落語を見に行ってきた！ We Went to See Rakugo at the Brighton Fringe And It Was All Kinds of Awesome
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落語を知っていますか。聞いたことありますか。
Rakugo o shitte imasu ka. Kiita koto ga arimasu ka.
Do you know rakugo? Have you ever heard of it?
The first time I heard of rakugo (落語), I was at a weekly Japanese conversation club in Nagoya in 2011, and the teacher was telling me about an event they were holding the following week.
"This man Sunshine-san is very famous," she told me. "He does traditional Japanese comic storytelling in English."
"Hmm," I thought to myself. "I don't want to see a show in English. I didn't come to Japan to watch stuff in English!"
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Like many people in the UK, I studied French in school. I liked French. I thought it was really fun to speak another language, to talk with people, and to try and listen to what was going on in a new country. (Still do!)
When I was 14 we went on a school exchange to the city of Reims, in northeastern France. I was paired with a boy, which I’m sure some 14-year-olds would find very exciting but which I found unbearably awkward. He was very sweet and we completely ignored each other.
That was nearly 20 years ago, and I didn’t learn or use any more French until, at some point in lockdown, I decided on a whim to take some one-to-one lessons with online teachers. Here are some things I learned about French, about language learning, and about myself.