Falling Behind

I really need to find more time to spend on writing here.  Every time I carve out a few minutes to update this blog, I find there are too many things that have happened since the last entry, that it is almost certain that something will have to be omitted.  I suppose that is OK, but since I simultaneously worry that one of these days I will simply run out of things to write about, perhaps I should just stop worrying altogether and just write the darn thing.

Anyway, I wanted to write about my recent bicycle adventure (last weekend) -- and at some point, I will -- but this weekend (Friday and Saturday), I spent some time "helping" at the Akatsuki booth of the ISAS/JAXA Open House.  I finger-quote the helping because when you spend 99% of your time at a public event as the only gaikokujin (外国人: foreigner) in the room, one's concept of helping quickly becomes, "please do me the favor of taking this Akatsuki leaflet."  Fortunately, there were a few groups of non-native Japanese speakers who came by while I was working the floor, and they gave me the opportunity to do my part in explaining how cool the Akatsuki mission is to the public.  It also gave me a few minutes to work on my very rudimentary Japanese skills.  And also to put them in perspective.  Since the Grade-1 and Grade-2 Japanese are expected to be mastered by students in, well, 1st and 2nd grade, and since I am nowhere near being able to master said skills, it occurs to me that my Japanese ability is probably comparable to my two-year-old niece's English ability.  That is, to a typical native speaker of Japanese, I probably sound like a two-year-old: I can usually (but not always) speak enough words to make my meaning understood, but for the most part, all I am doing is making noises that vaguely resemble actual words.  As a Ph.D. scientist, that is rather humbling (in a good way, but humbling nonetheless).  On the other hand, maybe it means that if I ever end up with children of my own, I can now be better prepared to understand the "Terrible Twos."