My biggest motivation and goal in studying abroad in Japan this semester was not only improving my Japanese, but also meeting and befriending Japanese students. I wanted to actually be a part of the Japanese world that someone my age in Japan experiences\u2014not just one of a foreigner! As silly as it sounds, one thing I wanted to accomplish by the end of this semester was learn to text in Japanese. Yes, I could learn hundreds of kanji and grammar in class, but something as mundane as texting to meet up with a friend is something I could only learn by doing. It was these little, daily-life things that I wanted to gain from my CIP experience.<\/p>\n
So, with all of this in mind, I chose to participate in a tennis circle at Doshisha as well as practice with the Kyodai tennis team. I\u2019m on the varsity team at my home university, so this was not only a perfect way to continue playing a sport I love but also (hopefully) a way to stay in shape for when I return for my season.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned a lot through my experiences, especially about the formalities and the ways of communication. Through the Japanese classes I have taken, I\u2019d known about the importance and common use of keigo<\/em>, but this was my first time utilizing it with people my age. Within Japanese colleges there is a strict and prevalent senpai\/kohai<\/em> relationship. In other words, \u201crespect your elders\u201d even if your \u201celders\u201d are only one year ahead of you in college. Although in my experiences I was rarely treated as either a senpai <\/em>or a kohai<\/em> (I was just the abroad student who spoke enough Japanese but wasn\u2019t Japanese), I still learned more about the appropriate levels of speech formality through my CIP\u00a0than I ever had in a classroom. In getting in contact with various tennis circles, I had to send countless emails jam-packed with keigo<\/em>, and I was surprised to receive emails back that had the same high formality\u2014in America I feel like it\u2019s bizarre to continue conversation with a peer in the same formal manner that you\u2019d be talking to a professor. The Japanese peers I was with often called each other by last name (another distinct cultural distinction), although everyone still called me Chelsea-san. My Japanese peers were also more shy and reserved than I was used to, the high level of politeness off-putting to me at first, but I soon realized that this isn\u2019t because they didn\u2019t like me. Rather, Japanese interactions just start off a lot more formal and become more casual as they develop and strengthen. When a peer stops using keigo<\/em> with you, that’s when you know they’ve accepted you as a friend.<\/p>\n I\u2019m happy to say that through my CIP I\u2019ve made friends, and I can now text in Japanese. However small of an accomplishment this may sound as, I feel good about it, and I\u2019m grateful that my CIP was able to provide more learning than possible in any classroom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My biggest motivation and goal in studying abroad in Japan this semester was not only improving my Japanese, b … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080