It has been a week since returning back home to England, and my final box of stuff has finally arrived, marking the point that my life has moved back to the UK and thus the end of my year abroad experience in Japan. It has been a whole lot more up and down than I could have possibly imagined, and answers to the normal "How was Japan?" have been very difficult to answer satisfactorily. So here is the final blog entry, to try and give a reasonable account of myself for the past year, to answer that question, and also in a way to say thanks for reading or following this in any way, and perhaps it might stand to serve for any other student heading to Nagoya or even anyone looking to emulate some of my travelling around South East Asia.
The principle reason why it is difficult to try and pin a single word on to my year-long experience (aside from the obvious time issue) is the fact that, in my head at least, I ended up living two very different lives while in Japan. In one I was a foreign student attending Nagoya University's foreign student programme (NUPACE). In the other I was still a tourist and free citizen of the East, managing plenty of travelling, socialising and even working under various guises. Japan is a marvellous country, and having had the chance to get around so much of it and experience all sorts of different regions and places (regional differences are much larger in Japan than in England) has been a wonderful once in a lifetime experience. If I return to the country again (and I really hope I will soon) it will unfortunately most likely be with work or some other commitment that will stop me doing as much, so I'm very lucky to have done so much already. Not only around Japan, but my travelling took me out of Japan three times, twice to Korea and once to Singapore, to see more of that side of the world that seems so far away from the UK.
My main problem with my year abroad, and what at times actually made me very depressed, was my life within the university. This is important to understand properly, because I do not want to be misunderstood - in fact this might come up more as a compliment for where I'd come from than where I'd ended up. I suppose the best way of putting it was that when I went to Japan, I found normal. That is, life in Japan was very normal to me. This is not the same as familiarity, because nearly every aspect of life in Japan was new and intriguing, but once figured out it became very very normal, with almost nothing exceptional to make it that extra bit special. I was a country-lad, raised on farms and I attended school with a fantastic group of people with fantastic personalities, and there was always something out of the ordinary to discuss, do or laugh about. In the deepest darkest city of Nagoya however, very little changed throughout the year. Anything unique within the university was only with the other foreign students, who mostly only wanted to go out drinking or karaoke, and who eventually were perfectly happy to spend every evening indoors playing on PSPs. With no university clubs (see previous posts) and nothing to do day-to-day outside drinking, social life was very monotonous. Service from shops was always identical, nothing out of place or eccentric popped up, daily life settled into a pattern, there were no ambitious projects for doing anything wild because everybody was happy just to go drinking and have a year partying. This was amplified since I was not really adjusted to city life, where taking walks was no good way of escaping anything, and especially in Nagoya where every street seems identical to the next continuing for an enormous urban sprawl there wasn't really much point to wandering along them. You couldn't see the stars, the horizon, grassy hills... I didn't feel that a life in Nagoya would really suit me very well from a location point of view. I suppose, at least not as a foreign student.
In terms of university life, this really only leaves study to keep the average student motivated and happy, and I guess that's why I ended up being as upset as I was. It is difficult to express my thoughts on the subject without accidentally offending the people at NUPACE, so I want to reassure them that I think they're all amazing. The effort and spare time that the staff put in to their teaching, to ensuring smooth living for foreign students and to help with any problems or queries you might have is phenomenal, and they all deserve medals for putting up with what us foreign students were able to throw at them. The teaching staff are excellent there, but sadly the lesson content wasn't - the majority of lessons were practically a waste of time. Out of the courses that I took in my first semester, I would only put stock into the History, Reading and Presentation classes, constituting just 4.5 hours out of a weekly 19.5, because they taught me new and interesting things. All the other classes simply went over old grammar and futile tasks that seemed more designed to keep students busy rather than teach anything useful. Homework was textbook pages with blanks, tests were textbook pages with different blanks. Classes were mostly teacher reads textbook, asks student to read textbook, asks student with friend to read textbook, sets group work with textbook, then setting homework (from the textbook), lather rinse and repeat for three hours every morning starting from 8.45am. This ended up being rather soul-destroying, because I questioned why I was there, why was I spending my time so uselessly like this, and why do I seem to be the only one so annoyed by it. To cap it off, every single lesson in my first semester (save one thank goodness) was in the same classroom. I suppose I'd come to Japan thinking that my language would be pressured so much that it would have to improve, and it was - just not in that classroom. In the second semester I planned and chose my studying much better, with all but three of the 1.5hour lessons being actually quite new and interesting (and all taught in Japanese this time around). Funnily enough, although I went from "Intermediate Intensive" (Intensive meaning hours worked and by no means an indicator of difficulty) to "Pre-Advanced Standard", in two of the lessons the content got easier and more similar to my 2nd year in Sheffield, and in another lesson the content was directly copy/pasted from the Intermediate syllabus! I bear no grudges against the teachers, but if asked what was the worst aspect of my year abroad, the lessons would be strong contenders for the title.
