Hello. Happy 2010. Yes, I know it’s almost February.

The power of the human mind always impresses me. Our ability to retain information for long periods of time without actively tapping into it is amazing. For example, back in January 2008, I took the time to learn both the Japanese Hiragana and Katakana alphabets. I wouldn’t say I knew them cold, but I knew them well enough where I could stumble through Japanese text and be able to sound out the words (visualize a toddler learning how to read). I worked on this for about a month, but ultimately got distracted and stopped studying.

A few days ago, I decided to pick up where I left off and give it another go. I initially spent my time re-learning basic Japanese words to refresh my memory – stuff like counting to ten, colors, animals, etc. Last night I decided to dive back into the Hiragana alphabet. I was expecting to remember almost nothing and have to start from scratch, but as it turns out, I didn’t do half bad. I was able to remember 27 of the 46 basic Hiragana characters…

That’s a picture of a basic drag-and-drop matching game. The purpose is to match the Hiragana characters up with their respective English-represented sounds. Now, after two years of not touching Hiragana, I managed to get 59% of them right on the first try. After I took this screenshot, I managed to match up another half-dozen through trial and error. The rest, I simply couldn’t remember.

Now, the purpose of this blog post is not to brag. Most people have this ability to recall things. Riding a bike, hitting a baseball with a bat, and basic algebra are all good examples of things that are easy to pick back up if you’ve neglected them for a while. The brain is an amazing tool. We often deride ourselves if we fail to remember a word or fact during an everyday conversation. “I must be losing my mind,” we say, but with the sheer amount of organic data floating around in our skulls, it’s certainly excusable. Especially considering the complex tasks we execute and recall on a daily basis.