Reflection on change
I wrote this short essay as a part of my requirements for a scholarship at UO. I felt like it was appropriate to share here.
When I left for my study abroad at Waseda University in Tokyo, at four in the morning on the first day of spring break, I was dragging my feet the entire way. I was excited about the prospect of being in Japan again, having previously homestayed there in high school, but the physical act of leaving home was heartwrenching. Driving through Oregon on my way to the Portland International Airport, knowing that it would be several months before Iād see these familiar sights again; saying goodbye to my family, my live-in fiancĆ© and our cat; leaving the comfort of my home for the uncertainty of a host country 8000 miles away ā the entire process was painful and clouded my excitement with thick, blanket-like anxiety.
To be perfectly honest, the terms leading up to my study abroad were especially challenging. I began working in earnest on both my majors, taking fourth-year Japanese and research-intensive international studies classes simultaneously. At the same time, I started a new job off campus that ate up my free time, and in winter term my long-time boyfriend proposed to me and my family experienced the loss of my grandfather about a week apart. My grades began to visibly suffer, but my mental health bore the brunt of it all. This set a less than ideal stage for my semester abroad, but time stops for no one and before I knew it I was sitting on a plane a mile over the ocean, wondering what would happen during the next five months.
Upon arriving in the Narita International Airport on what felt like a different planet, I immediately found and clung to my fellow Oregon transplants ā there were five of us arriving together, and eight year-long students who would meet us in the coming weeks. Assisted by students from the Waseda International Club, we rode the train to our hotel, where we would spend three days being oriented to a new city, a new school, and a new way of living, before meeting our host families and dispersing into the city.
The day we were scheduled to move in with our host families, I was terrified. Having spent the last three days bumbling around the city in a fog of jet lag while my speaking confidence diminished with each strained interaction, moving in to a house full of Japanese-speaking strangers was the last thing I wanted to do. As luck would have it, my host father was one of the first to arrive at the hotel, and so I said a nervous see-you-later to my new friends and rode silently through Tokyo with him to his home in west Tokyo. My host mother, he explained, was away on business in northern Japan and would return the day after next, and my host sister was working in her office downtown and would be home that evening. While I understood him perfectly, I was far too nervous to speak much, and our interactions were stilted and awkward. I spent the entirety of my second day in my bedroom, nervously texting the other Oregon students ā what are your families like? What did you do today?
Luckily, it only took a week for the uneasiness to fade. My host family and I settled into a new routine with the start of the school semester, and after my first trip to the local hospital (of four I would eventually make), my host mother and I became especially close. During my semester with my host family, we attended cherry-blossom-viewing parties together, made monthly shrine visits, ate lunch at rooftop restaurants, cooked American and Japanese fusion meals, watched late night crime dramas and learned to joke and laugh together in Japanese. My study-abroad friends began to tell me that they envied, to a certain extent, the relationship I had with my host family; they truly felt like a part of my own family, like relatives Iād simply been living apart from.
My studies at Waseda almost felt like an afterthought compared to the rich and abundant experiences I was having off campus: making new friends, soaking in the city and exploring as much as I could. My classes paled in comparison to visiting scores of ancient temples and shrines, to eating cheap snacks on the streets in Shibuya and Harajuku, playing Pokemon Go with new friends around campus after the game was finally released in Japan, to riding the crowded last train home after a night out in Shinjuku with friends, to laying on the beach at Kamakura, to attending festivals in Kanagawa, Asakusa, and Sumida, and to seeing plays in Yokohama. In the middle of it all, I almost forgot the distress Iād felt at leaving Oregon, and while I still certainly missed my familiarity and family and fiancĆ© (and cat), Ā I wasnāt hurting anymore, although I didnāt realize it at the time. It wasnāt until the end of the semester when one morning at breakfast, I mentioned to my host mother that I was going to have to write essays about my experience and describe the ways that Iād changed, and I wasnāt sure what to write about. I knew I could write about my language improvements (we were having this conversation in full Japanese), or about my increased cultural understanding, or about reflections Iād had on life in America. Instead, my host mother had a different idea.
āJanea,ā she said. āYou smile now. Youāve become brighter. You arenāt sad anymore.ā