So, how's your kanji study coming along? What? You've been slacking off? Well, me too. And I have a good reason: hairballs. Any Westerner who has studied Japanese kanji has had hairballs: those things that result when you start to write a kanji, usually one you've written a thousand times before, but suddenly you stop and think -- which radical goes with this kanji? Was it "hito ben" or "ki hen"? Hito ben, you decide, and write it down. But then, no, no, you remember it was ki hen, and you write over the other with the new. But then, no, no, it turns out you were right the first time -- it was hito ben! Scribble, scribble. And you write in hito ben again. What's left is a large, undecipherable scribble that looks more like a hairball.

The obvious solution is to vacuum up the hairballs. But this is not so easy, because it would require studying and brushing up on that kanji. I am to the point now where I no longer even try to study. Why bother buying textbooks that will just sit unopened on the shelf?

My study days are over. I'm no longer plagued by endless slips of paper with new Japanese vocabulary written on them, or rings of word cards to be studied at some later date, nor the occasional vocabulary jotted on paper bags, the corner of the newspaper or on the palm of my hand. I just don't go there anymore. I am a tired and retired kanji student. I am no longer the militant language extremist I used to be. I have achieved language freedom and have even moved on to gain an understanding of other languages.