"Every great journey begins with a cup of tea" - Kevin Richardson.
... and so it was, dear heart, that I hath taken on the most mighty +1 Challenge and shall indeed duly set forth upon this most epic adventure when the sun rises upon the thirtieth day in the month of September in the year of our Lord twenty thirteen.
Here is my introduction video - this is the five minute version ... since I am severely afflicted by muppetitus (a condition which causes one to be a bit of a muppet through never reading instruction manuals etc etc) and must profess that I blabbered on for fifteen minutes on my first attempt at making an introduction video.
I shall be using this blog to document my language learning adventure, so dear reader, I hope to share the joys, the highs, the lows, the struggles, the tears and in all likelihood the occasional stroppy tantrum ... but ultimately, there is a firm belief within me that this quest shall lead me to salvation ... my goal ... speaking Japanese comfortably ... as opposed to my current ability which is somewhere between tarzanesque nihongo grunts and grammatically random miscongrugations.
There is a story by Richard Bach which describes a community of creatures who cling to the rocks at the bottom of a river; for clinging is their inner nature. However, one creature decides that clinging to the rock is terribly boring and tells the others that he shall let go. They declare that he is a fool and tell him that if he lets go of the rock, he shall be taken by the current and smashed into rocks and be killed. The creature considers their words, but the prospect of a dull life spent clinging to the rock does is outweighed by the prospect of letting go and seeing what adventures he might have. So he lets go.
Initially, as predicted by his peers, the creature is thrown around by the current and is bounced around getting battered and bruised. However, he is not killed ... and soon he finds that he is able to ride the current and avoid getting battered anymore. As his current riding skills grow, he passes above another community of rock clinging creatures ... they look up and declare, "one of us who flies ... he must be the Messiah!". However, our intrepid creature calls down to them, "I'm just like you, I'm not special and I have no flying gene ... I just let go of the rock ... and you can too!!!!".
So this is the story I used to tell myself when I was learning to fly. Now I'm learning a language, the same story applies.
