I’m trying to write an article everyday these days. I don’t know why I have made this kind of goal. Apparently the goal is for nobody but me. Most people in this world would advice me that I should write in Japanese because you’re Japanese. It’s so true. But I somehow feel like writing in English and try to describe what I’m feeling out. Writing is sometimes thought to be as a translation process. Trying to feel and see something in your brain or mind and try to translate into certain languages. If you were Spanish, you would describe the emotion in Spanish. However, there is a cage in your language. Unconsciously, the word or way of telling story is posited by the language. We are all in a cage of our mother tongue.
But we sometimes can be released from the cage when we can capture things in a different languages or when we were able to express our feelings in different languages. That makes me feel really happy. I, of course, can use Japanese language the best, but unnamed feature of Japanese language makes me think twice to write something. That is a hint of sadness in Japanese. Writing sentences in Japanese, especially fiction, you would feel some sadness in Japanese sentences. Famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami is sometimes said like he wrote an American literature in Japanese. That actually true, I think. Because he could get out of the cage of Japanese storytelling format by adopting dry, hard boiled writing style like Raymond Carver or Hemingway. Moreover, he started writing his first novel’s first paragraphs in English.
Haruki Murakami is a person who I really admire and feel jealous. He used to read English paperback when he was a high school student, and he’s been a huge fan of cool jazz music or classical music, also he is known as a huge collector of these kinds of LP or CD music. I mean, he definitely has his own style to live. He is real and cool to his life it seems. I like writing. Writing makes me feel really chill. Everyday a tiny stressful things shakes my mind but thanks to write it out in memo app or some note, my heart soon becomes cool and real.
People often says it’s roughly by 30 years old when you finally realize what you wanna do in your life. By the way, I somehow dream like if I were really bad at living, it would have been much more easier to find what I’m good at out. It would sound a bit boosting but not at all, I do think so. Since I’m a person who can do the most of things with ok quality somehow, everything felt not too bad or not that good. Friends who seem really bad at living his life to me seems actually lead life that only they can lead.
But above all, now I feel reading and writing is my favorites, absolutely. Without no pressures from outside, reading and writing are my best pastimes. If I could live just by reading and writing and talking. That would be really great.
Tomoharu Watanabe 