Four years ago I was doing pretty much the same thing I am now: staring at my computer screen and contemplating life abroad. The difference is, I was fresh from wrist surgery at Imakiire Hospital in Kagoshima, having shattered my distal radius in December 2007. How could I possibly feel nostalgic for such a time, when I was facing my own mortality for the first time ever…?

That cycling accident had been my first serious injury and the first time under the knife, and yet, I saw it as an opportunity (not just in retrospect, but at the time). I took the chance to slow down, read some running books, and blog on Japan more often. In doing so, I finished the majority of texts that had been sitting on my bookcase for many months, discovered barefoot running, and took the time to reflect on my days in Japan.

The truth is, I do miss Japan now… and I don’t. I don’t miss the bureaucracy of teaching at AEON, and being pointed at and ogled. But I miss the hot springs. I miss the safety of the country. I miss finding new adventures. Sadly, even if I were to fly back into Narita, it wouldn’t be the same. There’s only one first-time Japanese experience for everyone, and I’ve had mine. It was delightful, but the awareness it produced stuck with me, and I’m now more world weary than I was in 2006.

One thing I do miss about Japan is teaching. Not the steady paycheck or the simplicity of the job, but the students. Just like Loco in Yokohama, my soul is healed by children. It’s impossible not to feel better about yourself standing in front of a group of ten wide-eyed ignorant minds whose loftiest goals are to laugh and eat dinner. When I left AEON in 2007 I wanted something more professional, more stable. I found SNBL in Kagoshima, and it worked out… for a time. I missed the classroom, and the interaction. So I left for Thailand to try educating some different nationalities.

I’m tutoring children in San Francisco too, but it’s just not the same. My kids here are so distracted, so angry, so unconcerned about what I have to offer them. For me, it all comes back to Japan, when I was faced with that first group of Japanese college students and got a taste of what it was like for them, facing an unknown foreigner. I reveled in it.

Is this all one massive ego trip I’m describing? Perhaps, but don’t I have the right to choose a profession that would allow me to feel better about myself? Teaching in Asia does that more often than not.

More of my time has been spent checking out new Japan expat blogs and remembering what it was like, to be fresh off the boat and new to the world of the rising sun. Truthfully, Japan may be my favorite place in the world to live, even as an eternal outsider. The safety, the job, the food, the people, the adventure, and the language… all are factors pulling me back across the Pacific. I just hope I can find circumstances that will allow me to go back.

Recently, I asked a friend living in Portland to do some shopping on my behalf and ship said items to Korea. Nothing too fancy: Reese’s, apple sauce, gingerbread, etc. Some things that are next to impossible to find here. As far as my taste buds were concerned, it was a wise decision. My wallet thought differently; it cost 76USD to deliver 40USD worth of product overseas. You don’t need an accountant to tell you just how stupid that purchase was.

So why did I do it? I’ve always been a sucker for food. Even before I started living abroad, I made frivolously expensive choices about where to eat, what to buy. I regularly drove 30 km to get Rudy’s BBQ in Austin. During my time in NYC, I took the subway with two transfers just to get some of those Magnolia cupcakes. Through all of this, I knew I wasn’t getting out of the food the money I was putting in. I just couldn’t seem to make myself act responsibly in this regard, because, let’s face it, food is so delicious. And when you’ve got a craving and the means to satisfy it, what else can one do?

Here are some of the more ridiculous distances I’ve traveled and money I’ve spent for the sake of food:

• Walking for two hours, including one kilometer through a dirty highway tunnel, to reach a mountainside restaurant in western Japan.
• Using my lunch break for an editing position in Austin, Texas to drive north for 20 minutes to the nearest Whole Foods, grab an overpriced lunch and wolf it down in 20 minutes, and drive back.
• Disembarking the shinkansen at Okayama, en route to Hakata, just to stock up on Dr. Pepper at Jupiter Imports.

“Fine”, you say, “let fluency be someone who is fluent to a native speaker in ALL situations.”

