed shape, and - after a short period of utter incomprehensible silence - I'm starting to read it differently, and be read differently in return. It's a quieter kind of communication, but it's no less worthy. Like somebody who loses the ability to see and learns to smell everything - every single nuance - instead, I am finally learning to read body language, which is a skill I have always lacked (as anybody who has ever been on a date with me can testify).
It doesn't mean that I am not going to try to learn Japanese, of course: I'm carrying my phrase book around with me, even if it sinks in slowly and painfully and with the kind of effort my 3 year olds don't seem to need. If I leave Japan without being able to at least understand a little of the language around me, I will have wasted my time.
But.... I'm going to try to hang on to this new world too; the one you don't need words to understand. Because it's one that's not limited to this country, and it's a skill that I should be able to take with me everywhere. Even when the bubble is broken again.
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