I wish they spoke Frapanese in Quebec!

A year ago, when I found for sure that I would be moving to Japan, I was very excited at the prospect of learning a new language.  I thought that even though Japanese is not a particularly useful language when you are outside of Japan, it is very useful when yo are in Japan and it would still be cool to be bi-lingual.  Immersion is the best way to learn a language, so I figured a year of immersion would be plenty of time to get a handle on Japanese.  For a month or two I studied hard and made a little progress in Japanese, but then somewhere along the line, my interest in learning Japanese peaked. "I have not made much progress and I am going back to Canada in six months where Japanese is not useful, not much point in working on it anymore." - this thought occurred to me at the halfway point of my contract, and that argument just kept getting better everyday.   So unfortunately I am going to leave Japan in a couple months with a very, very basic Japanese speaking ability.  I am not too upset about it, after all I made the choice not to do it. I am concerned that the Japanese I have learned has replaced the little bit of French I could speak.   Today I was trying to write a letter in french to the University du Quebec au Trois Rivieres to get some transcripts for my Ontario teaching certificate application, and I couldn't even come up with basic words in French.  I had to look up the word for thank you!  All that my brain would give me was arigato!   So now I am moving to Ottawa where French is useful, Japanese is not, and I have perhaps less language ability then I started with a year ago!  So much for being bi-lingual.  

thank you google translator for reminding me that arigato in French is merci