Sakura Blossoms and Pocky

Welcome back, everyone, to the Stir-Fried Tango. Today I will be talking about my difficult experiences here in Japan.

As you know I’m currently studying at ICU in Japan. Although, it may sound really fun, it is not all sakura blossoms and pocky. Before I came here I was a full time student while also working full time. It was super difficult. とても難(むずか)しいだろう。But I just knew that when I got to Japan, because I wouldn’t be working, I would have lots of free time. でも、違(ちが)う。I was wrong. Now sure I definitely ad more time than I had before, but the Transition from the US to Japanese lifestyle was difficult.

３か月(がつ)。It took me about 3 months to make the transition and start feeling comfortable in the new environment. I even took it easy the first semester and only took 3 classes but that didn’t make much of a difference. I didn’t know where the best place to buy food was, I had to come up with different ways to make foods because almost everything contains meat (oh yeah my wife is a vegetarian and I only eat certain meats), had to figure the bus system out, figure out where to get bikes, and where to “rent a fridge.” Yeah that last one was crazy, so it’s not always the case but it seems like some apartments do not come with refrigerators. Who knew? I didn’t.

So basically my first 3 long months in Japan were just to get settled. It wasn’t terrible, and in fact I’ve quite enjoyed my time here, but it was a difficult adjustment. I’ve talked to some students here who have set up some-type-of-thing so all they have to do is show up and they have a fully set up apartment with electricity, Wi-Fi, and everything as soon as they get there. It sounds nice, but I’ve seen later that I got a lot of side benefits from not having done that. I’ve gotten to talk to many Japanese people and find out how to get a lot of these questions answered. The interactions helped me learn more about Japanese culture, which if you spend the extra money to not have difficulty, you would completely miss out on. So to me that experience was worth the trouble.

After discovering the cheap place to shop for groceries Japan began to be about pocky. If you take the bus from ICU to Musashi-sakai station 武蔵境駅, exit the bus and go through the center of the station (south entrance to north entrance), exit the station and go to the right you will see this store just past the McDonalds that sell really cheap groceries. Also, note: if you like to drink Pepsi, and not the weird kind, this may be the only place and cheapest place to find it. I’ll try to find out the name of the store and post pictures on it later.

The next 3 months here have been a lot better, well… sort of. I made a bad choice. I took the Japanese intensive class. It tried to kill me. No really! The last month of class I never left my room except for class, groceries, and church. All of my time was spent studying really hard just to not fail this class. It was really rough and I don’t think I remember learning anything. We just went through the material so fast that I could not learn it, all I did was cram for quizzes and forget it all because the next day would be another quiz. 毎日クウィズがある。Yes every day there was a quiz. All I can think now is that I’m glad spring break is a month long.

So now I’m on spring break and the weather has been warming up a bit. To me the winter wasn’t very cold but I’ve heard a lot of other people complain. But since it is over the sakura blossoms have begun to bloom… so now Japan is all sakura blossoms and pocky, but it didn’t start out that way. I think that things will probably only get better from now. Next semester I won’t be taking intensive, so I should survive the class.

Sorry this post has seemed sort of stream-of-consciousness in construction. It’s partly because I’m writing it with little-to-no brain power left. Even though I’m on break I haven’t been breaking. I’m trying to make sure I learn all of the things I didn’t get during intensive class and studying up on my own personal photography goals. I hope my next post sounds a little more thought out.

Thank you for reading my Stir-Fried Tango. Let me know what you guys think. Feel free to leave a comment down below, and/or ask a question about something you may be interested in me talking about next time.