Japan as a Student
The first time I lived in Japan, and coincidentally the first time I had ever left the United States, was for the 2009-2010 school year. I entered into a Study Abroad program at Konan University via my alma mater University of Hawaii, Manoa. Having studied the language for two years, and being an avid reader of Japanese literature, I was not entirely uncomfortable with the idea of spending a year in Japan. I boarded a flight from my home in California to Honolulu, and from there I met with the other students from UH and we departed together for Japan.
When I look back on it, I think the main reason why I was able to take so much from my year abroad was because of the complete lack of expectations I had going into it. I had zero idea what it would be like. What kind of people would I meet. What kind of friends I would make. What my host family or my professors would be like. There were a few people in my program, as well as a few people I know who went in other years who told me they found studying there a very jarring experience. “It wasn’t how I imagined it would be at all,” was a common phrase I would hear. And to be fair, Japan has a great disadvantage in how it is represented in popular culture. If your idea of Japan is largely taken from anime, manga, or video games, you are in for a pretty rude awakening. There is a practiced order in Japan that can be hard to grasp. Fortunately, students aren’t really exposed to this.
I quickly made a group of friends among the other students and before I knew it, each day had become an adventure. Konan University was a tiny campus, but it was very well kept, and the staff were fantastic. Most of the students there received a scholarship of $800 a month, and I put the majority of that to Izakaya’s, train trips, hostels and hot springs. I remember the long walk through the foothills from my host mother’s house to the train station. I remember sitting on those maroon Hankyu trains, watching the scenery go by, listening to the hustle and bustle of morning life in Kobe. When you’re a student, you see the world through a kind of sophomoric innocence. You aren’t quite mentally ready to peel back the layers and see deeper issues. To you, everything is novel and fresh, and every day the sun shines brighter than the day before.
I could go on forever on things like being an undergrad in Japan, or learning to live with a host family, but instead, I’ll leave you with this. The year I spent in Kobe was the most important formative year of my entire life. If a young person were to ask me what one thing they should do to improve as a person, it would be to study abroad. Leave everything you think you know. Abandon all preconceived notions of faith and reality. Let it all go. Dive into the utterly unknown, and when you return, your life will have a clear divide. The person you were before you left, and the person you have become afterwards.
I’d like to write more about Japan from two other perspectives, as a working, married man, and as a traveler, so my next two blogs will be dedicated to those two topics. I hope you find them revealing or useful.
