For my CIP, I participated in the Doshisha Animal Life circle with Ryan. It meets every Thursday at 6:30 at the Doshisha Shinmachi campus and this study group’s aim is to enrich their own knowledge on the current situations of animals around the world. But since there were school festivals (Clover Festival and EVE Festival) coming up and free papers they had to finish, their usual study meetings were put on hold to discuss what kind of booth they wanted to set up and what kind of layout they wanted for the free paper. As part of my CIP, I decided to observe if there were any differences in the way they treat foreigners as compared to the way they treat other Japanese students.

Through my participation, I realized that their attitude doesn’t depend on whether you’re a foreigner or a Japanese person, but whether they think of you as a friend or a stranger. If you were a complete stranger, as well as a foreigner, the club members tended to avoid striking up a conversation and preferred to ignore your presence. For example, when Ryan and I went to the first meeting, although they first greeted us with smiles and snacks, as soon as they started to discuss the festival preparations, they turned their backs to us and proceeded to speak amongst themselves. Not once during the meeting did they meet our eyes or try to talk to us. We were left to figure out what was happening by ourselves. This continued throughout the semester. There was another instance when Ryan and I were working with a Japanese club member in order to make decorations for the club’s booth, but it was basically us working in silence. We tried striking up a conversation, asking what last year’s booth was like, etc., but the conversation always died after one exchange. The Japanese student didn’t try to continue the conversation and seemed like he felt uncomfortable talking to us for more than a minute. On the other hand, if you were someone they knew, they would greet you with exuberance and constantly joke with you, even if you were a foreigner. For example, there was a Korean exchange student who was in the club with us, but since everyone in the club was familiar with him, they would constantly chat with him and poke fun at him. There was even this one time when the president of the club wasn’t able to come to a meeting, so she made the Korean student the leader of that day’s meeting instead. Although it was a little disheartening to be ignored after trying to converse with them, it was still an interesting experience to see how the club members acted around each other.