Japan: Year One

I promised myself I’d keep the sob stories for my private blog, but I think this is relevant enough to post here.

This post is… personal. It’s the first of a three-parter that will sum up the three years I spent in Japan, starting with my training year at Osaka Gaidai and continuing with the two years I was a student at Tokyo Gakugei.

Side note: Trying to sleep with a raging fever and a sore throat is like poking an alligator with a stick and then wondering why it bit your hand off. Thank God for the ‘net. At least I have a distraction or two.

Year one

(No, not the movie. The movie may have had Jack Black in a leading role, but it still sucked. Worst $10 I ever spent.)

This is me, three years ago. My fellow scholarship grantees from all around Europe and I had just gotten off an excruciating 14-hour flight (and through another hour and a half worth of immigration procedures). I was 19, slightly overweight, a bit shy, dead tired… but happy. Can you tell?

Japan was my heaven-on-Earth. I’d had a long history of reading fascinating books about the country, watching anime, reading manga, and conversing with Japanese e-pals. I’d been studying the language for close to two years, and I could have a decent conversation with a native speaker. I was eager to see Japan — to know the people and the culture, make friends, and hopefully, stay here forever.

The first thing I ever bought in Japan was a lighter. When I approached the person at the kiosk, I was so nervous I could feel my heart beat in my throat. I was speaking in Japanese, and this person actually understood what I was saying! By all accounts, it seemed like a good start.

…But two hours later, my mood was much, much worse. We were still stuck at the airport, waiting for the minivans that were supposed to take us to the Osaka Gaidai campus. When the vans finally arrived, we were crammed inside with little ceremony. A two-hour drive followed. I remember nodding off a few times, but I was actually too tired to sleep.

Finally, when we arrived on campus, we spent another hour or so filling out papers. Then, we were finally allowed to go to our rooms and rest.

I remember a lot of small things about that first day in Japan. The weather changed a few times — sunny at first, then windy, then rain, then sunny again. Those of us who could still move were given a brief tour of the campus. It was beautiful. The cherry trees were in bloom, there were students milling everywhere, and above all… I was in effin’ Japan. For the hardcore otaku that I was, this was a dream come true.

Fast-forward to the second week at Gaidai. I’d made new friends (and some of these friendships, I think, will last for a lifetime), met most of my teachers, seen the downtown (and what a fascinating thing it was, even bigger and more dazzling than Vienna, Berlin or Strassbourg at night!), done some shopping… and life was good. Of course, I did get homesick every now and then, and I also had my very first panic attack on Japanese land… but other than that, I guess I was still euphoric.

As weeks dragged by, however, one thing became obvious: this “training year” thing wasn’t at all that nice. For one thing, some people were already fluent Japanese speakers, while others were only just beginning to study hiragana and katakana. The much-toted “required English language ability” was practically useless, since only two of my teachers actually knew enough English to explain things we didn’t understand (and believe me, there were plenty of things we didn’t understand). Classes were moving too fast. People were being marked down for silly mistakes. And on top of that, attendance was a must. To someone with General Anxiety Disorder and what seemed to be mild angina at the time (thankfully, it turned out to be yet another side effect of stress), that was the equivalent of tying a rock to their feet and pushing them off a bridge.

My first exam session was an epic failure. Yes, I scored in the high 90s. But so did everyone else. Wait… so we were all supposed to pass this thing, no matter what? If skill didn’t matter… what did? I only found out much, much later that it was all about attendance. That was after me and another student were threatened with expulsion and deportation. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’d made new friends and seen Kyoto and Tottori. Dorm life was fun enough. I even made friends with some of my teachers, who were awesome to boot. (Yes, mr. Shibata and mr. Shimamoto, that’s you I’m talking about!) Lessons were hard, but not impossible, so I thought I could pull through.

And then… I met him.

