Dreaming in Japanese explores the transformation that occurs with total immersion in a new language and culture, and how a person translates, changes, and ultimately flourishes by learning to be in the world in new ways. These include a heightened awareness of nature and the seasons, perplexing rules for speaking respectfully, a community of shared values and responsibility that starts with school children making lunches and cleaning bathrooms, and fast friendships inextricably woven into day-to-day life.
A field guide to the Japanese language, Dreaming in Japanese is based on two decades in Japan where I was a professional translator, wife, and student of the tea ceremony.
It is for people interested in language and personal growth. It is for curious people who love travel, even armchair style. And more than anything, it is a book for people who love Japan.
读万卷书，行万里路
人行千里路，胜读十年书
M'amour, m'amour
what do I love and
where are you?
That I lost my center
fighting the world.
The dreams clash
and are shattered—
and that I tried to make a paradise
terrestre. --Ezra Pound ((Notes for Canto 117 et seq.)
"Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what."
— Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." --Calvino