When you commute for a few hours every day, the usual amusements tend to lose their flair. Reading books, listening to music, and eavesdropping on conversations simply don't pass the time very well, anymore.

Today, I tried to keep myself occupied by balancing unassisted for the entire duration of the train ride, which can become somewhat tricky after 25 minutes on the twisting and spiraling Yamanote line, where every bump and curve reverberates through the dozen or so train cars, viciously trying to toss unattached passengers to the ground, into the walls, or into each other.

It's a pleasant challenge.

When the train is crowded it's not so hard to remain standing, but on a relatively empty train, to stand without assistance requires mental focus and anticipation--you've got to feel the track, baby.

This balancing act helps to shorten the ride, but of course, the best position on any train is seated and fast asleep--though if one perseveres to stay awake, and concentrated on interpretation, there are plenty of wonderful conversations to drop in on.

Tonight's ride home included a squinty eyed old man commenting on how the youngsters in Japan these days love their "cellphone computers," which he finds useless.

He then went on to comment upon America's president, followed by my hair--which he found that, despite being dirty, was quite interesting, and perhaps something that the young women in Japan would find attractive.

I enjoyed his laugh, the same way I enjoy my grandfather's laugh; the laugh of a man who has lived four of my lifetimes and laughs because he is happy, because he loves me, and he knows there is much for all of us to learn.

Perhaps he also knows that the laughter of an old man has a calming effect.

It helped to bring me out of my self-depreciating mood--at least temporarily.

That laugh told me not to take things so seriously, not to worry about fluency yet, not to be so hard on myself for something that takes in nearly infinite amount of time to master.

And even though every day I've been studying for hours and hours, and every day I converse for hours and hours, I can't shake the nagging little cloud that follows me around, constantly raining on my head saying, "You don't know shit."

Which is true.

Despite all the progress that has been made, all the times people have told me I speak Japanese just fine, I know, in my head and in my heart, that I still have a long, long road ahead of me.

Despite all of the dreams I've had in Japanese, and all of the times I catch myself thinking in Japanese instead of English, I know that there is still so much farther to go, and all the studying that my brain can do in a day is no replacement for time--which is what language learning requires.

It's hard not to get down on yourself.

You see, there's a plateau one reaches in every discipline, be it physics, writing or computer science: the flat place at the top of a big hill where nothing new is learned, and on the horizon looms everything that has yet to be done--but that horizon is oh-so-far away.

That place, for those studying a foreign language, is a desolate, wide, deserted place, that just wrecks the inside of your mind.

People think you are fluent.

People expect more of you than you can offer.

People are asking the tough questions, now.

People are speaking their real speed, now.

Your new friends aren't friends with you simply because you are foreign, anymore. They are friends with you because they like you--gaijin or not--and your ability to communicate properly and functionally directly relates to the preservation of those friendships.

You are no longer cool just because you are from America.

No one cares about that, anymore.

Right now, believe me, I'm running for that horizon, trying desperately to grasp at anything I can in order to increase my language efficiency--and though I've improved tremendously, as I mentioned before, the road is long and arduous, and the pitfalls are many.

Just turning on a TV can be quite depressing when you realize you've studied for almost four years and can hardly understand anything.

But that's TV, right? Don't worry about that, they say...

...

Ah, the laughter of an old man.

He knows that nothing really matters, he knows I should just laugh, too. Oh, and he knows I'm not as crafty as I think--he knows I'm listening, and he knows I understand. The wink he gave me after mentioning my hair told me so--and even if I don't have faith in myself, he does.

So I suppose there is hope, after all.