Son, Take A Seat…

That is a fine, and unimpeachible definition of fluency. It only has one, tiny tiny flaw. By that definition, particularly in languages with complex cultural aspects like Japanese, NO ONE is fluent, not even native speakers.

We all presume that as native speakers, we are all fluent. After all, most of us only know one language. How can we not be fluent in the only language we speak? An 8 year old native speaker might not have a huge vocabulary, and might not always express everything completely correctly, but no one would suggest that she is not fluent in her own language.

The point I’m making is that strict definitions of fluency are all well and good, but most people don’t realize that a majority of native speakers of a language will find situations where they struggle to be fluent in their own language – for example in conversations about topics they are unfamiliar with, and in areas with unfamiliar protocols.

I’ve talked about my lack of desire to learn Korean in previous video blogs. What it all boils down to is being accepted. Before living in Japan, I (some would say naïvely) believed that learning the local language is a major step towards cultural integration. To some extent, I still believe this to be true. But NOT in Japan or Korea. Why not?

The perception of language, that is, how native speakers view outsiders speaking their tongue, is incredibly important. Sure, I can see how one could learn Korean at a Canadian university from a non-native speaker, and become relatively fluent without ever having spoken to a Korean. But more often than not for language learners there’s at least some contact with someone who grew up with it. You can imagine how nervous one might be when first attempting to use these new skills to communicate.

Think about how non-native English speakers are considered in America. With little empathy and cultural awareness, I would say most Americans treat non-native speakers like complete crap. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I grew up in Texas, and the number of times I overheard things like “Damn Mexicans, if they’re going to live here, why don’t they learn the language?” Putting aside the fact the US has no official language, I’d say the perception of non-native speakers of American English is that of lesser intelligence:

We might bother to consider the people behind the language travesty, this illusion we put up in our minds. Where do these travelers come from? They’re obviously here for a reason, and maybe they’re trying to learn the local language. They could be fresh out of university and brimming with ideas, people perfectly capable of eloquence. But what do we associate with them? Lack of intelligence: you can’t speak properly, so I must be smarter than you. An assumption so far from the truth it’s laughable.

This perception, while insulting and completely unfounded, doesn’t even begin to match how I’ve seen non-native speakers treated in Korea.

If I DO try to speak to you in Korean, please respond to me as an adult communicating in your language. Being told “You’re cute when you speak Korean” is frustrating and patronizing.

I’m speaking Korean to communicate with you, not to entertain you: your language is a language, not a party trick, so please stop responding to my attempts to speak your language as if I’d just performed a really great party trick. Listen to what I say, and answer. Don’t congratulate me as if I were a six-year-old who just tied his shoes for the first time.

Unfortunately, based on my experiences in Korea, being treated as a six-year-old is really giving the listener too much credit. I want to clarify: my Korean is laughable. But obviously I know how to say things like “Hello!” and “How much is it?” after a year in the country. Yet, even when this information is available to people I’m talking to, I’m treated as Roboseyo suggests: less than human, almost like a monkey that’s been trained to spit out a few Korean words.

This could not be more obvious when I use Korean in the classroom. I know kids will be kids, and I’m an anomaly to them as a foreigner. But still, you’d think after being at the same hagwon for years (some of them have been there for all of elementary school) and seeing foreign instructors use simple Korean in and out of the classroom, that the amazement would wear off. As it stands, whenever I discipline a student in Korean for not paying attention by telling him to sit down, be quiet, or simply stop, instead of actually listening to my angry tone and what I’m saying, he or she just giggles and claps, amazed that I was able to speak.

I haven’t had too many experiences speaking to my adult students in Korean, but I can comment on what I’ve seen on Korean TV when foreigners pop up. Take the couple from Eat Your Kimchi on a popular show called Running Man. I had been following their videos for some time and was really excited to see their TV appearance. But… and I mean this with no disrespect to Simon or Martina, or any of the other foreign guests on the show, I really wish they hadn’t done it. Take a look first.

