I started this post two weeks ago… Well, it was a title, really.

My goal was to at least reach a thirty-day streak before mentioning a word about this. You know, for some credibility. After all, I’ve written a few times about the latest updates in my life—yet, somehow, each time… after hitting publish, something happened. For one, I stopped climbing the stairmaster (actually, gained a few pounds, too) and I even advised my sister-in-law that she should start scouting new nannies despite proudly sharing one of my best articles about the job like, what, ten days ago?

So, why… oh, why, would I be writing about this?

This sacred endeavor, or shall I say, ‘path’ that I’m on.

Maybe it’s to legitimize things.

Maybe it’s to give it some sense of outer reality?

To be honest, I don’t really want the world to know that I’m learning Japanese.

Very few know its significance to me,

Many scoff at it though.

And, how I have probably annoyed and totally dumbfounded my family members each time they hear me nail another new Japanese expression, ‘watashi wa [Sarah] desu.’

But, those few weeks ago, when I wrote this title in my notepad and doubt overcame me, a beautiful mulatto woman at the gym whom I overheard saying she spoke fluent Japanese was the gracious sign from God I needed to continue to my thirty-day streak before I uttered a single word about this… this path.

At the time, I looked back at her in cosmic shock. I stopped in my tracks and interacted with the rare phenomena. A black woman in this small town who spoke fluent Japanese?! How I could I not seize this blatant divine opportunity to say it out loud! “I’m learning Japanese too!” And to my humblest surprise, she told me “Congratulations, that’s huge! Japanese can be hard, but it’s so worth it. I really hope you see it through.”

And so, here I am. Seeing it through. Getting pretty good at Hiragana and keeping up my streak on Duolingo as I seek other outlets to deepen my studies.

I even went to the ‘depaato’ to find a notebook and bought some old-school pencils and erasers to further my motivations. Oh, and a pencil sharpener too, of course.

The truth is, something feels so good about this. Since our month-long journey in Japan back in May, a longing in my heart to return and, I don’t know, once day perhaps lay down some roots has taken place. Not a day—or, really, an hour—goes by where I don’t think about the land of the rising sun. So, maybe learning Japanese is an ode to the time we had—a filling of the blanks, or a hope for the future—that we would continue to return.

You see, not many people find a place on Earth where their soul really settles. Most people rarely, if ever, find a place that they feel called to return to… again, and again, and again. Surely, there’s a go-to vacation spot. But have you ever been to a place that left you with an unending, unrelenting, ever-present ‘now, what?’ Like you simply can’t continue taking the metaphorical blue pill once you’ve glimpsed your life outside the matrix?

Well, Japan did that for me.

And I know we’ll return again.

To be honest, I could even see myself raising little ones in the streets Kyoto, toes in the Takase River, eating at the local basement Gyoza cuisines, and taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

And, if that never happens, I know I’ll retire there.

So learning Japanese is really paying my future forward, a future where I know I’ll be back.

I pause to think of my hesitation towards writing this post. Perhaps it is the fear of exposing a dream to soon. If I tell the world I’m learning Japanese, would it snatch my vision away from me? Would it spoil the excitement like it did when I wrote about the stairmaster? Would it give away something too raw, too precious that the world might carelessly receive?

It’s enough that I get rolling eyes from people when I talk about Japan (seven-hundred-thousand times a day.) But telling them I’m devoting yourself to learning a whole new language around it, would they stomp on what it means to me? An eyeroll, I can take. Cause I know that until you’ve been there and experienced it, you won’t know. And unless that deep calling in your heart draws you back, you won’t see why I’m committed.

But learning Japanese is like a promise to myself. And I’m afraid that sharing this dream is what will ruin it. That someone in their blissful ignorance will take what it means to me and crush it. That they’ll ask me to come back down to Earth, to get a foot in reality, and give me an endless list of reasons why it’s better to trade this uncontainable dream for something that fits neatly within the edges of what they can understand.

But mark my words, I will, despite the eyerollers and the careless scrollers, fulfill this dream. If it’s a daily streak or an intangible promise that carries this through, I will learn Japanese.

A lot has shifted in my world since the end of 2024. Career changes, body changes, lifestyle changes, even diet changes. Each has brought an equal joy as it has an obstacle. Where I left publishing, and started nannying, I eventually came back to creative… well, creating. And where I stopped the stairclimber, gained maybe 10 pounds, I eventually found the Keto diet (perhaps a post for another time.) And where the rug beneath my feet has been shifting constantly, between renovations, talk of selling, and downsizing to travel, I am learning that the future is built by seizing the moment and those deep dreams you have inside of you are a God-given blueprint to get you there.

Maybe learning Japanese will just be a skill I pick up in my late twenties, or maybe—just maybe—it will be the exact seed that, one day, grows into the life I’ve long-since felt was waiting for me.

And so, I’ll keep going.
Past the doubt.
Past the eye rolls.
Past the need for anyone else to get it.

Because this isn’t just about a language. This is about a future I am speaking into existence.

So I learn. I repeat the words. I fill my notebooks. I write my future into existence with every su (す) and shi (し). And whether it is met with eye rolls, skepticism, or someone well-intentioned but completely uninspired, this dream is mine.

The truth is, most people won’t get it.

And that’s fine.

Because I get it.

Like, really, I’m starting to get Japanese!

Jaane,

Sarah Elle