For my CIP I go to a group called Klexon every Tuesday. It is kind of like speed-dating, but for friends. There are a lot of young Japanese working professionals and a few foreigners looking to learn English there. There is a different topic of the week to discuss, for example fast food, and you talk to a partner for 10 minutes then talk to someone else. I chose Klexon because I wanted an opportunity to speak Japanese with native speakers. I found that for the most part, my Japanese was better than their English, so when there was a sticking point in the conversation, my partner and I would usually speak in English. At Klexon, I learned a few things about Japanese culture. A lot of the people I talked to were learning English for their jobs and there were especially a lot of engineers. I had no idea that so many people used English in their jobs. I also learned that the Japanese start learning English from a very young age. Another thing I observed was that the Japanese were very persistent in their study of English. They tried and struggled to speak English when they could have easily reverted to Japanese to express their thoughts to me. However, they persevered where I might have given up. One more interesting thing I learned about Japanese culture is that a lot of the people had been born in Kyoto and had never traveled out of the country, or even to Tokyo. I learned that it is not extremely common to travel.
One of the hard things about Klexon is that the Japanese speakers there are trying to learn English so it is sometimes hard to speak Japanese because they really want to speak English. However, a lot of them were eager to speak Japanese so I was able to have a lot of Japanese conversations. I learned a lot of new vocabulary and was able to improve my speaking abilities. I failed in that I probably could’ve spoken more Japanese, even when my partner was speaking English to me.
My advice would be to pick a CIP activity that actually interests you and when you do get there, do your best to speak as much Japanese as possible.
Wow, it sounds like you were able to learn a lot of interesting things about Japanese culture! My host parents are also working hard to learn English for their jobs and to help their baby learn some too; my host dad is a software engineer. I didn’t realize there was so much pressure to learn English before I came to Japan.
I also didn’t know that many people don’t travel much. Do you know if it has to do with work, age, or the location where they live? My host uncle from Aichi Prefecture has few vacation days, so when he does have them he speeds off traveling somewhere; I got to go with him and my host cousin on a road trip to Shimane Prefecture one day. But he seems like a special case. I think it’s unfortunate that people might not be able to travel so much when there are such good train systems, but I guess those may be less common farther out in the country.
Yeah, I really enjoyed the experience. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with where people are from. I’ve met a lot of Japanese people that hadn’t traveled anywhere, but those that had seemed to have traveled literally everywhere.
It’s nice that you got to go to Shimane Prefecture with your host family!