Could you spot the not-so-subtle ways the hosts treated any Korean skills on the part of the foreign guests as a parlor trick? They couldn’t even hold off until someone spoke: the first commentary is “무슨 말…?”, making fun of the fact that a few of them didn’t seem to acknowledge what they had said with a head nod. And when one of the cooks gave his instructions to spread the sauce in Korean, the laugh track kicked in, as if to say: “Yeah, right. Like the foreigners understood that!” I don’t want to give a blow-by-blow account. Watch, judge for yourself.

I know this perception isn’t true of everyone, but it is certainly true for the majority of native Korean speakers. I’m not really frustrated about it anymore, just depressed. Well, just plain sad. Sad at knowing there are so many foreign English speakers out there, wet behind the ears, believing their Korean language skills may someday be used for insightful conversations, when in fact they will be seen as little more than dogs taught to bark on command. Sad at my own realization of this perception; if I had taken Japanese classes at university (i.e. before I lived in Japan), I firmly believe I’d be more fluent right now. Not because I’d have had more experience speaking the language, but because I’d have less experience seeing how native Japanese speakers treat non-native ones.

And so, sadly, that’s where I stand on my Korean. I can learn more and open a few more doors, but ultimately they’ll lead to the same place: amusement for native speakers. That’s not why I want to learn a language, and why I don’t intend to pursue Korean or Japanese after I leave.

As a constant traveler, there are many things I miss out on, but stability is probably my biggest regret. Not financial stability, or even physical stability (staying in the same place). No, I miss mental stability. Yes, I said it: I am mentally unbalanced. In the way that only someone spending the majority of his time in an undetermined location can be.

When I left Japan in 2008, I was connected to that world. I knew the top blogs to check for the latest insider news. Vlogging wasn’t quite as big then as it is now, but I still monitored YouTube for the latest updates. I had English-teaching and Japanese friends I left behind with whom I assumed I’d stay in touch. But, as so often happens in the vagabonding experience, we just slowly forget. Not that I can’t remember every moment, every highlight, of my time in Japan. But it’s not a part of who I am anymore. It just can’t be: I don’t live there; I don’t share in their pain, their joy (I try to, but it’s a shallow effort).

This is especially ironic as most of the things that connected me to Japan – YouTube, blogs, news sites, Facebook friends – are still completely accessible from my computer in Korea. I’ve just lost touch with what it means to be a part of that world, and I don’t try anymore.

The same is no doubt going to be true when I leave Korea. Oh sure, I’ll follow Eat Your Kimchi and check for updates on Monster Island, but eventually, there’ll be more and more references I just don’t understand. The time difference will become an issue. I might even stop saying “나이스!” on instinct.

The truth, as I see it, is our surroundings define our reality. And in no circumstance could that be more obvious than among fellow travelers. I hear from people all the time saying “Sure, we’ll keep in touch, we’ll stay friends; our relationship is strong enough to last even when we’re apart for months.” I don’t believe that. Not in the least.

Just as two high school sweethearts find themselves drifting apart – even when Skyping, talking, and tweeting each other – when they attend different universities, so too do friendships and relationships weaken without physical closeness. Maybe this is rather cynical of me to say, but I can only judge from my own experiences. I have kept in touch with high school friends, friends I’ve met in Thailand, even ex-girlfriends, but it’s limited to Facebook and the occasional Skype call. I have a feeling if we were to meet face-to-face, there would be nothing to talk about after catching up.

Our worlds are just too far apart. They’ve been in one place, attending fundraisers, dating the same people, starting families, moving their careers along, building a future. I’ve been adjusting to life in foreign countries, finding the best way to get turkey into my refrigerator, writing about travel, discovering hidden hot springs.

