This is not the end.
Life After Japan
The first few days were difficult. There was a strong sense of unreality in being back here-I kept expecting that any minute, I’d wake up in my dorm as usual, eat my breakfast bento, and head to school on the subway.
Unfortunately, being back in Texas was the reality, and I had no choice but to accept it. It was hard, though, especially since I didn’t have a steady schedule to return to yet. Though there were things I needed to do-unpack and repack for Pittsburgh, celebrate two birthdays-there wasn’t any particular time I needed to be up and dressed or in bed. I never deal well with this kind of unstructured existence, and jetlag left me feeling fatigued and a little moody as well.
Of course, it isn’t all bad. I was happy to be reunited with my family. We e-mailed a lot and they kept up with this blog while I was abroad, but it’s still not the same as getting to talk with them in person. It was also nice to be in the same timezone (or close) as a lot of my friends and to get to chat with them in real-time. Being able to read newspapers and watch the news (and TV in general) helped me feel more connected to the rest of the world as well. And, yes, I do admit that having Internet access 24/7 again is nice, even though at first I wasn’t sure what to do with it-I really had gotten used to only having about an hour a day at most.
Also, especially because of my sleep schedule constantly changing and therefore spending many hours lying awake trying to fall asleep, I did have a lot of time to reflect on things-especially the changes that have occurred since I left for Japan in June. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I don’t think my personality’s changed, and I still hold to that. My goals and interests also haven’t really changed, aside from the fact that I’m now more determined than ever to fulfill my dream of working and living in Japan.
One of the biggest changes is that, at the start of the summer, when I realized that I am halfway done with college, I was really freaked out about it. Though I’ve had my share of ups and downs, I was thoroughly in love with the college life and couldn’t imagine wanting it to end. But since my summer in Tokyo, I’ve done a total 180. It may have been partly because of my spending so much time with my Korean classmates, all of whom have already graduated college, and realizing that the post-college life is not half so bad. At any rate, all of a sudden, I can’t wait to graduate and be done with college.
Another change that I anticipate is a change in my priorities. When I tried to go over what awaits me when I return to CMU, I realized that the prospect of the thing I usually look forward to most-the many clubs and activities I participate in-no longer excites me nearly as much. I don’t dread it, but I don’t feel nearly as passionate-and while half of me hopes that the passion will return, half of me argues that it’s okay. After all, my priorities ought to be finishing my Design degree and, if at all possible, getting my two minors as well. In a similar fashion, while I was going over what would happen if I don’t manage to test out of even a single semester of Japanese (which, unfortunately, is a possibility because I did not cover all of the grammar they cover in IJI) and whether I can still get my minor in that case. It should be possible, but it may mean giving up my opportunity to take Chinese language classes my Senior year, which I’ve always been planning. However, I now realize that, although I truly am passionate about learning Chinese because it’s part of my heritage and I think it’s the most beautiful language in the world, it is not nearly as important to me as learning Japanese-and so it would be acceptable to give up taking Chinese my Senior year if that’s what it takes to finish my minor. I realize that I may have been thinking of college as a smorgasbord perhaps a little too much.
In terms of more minor changes, I find myself interjecting conversations and actions with, “In Japan they…” I suppose this is not unexpected. It is human to make comparisons, and since I am not generally a great conversationalist, I am enjoying the opportunity to be able to share some knowledge and experiences that other people do not have.
Most of these are cultural differences or oddities I didn’t mention in here earlier because I planned to compound them all in one entry at some point. Since I never got around to it, I suppose now’s as good a time as any.
· Japan really is “Opposite Land”. Not only do they drive on the left side of the road, but pretty much anytime we’re right-oriented, Japan is left-oriented. For example, you stand on the left side of the escalator and pass on the right.
Subway 001
· Mom said she had heard from someone that no one talks to each other on the subway. This is fairly true, but moreso in the morning. The average person in Tokyo does commute a pretty long way to work/school every morning, so on the morning trains, more than anything else, you will find people sleeping. In the afternoon, you will occasionally find people chatting quietly, though in general, the subways are very silent. It helps too, though, that you are pretty much required to have your phone on silent, and you’re not allowed to talk on your cell phone while on the train/subway. Personally, I kind of like the silence. I like taking this time on the subway to reflect and review my day.
