Reclamation Commences

I started this blog for me. I have told no one of the existence of this blog. This could be due to the fact that I don't know how to do everything I might want to yet, as in forming links to sites that interest me (hampered somewhat by the fact everything on this computer appears in Japanese that I don't entirely understand), but I think it is primarily due to my not having written anything other than emails and lesson plans since graduating from university. I am making a feeble attempt to get back into the habit of writing something for no reason.

I blame this on my friends. My friends (not all of them, but several) and even cousins, have started their own blogs, which I studiously read when I am supposedly working. (As compared to now when I am studiously writing as opposed to working? I can't deicide which is worse.) And I am fascinated by their blogs -- and envious -- as I am in love with their words and the way they think. They are using words I used to know, and still recognize when I come across them in novels and such, but rarely come unbidden (or even when bidden) to my mind. My vocabulary has shrunk as a direct correlation to how my Japanese has increased.

This is not to suggest that my Japanese is in anyway impressive; oftentimes, I feel it is barely adequate. I do believe that it is slowly but surely taking root in all the crevices of my mind where I stored my "interesting, multi-syllabic" words. The words that I would haphazardly fling into normal conversation with not a little satisfaction. Now, I have regressed to the level of a high schol student (possibly even a Japanese high school student), and it depresses me. I am often left standing with a dumbfounded look on my face as I attempt to resurrect a specific word, a word which would take the place of the dozen others I will be forced to use in it's place as I try and explain what I mean. I do so in the hopes that my friends will suggest my linguistic conundrum to me, or at least say something that will trigger an emergency resuscitation of the word in my enfeebled mind. It is as if I am suffering from some weird form of lingual constipation.

Perhaps I will have to take up reading the dictionary, but I think I would be content with a good thesaurus. A friend of mine will be leaving the country this year, and I am hoping I can lay claim to her thesaurus, as I think I can prove I have a need...