Looking Forward by Looking Back

I'm including another one of my Asian Studies Senior Seminar papers.  The winter break is coming up, and I've been trying to decide where to go.  I had thought that I'd explore China, but these last few weeks they only places I want to go to are Beijing and Harbin.  I also have started to feel a little tired, in a way that I remember feeling tired of everything around this time two years ago in Japan.  So, I think I'm going to visit Japan this break.  Though it is certainly not written in stone.  This piece talks about the end of the semester in Japan, and coming back.

Pine Trees at Uji, Kyoto

Walk from Train Station to Kansai Gaidai Dorms

Listening Practice:  An Outsider's Role in Japan

            After one semester in Japan, I felt a bit overwhelmed.  My language skills seemed to be deteriorating, instead of getting better.  Most of the study abroad students I knew were returning home for spring semester.  And I had the eerie but unconfirmed suspicion that my host family was glad that I was leaving them.  I was beginning to wonder if I had gained anything from the experience of being abroad.

            Ironically, it wasn't until I left Japan that I began to feel at home there.

            For two weeks during winter break I traveled outside Japan.  The experience was incredible, but I will not elaborate on it here.  I will leave it that I saw a side of Asia that is not as organized as Japan is.  I found out what it was like to be unable to speak any of the native language.  It is with this context that I was able to view my return to Japan.

            On the first night back I caught the slowest of the Shinkansen and rode from Fukuoka to Osaka.    By the time I arrived in Osaka it was 11:30 at night.  The local train I would have needed to catch to get to the dorms would shut down for the night before I could get there.  With my leftover money I went and caught a cab.

            Osaka is known for being more casual and more open than most of Japan.  People speak more informally and are more comfortable with foreigners.  The cab driver that night was definitely from Osaka.  After I told him the destination and we agreed on the price, he used the casual short verb form.  He didn't try to use English except once in a great while when I didn't understand something he said, and even when he did, he would shift almost immediately back into Japanese.  Over the course of the two hour cab ride we talked about food, American/Japanese stereotypes, and China as a world power.  Out of all the people I talked to in nine months in Japan, that cab driver that night remains by far my favorite conversation partner.

            As spring semester went on I found myself fitting into a new role.  While first semester I tried to be a part of a family, second semester I tried to be myself and explore.  I eavesdropped more, and smiled more.  I have come away with some interesting conversations, from a brief history of a fire bombed neighborhood in Tokyo to drinking habits of working men in Sapporo.  I found a role in listening to others rather than in speaking or doing.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.  I am much more of a listener in English as well.