Save My Mother Tongue!

I'm a little worried. It seems like I'm losing my Japanese. "Losing" here doesn't mean that I'm going to be not able to speak Japanese, of course. I grew up in Japan, spent more than 22 years there with Japanese language. So I'm not going to forget Japanese completely, but I am actually losing some Japanese.
Here are some examples. Kanji: I guess it's very common to forget some Kanjis once you start living abroad (except China?) My reading is still fine, probably as good as how it used to be, but my writing is getting worse. It's sort of interesting, the Kanjis I forget are mostly simple and basic ones. I said that they are simple and basic, but they are not something like "一" (one) or "日" (day)... something a little more complicated. Like the other day at work, I couldn't remember how to write "訂" (correct an error). "一" or "日" is way simple and it's used so often, I can't possibly forget how to write them. But something like "訂", not many strokes but used not that often, that's like what I forget. And I haven't felt like I can't remember how to write a Kanji because the Kanji has a lot of strokes. (I'm talking about Kanjis I use in my daily life, so the crazy ones don't count.) So I guess whether I forget a Kanji depends on how often it's used in my daily life rather than how many strokes it has. But then, like I just said, even though I forgot how to write a Kanji like "訂", I can't think of a time I had hard time remembering how to write a Kanji that is not used very often and has many strokes, like "響" (reverberate) or "艦" (battleship). I wonder if it's because I pay enough attention to these Kanjis when I write them (since they have many strokes) so I remember them better than Kanjis like "訂", which I don't pay attention to as much as the other two (since it has much fewer strokes).
Pronunciation: I noticed that my Japanese "F" sounds are pronounced like pseudo-English "F" sometimes. It was pretty shocking. Japanese "F" sound (as in "ファ,フィ,フ,フェ,フォ") is made with your lips rounded while English "F" sound is made with your upper lip touching your lower teeth (or the other way around). Apparently my Japanese "F" is now pronounced like my upper lip very lightly touching or almost touching my lower lip. I don't think I did it before I started studying English. I've been trying to pay attention to my Japanese "F" since I noticed this consonant's shifting but I wonder if there's some more shiftings in my Japanese sounds. I just remembered that some of my English teachers in Japan (all Japanese) had a funny accent in their Japanese. Ya, I better be careful. :(
Fluency: This is pretty bad too. I feel less comfortable than before when I try saying something long, like telling a story, in Japanese. I can't produce sentences as fast, choose a word not as precise... geez, listing these up is making me very nervous! But I think my English improvement must be causing this fluency problem. Like a lot of times, my very first expression is in English even though I'm still much less fluent in English compared to a native English speaker. It's just about how I'm used to thinking in English, and that's a part of my English improvement.
I'm not sure if I have these problems because I've been storing more and more English in my brain and that's taking up so much room, or just because I have much less chance to talk in Japanese than I did when I was in Japan. But no matter what the reason is, I need to keep my Japanese good, or else I'm going to be not "natively" good in any language! Well, my goal in studying English is still to reach the native level though. :)

Well, Let Me Guess...

