AS FOR ME

When I first began learning Japanese, I thought I was learning how to say things correctly.

Instead, I began to hear my own language rearranged.

私はアメリカ人です.

Watashi wa Amerika jin desu.

“As for me, America person, it is so.”

It sounds like a cautious worker building a tower. Identity laid down carefully, without hurry. First, position yourself. As for me. Then name the tribe. America person. And only at the very end, almost as taking permission to live: it is so.

In English we rush toward the verb. I am. We plant the flag early. We insist.

But in Japanese the self waits its turn. It clears its throat politely. It gestures toward context before it dares to exist.

As for me.

The phrase feels less like a declaration and more like a bow.

I love it, and it reveals to me why I was intrigued by some things Japanese before I moved to Tokyo. Like Haiku.

Bashō, the famous haiku poet, named himself after a plant that bends. The bashō tree, with its broad leaves, is easily torn by wind. It does not hold weight well. He could have named himself after something stronger. He chose something fragile.

There is a humility in that choice. A willingness to stand in what cannot endure forever.

This same quiet resolve shows up in other phrases, lighting up my Japanese language class.

しょうがない or Shouganai.

Simply: “No way exists” or “Path none.”

It’s bent into English as “It cannot be helped.”

Not surrender. Not quite. More like stepping aside to let the wind pass through.

Another is がんばります or Ganbarimasu.

Much is happening here. The “gan” means “stubborn…firm…obstinate.”

Then the root “haru”…“to stretch, to strain, to stick out.”

The brute translation into English becomes, “To stubbornly stretch oneself.”

Or, more simply…

“I will do my best.”

But the English feels too bright, too goal-oriented. The Japanese sounds closer to: I will endure well. I will stay where I am placed. But I may stir if I feel the wind in my hair.

This same sentiment is echoed across Japan in the small exchange that happens at front doors every morning.

A child slips on shoes. A backpack is tightened. The door slides open.

いってきます

Ittekimasu.

“I will go and then come back.”

The parent responds without looking up from the stove.

いってらっしゃい

Itterasshai.

“Please go and then come back.”

The child assumes return.

The parent assumes care.

But more faithfully to the grammar, the goodbyes become:

“I go, already returning.”

“I release you, but not completely.”

Leaving is spoken as returning. Absence is folded into reunion. Even departure carries a promise inside it.

In English, we say goodbye as if it is clean and finished. In Japanese, goodbye bends forward into tomorrow.

I think this is why haiku is best read in Japanese.

A haiku does not argue. It does not expand. It does not explain what the moment means. It simply places the moment in front of you and steps aside.

As in one of Basho’s most famous poems:

古池や

蛙飛び込む

水の音

Old pond…

a frog jumps in,

sound of water.

Three lines. A world. The pond does not declare itself a pond. The frog does not narrate its leap. The poet does not tell you how to feel. It is simply: here. Listen.

There is something similar in the way Japanese sentences move when translated literally.

“As for me…”

“I will go and come back.”

“It cannot be helped.”

They feel like fragments. Incomplete. But perhaps they are complete in the way haiku are complete. Self-contained. Bound. Honest.

In English, I tend to conclude. In Japanese, I tend to place myself.

In English, I often speak to fill space. In Japanese, silence holds part of the sentence.

As for me…America person…it is so.

The sentence bends slightly at the waist.

It does not conquer the room.

It sets itself down, like a bowl placed gently on a table.

It waits.