Final Blog Posting!

I would like to start off by thanking everyone who followed me on my journey to the East.  As you could probably tell, things weren’t always easy, but that made everything all the more rewarding once I was able to accomplish them. 

It is amazing reflecting back on my first days in Tokyo, and comparing them to my last days, only 4 months later.  I remember being completely lost, and the simple most mundane tasks were nearly impossible without help.  While I was no wiz by the time I left, my improvement in everyday Japanese life was evident.  I can only hope that I get a chance to return to Japan and build upon these skills in the future.

My last day was such a memorable experience, as there was such an outpour of love from many of those I had become close with.  All of my close friends from the dorm walked with me from the dorm to the station,  and a couple friends from school also met us at the station.  I recall grabbing someone from the crowd of passerby’s and asking them to take a picture of us together, one last time.  It must have been quite a scene seeing a bunch of rowdy Japanese and White kids scrambling to take a picture in the middle of the crowded station.  I’ll post the pictures below.

Once I returned to the States, it was such a weird feeling.  It was like experiencing culture shock all over again.  I remember thinking to myself, “where are all the Japanese?”  For about a week I felt like a stranger in my own country.  Quite an interesting feeling.

 Some of my friends at Musashi Koganei Station

 These 4 rode with me all the way to Shinjuku.  Thanks all!

Again, thank you all for reading, I’m glad you got to share this great experience with me!  See you around!

Last Day in Japan

Hey all,

So the day has finally come..my last day in Japan.

It has been quite a journey!  I have made some great friends and great memories that I will never forget.  I am real busy today packing and sorting things out before I go, but I just wanted to say thanks for reading!

I will have one more blog entry once I am back in the states and have had some time to reflect, so please check back!

Also, I want to give a BIG thank you to all the good people at Honjo International Scholarship Foundation, Rikki Mitsunaga, and Professor Misawa for making this trip possible! 

かなしい！ (sad)

Yeah, I'm sad its all winding down, but in a good way.  (Sorry, my next few posts until I leave are probably going to keep mentioning how sad I am to be leaving.) 

Tomorrow is my last concert here at Sophia University.  I'm playing in 4 bands, got a lot to memorize tonight, but I am looking forward to it.  I will post pictures when I get a chance.  Its going to be my last hurrah on stage with a lot of my friends from this music "circle". 

I cannot emphasize enough how good of company these people are, and it is kind of funny reflecting on my relationships with them a mere 4 months ago when I first arrived.  First off, I didn't know that so many of them could speak English.  They were very shy at first (a common trait here in Japan) and were very hesitant to use their English skills.  However, as we got to know each other (and they figured out I wasn't a crazy Gaijin, well not completely crazy at least) they opened up and BOOM all of a sudden everyone was an English speaker (slight exaggeration).  It felt like a snowball effect.  As soon as I got close with a couple people in the circle, the metaphoric "Warning Label" was lifted off of me, and others felt like they could actually talk to me!

The "shy" factor, as I call it, is the biggest difference between the US and Japanese culture. They know it. Us foreigners know it.  However, it's a gap that when bridged, opens up so many deeper and frankly more interesting cultural insights.  I see many instances where this initial bridge is not crossed and as a result many misconceptions about one another remain.  My friends from this circle have even told me that as long as they have been a member, no exchange student has gotten close to knowing them as I have.  Its a great honor, and I hope it will help them warm up to the next batch of exchange students more quickly.  After all, there is so much to learn from each other!

Ok enough with the cheesy life lessons, gotta get back to practicing for tomorrow's concert. じゃあね。

the home stretch

Hey all,

So time is winding down here in Japan and it is really sad! I just want to reiterate, if you are considering doing a study abroad program, go for a year!  However, I have had such a great time so far...and I still have a month, so its not quite time for reflecting.

Well, over the course of a week, the weather has gone from mediocre and rainy, to unbearably hot and humid.  Everyone in Japan knew it was coming, and we were all dreading it.  It probably 80 degrees at night, pretty ridiculous.  Living in Hawaii has really not even prepared me for this LOL

Speaking of Hawaii, yesterday, a student organization hosted a "Hawaiian Culture Party" or something like that.  For the past few weeks they have really been on us UH kids to come and represent. One of the UH students, Kele, even performed a hula dance.  I gotta say, it was great! Very elegant, very smooth.  Well done Kele.

Also, I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but the school year is ending about 2 weeks early here at Sophia in order to save electricity.  A lot of people are happy about this, but I'm not too thrilled.  Don't get me wrong, its gonna be great not having to wake up at 7am every morning, but I am gonna miss a lot of the daily interactions with the students here at Sophia.  But, it is what it is, and I knew some sacrifices were going to have to be made when I decided to come to Japan during such a hectic time.

And I don't want to forget to mention the Tokyo perspective on the ongoing Fukushima Power Plant issues.  Basically, the Fukushima is an afterthought to many of us, at least the students here.  However, it is clear that the situation up there is not getting much better.  In fact, there is a lot of criticism aimed at the Japanese government for downplaying and even covering up the reality of what is actually going on up there.  Its definitely some scary stuff, but as far as I can tell it is not dramatically affecting people's live here in Tokyo.

Anyways, more to come later!

