Lots of things happened and I haven’t managed to finish writing all of the travel reports yet, but considering it’s already January and I’m back home for almost a month already, I feel like it’s time to take a step back to look at all the things that happened and the way these things reshaped my way of thinking. I’ll also record some interesting stories here.
This was by far the most humbling experience. I live in the German countryside which means my connection to the people and environment around me is strong. I didn’t feel that way at first because I don’t talk that much with people from around my neighborhood, but as I left the town I call home for more than 22 years now, I started to notice things being absent I didn’t think about before.
I wouldn’t call this homesickness per se, although it was still an uncanny feeling I haven’t experienced before. Although I was busy for almost the whole four months, the realization of not being home was a silent companion.
I’d call myself a curious person which likes to take challenge in adapting to a new environment despite my reluctance to talk much. Without going too much into psychology, I can safely say that being thrown into this new life didn’t pose a problem to me at all, this being not only due to the aforementioned mindset, but also due to the similarity of life in Japan and back home. Shopping as well as going out, attending classes and so on was in principle the same as back home, and even though cultural differences made themselves obvious more often than not, this didn’t present itself as a problem.
Living abroad was the first time for me to live alone, but lots of chores I was worried about, like cooking, washing and cleaning, only differed in quantity to what I was used to back home. This practically means I had no concerns anymore about moving and living alone without my family supporting me. Quite the contrary, I’ve learned to appreciate the freedom of being able to do things in your own way, and that’s why I’m planning on moving out and changing university in October 2023 for my graduate studies.
I went to Japan with moderate skills in reading and listening and almost no speaking skills. This quickly remedied itself due to constant exposure and the necessity to use the language in a variety of situation like talking with friends or store clerks. Even though I managed to make myself understood in some way or another, recording myself yielded the sobering realization that my pronounciation is shit. Despite sounding like gaijin, being able to at least convey information opened lots of doors for me and allowed me to make experiences I wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise. One example is the four-day trip to Tokyo.
I went together with a friend and our Japanese was good enough for simple conversations, but not much more. One day, while wandering the streets of a district near Akihabara, we decided to look for a small, family-owned restaurant for some nice dinner. These kinds of businesses have a really good atmosphere and I speak from experience when I say the food is just better.
After looking around for some time, we found a small Sushi shop which we promptly entered. There was an old guy standing behind the counter talking with and preparing sushi for another old customer while the wife of the old guy served him some beer. As soon as we entered, they turned their eyes to us in surprise, but still greeted us nicely, all in Japanese of course. Probably assuming we didn’t know any Japanese, the guy started preparing two plates of carefully selected Sushi which totalled around 12 pieces per plate.
We ate Sushi before at chain restaurants like Hamazushi, but the high quality stuff they made there (it was $35 btw, so it better be good) was on a whole different level. Because the shop was almost empty at the time, I tried asking the guy what a certain piece of Sushi was called because it was really delicious, and he started talking about the art of Sushi making and how they source their ingredients in more detail than I could ever have imagined. He talked really quickly and I didn’t understand everything, but being interested in Sushi and possessing some level of Japanese proficiency resulted in the guy talking like a waterfall and sharing lots of wonderful stories with us.
This is only one of many demonstrations of how basic Japanese skills make the experience a thousand times better. Another interesting situation arose due to us being foreign, so people automatically assume we speak English fluently (which was the case of course).
The next day, we went to a small Izakaya which also offered great-looking food. After ordering in Japanese and finishing half of our meal, some drunk white-collar worker from the table next to us came over and told us he wanted to practice his English, so he promptly began to tell his life story and asked us where we came from etc. He then proceeded to talk about Japanese cuisine by going over the restaurants menu and whenever we didn’t know what something was, he ordered it for us so we could try it. He probably spent over $50 that night to introduce us to lots of nice stuff.
We also had quite some smalltalk with various people while climbing Sanageyama and even took part in a spontaneous bottle flip competition with a group of Japanese students.
All these things require a certain amount of social initiative and openness of course, but this usually presents no problem for most people going abroad, so leaving aside more complicated things like going to the city hall to submit some documents which can be a bit cumbersome, daily interactions with people and finding friends stands in no contradiction to a lack in language ability, although even a small amount of Japanese understanding helps a lot.
The 24-hour journey back home was one of the weirdest experiences in my life. Starting with packing all of my stuff and staring at the empty room I used to call home for four months, all of the preparations felt kind of uncanny. Am I really leaving all these people? Leaving this environment? It was almost as if I had forgotten how life back home was and couldn’t imagine a life outside my small, 16sqm apartment. Going to the airport and boarding the plane felt like just one of the many travel experiences I made during my stay.
Finally seeing Germany on the flight radar embedded in the seat in front of me made me really excited for some reason. I have returned home and can finally see family and friends, play table tennis and return to my old life, was my thought at the time. I also wondered whether it’d take time to adjust to life back home, but curiously, this wasn’t the case. As soon as I left the plane and heard people speaking German and took in the general atmosphere, it was the same as the day I’ve left. It felt like I hadn’t left the country at all and all of the things I experienced were like a short daydream. The fact that my life after coming back home was indeed the same (i.e. studying, playing video games etc.) has probably played a big part in not needing to adjust myself.
To this day, I wonder whether I’ve been away at all. It’s so bad that only checking LINE groups and chats I’ve had with people as well as travel photos are able to convince me I’ve actually been to Japan. It’s not like I forgot anything - quite the contrary, I remember every trip and everyone I’ve interacted with - but the feeling of having lived abroad for a while has completely vanished from my mind. That’s probably the meaning of the thing everyone calls home so easily without thinking; a place you immediately feel intimate with, even after a long time away.
Despite being back in my comfortable room, sleeping long hours and playing video games all day long again, a few things stuck with me. Although my personality didn’t change much (it’s probably too late for that already), I managed to get some new perspective on things like friendship and camaraderie fueled by us all being foreigners in a far away land. I still have many contacts and plan on meeting some of the people in the near future. Travelling the US, The Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea, China, Taiwan, France, Belgium, Italy and of course Japan is way easier if you have friends living there you can rely on.
Being part of a minority as a white dude was also a sobering experience. I wouldn’t say I was discriminated against, but knowing the feeling of being different and people looking at you in a different way than others was quite something.
Academically, I of course improved on my Japanese, especially the speaking-with-confidence part. My grammar and vocabulary is still lacking and my writing skills are close-to-zero, but I can manage on my own now and hold conversations.
That’s it. There’s nothing more.