I just finished a great book, in my first language, called Samurai Shortstop by Alan Gratz. I was pleased to see the chapters written in Kanji characters and have many words in Japanese romanized and many baseball terms Japanesed, for example, besuboru and homu ran. It is the story of turn of the century Japan and how they quickly, willingly adopted so many modern technologies and advances like telephones, trains adn modern dress while still keeping their codes of behavior.
The author began the idea of the novel when he ran across a photograph from 1915 of a man in traditional robe and sandals throwing the beginning pitch for a high school baseball game. THis was not a Yankee soldier import during occupation after World War II but rather an instance of something that Japan does very well and the rest of us who try to take on another culture's language would do well to adopt: the ability to keep what is important with you or adapt your culture to another culture.
The students of other languages who take on culture as well as words, succeed best. Sometimes, I feel so limited in my second language that I wonder if I can be myself the way I can in the native language that seems to be the language of my thoughts. I need to remember to take the two parts of me and like the main character of Alan Gratz's book, figuratively play baseball with bushido. My advice: Take what you do well or what has been a gift to you from you circumstances and parentage and learn a language through it. I'm sure that if you take the subjects that interest you, you'll find a wealth of authentic language learning opportunities.
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