One Month and Counting

Well, it has been a month. A month full of wonder, amazement, learning, and awe. A month full of delicious foods, new experiences, and hilarious people. A month in a new school, in a new country, with a new language. But, perhaps, most importantly of all, it has been a month of Danielle bothering me to make a blog.

To be honest, I held off on writing this for a variety of reasons; not only did I feel like I hadn't been in Japan long enough to warrant a blog, but I also thought that writing a blog (in English, predominantly) might be detrimental to the immersion process. However, in the end, my friends and family in America won out (albeit, after longer than they had expected). I shall do a blog, but infrequently; I feel that this is the best way to go about it. After all, the more time in between blogs, the more opportunities I'll have to gather and experience stories worth retelling to you.

Now that that's out of the way, let's begin.

The night before my departure was... magical. Having the opportunity to see my friends, those closest to me, so close to my departure (my plane left Austin about 5 hours after the party ended) was the best sending off I could have hoped for. I am extremely happy with how that went. However, my adieu itself was far from perfect.

I arrived, bleary-eyed and COMPLETELY out-of-it, after maybe 4 hours of sleep, at Austin Airport, and promptly went to the bathroom to vomit. After considering briefly that this might be a bad sign, I rejoined my family, and proceeded to offend a Chinese couple by speaking to them in Japanese (in my defense, I had just picked up a piece of luggage they dropped, and they had thanked me, AND I was really sleepy). After enduring their glares for several minutes (why did they have to be right behind me in line?), I left my brother, father, and sister at the gate, tears in my eyes, as I accompanied my mother to San Francisco. It was there that I met Hansen, my fellow exchange student. After an enlightening conversation with each other, we left. I remember vividly the moment when I stopped waving to my mother, and, turning around, left for my year-abroad; I knew, at the outset, that it would be unlike anything I had ever experienced, and that it would change my life forever. However, knowing something, and really KNOWING something, are two different things, as I discovered when I arrived after a 14 hour flight.

The airports in Japan are really cool. Well, actually, they are pretty much the same as airports in America. BUT, they are airports in Japan, and that in and of itself makes them much cooler to me than their American counterparts. On August 22^nd, Hansen and I arrived at one of these cool Japanese airports; to be specific, we arrived at 関西国際 (or Kansai-International Airport). After wandering around a bit, we met our welcoming party, which consisted of the head of the EP program, a range of teachers, and our host families. We then left, to go live with and get acquainted with our host families.

I won't lie, my first exchanges with my host family were awkward, given my incredibly poor spoken Japanese. However, after about a week, I began to feel at home; I cannot tell you what a relief this was. One of my more memorable pre-departure worries had been that I would struggle to fit in with my host family, that they wouldn't like me, that I would be a burden, etc. However, all fears were banished when I actually got to know them.

The Fujii's are absolutely wonderful, and I could not be more grateful to have them as a host family. My father speaks both English and Japanese very fluently, and is very very supportive of my studies (when I have questions about homework, which is fairly often, I go to him). My mother is incredibly kind and very, very funny; when I got home from soccer practice at 12 midnight, she was the one who stayed up, keeping a meal warm for me, and talked to me while I was eating. I have two host brothers; Tak and Kent. Tak goes to Momoyama, while Kent is in a university in Kyoto. Everyday, I go to school with Tak, and talk to him very frequently; while at first our interactions were strained (given my aforementioned poor Japanese, and his lack of English fluency), after a while, we got to know each other much better, and are very good friends; our banter, while simple, is quite amusing. He also has a great taste in music (his favorites are Bon Jovi, U2, and Led Zepplin). Sadly, I've only met Kent once; however, he confirmed himself as awesome in this one encounter (which shall be discussed a bit later).

School itself is.... interesting, to say the least. Every morning, I wake up at around 5:50, lay in bed for 15 minutes groggily thinking about how early it is, and then get ready to leave. I live in an area called りんくう　タウン (Rinku-town), which is very close to Kansai airport. It is, in turn, very far from Momoyama; my commute everyday takes about 1 hour and 20 or so minutes. After this long commute (during which I sleep, listen to music, sleep, do some homework, and sleep), school begins at around 8:15.

Now, the exchange students schedules are rather interesting; we take most of our classes in the EP room, but some we take with our homeroom (made up of Japanese kids, just to make it clear). All three of us are in different homerooms, so that we're forced to interact with Japanese kids and make use of our ever-expanding Japanese vocabularies. My homeroom is in F-con (Ace already knows this, but this is a separate building from where the EP room is, so everyday I have to sprint between classes so as to avoid being late), and is comprised of some of the most amusing and interesting Japanese kids I've been lucky enough to meet. Everyday, they greet me with hilarious enthusiasm, and, when I ask, are always willing to help me if I don't understand anything. I'm lucky to have them as a homeroom, and am looking forward to that point in the year when I'll actually be able to talk with them fluently(ish).