If I were to stop everything right now, fly back to the states, and start living the life they had been living all along, I might find we soon have more in common. I’ve seen it happen before, as I get overwhelmed with the American media and start focusing on celebrity gossip over Japanese politics, which kind of Greek yogurt is best vs. understanding my friend’s problem with corruption in Thailand. It’s no secret travelers come back to their home countries and can’t help but toot their own horns, spouting every single thing that happened to them over the past six months. Some are fascinated, but eventually they wish you’d stop talking about yourself so much. It’s no different than living abroad and having locals ask you about life in your home country: the fact that you have experienced someplace completely different than anything they may ever know sets you apart.

I got a bit off track there, but my point is this: as a traveler, as a pretty lonely person at the moment, nothing but physical closeness will really make me feel a connection with anyone. I’m all for connecting with people online, but eventually you have to meet. And stay in one place to let that relationship flourish.

Oh, I’m just asking for trouble with this one. My final thoughts after visiting the disputed island of Dokdo. Xtranormal format, of course.

I was reading over hikosaemon’s Japan blog not too long ago and came across a very interesting entry on fluency in foreign languages:

You see, it is quite plausible for someone to be fluent in some situations, and not in others. This is particularly the case in Japan, where even vocabulary customarily used can vary dramatically between different companies, meaning that you might be completely fluent at one company or in one job, and struggling for a time after you change. The change from college life to the business world is even more dramatic, where most people have to use honorific Japanese for the first time, which is completely different, and where a foreign exchange student was completely comfortable sitting in Japanese lectures and drafting term papers in Japanese, they are struggling for correct termination to address customers and superiors in a company.

Although the Korean language doesn’t exactly have honorific like Japanese, I found his argument over situational fluency to be right on the nose. After all, on a given day, in a given situation, I can fool quite a few people into thinking I’m completely fluent in Korean (not just foreigners, either). Take a recent conversation I had with expats on my trip to Ulleungdo.

“It just seemed like your Korean was a lot more fluent that mine.”

“Oh no, far from it. I’m not very good at Korean, but I am very good at knowing the key phrases to fake fluency.”

And that’s exactly what it comes down to when learning a foreign language outside of the classroom. Hikosaemon calls it situational fluency, I call it faking complete fluency, but the progress of someone’s language skills is determined solely by experience: you can repeat phrases in your apartment until the cows come home, but until you test them out in the world, they won’t be added to your language skills.

In that sense, I was fluent at Pusan Airport ordering some bibimbap, in that I was able to communicate my order and answer a question the cashier had for me (“Can you speak Korean?”). I’m fluent at my neighborhood supermarket, Home Mart, in that I can say “hello”, ask for a bag, understand how much money my purchase costs, and thank them when I leave. I’m fluent at the bus terminal by being able to pronounce the name of my destination (though I still have trouble with 강릉) and understand the departure time.

But in most situations? My Korean is laughable. I still struggle with some given names.

Today is a holiday in South Korea: Buddha’s Birthday. My original plan was to enjoy a temple visit, but the weather did not oblige. So, I sit inside my clean apartment and think of things to write. Once you get out of the habit of blogging, it’s hard to start up again. This past month, I’ve had friends move away, new people coming in, life changes, better weather, and moments of Zen. I’ve talked about the bitterness one can develop after teaching English for twenty years in Asia. While I don’t think I’m quite there yet, I can see how the path I’m on in Korea might one day lead me to that state of mind.

I taught in Japan for a year as my first experience abroad. My first experience with English as a foreign language. My first experience being the dumb foreigner. And I learned a lot, for better or worse. It was just too easy to be paid to do something that came naturally. So it was to be admired (ogled, anyway) or an attraction for locals. When you’re not challenged in your personal life or your job, when you don’t see any reason to change because it wouldn’t affect your life in the slightest (i.e. you will always be the foreign English teacher in Japan), you truly are in a social stasis. No growing maturity. No intelligence. You might even slip backwards at the lack of stimulation. After two years in Japan, that’s how I felt, and why I wanted to escape while I was still aware enough of my situation. A few more years, and I doubt I’d be able to see myself for what I had become: a charlatan in a shirt and tie walking through the streets of Japan like I owned them, when in fact I was always in a class of my own (not the good kind).

