Alice Zeng: My First Week in Japan - Extreme First World Problems

A little backstory before we get started, for those that don’t know Aichi Gakusen College is located in Okazaki City of Aichi Prefecture. Other notable cities in the prefecture that you may have heard of include Toyota as well as the capital, Nagoya. It’s located in central Japan, and is one of the richest prefectures in the country, guess why (*cough Toyota). As for me, I will be staying in a city north east of Nagoya by the name of Seto, a humble little city famous for its ceramic crafts.

I won’t be going into excruciating detail about what I’ve been up to during my stay here as I don’t intend for this to be a travel diary that records my everyday antics by the hour. Instead I will be sharing the more important experiences, as well as my impressions, and advice in hopes that I can help future students going on this exchange, or those simply interested in applying and would like to know a bit more about what it’s like.

 

Now that that’s done, lets get started on the stuff I assume you’re actually here for.

 

First, the summary of my arrival and how I got through my first week in this beautiful, wacky, foreign country.

 

We arrived at Chubu Centrair around 3 pm JST after a long flight. The representative of the international exchange department at Aichi Gakusen, Mr. Ishikawa, welcomed us at the gates and escorted us and our luggage to his car and we proceeded on a (very packed) hour and a half long car ride to Okazaki.

 

 

We spent our first night at a hotel in Okazaki city center (courtesy of Aichi Gakusen, we each had our own private room, bless) and Mr. Ishikawa took us to the school the next morning. We had a pretty basic orientation (tour around the school, meeting teachers, taking the language proficiency test) and afterwards we were distributed to our various host families.

(above) The main school grounds! We just caught the tail end of cherry blossom season.

Unlike Emily and Drew, my host family isn’t from Okazaki, so instead of getting picked up at the school like I was told was going to happen initially, I had to take the train by myself, with my luggage (at the time I really regretted bringing so much with me), for an hour to Yamaguchi station in Seto, where my host family will be waiting for me. I have to admit I was really nervous, I had heard a lot about Japan’s infamous transit system, known for being really convenient and really, really confusing (more on this another day).

 

Fortunately, I arrived in one piece (actually, 3, if you include my baggage). I stumbled out of the train doors and was immediately greeted by my host family who had been waiting for me on the platform. My first impression was, honestly, relief. I was really anxious about my host family for a long time, and whether not they would be a family I could fit into, and immediately I could tell I had nothing to worry about. Okaa-san (is what I call my host mother), her daughter Maya-san (who was pregnant at the time), and the granddaughter Rine-chan were the ones who picked me up from the station. We drove to the house which was really close to the station and they helped me up to a bedroom on the 2nd floor that they had prepared for me.

 

My first thought was that it looks like Kagome’s room from Inuyasha (laughs), all in all I was very satisfied. They gave me some time to settle in and unpack my things and afterwards we went to a restaurant for a joint dinner party (my welcoming, and it also happened to be Otou-san’s birthday that day).

 

Everything up until now had been mostly all positive, up to or above my expectations (I tried to keep them humble because, you never know). I had arrived in Japan safely, I’d been keeping in touch with my family and letting them know I’m doing well, and my host family seems really lovely. Now comes the not so “rainbows and sparkles and kawaii” part. I was soon informed that the family I was staying with does not use the internet, and therefore there was no wifi in the house.

 

I know I said I wouldn’t go into excruciating detail in the very beginning, and I’m breaking that promise already /laughs. However, I feel like it’s really important to share this experience as it was definitely one of the major difficulties I’ve had here.

 

Now before we start an argument on today’s society and how, people are so unhealthily reliant on technology and the internet, let me tell you why this was such a big deal for me. For me, a young student with hardly any traveling experience, coming from Canada for the first time, by myself, to a place where I have no relations whatsoever; A place where I can barely communicate due to a language barrier. For that me, the internet was my connection to everything I had: my family, friends, anything in a language I can understand and relate to. And to be cut off from that was extremely hard for me, I felt really homesick. I was still getting used to things and settling in. I was experiencing a lot of new things, some of which were really difficult for me, yet I had no one to talk to about them.

 

The school didn’t have accessible wifi either. Certain places had connection but its was so poor you couldn’t do anything with it anyway. The little rest room that the international students at the school stays in has ethernet cables with really slow internet, but it was internet nevertheless. And so I found myself coming to school as early as I can every morning just so I could use that short time to Skype my parents and let them know I was okay. I also used that time to download as many youtube videos and podcasts I could so I had something I could listen to when I went home every night.

 

That became quite tiring after a few days and my evenings were will still extremely lonely without the connection with my family and friends. I had bought up my issue with the teachers (someone of them couldn’t even believe that families who don’t have internet still exist in this time and age /laughs) and after some talks it was arranged that I would go with my host mother on the weekend to look into getting a personal portable wifi device. I won’t go into detail about it, but basically the total was quite pricey but I ended up getting it anyway, because my family and I had agreed that it’s ridiculous to spend my  entire 4 month stay without any sort of internet, and with this I could take it with me and use it wherever I go.

 

So fortunately, that was the extent of that issue, and I found myself enjoying Japan and getting settled in no time. My classes have been enjoyable, though not what I expected (more on this later) and I’ve met some nice people and made friends (this too, I will talk about later).

If you’ve made it this far into my ramblings I sincerely apologize and thank you for your patience. It is currently nearing the end of the Golden Week week-long holiday and I am in good spirits after coming back from a 4-day trip in Tokyo. More about that adventure in an upcoming blog post so stay tuned! That’s all for now!

Alice Zeng is a Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication student at Capilano University. Alice is currently studying abroad at Aichi Gakusen College in Okazaki City, Japan.