My friends know that I was engaged for close to two years. He was a Japanese student, majoring in English. We met online, we went to karaoke one night, and… we clicked. We began dating, then hooked up, and then, in summer, things got serious. He even introduced me to his family. Even though I was to find out much, much later that his father seemed to have a thing against foreigners in general and his son dating foreign girls in particular.

I don’t have any photos of him left, because we split up more than a year ago (…OK, less than a year ago, but it began long before he ended it on the phone). So, here’s a pretty photo of Osaka Harbor instead.

And then, in winter, everything began to fall apart.

By then, I had already come to terms with the fact that some classes were too dumbed down to be worth my time. One teacher in particular — who treated all of us like we were elementary school kids — got on my nerves to the point where I decided to not go to her class altogether. Another teacher who took to asking inappropriate questions every class and only spent about 10 minutes actually teaching something, made me skip that class, too. Actually, most teachers didn’t seem to take teaching all that seriously, and randomly change from one extreme to another: one class was easy enough, the next was a living hell. Until I stopped taking classes seriously myself. Other foreign students did the same.

My GAD, on the other hand, was also getting worse. I had another panic attack smack in the middle of a test. I still got an 89 on that test, but I began dreading classrooms.  My homeroom teacher was kind enough to come with me to a private clinic, and all I got were a handful of pills and a $50 bill. The on-campus counselor gave me a few interesting pointers. I began searching for the root of the problem. But I figured this wouldn’t be easy, and I had more pressing matters to attend.

Photo is unrelated. The view from the dorm rooftop was gorgeous though. I miss it.

My 20th birthday came and went. One of my Japanese friends was sweet enough to come to the dorm with a birthday cake, and there was enough cake to go around. I also bought a hamster. And that was all.

Me and my then-sweetheart went to Tokyo in December. It was my first time on the night bus, and I couldn’t sleep a wink. By the time we reached Tokyo, I was too tired to care about anything. I fell asleep in the Toyoko Inn lobby waiting for the check-in hour to arrive, until the lady at the front desk felt sorry for me and let us in early. The week or so we spent in Tokyo was nice enough… even though crowds weren’t really my thing, and all my fiance seemed interested in was spending money he didn’t have on useless trinkets. In the end, I bought him a $800 wallet, and he was happy.

The person in the photo is me, by the way… thinner, happily in love, and a lot more confident than I had been half a year ago. That day was windy as all f*ck. Surprisingly enough though, it wasn’t cold at all. I thought the wind was fun.

Fast-forward to early January, when we had an orientation meeting with representatives of universities from all around Japan. We got to pick four out of the seven mandatory orientations we could go to. I went to the Tokyo Gakugei University absolutely by coincidence; it was one of the three meetings assigned to me by my homeroom teacher, and I was just about to say “Screw this!” and sneak back to my dorm… when I ran into my homeroom teacher. “Hi!” he said. “Erm, hello”, I replied. “You have an orientation meeting, right?” “I… guess I do?” “Well, best be on your way then!” …And so, I was on my merry way.

The Tokyo Gakugei ladies were very helpful, or so it seemed. “Yes, if you study here, you will get your license to practice counseling in four years!” they said. That was what made me include Tokyo Gakugei on my options list. Little did I know, that they were, in fact, bullsh*tting me big time. At any rate, Tokyo Gakugei was my third option on the list, with Osaka University and Kobe University being first and second respectively. I was firmly convinced I’d enter Osaka University… after all, I had good grades, right?

Wrong. Attendance, it seemed, was everything. I got bounced off to Tokyo Gakugei.

I cried for three days when I found out. I had based everything on the fact that I would be admitted to Osaka University; after all, I had straight A’s in everything, barring Economy (which I hated with a passion, and I still hate to this day). I have no idea what happened there. I went through every possible avenue to try and overturn the decision, but to no avail. So, come late March… I packed what little stuff I had, and grudgingly made my way to Tokyo.

(Wait… there was an admission interview before that, but that one was a joke; not even worth mentioning in detail here.)