So I left. For Thailand, China, New Zealand, back to the US for a few months, thinking I could just settle into a high-paying job with all my “experience” in Asia, enjoy the perks of success, get a fancy apartment, date a model, and enjoy the rest of my days. A bit of an exaggeration, but I think that’s what I had in mind. But when you give up two years of your life fresh out of university, you sacrifice more than those two years; you forego all the opportunities that an entry-level job and the connections with the people you would have met bring with them. Of course there are other chances, other jobs, other career paths I could have explored, but I wanted the easy road to success, and deluded myself into thinking it could be that easy: a lottery ticket, an interview for a job for which I wasn’t qualified…

Looking back, I’m pretty sure I knew exactly why I chose to move to Korea and teach. I can say all I want about my wanderlust kicking in and wanting to try life in a different country, one having aspects of Japan but still culturally unique, but in the end, it came down to cowardice. I wasn’t willing to get my hands dirty and do what I needed to do in the US to work for success, when I knew there was a job out there waiting in which all I would have to do was stand and talk. Nothing difficult. They would even pay me to come over there. When I knew that option was available, when all potential recruits see that choice, your work ethic for anything else essentially vanishes.

Why try in your home country? There’s an easier solution. Why try in Korea? They pay you either way. That’s what Japan did to me: their English educational system taught me to stop learning, stop trying. Though you can certainly survive as a mindless English speaking foreigner lacking ambition of any kind in Japan, Korea, China, and a handful of other countries, this “skill” doesn’t carry over too well when it’s time to go home and actually work for a living.

I’m being overly cynical about this whole process, but I can’t help it: I want newbies to learn from what I’ve done and the mistakes I’ve made. Namely, it’s perfectly alright to teach English for a year or two in Asia… after you’ve had some kind of experience in the real world and you know there’s something for you to go home to. Otherwise, you’re really screwing yourself over. Age doesn’t matter, but many in their early to mid 20s come to Asia, high on life and thinking they’ve hit the jackpot. Working and traveling is a jackpot. Teaching English is far from it.

I know there are those out there with college loans to pay off, kids to support, and savings to build. People who have no intention of staying longer than their contract allows and returning to the real world. But some get caught in the vortex and end up living the rest of their days unchallenged, and often bitter. Too black and white? Am I challenging those who start dating locals, finding themselves pregnant, and settling down while doing the same job? …a little. You may think a job is just a job, and your personal life is quite fulfilling, but what of the rest of the world? Do all the people around expect you to change? Their opinions don’t matter, but their perception of you certainly does; to them, you will always be the same.

This is a little more depressing than I had intended. Let me just say that although I’ve benefitted from my time abroad in terms of experience, I don’t believe I’m going to have an easier time “making it” at home due to it. I came to Korea to teach English knowing full well I’d be excited at first, then slowly fall into a routine until the job became practically pointless in my eyes. That’s already happened. And I’ve even agreed to stay until October to make a little extra money. How hypocritical of me.

I just wish teachers out here were actually teachers. I wish job experience out here actually counted as experience. I wish we were motived to learn rather than be apathetic about our students, employers, and ourselves. I wish maturity could be measured in interviews, so we didn’t have drunk foreigners parading through the streets of Hongdae and Itaewon on a regular basis. I just wish there were higher expectations of everyone.

One of my biggest pet peeves about living in Asia is the attention one receives as a foreign resident. Not even necessarily kids yelling “HELLO!” in a crowded area. It comes from adults as well. I’ve had cashiers struggle with the English to explain the cost of something when I’ve asked them in their language. When traveling with friends who are often loud to the point of obnoxious (by Asian standards), we draw stares from everyone in the vicinity.

