Impiety

I opened my profile on this blog. It says I have posted 117 entries. Come to think about it, I have never written such amount of English in my life, apart from scientific reports.
Speaking a language, and writing for that matter, is a strange thing. Even if you haven't spoken a word, all the elements that are required to speak have grown somewhere in your brain if you have been well exposed in the language environment. So you yourself will be surprised when one day you find yourself speaking it without much trouble. This is like a baby when it starts to speak. To us it looks quite suddenly. It rapidly develop its skill to a level that it can communicate its request to adults.
What is critical is how and how long you can expose yourself to that particular language environment. It is easier said than done. If you are studying abroad you have enough motivation. You have to live in that country and you need to dispose of your necessities in English. Even if you do not feel that you are learning English, there you have the natural growing process at work.
However, living in Japan, You have to create an English environment by yourself. Keeping the motivation is the most difficult since the improvement of the language ability is so slow a process that it is almost invisible. You need to have faith. You have to trust in something you cannot see but surely growing inside you. Keep reading books in English. Keep writing however awful your English looks.
How hard it is for us to be faithful to something; our improvement in English, people's love, god, spirit, whatever.
Impiety is our current problem spreading rapidly sweeping over the world.