The inhibition of spontaneity

My Japanese girls are high achieving students at home, who’ve done much already in getting the required TOEFL score to come abroad.

Here, they feel dismayed at the sudden uprising of shyness in them, that the ease with which they spoke English at home has deserted them and they struggle to talk to people spontaneously.

Any of us who have taken our second language into a foreign country know how that feels. On my first night in Paris, seven years ago, I sat at a bar table with my empty beer bottle for a good half hour because I was too scared to ask the waiter for the price of the beer before paying.

I know too that, when they’ve passed through this initial period of inhibition, they’ll be unstoppable, even if they don’t yet believe it. Nor do they grasp the potential for their appeal to the locals: what straight man doesn’t want to get into conversation with a beautiful, twenty-year-old Japanese girl?