I’m not a fan of jet leg or of Typhoon 14.

I’m awake at 7am, even though we don’t actually have to meet for anything today until 10:30. I wanted to get in an extra hour or so, in hopes that maybe I won’t want to crash at around 8pm. Oh well. I’ll adjust to this time zone eventually.

As for Typhoon 14, it’s absurdly humid here right now. Due to the earthquake and the resulting power shortages, there are a lot of efforts to conserve electricity.  At Waseda and at our hostel, that means curtailing the air conditioning. The recommended setting is 28 degrees Celsius. I’m not sure what that translates to in Fahrenheit, other than “not cold enough to make a difference.” It would be one thing if we had an electric fan instead, but we don’t. At least the Waseda energy-saving information came printed on an uchiwa paper fan, so I have to take breaks from my typing to fan myself. I took a hot bath last night, which I totally don’t regret because nothing drains the worries away like a hot bath, but I feel like I haven’t been dry since then, thanks to the humidity.

Yesterday was so busy. We were literally thrown into the beginnings of our college lives here. We left the hostel at 8:30 to take the train to Waseda, and then we planted ourselves in Building 22 and went over program rules and what to prepare for our homestay interviews. At noon we had a break for lunch, during which I ate cheese naan and drank a mango lassi with boba in it at a nearby Indian restaurant. The lassi was amazing. I wish I had another one right now, but I’ll make do with the remains of the Calpis I bought last night after my bath. We do have a mini-fridge in our room, and the cold bottle feels amazing resting against my ankle.

After lunch, we met up with some Waseda students to go explore campus. There are a lot of Japanese students that are helping us, which is awesome. Some of them are our program assistants, so they’re with us all the time. Sunday night after we got to our hostel, me and another guy ended up having dinner with one of our program assistants and she was really friendly. They were all given our pictures and names to learn ahead of time, but even knowing that, I’m still surprised whenever one of them calls me by name. They’re really good at keeping track of us and making sure we don’t get lost in the train stations, though.

The two students that were directing our group were also really friendly, but it was so hard to talk with them. Listening to Japanese drains my energy so quickly even when I can understand it. They also knew some English, so that was helpful, but I just felt bad that I wasn’t more talkative. All day long people kept asking me thinks like “大丈夫？(daijoubu)” and “疲れている？ (tsukareteiru)”

            As I wait out my layover at O’Hare before my 1:10pm flight to Narita Airport, it’s really starting to hit me that I’m on my own from this point forward.  I didn’t meet Karen in St. Louis, and Madi, Young-sensei, and Shipplett-sensei aren’t going to be sitting by me on the thirteen-hour flight to Tokyo. I’m not going to meet up with the rest of the bleary-eyed Knox College Japan Term group at Narita Airport, with Schneider-sensei instructing us on how to exchange our traveler’s checks for yen.

            Instead, I’m going to get on and off the plane surrounded by people I don’t know, and when I clear customs, I’ll find the unfamiliar faces of the Japan Study participants waiting for me. But the fact that I’ve done this all before eases my nerves. I can picture the currency exchange counter outside of customs, and hopefully this time I can find the Meeting Point.

            I’m not worried.

            Now, would someone please pass that message on to my stomach? I took some medicine, so hopefully it will finally feel better by the time I board the plane. I have a window seat, and while I’ll appreciate something non-fleshy to lean against, I’m not looking forward to having to clamber and crawl over a sleeping aisle-seat stranger should my guts decide to rebel.

            My dad told me that the number one question he gets asked when he tells his friends about my study abroad is “Why Japan?” I’m going to try to answer that while I wait.

            I’m going to Japan to grow up. To become an adult.

            Yes, I’m going to be independent. I’m going to have to make my own choices in a foreign culture without my mom a phone call away for advice. I’m going to learn about myself, about how I react under pressure, about how I adapt to new people and new circumstances. But I’m not just talking about that.

            Junior year of high school, when I was in level 1 Japanese, the Japanese professor at the college in our city came to our class, specifically to talk about his bunraku puppetry, but also to talk about his teaching methods. He told us that there was no way around learning kanji, the complex Chinese characters that are tangled up in the Japanese language. The reason?

            “You’re not an adult unless you learn how to read.”

            That’s stuck with me all four years that I’ve studied Japanese. “You’re not an adult unless you learn how to read.”

            Japan Study recommended that we explore the website At Home in Japan, which gives advice for students on Japanese home-stays. It refers, again and again, to the “cultural child.” A “cultural child” is someone who, regardless of her biological age, is living in a culture new and different from the one in which she grew up. Since she is physically an adult, she’s expected to know the proper behavior that adults know in that culture. These often are not things that people from the new culture think to teach her. They’re just cultural assumptions everyone’s unconsciously aware of. Once the cultural child becomes aware of these unconscious cultural assumptions, she can begin to grow up.

            I’ve been studying Japanese for four years. It’s time for me to take my language study out of the classroom and into the real world. It’s time for this cultural child to finally be born.

            When I step off the airplane and set foot in Narita airport, I begin my baby steps toward Japanese cultural competency. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally learn how to read.

We’re boarding in fifteen minutes. Here’s to a great year!

Note: I'll probably be doing a lot of my blog entries in this style, where I write them ahead of time and then post them when I can.