Work or Not Work 1

December 1, 2013

When I was young, 28 years old (not so young!), I first visited a foreign country: it was India.
At that time, I didn't learn English at all, and after my graduation from college, I had never used English, so my English level was very low; in fact, almost nil.
Many people know that India used to be a colony of the UK and many people use English. At that time, 27 years ago, so few countries in the world used English as a second language. On the other hand, India was one of the few countries that people used English in their usual lives.
Before leaving for India, I learned English for a couple of weeks. I went to a book store and bought an English textbook which emphasized travel English. With this book, I exercised my English for the first time in eight years (since my university days).
Anyways, I stood in Calcutta in India. Soon I realized that my couple of weeks' effort wouldn't work at all. I couldn't hear their English, and I couldn't make them understand my English, except 'How much?' and 'Thank you.'
Some of you may wonder how I survived in India. I survived in India for ten days and returned to Japan without any

problem. I can say that in travel we can live without language. Because if you point to the food on the table of the next customer and said 'That please.', even if your pronunciation is terrible, the waitress will understand what you want. And, if you stand pointing a finger and say 'One night please,' the clerk at a hotel will understand what that finger means.
My staying in India was far from 'surviving', it was an amazing experience. (Maybe some day I might have a chance to talk about it.)
I received a lot of kindness in India, and so, I became very frustrated because I couldn't express my appreciation to them because of lack of language. I wanted to explain my feeling but I vainly repeated 'Thank you' and 'Thank you very much' again and again.
When I got to Narita airport, a tourists, a young Philippine girl, asked me, "Can I ask you where to get a train for Oume?" I'm not sure I was able to catch her English but at least I caught the word 'train' and 'Oume', which is a city in Tokyo. I struggled to explain to her the train track but she understood it and thanked me. I said after my struggle to use English, "English is different." She smiled and gently corrected me, "Maybe 'English is difficult'." After that day I decided to learn English.