Getting Lost in Translation

Recently, I was traveling in Japan and struggling with the language. I lived in Japan for two years and have visited numerous times. Sadly, I don’t practice Japanese very much day-to-day, so my first few days back in the country were tough.

Once I got there, a flood of words started returning to me. All the mundane vocabulary that you need to navigate daily living in a foreign country. Words like まもなく (mamonaku), which means ‘shortly’ or ‘coming up’, in the context of train announcements. When the conductor said ‘mamonaku,’ my ears perked up to hear the name of the station that was coming up soon.

せつめします(setsume shimasu) means ‘to explain.’ I often said this when asking about how to do something and, more importantly, why it is done that way. I hadn’t thought about these words in years, and they slowly came back to me over the course of my trip.

It can be more frustrating to re-learn a skill that you have forgotten. Sometimes, it’s even more challenging than initially learning it. It was a reminder that with language or any skill, you have to ‘use it or lose it.’

It can be exhausting to communicate in a foreign language all day, especially when you’re out of practice and have to concentrate on every word. I pitied my poor friends who had to struggle to understand my broken Japanese as I tried to clarify what I was saying and ask questions.

I was sitting in a café one day, zoning out. I had just finished an intense work week of production, and because I wasn’t concentrating, I couldn’t understand a thing. I couldn’t understand the menu, the signs in the café, or the waitress asking me what I wanted to order.

And then I remembered something that I loved about traveling: the silence. I couldn’t process any of those inputs because I wasn’t concentrating, and to maintain that silence, I didn’t have to. Of course, I had to order, so I turned my brain on and ordered a siphon coffee, a delicious style of coffee-making that I highly recommend and the whole reason why I picked that café in the first place. I could be entirely alone in my thoughts without any distractions or external input other than what I could see.

For myself and many of our readers, leatherworking can be this same kind of respite. You can go into your studio, close the door, and work on a project — a delicious treat after a long and stressful day. Whether leathercrafting is a hobby or your work, you can make it a joy to do. Yes, custom leather work can be aggravating when there are deadlines and unreasonable demands, but the practice of leathercraft doesn’t have to be stressful. You can set up your space to work cleanly and turn off the external stimuli to quiet your surroundings, create your own island of peace, and focus on the simple act of making leather goods.