Life After Coming Back from Japan

国際感覚(kokusaikankaku): cosmopolitan outlook

When my classmates and I first saw this listed as one of our vocab words to memorize from Quartet, we laughed about who would use “cosmopolitan outlook” in an everyday setting. It quickly became a fond running joke that we’d reference in our Japanese conversations.

But as I lugged my semester’s worth of living essentials in my three suitcases around, filled out the forms to say I wouldn’t be coming back to Japan during my visa’s duration to give to the immigration counter in Narita Airport, sat down at the seat at my gate looking out to all the taxiing airplanes, I wondered, not fully in jest anymore – do I have a cosmopolitan outlook?

Looking back, of course my time abroad was a shining, beautiful experience that I’ll treasure forever as the unique time I got to live in another country with a cohort of students with similar interests. But it was also an amazing time because I got to step out of the shoes of a tourist and sort of cosplay as an almost-local.

Isn’t Japan beautiful with all of its culture, though?

Of course it is! Even months in, I’d experience golden hour on the train and take a picture out the window, stop at a random neighborhood that looks pretty even though it looks completely normal to any other Japanese person.

But around the seventeenth time walking the same streets on your commute or going to your favorite restaurant for dinner, you start to not notice every little thing or need a navigation app. While I was walking the streets in Shinjuku, swerving around people to get to my dance class on time without Google Maps, I mentally paused – when did I stop needing Maps? But the beauty of the little things, names and histories of the streets will always be there, you just need to slow down if you want to see it (and take pictures so you can remember it!)

Outside of the "mundane" stuff,  all the exciting things I got to do like hiking for the first time (anyone who knows me will be extremely surprised), and got to enjoy the beautiful views of nature -- those are also things that are not bound to just Japan. At the summit, I told myself, I don’t want this to be a contained experience where I can only get it in Japan. I want to, and can, keep hiking back in America and enjoy the scenery wherever I go, so I just have to seek that out (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or something like that.)

What about learning language firsthand in a place where they all speak the target language?

Well. This part is definitely going to be a struggle. There’s nowhere better to practice a language than in the place where it’s primarily spoken.

But even in Japan, if I stuck to the same people in the program and stayed in my comfort zone, I knew I’d end up mainly speaking in English. That’s why I went on solo trips, cafe hopped, and signed up for weekly dance lessons, which were what helped me fully immerse myself with the language (mini self promo: you can click onto my other blogs if you want to read about any of that!)

Speaking to people at izakayas, cafes, or even just talking to the manager at Lawson trying to deliver packages or get help for buying tickets to fan events, were all random scenarios that I just to thrust myself into spontaneously but happened to be the most fun, real practice I got.

I’ll definitely miss the casualness of speaking with college kids my age and the phrases I said day in and day out, which I won’t get anymore in America. Just thinking about it now, I hope I won’t forget how to say these things.

Although it won’t be the same, I will always have to search for those opportunities, whether in Japan or back home, no? At least that’s what I tell myself.

New Country, New Me

As comfortable as I got with being in Japan, I was still very aware that I was a foreigner in many instances (that's why I said at best I'd be "cosplay"ing as an almost-local.)  Which I think is actually a good thing.

Since I'm not ethnically Japanese, I along many others became quickly aware in multiple instances, that we're foreigners in Japan. You start being aware of your own body in space and in relation to others, how much space you're taking in a conversation,  implicit and cultural do’s and don’t’s, as a part of the learning process in being in a different country.

There were things I had to pick up that I wouldn’t otherwise do in America, and things that I wouldn’t necessarily do anymore in America. But having that awareness of “who am I, in relation to everyone else in the room?” (or “KY” for kuuki wo yomu: reading the air) is something that made a big impression for me for how I want to hold myself, no matter where I am, Japan or America. That's possibly my deepest takeaway from living abroad, that I think I'll carry with me from now on.

Back to the age old question: Do I have a cosmopolitan outlook?

If you ask me, I might laugh a little at first, thinking of the old joke back in that classroom. Then I'd say, "I'm still working on it, but maybe."