I keep saying this, but math in another language is really really hard. Like three extra calculations to every single little thing level of hard.

So playing Borderlands 3, for like the first time since the first dlc came out, was a struggle. It's enough of a struggle that I'm not sure if I'll be able to play it without a build guide because I can barely understand the skill tree. Like I can kinda decently read skill things and follow a narrative explaining them. But figuring out how they work in my head is a different story.

This is easy for people that don't do their own builds or min-maxing can understand, since they tend to struggle with this in their own language already. Or, you know, people that really suck at math. (The weird part here is that 'suck at math' is concept-wise in this case, not actual calculations.)

 A really interesting thing I'm only starting to be able to articulate coherently... is my experience in studying Japanese. Now, at the risk of identifying who I am, I have to explain a part of my family history - and that I come from the diaspora of Japanese in Hawaii from somewhere between 100 and 200 years ago. Most of these families dropped their language learning in World War 2 for what should be obvious reasons. And due their age, the language and culture is possibly a quite old one of peasants.

An example of this came up recently - I didn't grow up in a food culture that featured cheese. All Japanese people now know cheese, probably leagues upon leagues better than I do. Of course it doesn't help that lactose intolerance runs in the family, but more than that, the only exposures I really had to cheese were things like mac n'cheese and pizza. I learned about string cheese from my haole (white) friends in intermediate (middle school). Sidetracked, but a good anecdote to explain how different my experience is from modern Japanese culture.

It is most likely that my parents show a local accent to Japanese rather than their original ethnic one. I know little about my father's side other than that they're Okinawan and most likely speak both Okinawan and Japanese. My mom's side comes from southwestern Japan and the last one that spoke was my Grandmother. I know I have this accent because of the things I struggled to learn to pronounce correctly in Japanese (Hawaiian, for instance, has a lot of vowel dipthongs so the temptation to pronounce them as in Hawaiian is really strong). Oddly we're half-and-half on the problems of vowel length as both Hawaiian and Japanese have long and short vowels, but this was not really... emphasized in my Hawaiian classes in elementary and intermediate. Just brushed over and you're off.

Anyway I never got to my point here. The thing is that learning a language like Japanese when you're ethnically Japanese is like having an invisible disability. You struggle so hard and so long... for what? And with having a foreign language as a degree, everything is about self-motivation. Drive. What would you study a foreign language for, for people that expect you to know it through and through, inside and out? And it's not like I don't look Japanese (well, I look East Asian due to the Okinawan so I've had everyone from Filipinos to Cantonese speakers asking me if I'm their ethnicity). But hey, at least I can read body language and didn't skimp studies out in that too (because you do have to learn that in another culture also).

I guess my brain is not all there because this isn't a really good essay. I'd probably need at least ten more rewrites before this is something worthy of public domain.

Anyway the feeling of judgement that you sound retarded or something (who are not really dumb but yeah) or even if they know you're from an immigrant family, look at you like you were too lazy to learn the parents' language. I dunno. Quite frankly I don't take judging looks as badly as a lot of people I could name, but imaginary ones feel really bad too.

Even in school (college but I call it school like a little kid) I had a weird position as one of the few kids not bilingual in my classes, not exposed to the language on a consistent basis, and I read a hell of a lot better than spoke or heard (I had to do my own version of cram school when I transferred to university to be able to kinda understand what my teachers were saying). Of course part of this is really common for someone with my brain... type, but at the time I was really alone. 

And every single time I dealt with something in Japanese, I would always be alone.