During my stay in Kyoto I participated in the activities of Kyoto University Dance Club (\u793e\u4ea4\u30c0\u30f3\u30b9), where I managed to immerse myself into a Japanese college club vibe. Since I’d never danced even a single time before attending the club, I was quite nervous on the first day, and found myself just as clumsy as I expected at the dance practice. Yet\u00a0learning to dance is\u00a0not the point of joining a dance club in Kyoto; rather, it\u00a0was to interact with my Japanese peers on a regular basis so that we both\u00a0could serve\u00a0as \u304b\u3051\u6a4b through which we were able to understand each other’s cultural background better.<\/p>\n
The Dance Club holds activities as often as 3 times a week. Each time lasts for 3 hours. I tried to commit as much as possible to the club activities, but I was also busy with schoolwork, so I often ended up going once or twice a week. One thing I found interesting though was the fact that the club claims to have between 20 to 30 members who have signed up for club activities, but almost every single time only those 6 or 7 same members showed up. Occasionally we would be lucky to have others join us but that was pretty rare. One of the club members told me that this phenomenon is quite common among Japanese university circles, where you would expect some members to regularly show up and become the core of the circles while others who rarely show up are labelled ‘ghost members’ (\u5e7d\u970a\u90e8\u54e1). I’m glad that I didn’t become\u00a0one of the ghosts.<\/p>\n
During the 3 hours of club activity we would practice different forms of \u793e\u4ea4\u30c0\u30f3\u30b9 such as Tango, Waltz, and Samba, although I still have difficulties even now in distinguishing them from each other. To be frank, dancing is not my thing, but thanks to the warm-heartedness of my Japanese peers I was able to enjoy the activity sessions as much as\u00a0I could. They knew I had never had experiences in ballroom dance and my Japanese wasn’t that good, so they treated me with patience and taught me step by step. Although more often than not I still ended up messing up with everything, I do not regret joining the Dance Club, because other members regarded me as a normal, functioning member of the club too. The opportunities to interact with Japanese peers are absolutely the most valuable experiences I’ve had so far. Therefore\u00a0I highly recommend the KU Amateur Dance Club even if dance is not your thing, and on a side note I’m pretty skeptical that someone is actually worse than me at dancing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During my stay in Kyoto I participated in the activities of Kyoto University Dance Club (\u793e\u4ea4\u30c0\u30f3\u30b9), where I manag … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080