Today, Sophie and I went to a picnic for Japanese moms of babies born in 2007 who live in Greater Vancouver. This group apparently has been around for a while now, and I briefly visited their community webspace when I was pregnant, but seeing how I am very self-conscious about speaking Japanese, I was too nervous to participate very much back then.

I speak to Sophie in Japanese, but now that she is bigger and is developing her cognitive and language skills at lightning speed, I have been feeling the pressure of a) needing to improve my own Japanese and b) needing more Japanese friends who will convince Sophie that Mama’s language isn’t made up, or some otherwise obscure language that nobody else speaks.

Today’s picnic was fantastic. I quickly explained my situation to everyone, how I’m not very confident with my speaking, but I am fluent and really want to raise Sophie in Japanese. I was surprised at how successfully I could actually express myself. (I think expressing yourself gets harder when you’re fluent because you know that there are several ways of saying one thing. Plus I didn’t want to sound uncool, hehe.) I made some new friends and can’t wait for the next get-together.

Around 30 (!!) mom and baby pairs were present, and many of the babies were Sophie’s level of development and half-Japanese. Sophie clung on to some of the walking toddlers while they were exploring, and she fooled people into thinking that she could walk independently. It was pretty cute. She also babbled away to strangers much more than usual, and I like to think it was because she picked up on the Japanese environment.

I’m really excited about joining this community. I have no clue about all the Japanese language resources there are for children, but I know they exist because Vancouver has so many Japanese people. I’m looking forward to Japanese playdates and story time for Sophie.

I always thought I was a ‘banana’ through and through, but wanting to raise Sophie to be bilingual has forced me to re-examine myself. I never thought I would seek people out based on race and language, but I’m learning that preserving a culture isn’t all that bad.

Says the girl who can only blog comfortably in English…