2010-12-27 - 4:49 a.m.
(Written December 14th)
鈴木先生へ、
この間何も書きませんでした、すみません！ 先週能力試験を受けたので、最近の勉強はすべて試験のためなのです。
この前のメールお返事書いてくれた、ありがとうございます～！ キッスしたかったことはあまりびっくりではありません。私はもう二十代の後半です、そんなことがわかっていますね～。がっかりですが、もしランチが食べに行っても、キッスしません。鈴木先生からこそ 「だめな男がキッスしないで」何回注意してくれたね～。
能力試験でがんばったけれど、自信あまり持っていないです。読む分には、時間が足りませんでした。最後の六の問題が全然読まなかった、ただ答えを選びました。失敗しても、いい経験だと思います。やっぱり、日本と比べば、カナダには日本語を勉強している人が少ないです。試験前後いろいろの人と話しました。それは面白かったです。
変えて来たとき、すごく眠かったです。バンクーバとビクトリアの間は遠くないですが、カナダには電車が使わないですね。車が持っていない人は、どこでも行くことが本当に時間が掛かります。帰りの途中でフェリーボートを乗るとき、となりに座っている夫婦の話がちょっと聞こえました。話が全然特別ではありません。それはそうですが、聞きながらちょっと寂しくなりました。私の結婚していたときから、そんな楽にあまり意味がない話を思い出した。二月に夫と離れた、もう慣れましたけれど、急に、とりあえず私の日本生活は終わったと気がつきました。
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Dear Suzuki Sensei
Sorry I haven't written in a while. I wrote the JLPT was last weekend and all the studying I've done lately has been preparing for that.
Thank you for replying to my last email.* Actually, I already knew that you wanted to kiss me. Sorry to say this but, even if you had taken me out for lunch, I wouldn't have kissed you. As you yourself have told me many times, I need to stop kissing boys that aren't good for me.
I did my best on the JLPT, but I don't think that I passed it. I ran out of time on the reading section and had to fill in the last six questions at random. But, even if I've failed, I'm glad I took the test. There are, obviously, a lot less people studying Japanese in Canada than in Japan. It was nice to be able to meet some of them.
After the test, I was exhausted. Vancouver and Victoria aren't so far apart but, of course, we don't have many passenger trains here in Canada. For people without cars, it takes a long time to go pretty much anywhere. On the ferry on my way back, an older married couple sat near me. Their conversation was utterly unexceptional but overhearing it made me feel lonely. I left my ex-husband almost a year ago and I've had time to get used to that. But, in that moment on the ferry, remembering similar comfortably pointless conversations with my ex, it was suddenly very clear that the life I was making in Japan is truly over for now...
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* For those of you not in the know, my former Japanese teacher is now my Japanese penpal. I've been writing to him and he's been sending back comments and corrections. He also confessed that he regrets not kissing me before I left, which is probably creepy but somehow doesn't bother me as much as you might expect. He is a sttuborn, funny old man and a good teacher on top of that. This brand of creepy is pretty much fine with me.
