Readjusting

It has been around 2 weeks since I left Japan and safe to say, it’s been strange adjusting. I've gotten my beach fix and have been able to see all of my family thanks to my cousin's wedding (which happened the day after I landed) but thing's just feel different. When people think of readjusting to life after study abroad, I feel like most people think "Oh, you must miss the food," or "You must miss [insert very popular thing from said country]." Being from Hawaii, I’m very lucky that there’s a big Japanese influence here so it’s easy to find Japanese food or snacks, but it’s still not the same. The 7-elevens are definitely not the same (although it is still a similar style of convenience store here in Hawaii) and not even mentioning the lack of public transportations, even though it is nice to drive my car again. But surprisingly, I think the hardest thing I’ve had to adjust to is speaking English again.

If you didn’t know, I did a homestay while studying in Japan. As a result, I often spoke Japanese at home with my host family’s kids while my host parents tried to study English with me. It was strange coming back home and forgetting how to say easy phrases in English but knowing them in Japanese. Just the other day, I had gotten into an argument with my younger brother and told him to quit it in Japanese. We both paused and stared at each other, technically my brother should know the phrase, since he’s studying Japanese in high school right now, but it was weird realizing that the common phrases I would use everyday in Japan is foreign back at home. 

The food was hard to adjust to as well. My host parents always made dinner every single night and dinner tended to be very healthy, as the Japanese diet is pretty healthy in itself. We’d always have rice, soup, salad, sides (like Japanese pickles which are my favorite) and whatever main dish they would make. I tried my best for the first few days to cook like my host parents but it was so hard. For one, I didn’t have all of the ingredients, and secondly, I didn’t have the time. It really made me appreciate the work my host parents did, along with their full time job, to make the meals everyday that I greatly under appreciated.

The last thing that was hard to adjust to was not seeing my friends. It’s hard going from basically seeing your friends everyday to realizing they now live all the way across the country or even in different countries. Although it was nice to see my home friends again and I get to see a few of my college friends soon, it’s still very sad when I realize I can’t just take a train and go to see my friends at an izakaya or go on a spontaneous trip with them. I hope to meet up with them in the future, hopefully sooner than the 10 year reunion in Nara that we planned. 

I hope it won’t take too much longer to readjust to life back in the US, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a bit longer.