Winter
*The Kansai Trip*
The Great Post Kansai Let Down
By the beginning of Winter term, most of us were settled in with our situations in and out of school. My language skills had improved to the point where I could actually converse with the average Japanese on the street and be understood, more or less. But there was a demon that began to show its ugly head at about this time: culture shock! Anyone who moves into another set of social rules will experience some degree of it sooner or later. There is just no way to totally avoid the temporary insanity, no matter how hard one tries to integrate. I was a little older than most of the others and had been to Japan before, so my symptoms were pretty mild (thinking about things that I liked better back in California, weird feelings that people on the subway who looked at me were plotting against me because I am an American, etc), and I got over it after about a month of complaining about everything. Many were like me, but some others took it much worse and decided that they wanted to go back to wherever they came from. This is where Dr Aso and Kazaoka-san had to step in and convince several students to stay. How amazing that a few months after everyone was having so much fun together in our new country, it was not uncommon to hear remarks like "I hate Japan" in the Kokusaibu halls, even coming from Japanese-American students who had family there and knew the language fairly well.
Besides culture shock, an even more discouraging pattern began to emerge: students who could not get along with their host families moving into dorms. I always hated to hear those kinds of stories, because the negative memories would stay with both the host family and visiting student long after the year ended. A nice family that had opened their home to a total stranger from the other side of the planet would now probably have bad feelings about people from that country, and would not likely want to repeat the experience. Mostly, the problems came about for two reasons. First, host families want to spend time with their exchange student. After a few months of getting to know their families, many students start to explore other aspects of Japan, and do not bother to make time for them except during dinner and breakfast! Not what the host family signed up for. Second, Tokyo is a town with many, many nightlife options. Unfortuneately, the vast majority of host families do not appreciate the joys of being woken up in the wee hours of the morning as their exchange student stumbles in drunk with two girl/boy "friends". Simply put, if you are reading this and will be going on a study abroad program, ask yourself two simple questions. Am I a very independent person? Do I like to stay out late and party? You now know if you should stay in a dorm instead of with a host family! Wasn't that easy?
In my Japanese class, one of our teachers, Mizumoto Sensei, left to return to her hometown in Kyushu after getting a very nice job offer from one of the major universities there. We were sad to see her leave. She was always very demanding, but nobody could deny that J3 benefitted greatly from having her. Shortly before leaving, she deadpanned "It's going to be nice to teach some serious students for once." Her years of teaching at NYU had obviously given her a New York sense of humor. Her replacement was a young looking, always stylishly dressed lady named Mine Sensei (pronounced me-nay). She had recently returned from teaching in Singapore, and had yet to account for the cultural differences between American and Singaporean students. Swan Sensei had long figured out how to handle each individual personality in the class, but when David (the skater punk, remember) started to ask Mine Sensei personal questions, it was obvious that she became a little "uncomfortable". One lesson that our young friend David did not yet understand was not to agitate the person who makes the assignments and writes the grades. Especially when that person has just returned from a country where counseling means being beaten with a large object. It made for some comically tense moments the first few weeks, but she eventually whipped us back into line (except for David, that skater punk).
--TO BE CONTINUED--
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