And it was from this that I tried my best to create the second life, to escape from NUPACE and see what else I could find in Japan for me. A lot of foreign students talk about an "international bubble", and I was out to burst out of it as soon as possible. This is why I did so much travelling, and refusing to go along with the American/English group whenever they did things. I hadn't come 7000 miles to eat at McDonalds, play on PSPs or simply go out drinking all the time. I wanted new foods, cultures, and sights. Having made a disaster out of my first semester, I tried desperately to model the second one into something I could be proud of: much more study, get a job, take the JLPT etc. (the JLPT result is in the post as we speak...). I even started playing the piano again. In the end I'd achieved this goal of separation very well, and my shining pride from my year abroad is my translation job with Nagoya University's OCW department, because not only was it completely removed from all other foreign students but, thanks to the kind understanding and tolerance on the part of the other staff, I've proved that I can make it in a Japanese office without stepping on too many people's toes, and the frequent necessary keigo and both written and spoken interactions have been a great asset to helping me improve my Japanese. I hope that I can continue to help them with their work in any way possible, and wish them all the best in my absence.
Was my year abroad worthwhile? Incredibly. I've learned how to cook, how to play piano (again), calligraphy, translation, the rules of sumo and bridge, karaoke etiquette, how to fold a futon, house-visiting manners, dormitory politics, rubbish recycling, how to teach a British accent... to name but a few. I've experienced blizzards in Sapporo for the winter Snow Festival and typhoons down in Okinawa in mid-summer, done both Sakura and Koyo seasons in Kyoto, visited Tokyo numerous times and even left the country entirely three times. While my mood was up and down like Alton Tower's best rollercoaster (there is no better place to make you feel stupid than Japan), looking back on my time in Japan has changed me and grown me and given me experience of things that I'd have never have encountered otherwise, and now having those things conquered I'm much more of a person than I was before I left. Although I might suggest that Nagoya would not be the best place to first experience Japan, I wouldn't go back and change it even if I could. My closing thought in Nagoya, as I eyed the TV Tower lit up and resplendent at night before heading home for good, was "Done. Next challenge". And I'm eager to see what might be awaiting me around the next corner.
I will see you all the next time I see you, and soon I hope.
Signing off,
Simon
PS. One point I'd like to address separately is people calling Japan "racist". Well yes, at face value Japan is (at times) xenophobic, racist and extremely obtuse, but apart from the way of "that's just how it is", the best way I've found of explaining this is in the form of a "context-cloud". Imagine a subtext, or unwritten codes or patterns that define how things should be in society, then imagine that most people in Japan can see/understand this, and so follow it, because that is often the best way to get about things when everybody else is doing the same. The abiding rule is therefore to follow or to play by the part that has been expected of you, which as a foreigner means that you are expected to be a tourist, to not speak Japanese and to be different. It's by not knowing what is expected that makes us seem very odd, because we do not tend to follow the established way of things, and this both makes you interesting because you're novel and funny, but also trouble. And as soon as you try and do something to deliberately go against this unwritten context, such as try and live in the country, or make extra requests of banks or post offices, do the problems begin. Sometimes even by speaking in Japanese to ask for help will be met with blank looks because you're not expected, or even meant to speak Japanese, simply because you are foreign. Some of the best conversations I've had with strangers in Japan were pretending that I'd only been in the country for a few weeks, rather than mentioning my foreign student status. People complimented me on my Japanese ability, but this was not because I had any linguistical skill but more that I'd had the same introductory conversation X hundred times, because that was what you were expected to say and so went down very well. This system does have its advantages, such as if you're ever caught doing something you shouldn't it is all too easy to simply claim that you don't know any better, and the police/authority will grunt and bear it because that fits with their knowledge of us. Every time I went to the bank I distinctly felt that the clerks' looks were more of the lines "oh no a foreigner, they always ask impossible questions", and so by giving me the answer "that's impossible" everything has been fulfilled and what am I complaining about. Rather than label Japanese culture as racist therefore, it is more accurate to describe it as context-driven, where people tend to follow society's expectations rather than individual judgements. I made it a personal mission to try and change as many opinions of foreigners as possible, mostly by returning stares of curious children who'd probably never seen such a strange thing as me before. Start young I thought.
PPS. I'm sure I can explain that idea better in person, so maybe ask me the next time you see me ;)
