Age: 22
Physical Specs: Bigger than a Pikachu, smaller than a Blastoise
Favorite Food: (before Japan) Peanut butter and jelly, Philly makizushi, cake
(after Japan) Donburi, mushi cake, Hai-chu, Chu-hai (...), gyoza, okonomiyaki (c'mon folks, i lived in kansai), and Lipton 100Y Milk Tea
My story is this: I went to Japan for a year and everything changed. I went from a kinda shy, dependent person who liked nothing more than to spend a day playing video games, to an outgoing, assertive, happiest-in-her-life adult who really likes to play ping pong. There honestly is so much about my year that I did not write about, so even though I'll be trying to backlog the most wonderful year of my life, some experiences are always just going to be passionately, and only, my own.study abroad
I've actually just finished my senior year at Rutgers for a degree in East Asian Languages and Cultures, concentration in Japanese. I've got a job (after months and months of agonizing waiting!) with the JET Programme as a CIR in Iwate prefecture - instead of teaching English, I'd be working at a government office and coordinating international events, along with translation, and most of all using Japanese in a business environment. I'm not sure what's next for me, but I do know that I absolutely want to live and work in Japan and would work almost anywhere to do it. I spent a year of my life at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, and it was a wild, crazy, amazing time and I grew up so much. I met the most interesting people in the world, and eventually joined the ping pong club and gained a Japanese posse, haha. My Japanese went from barely holding a simple conversation to being able to live my daily life language-barrier free. I just can't recommend studying in Japan enough. All the rumors I heard about people not getting used to the Crazy Japanese Lifestyle just didn't apply to me, because I'm pretty sure I love it more than my American lifestyle (if only by a little bit). I made mistakes, I hurt someone I love very deeply in the process of finding myself, and I ended up accidently running out on my last Softbank phone bill (sorry Softbank!! Guess I'm not getting an Iphone when I return...), but I have no regrets. I finally feel like I'm living my own life, instead of feeling like I'm just observing others, and that's the most important thing I could have learned.
japanese
So after a year abroad, can I call myself fluent? No, I'd still say I have about 6 or 7 years before I'm at the level of fluency that I want: natural, native-level Japanese with only a bare trace of an accent. Will I ever get there? Who knows. But whatever skill level I thought I was at before I left, it did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the joys and tribulations dealing with daily, spoken, NORMAL Japanese. It really is a gradual process, learning a language, and I only realized just how much I learned after the year was done, but at this point, I can have conversations with my Japanese friends and not get left behind or slow the conversation down or basically be a drag. I can read high level stuff (kinda!), and I can watch TV without getting lost. Being in Japan was the single best thing I could have done for my studies - I don't think I could have made it this far without it. But it goes without saying that I worked my butt off to be able to do this too (it's not all osmosis learning!). At first, I didn't even study that much, but I realized after about 4 months there that I just wasn't improving at the level I wanted to. I wanted to make Japanese friends, and not just talk about English or America. I wanted to be a NORMAL person. So I poured my heart into studying and after about 6 months, I joined the ping pong club - and hearing crazy Japanese boys speaking at their insane pace really did the trick in forcing me to go from 50-60% listening comprehension to 80-90%. I got way more out of daily life than classes at Rits, but it's still a wonderful program. I wrote on this page a really long time ago that I was going to aim for the 2nd level of the proficiency test, not really believing that I'd get that good, or anything, but it turns out that I got back, studied my ass off and managed to pass the highest level instead. Yeah, that's right! So listen to me when I say that it's possible for anyone. Basically, I never imagined that my life would change this drastically or that I'd get this good at Japanese. After so many years of wanting to learn and being to lazy, and wanting to go to Japan yet not dreaming big enough, it finally actually happened, and I just feel so incredibly lucky for getting the chance. Contact: akrips86 AT gmail DOT com