As I sit and write this entry, the brunt of Typhoon Fitow is just starting to hit Tokyo. We are on the top floor of our hotel with a bird's-eye view of the storm. It is quite incredible, much like a winter blizzard in Saskatchewan except with rain instead of snow. I've never been in a hurricane / typhoon before. Luckily this is a comparably small storm. So much for my travel planning skills... Hopefully this will not impact our return trip tomorrow.
On our final day in Japan we spent the majority of it with Hana's sister, husband, and our nieces and nephew. We had a lot of fun with the kids, especially me since language barriers are pretty much meaningless with them. This was really nice. For some reason I've especially found the language barrier between myself and my family here somewhat difficult this time around. I guess that my expectations are perhaps a bit too high. I either need to learn Japanese up to a functional level or simply accept the fact that I will never be able to communicate directly with them.
There can be a lot of awkward moments of silence and pauses when you can't talk to someone else that you'd really like to talk to. The onus is on myself though to improve my Japanese language skills over the next few years in order to make this easier. It can probably be done but I'm not sure about the capacity of my old brain anymore...
As for my nieces and nephew though, language is no barrier. I turned out to be a pretty popular guy this evening. Really fun.....
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