The Great Adventure Begins!

Japanese Word of the Day:
English: “Good Bye”
Japanese: “Sayonara”  さよなら (This literally means “if it must be so)

               At 3:00 A.M. Eastern time my parents and I drove away from the house to head to the Charlotte airport to send me off. In preparation for this I’d gone to bed early, at 9pm, the night before so naturally I’d only ended up getting an hour or so of sleep. CLT (Charlotte airport) is about 2 hours from my home and my flight was scheduled to leave at 7:30 so we set off into the late night/early morning. My wonderful parents both agreed to go with me and drive me so that I wouldn’t be half asleep and anxiously driving to Charlotte on my own; What good parents.

I got my ticket and bade my parents’ farewell before venturing through TSA. I got to encounter one of those new body scanners everyone’s in an uproar over. I didn’t like it, not because I felt my privacy was being compromised but because it took me like 5 minutes to figure out how it worked. First I walked through it then noticed the painted foot prints on the ground and walked back through it before a TSA attendant came over to help me. She told me to stand, legs apart in the middle with my hands up at my forehead. Somewhere in there she told me to stand still but I didn’t remember that and upon seeing my parents watching me from a distance opted to do a little wiggle dance for them to which I was scolded quite harshly by the TSA lady. Oh well, worth it.

When 7:00 came I boarded my plane and proceeded to sleep for the majority of the almost 6 hour flight. Upon preparing to land in San Francisco I noted that I didn’t have my ticket for my connecting flight and began to panic about how I would get it. Luckily a nice man at a desk told me to just go to the international terminal and find my airline counter. I’d like to take another opportunity to say to anyone looking to study abroad or even fly through major airports, make SURE you have plenty of layover time to get from one flight to another. By the time I got my ticket, went through international TSA and got to my terminal I had no time for food (by this time it was ~2PM EST and I hadn’t eaten since 7AM) and arrived only 10 minutes before boarding started.

This is when I first started to lose my cool. I was about to leave my home state, my home country, my family, my friends, my language; every security I’d known in life up to this point. I sat in my seat staring at the giant Boeing 777 in front of me and wondered why the hell I was here. Why wasn’t I at Asheville with my friends and familiar environment and safety? What was wrong with me, why would I be so stupid as to risk everything to go so far away? Luckily at this point in time there was no turning back, despite how much I longed for the chance so I got on the plane and began the insanely long 11 hour flight to Osaka. For anyone who didn’t know this, flights to Japan from California go along the coast of the continents. 

               So what did I do for 11 hours? Watch Aladdin twice for starters. I also watched Mastermind, some special on aliens, and mostly I enjoyed the comedy radio channel. Even by the third time the jokes were still amusing. Eventually the plane landed safely in Osaka and I began filing out of the plane with all the other passengers, paying special attention to the Caucasians disembarking. As we separated from the Japanese passengers at immigration I began to realize we were all Kansai Gaidai (KGU) students and a few were returning for a second semester. One of the girls assured me that the bus to school would be very easy to find once I had picked up my luggage so I pressed on to retrieve my items. I feel a need to mention that at the baggage claim there were big Labradors in vests working as sniffer dogs and they were adorable. Seeing them honestly made me feel better. But what made me feel amazing was going through the door and seeing a huge group of students around a “Kansai Gaidai Pickup” sign. And they were all nice! And nerdy! It was heaven! We all introduced ourselves and waited for the bus to take us to Hirakata City from Osaka.

The ride was about 45 minutes but we were all dead on our feet so it felt a lot longer. Despite being night, the sight of the cities passing as we drove was amazing. I remember seeing a huge ferris wheel all lit up green that was gorgeous and the city lights reflected on water. But I also had had about 6 hours of sleep in 2 days so… I may be exaggerating the beauty. But probably not, Japan is amazing. The bus took us to Seminar House 4, which luckily was my home as the other students had to then get another smaller bus to their house. I grabbed my luggage and the Japanese RA students gave me my key and showed me to my room. During the first week of orientation the students doing homestay live in the dorms so for that time my roommate and I would have an extra roommate.  I dropped my stuff off and opted to go on an RA led trip to the nearby supermarket considering I hadn’t eaten any dinner. On the walk I met Ellen who I’ve since befriended hang out with a lot.

               But back to the supermarket. I think there is no better way to truly initiate someone into another culture than to go to a supermarket. There were fish cut up and packaged with the heads and jaws. There were tiny dried fish in bags next to chips. There were fish EVERYWHERE. It was terrifying. At that point in time I honestly believed I would starve in Japan because surely there could be nothing I could eat. I ended up getting some melon pan which despite the name was strawberry flavoured. Basically, it was a huge bread roll with a sugary strawberry coating on the outside and a strawberry cream inside. It was amazing! I also bought a small bottle of traditional Japanese tea at the advice of one of the RAs which I abhorred. It had an incredibly strong smell which I can most closely describe as being nutty, sort of like peanuts except horrible. After what I considered a long hike to the market and back I met my roommates, grabbed a shower and collapsed into my futon awkwardly placed in the middle of the room for the time being.  I was out in a matter of minutes.

               Sorry for how long it’s taken me to get around to posting these but I’ve been quite busy, what with that whole “being in a foreign country beginning the school semester” thing. I promise I’ll try to get more up with their corresponding pictures as soon as I can.

Ja ne!