My point being, everything about me, from my hair color to my manner of speech, is lit up like Christmas tree in the middle of a dark night, comparatively speaking. English is a rather coarse language compared to Japanese and Korean, and anyone speaking it, whether it be me or someone trying to talk to me, draws stares. Likewise, foreign behavior, as a generalization, is arrogant by making oneself the center of attention. We do like to stand out, don’t we?

Unfortunately, the opposite is usually the case for many Asian countries: “The nail that sticks out will be hammered down.” Individuality in Japan is frowned upon. I learned to alter my American behavior and speech in an effort to be as Japanese as I could. The one thing I could not change was my appearance. As this was the first thing many Japanese noticed about me (and indeed, all foreign residents), I could never get past the guest mentality posed to me: “You use chopsticks very well… you speak Japanese very well… when are you going home?… where are you from?”

Behaving such a way for so many years (well… two) makes it difficult to change back. Even upon my return to the states, I did my best to lay low in public, never shouting, and speaking in a even-tempered tone. I carried this with me to Korea, where I though I would have a head start over first-timers negligently yelling at bus drivers, and speaking English when their poorly pronounced Korean wasn’t understood (I still don’t understand this cross-cultural compulsion… no one can understand you if you speak slower in a different tongue).

So that’s what I did: I kept my head down, my feelings to myself, my behavior a mystery to the elderly residents of my little fishing village. And, for the most part, I don’t regret it. I learned the basic Korean necessary to politely state my requests for food and drink. I don’t make a spectacle of myself by loudly banging on my own door at 3 AM drunk on soju. In a small town where gossip is everything (even without Twitter), I was nothing but a blip, just the way I wanted it to be. The only exceptions were the few Couchsurfers visiting my area; I have no doubt the cashier at my supermarket must have thought I had quite a few girlfriends. And my running. No one else, as far as I have seen, is as big an outdoor runner as me in my part of Korea. When I show up in tights and a headband requesting soymilk and carrots, it tends to leave an impression.

Still, my image in Bugu, as I believed it to be, was quiet and respectful. There wasn’t too much other information out there about me. Conversations went like this (in Korean):

(Entering the store)

“Thank you.”

Now I’m not so sure I made the right decision. As their faces become more familiar to me, I started seeing these workers around town under different circumstances: the friendly old man running the neighborhood bathhouse taking a soak in the same bath as me; the kid who speaks decent English working out his upper body at the Energy Farm gym; the Nong Hyup bank teller remarking she had seen me running past her house the other day.

By keeping to myself and establishing my image as someone to be overlooked, I had squandered months of what could have been education: awkward education, but learning experiences nonetheless. I could have been more inspired to improve my Korean had I heard that cashier commenting on my run my first week. I could have asked the old man what he thought of this bath, and what’s the best place he’s ever taken a soak?

All these opportunities wasted because I didn’t want to be one of those nails sticking out. I know there’s a balance between the two: being prudent and inconspicuous when the time calls for it, but when friendly people chat you up, even in the middle of a crowded store? I should have just ignored what others might have thought, set aside my modesty, and tried my best to stand out, my head held high. “YES! I was running over there yesterday. It was quiet beautiful…”

As I was consuming one of these creations this very afternoon, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly guilty at everything I had.

CNN provided the perfect contrast: people in the areas affected by the tsunami waiting in lines to buy oranges and milk from makeshift markets; seniors trapped in evacuation centers with limited medical supplies. And here I was, safely in South Korea, in clean clothes, an apartment all to myself, using a knife to slice a 1900-Won apple.

I know this reaction is typical, empathizing with those suffering, particularly if you have close ties with the people or place. But, for some reason, Japan’s tragedy is lingering with me. Nothing that’s happened in the US – Katrina, Arizona shooting – has made me feel quite as bad as I do now. Food doesn’t taste as good, a bitter taste sloshing along my tongue where there should be sweetness.

Maybe it is just my own fears about what might have happened to me had I chosen to pursue work in that area of Japan. Or maybe it’s simply because Japan was my first destination abroad, and I believed myself and my surroundings to be invincible to any problem. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to move on.