I work part-time at a Japanese bookstore. The bookstore mainly carries Japanese books but they have some English books and Chinese books too. So probably the biggest ratio of the customers would be Japanese people, but quite a bit of non-Japanese come to the bookstore, especially Chinese people. Actually the bookstore has a stationery section, and apparently Japanese stationery is pretty popular among people here so not only Japanese, Chinese and Americans (I'm not totally sure what I mean by "Americans" tho... like white people?) but also people of other ethnic groups, like Korean, Indian, Hispanic, Vietnamese, African, Russian, French, Persian, etc. (these are actually the customers I've taken care of,) come to the bookstore, and of course, they speak English to communicate with me.
At a cashier counter, when I ring up a customer, I always think that it would be easier if I always talked to the customer in English. But, in reality, I can't. To be precise, I don't want to. Because If the customer is Japanese, I don't want to talk to him/her in English, like I talk to a Japanese customer in English and he/she answers in Japanese, then I start talking in Japanese... well, I mean it's totally fine, it's not a mistake, it's not rude at all, but it just feels kind of stupid, especially when a Japanese customer answers in English and force him/herself to keep talking in English. It's probably because my English is not as good as a native English speaker's and the customer's English isn't either. So it's like two Japanese people trying to make some non-native conversation. It just feels funny. It might be fun to do something like that with your friends (actually some of my Japanese co-workers talk to each other in English for fun,) but not with a customer.
Then, what can I do with it? I basically just need to deal with it because it is very hard to guess perfectly whether an Asian customer speaks Japanese every time you see an Asian customer. But I still can guess! There are some aspects to help my guess.
The stuff a customer brings to the cashier counter is a very simple and easy indicator. If an Asian customer brings a Chinese magazine, I would just talk to him/her in English. If an Asian customer brings a Japanese novel, I would just talk to him/her in Japanese.
Appearances are very important, of course. Hairstyle: there are some particular hairstyles some particular ethnic people seem to like. My co-worker has told me that if you see an Asian girl with long hair partially dyed in gold, that girl is probably Korean. Facial Parts: a person with round nose, round eyes and double eyelids are good signs that increase the chance that he/she is Chinese. Outfit: it's kind of hard to use outfit to guess where an Asian is from, but I use it more for distinguishing American-born Asians from Asian-looking people. For example, the outfit of Japanese international students and Hong Kong international students look alike, but the outfit of Japanese students who grew up in the US tends to look pretty different. Makeup: I don't know how different they are but I feel like makeups are pretty different among different ethnic groups. It's hard to explain, but it gives me some hints.
Behaviors make them look different too. Facial/Verbal Expression: people who grew up in the US seem to smile at a cashier more and to say something to a cashier more than the people who grew up in Japan. Posture: I'm not so sure about this but the way they stand and walk gives me a slight hunch... I think.
So these are just indicators and factors I use to guess whether a customer speaks Japanese. I do not mean that these are the traits I use to determine an individual's ethnicity, but to guess. Cultural influences are probably not the only factors which shape an individual's characteristics (especially for appearances, of course.) And the influence itself wouldn't be so simple anyway. But I believe that it works not bad.

Nice to a Stranger?

It's been already more than a year since I moved to California from Japan, and I've seen some cultural differences between the two countries since then. One of the things I've noticed is that people here seem to know how to be nice generally better than people in Japan.
Let me give you some examples.
One day, I was pushing around my 5-month-old son in a stroller on a campus. Then every time we (the baby and I) got close to a door, the students there opened the door for us! Non of them seemed to show any hesitation about helping us. I think this part is important to think about the difference between them and people in Japan. I mean, Japanese people are not heartless, of course. But from my experience, not very many Japanese people would help us without showing any hesitation in that situation.
Here is another example. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people would agree with this; people here (in the US) greet more than people in Japan. I'm talking about the situations like on a street or in an apartment complex. Here in California, you see a guy (you don't know him) in your apartment complex, and then they say things like "Hi" or "How are you doing" (except at night! They for some reason stop greeting or even looking at each other after the sun sets. I wonder if it's because they think it's dangerous to talk to a stranger at night.) Japanese people greet, but not as much as people here, especially at strangers. I don't think I would say things like "Konnichiwa" ("hi" in Japanese) to a stranger I see in my apartment complex if I lived in Japan. Actually, I feel like Japanese people used to do this more than they do now, and some of them still greet pretty often. But I just see a significant difference in how often it happens in Japan and in the US.
What I'm taking about here is totally based on my experience and very subjective observation. And also I'm not saying either people in Japan don't interact with others or people here are superficial. What I think is that people here culturally know how to be nice to strangers compared to people in Japan. I guess I could say that it shows how people here are generally more open minded and easy going.
What do you think?

A Blog in English

Let me write a little about why I started this blog. It would sound like a pretty ordinary and boring first post but I just want to talk about it at the beginning of this blog.

1. I need to practice writing in English; I have less chances to write in English compared to chances to listen, speak, and read English. A book I read says that speaking, listening, writing and reading are mutually related, and one should maintain a good balance among these 4 skills for better improvement in one's English in general... or something like that.

2. Some stuff are just easier to talk about in English even though my English is far behind my Japanese. There have been some stuff I thought about posting on Mixi(:a Japanese SNS) but I didn't, because those stuff involve some English-related things. I feel big hesitation about posting something in English on Mixi because it's for Japanese speakers. But I'm too lazy to translate what I want to say either. So this blog is going to be very convenient and stress free that way. :D

3. I could just write in a notebook or something instead of a blog, but it's more interesting this way that people can see my posts.

Hey, it already feels like it was a pretty good writing practice!