· The Japanese love Louis Vuitton. At least one out of every five women I saw in the city would be carrying an LV bag-yes, I have tested this theory. It’s not unusual to see men carrying LV bags, either. And you can find Louis Vuitton stores everywhere.
· It really is very socially acceptable to drink, and to say that you like drinking. Even our teachers, when introducing themselves, would say things like, “On the weekends, I like to go drinking with my friends.”
· Smoking is very, very common, much moreso in the U.S. It is also much more common among men than among women. However, Tokyo does have a law where you can’t smoke as you’re walking-only when you’re standing still. They actually generally keep to this rule. The Koreans break this law all the time, though.
· Tokyo is very, very clean, but you’ll hardly ever find any public trash cans in the streets. I’m not sure whether it’s the Japanese traditional custom to take your trash home or an effort to make the city appear cleaner. (After all, overflowing trash cans are not a pretty sight.) Anyway, it’s kind of a pain in the butt, for example, when you’re walking and eating ice cream and need to throw the bowl away afterwards, or something, but there’s no trash cans. After a while, you do learn where you can usually find them-outside a konbini there will often be a couple of small trash cans. But until you figure this out, it’s easy to walk for blocks without seeing a single trash can.
· Speaking of trash, the Japanese are really gung-ho about recycling and separating trash. EVERYTHING gets separated and recycled appropriately. Even the aluminum cap from your yoghurt or dessert pudding gets separated from the plastic cup and recycled. Even when we got lazy, our dorm mother would go through the trash and separate the things we’d put in the wrong bins.
· People marketing their stores, restaurants, and products in the streets is very, very common, and streets tend to be very noisy because of all the people yelling about their products and services. Restaurant staff will try to stop you as you’re walking to get you to look at their menu. People marketing stores or products often do this by giving out flyers or useful little freebies, like paper fans or little packs of tissues. I was personally a big fan of the tissues. They always end up coming in handy.
· At stores, if it’s raining, you either leave your umbrella outside or wrap it in a plastic bag before taking it inside with you.
· At large department stores with multiple floors, you usually have to pay for each item on the floor where you found it.
· While in America the trend has been toward more casual dress in the workplace, Japan is still very much a country where men have to wear suits to work, regardless of their job. I have to admit I am quite a fan of this. In my opinion, men look their best in a nice suit, so while in Tokyo, I was constantly surrounded by eye candy.
· Women, too, dress up. Shaunte often complained that she always feels underdressed in Tokyo. Part of it is, though, that women do dress pretty conservatively. Naked stomachs or bare shoulders are very uncommon. Shorts are very rarely worn, either by very young girls or by teenage girls obviously going for a slightly risqué look. Capris are acceptable, as are regular blue jeans, but skirts and dresses are a slightly more common sight.
· Weekends and holidays are really the only time when you see families on the train and subway. On weekdays, it’s really just the older generations going to work, or schoolchildren going to school by themselves. So, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the Japanese are still marrying and having babies. It’s very obvious that the birth rate is in sharp decline, though; I’m fairly sure I only saw 3 pregnant Japanese women during my entire stay. (Yes, I counted.)
· Though you’d think people in Tokyo would be used to seeing foreigners, since it’s such a famous and touristy place, foreigners will often find themselves stared at like you’re some rare animal at a zoo. This is especially the case among the older generations of Japanese; the younger generations don’t really do this, so it obviously has a lot to do with the attitude toward foreigners when people were growing up.
· Japanese girls love American men. Pretty much anytime I saw an American guy who wasn’t either with an American girl or part of a larger group of Americans, he was on the arm of some Japanese girl. They just snatch them right up, apparently.
I’m sure there’s plenty of other things I could list, but this is all I could come up with off the top of my head. At any rate, I’m sure that whenever I do go back, I’ll add to the list as I go. But we’ll get to that topic later.
Unfinished Business
There’s a few pictures and things I failed to post until now, either because they needed to be scanned or I didn’t have time to upload them all. Anyway, now’s the time when I try to clear up all this unfinished business.
First off, here’s some photos from when Susan & I met up in June and did “print club”, where you pose for cutesy/goofy pictures and then decorate them with smileys and text and sparkles and all kinds of other ridiculousness. Although I am hilariously bad at posing for photos, I think the end results are quite cute, so I scanned them in for everyone to enjoy:
Print Club
Also, here are the videos I took at Ueno Park a couple of Sundays ago. They’re nothing too special, but they show some of the street performances and random entertainment you can find when you go there.
