Week One: Living in a Foreign Country

It's really strange to actually sit here at my desk and write this, especially because all I can think about is the last time I posted. It's one thing to actually say that you're going abroad, and a totally different thing to actually be living through that experience.

Some islands just south of Japan on the last leg of my journey here. 

It's hard to pin down exactly what my feelings are, because I think I've felt just about every human emotion possible in the last week. If there's one thing I can say about living in another country, it's that you will be overwhelmed at some point. I guess that leads right into part of what I'm going to write about today: homesickness.

I really miss this city, and I've realized that's just a part of living abroad

I'll preface this by saying that I have had an amazing time so far, and I'm very excited to keep exploring Japan and 金沢市 (Kanazawa city) itself. Everything from the food to the people to the scenery is breathtaking and unique, and even though I've been frantically taking pictures I feel like it's impossible for me to actually absorb everything I want to. My days have been packed with orientation and intensive Japanese (good luck to me) and dinners and excursions and I've loved all of it! This is something I know I'll never forget.

Having had said that, I think it's important to to also talk about things that aren't going quite as planned, because so often studying abroad is romanticized to the point of nonsense. If you go into it thinking you have to be having the "best experience of your life" 24/7, you risk bottling up your emotions in desperate hope of forcing the overall experience to be magical. And quite frankly, some parts of it just aren't. This is okay! The biggest thing I've come to terms with over the past week is that it's alright to feel so homesick you need to lie down, or randomly sad for no reason and deliriously happy the next. The problem is that so often when discussing big life events, we as humans tend to omit the bad and hammer in everything that we loved or that went right. But there are going to be things that don't go right!



My first day here, I almost got lost on the train system travelling from the airport to the city of Osaka. I remember sitting on a train and just praying over and over that it would end up where I needed it to. I was jet-lagged like hell and emotionally shut down for that hour on the train. I could barely even move when I needed to get off. Of course, the other side to that story is that I was able to practice my Japanese by asking for directions, I learned how to navigate travel-related stress, and my confidence shot upwards after the fact. If I can navigate my way from southern to northern Japan alone with no wi-fi or cellular data, I'm pretty sure I can handle any challenges I might face while living abroad.

My point is that for anyone going abroad or thinking about it, there will be moments where you feel terrible and just want to go home. If you can persevere through these situations, you'll come our of them a better person, because it is at our worst moments that we grow the most.

Moving on to a somewhat happier topic, I also just celebrated my 21st birthday! It wasn't totally ideal to have just moved to a foreign country days beforehand, but thanks to Sasaki-san, the program coordinator for Tufts students here in Japan, I was able to have a fantastic birthday dinner. We ended up having a fantastic six-course meal (!) at a traditional Japanese restaurant. Of course, I'm now forgetting the name of said restaurant, but at least I have pictures! After entering, we had to remove our shoes at the entrance way before stepping onto the traditional 畳 (tatami) mat that covered the restaurant's floor; in Japan, it's considered rude to leave your shoes on inside most building, and this is a practice I wholeheartedly enjoy. There's something about eating out in socks that's very comfortable and relaxing! After being seated and ordering some Japanese お酒 (sake), the meal began! We started with some seafood appetizers before moving onto a delicious fish stew.

Sake is similar in taste to sweet/weak vodka, and at special occasions is a typical drink of choice.

SO many appetizers! My favorite was the squid, on the back right.

The fish stew was both rich and fresh.

On a brief side-note, I was worried I wouldn't like the seafood here, but everything is so fresh that it's all been really tasty. After finishing the stew, it was time for the main courses! We started with a few seafood dishes that included locally caught raw fish and たこ (tako, octopus), and afterwards had some local vegetables and cooked かも (kamo, duck). I'll be honest, the octopus had a very, erm, chewy texture, but it didn't taste too bad, almost like a cross between fish and clams. Anyway, I devoured it all so my verdict was tasty again!

The octopus is the thing that has suckers :O

The duck was amazing and full of flavor! 

And after the main courses, we had a bowl (in my case, two bowls) of rice, which included cooked chestnuts from, you guessed it, Kanazawa! We also had miso soup, which Sasaki-san informed me should be dranken first a la Japanese culture, and some different pickled vegetables. Finally, the meal ended with desert, which meant a rice-based ice cream, mochi, mangoes, chilled grapes, and the character 祝 which roughly translates to "congratulations" and is used when celebrating birthdays. It was also made of chocolate and thus delicious.

This was bowl number one of rice, no judgement please!

The ice cream was just different enough that it had a unique taste but was still familiarly sweet!

Overall, I've had such a good time so far. This has definitely been a challenging week, and I'd be naive if I thought that my homesickness would go away overnight. But I'm so lucky, because I have a fantastic network of family and friends who are staying in touch with me, along with days that are packed with exploring and getting to know Japan. I'll end with this picture I took of 金沢大学 because one, I really like the picture, and two, it seems to be welcoming me here in my new home for the next few months. Until next time, さよなら！

ようこそ金沢大学へ