Anyway, after this homeroom time at the beginning of the day, classes begin. I have Physics, Algebra 2, Japanese History, Japanese Geography, and Japanese language as regular EP classes; in addition to those, I have a bible study class, math (in Japanese, which means I understand almost nothing), English (surprisingly, this is probably the class I learn the 2^nd most Japanese in, besides Japanese language), music, and home economics (which includes things like sewing and cooking).

Japanese language, out of all of these classes, is the most rewarding and, simultaneously, the most difficult. It's taught by みき　先生 (Miki Sensei), and I've discovered over the past month or so that she is one of the best teachers I have ever had. Her teaching style is very demanding; every class, we (that is, us exchange students) interact with each other in Japanese, and, as lessons progress, are taught new grammatical structures which we then incorporate into various exercises and conversations. While I enjoy it, I must admit it is difficult: there are three exchange students this year, including myself, Hansen, and a Canadian (sadly, he does not have a hilarious accent) named Stefan. Stefan is quite brilliant, and before coming to Japan, he studied Japanese for over a year. Because of that, and because he studied it in a highly-intensive program, his Japanese is light-years ahead of mine; he is already 1/3^rd of the way through our blue Kanji book (this may not make much sense, until I tell you that the blue kanji book is the second in a series we have, and that I won't finish the first for some months yet), and has a huge vocabulary.

So, of the exchange students, one studied intensely for over 1 year, one studied less intensely for over 3 years, and one studied informally for about 4 months; suffice to say, when we speak in Japanese my inexperience is thrown into sharp relief. However, in a way, their being much better than I am is a blessing; our Japanese class is moving at an accelerated pace, and I am learning new Japanese at a very fast pace. Despite how difficult it is, I relish the challenge; after all, I'm here to learn Japanese, and I want to learn it as quickly as possible. And, with Miki Sensei teaching me, I'm not worried: she is an absolutely fantastic teacher (according to literally every ex-exchange student I've talked to, including some who are living in Japan, as well as myself).

And, what a difference there is between my Japanese now and my Japanese one month ago. A good example of this would be きしわだの　だんじり　松 (Kishiwada's Danjiri Festival). It's hard to describe what this is in full detail, so I encourage everybody who reads this to at least skim wikipedia's article on it (and look at some pictures of actual Danjiri). Anyway, my host family decided to take me to this festival a couple weeks back, because they thought it would be a good experience for me. They were right, though in a way which they hadn't predicted. During the hours before leaving for Kishiwada (we had decided to go for the night portion of the festival, a decision which turned out to be a mistake), my older host brother Kent showed up. Kent is kind of awesome, in that distant-older-brother kind of way which I've heard about (though I'd never experienced prior to my time in Japan). He is very smart, very interesting, and very funny. He, like Tak, has a great taste in music; however, whereas Tak leans towards older rock, Kent likes modern stuff. Anyway, I met him for the first time that day, and, after talking with each other a bit, we proceeded to the festival. We explored Kishiwada for a bit, ate a ridiculously overpriced dinner, and left, because we had gone at the wrong time of the festival. This may not sound like the best turn of events, but to me, it couldn't have gone better: I spent the entire time talking to my host family, predominately in Japanese. It's difficult to express how happy I was to be able to do that; I won't say I said everything in Japanese, or that what I did say in Japanese was all that coherent. However, when the day was over, I looked back and realized I had spent more time talking in Japanese than I had in English. The contrast between that day, in which I was making jokes left and right and learning new words like nobodies business, and my first day in Japan, when the most advanced thing I said was すみません (pronounced su-i-ma-sen, it can be used as “excuse me” or “I'm sorry”), was immense.

Perhaps, however, the best part of my time in Japan so far is that I've only been here a month. This has been one of the most memorable months of my life, but, it's only the first month. I cannot wait to see where I stand around Christmas, and again at Spring Break, and finally, when I leave. I've felt myself, and my personality, change over this last month, as I faced the challenges inherent to being an exchange student (and, one who effectively didn't know the language when he arrived). However, it has only been one month, and the changes are small compared to what I will become over the course of this year. It's frustrating, because I still make simple mistakes, and the more difficult things elude, but, it's only been a month. I've savored every moment, and half nothing but eager anticipation for the challenges that lie ahead.

This has been one unforgettable, difficult, amazing, painful, hilarious, life-changing month. But still, a month.

I can't wait to see where I am when this is all over.