Plans for the Future
I had already mentioned that I want to look into getting an internship in Japan for next summer. I had also mentioned this to Takahashi-sensei before leaving, and she told me to check out Temple University’s Japan program because she said that they help their students find internships with both Japanese and multinational companies in Tokyo. So, last Friday, since I didn’t really have anything better to do anyway, I began to do research.
It turns out that what Takahashi-sensei said about Temple is true, but the service is only offered to participants of their study-abroad program, since the internships are for college credit. Temple also doesn’t have a summer program-just fall and spring.
That’s when I returned to an idea I’d had since coming to college-studying abroad during the spring of my Junior year. I’d given up on this idea because I was worried about not graduating on time, but at the beginning of the summer, I’d made a detailed spreadsheet of my graduation requirements and my progress so far, including which courses I still need to take which semesters. It turns out I’m still well on-track and shouldn’t have to overload ever again. In addition, spring semester of my Junior year is the one with the fewest required classes-as well as the semester I least look forward to. I don’t like the projects they do in Typography IV, and the only other classes I’d need to take are a couple of Design electives (and spring semester of last year, they did not offer a single elective I was at all interested in) and at least one Japanese class. I don’t have to take any CS classes, and I was planning not to. After this semester, I’ll have only 2 required classes (electives) left for that minor, and I’ll have a better chance of getting into the classes I want during my Senior year.
This means that it is actually very possible for me to go abroad in the spring, so long as I can find a program where I can transfer my credits and use them toward my Design graduation requirements. Temple’s program is probably out of the question because, while they do offer art & design classes, they do not have a high-level typography studio that I could take in place of Typography IV. Aside from that, I don’t believe I could use my Carnegie Mellon financial aid, and the cost is too high to pay out-of-pocket.
However, I did a little more research. My friend Robin had mentioned that a couple of students in her year had studied abroad in Japan during the spring of their Junior year. I discovered that they’d gone to Nagoya Zokei University-Zokei translating roughly into “Art & Design”. That would explain why their credits transferred. So, Nagoya Zokei is a possibility-but I was a little dismayed, because in the end I’d like to be in Tokyo, just because I know the city well, I have a few friends, and I just generally feel comfortable there.
Further research, however, led me to discover that there is also a Tokyo Zokei University. They even have a lot of exchange students come from abroad to study there, so a lot of their classes are taught in a combination of both Japanese & English. In addition, because they don’t have a study abroad program but have exchange agreements with other schools, if I can persuade the CMU School of Design to make an exchange agreement with Tokyo Zokei, I believe that I could use all of my financial aid.
The interesting thing to note is that the Japanese school year for university students runs from the beginning of April until the end of January. So, if I do go to Tokyo or Nagoya Zokei, I would be going to school from April until the end of July-and would be off from mid-December until at least mid-March. This would give me ample time to still do an internship, likely in the U.S.-with the added benefit of having less competition for sought-after summer positions.
So this definitely seems like an option I want to pursue-especially because, for reasons mentioned earlier, I’m not particularly looking forward to spring semester if I do stay at CMU. However, there is much that is up in the air and questions that need to be answered. Would the CMU School of Design be willing to make an exchange agreement with Tokyo Zokei just so I can study there? If they do approve it, is it true that I can use all my financial aid and all my credits will transfer? What will I have to do to apply for Tokyo Zokei? In Japan, even art schools have special entrance examinations.
I’ve already scheduled a meeting with my advisor for 2pm this Friday, so I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed for a positive response. I feel like it shouldn’t be impossible, but it’s quite possible that there are other obstacles or objections. I don’t really know. But I’m really hoping for the best.
If it turns out that it isn’t possible, I guess I will go back to my original plan of trying to find an internship in Tokyo for the summer. I’d prefer the study abroad option though, just because I feel like it would be easier to arrange overall and because I really do want to try to avoid being at CMU next semester.
Anyway, so that’s where my plans stand at the moment-and, as I hinted in my last post, this is the reason why this likely isn’t the end of this blog. If I do go back to Japan within the next year, I will most likely reuse this blog, and in the meantime, there might be periodic updates on my progress in getting myself there.
So, as before, this is not the end. This is not goodbye-simply a “see you later”, because I am determined that there will be a ‘later’.