Hey all,

So, anyone who is considering doing study abroad in the future, I highly recommend it, and I also recommend that you go for en entire year.  A single semester is just too short! Recently, I've been discussing this with other exchange students who are only here for a semester and they agree.  It just feels like you are counting down the days as soon as you get here.  Lately, I have been feeling really rushed, and that I just am not going to have enough time to do everything I want to do! In addition to this, my Japanese has been getting a lot better, but by the time I leave it is not going to be at the level I would like.  A year here would definitely get me a lot closer to that goal.

Unfortunately, the prospect of staying another semester here in Japan would delay my graduation from UH at least another year, due to the Japanese semester start/finish dates not lining up with schools in the States.  And yeah, I am already a super senior so the general line of thought is that I need to go back and finish school.  I have been exploring options in which I can come back to Japan for an extended period of time post graduation, for example the JET program.  Let's hope it can work out!

On another note, my trip to Nagoya last weekend was a lot of fun! I had some very interesting experiences being the only native English speaker in my group.  Needless to say, it was great practice for my Japanese speaking.  However, I have noticed lately that my listening/comprehension is very far behind my speaking.  This is probably because I will want to practice Japanese, so I will speak to my friends in Japanese, but they want to practice English, so they will end up responding in English.  After that, if I say "Nihongo dake kudasai" (Japanese only please) they will speak to me in Japanese, but its hard for me to pick up a lot of what they say, so they explain themselves in English (and then speak in English after that) and thus the whole "nihongo dake" thing goes out the window.  I don't blame them, I would probably do the same back in the states.

But, it was a great experience nonetheless! 

Update

So....not too much new stuff going on.  Just been super busy with midterms and such. 

But, in about an hour I am off to Nagoya for the weekend to play a concert which should be a lot of fun! It should be interesting being up there with what I am assuming will be a good Japanese language experience (aka lack of English being spoken).  The event (from what I understand...which is not much) is a weekend long sports competition between Sophia University and another rival school. Apparently there's a long history of a strong rivalry between the 2 schools.  Mixed in there will be some festivities, such as food/drink/music etc.  It should be quite eventful!  Also, going to take the Shinkansen for the first time since I've been here, I am looking forward to it!

Sick in Japan :(

As soon as some sort of sick bug goes around, without fail, I get it.  Weak immune system, whatcha gonna do? (thanks Mom!)

Anyways, had a really weird experience today at the Sophia University Student Health services center that I'm going to try to describe, even as my head feels as if its a balloon filled with wayy too much helium (What does that even mean?? See, im sick!).  So I just wanted to get some cold medicine, and unlike the US, you can't really just go to 7-11 and buy some DayQuil.  I just needed something to make me feel less junky so I could finish my take home midterm and study for my Japanese lesson test, both occurring tomorrow.  Apparently you have got to go to the pharmacy, or in my case the Sophia University Health Services Center.  So I staggered over there after barely making it through my first and (luckily) only class of the day.  I had prepared by making a cheat sheet of phrases I could say to describe my symptoms such as  "Atama ga itai" (Lit: My head has pain..aka headahce) "Kaze o hita" (I have caught a cold)...etc.


So I go in there with the expectation of hopping in and hopping out with some Japanese equivalent of cold medicine.  Well, as usual, my expectations were totally wrong.  I go in there and they make me put a thermometer under my armpit (ok, thats fine, i guess) and then they bring to this bed in the back of the ward and motion for me to lay down (ok, I can see that being realistic as well).  Then, they close the curtain around me, and close a sturdier looking curtain system behind that, so I am completely isolated.  Kinda weird but OK. I'm sitting there for an hour waiting for a doctor to come give me some medicine and send me on my way, but no one comes.  So, I decide to text my Japanese friend, Takuya, and ask him what is going on/is this normal?  His reply was essentially, "No not really normal, but want me to talk to the on the phone for you?" I said that it wasn't necessary, then proceeded to get out of the bed to go and get some answers for myself.  This is when I got a little bit creeped out.

I got out of bed, pulled back the 1st curtain, then tried to pull back the 2nd sturdier curtain, but it wouldn't budge.  It seemed as though they had locked me in, quarantined me, if you will.  WEIRD.  So I kind of shimmied between the 1st and 2nd curtain, past other beds etc. until I got to an area where I could get out into the main infirmary.  I hopped out, relieved, and the nurses were sort of standing there looking at me like "Uh...where did you just come from?" So I made up some story that I had to meet my teacher and just wanted some cold medicine.  They then proceeded to tell me that the Doctors weren't in today and that they couldn't prescribe me and medicine.  I'm thinking to myself, "Ok, so why was I laying in that bed for an hour?" Well at this point I was pretty creeped out by the quasi-quarantine vibe, so I decided to cut my losses and get the heck out of there.

I'm still completely confused about what had happened, and I still wonder how long I would have been there had I not escaped from my quarters.  My Japanese has definitely improved a lot, but in terms of hospital vocabulary, my knowledge is pretty limited.  So I am kind of wondering what my experience would have been like had I been able to communicate with the nurses. 

Well, I hope that made some sense to you all...but seeing as how the whole experience didn't/doesn't make any sense to me compounded by the fact that I am trying to recount this experience while totally sick, I don't have very high expectations...