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When I first came to Japan, many, many years ago, I struggled hard （ 1 ） the language. One of my biggest problems was that often the Japanese that I learned in the classroom was different from the Japanese that my Japanese friends spoke. I decided to buy a very small notebook, which I carried with me everywhere I went. When I heard a word that I （ 2 ） understand, the notebook would come out, and I'd jot the word down. I carried this notebook for a couple of years, and I still have it. It served its original purpose very well. I learned a lot of （ 3 ） Japanese quiet efficiently. Every social encounter became a language-learning opportunity, and the physical act of writing the words that I heard helped me to retain them. Now, I treasure that tattered little notebook for a different reason. Every time I look at its yellowing pages, stained with （ 4 ） from beer to coffee, it brings back the past. Looking at the words I scrawled, I can remember conversations in （ 5 ） detail. I remember who I was talking to, where we were, and what we were talking about with much more vividness than if I had kept a proper journal. In a journal, the experiences would have been filtered through my feelings about them at the time, but my notebook had no such filter, and so the voices of old friends come through its pages as clearly today as I heard them years ago. |