What a great start to the new beginning, innit? For the background information, I’m currently doing my Year Abroad (YA) as a student of Japanese in a smaller university in Hiroshima, Japan. So far, I’ve been living my weeb dream in the land of cuteness and conbinis, buying “jelly-filled doughnuts” (this meme ain’t dead yet!), seeing cool toilets and vending machines at every corner and trying a real ramen in a real ramen-ya.
However, when it comes to the study-related things, it hasn’t been all fun and games, possibly because of my awkward nature and perfectionism. Mind you, I have only been here for three days, so everything’s very recent and may change even tomorrow (doubt it though (update: it did, lol)). Moreover, all of this is quite specific to the language exchange students.
Only now have I realised how poor my Japanese actually is (perhaps due to the insufficient revision in summer and I know I’m the one to blame). And I get it, I’m here to learn but my perfectionism has already classified me as a failure. So to explain where it all comes from…
At my home university, we could say that I was in the better half of the class with my marks, which not only boosted my ego but also gave me false security. Then, as a part of my application process, I had an interview in Japanese, which, said mildly, I messed up on the second question and I still cringe now whenever I remember it. It was kinda funny though (I thought they were asking about my height when in reality they asked about my degree, oh well~). So I wasn’t surprised when I got assigned to the pre-intermediate group, but I wasn’t exactly happy about it either.
Moving forward, I get to Japan, I get to my accommodation, I meet the staff and the Japanese students who are here to help us. They all understand that Japanese is a difficult language and they’re luckily patient with me as well as willing to say it in English if needed. All good. But then, I’m supposed to meet the other exchange students, which I try to postpone as much as I can, mainly because of not feeling like having yet another small-talk conversation.
Then I meet them. Some have much higher level, understandably, some I would say quite similar to mine. Also, I understand that it may be better to speak Japanese to Asian students, but it’s so awkward trying so hard to get across your idea in Japanese to a European or an American student when it would be so much easier and less embarrassing to just say it in English. Moreover, will it even help my Japanese when I talk to people whose Japanese isn’t perfect either and I may start making their mistakes?
Maybe it’s my fault for not revising, for not learning the vocabulary, for not speaking enough in class. And, indeed, I’ll do my best to learn as much as possible and speak to the Japanese people primarily in Japanese (unless it’s something very important and I want to make sure I understand it). I can already feel slight, very slight improvement, or at least it feels more natural. But do I talk to the exchange students? And do I use Japanese? (Update: we speak English to each other – another proof of me being overdramatic ♥)
Lesson learnt: Study your vocab, kids.
