Epilogue

Dear all

I am writing to you from Seoul airport and in less than 12 hours I will be reunited with my home country. Despite all the highs (and lows) of this year gone, I have to admit I have been craving this moment for a long time.

I don't have too much left to say in this, my final post. I think followers of this blog will already be well aware of my love for the japanese countryside, my longing for Tokyo, and my discontent with Kobe University.

Instead, in these 45 minutes I have before boarding, I wanted to write about studying abroad in general.  On reflection of this year I think it would be fair to say I came to Japan with slightly unrealistic expectations of what my life would be like here.

There is a stereotype about studying abroad in the UK. It is very much along the lines of 'a year abroad is a chance to have loads of fun, chill out from studying, get really drunk and mess around in [insert name of host country]'.

No doubt I certainly had this idea in mind when I made my way to Japan a year ago. I set myself up for inevitable disappointment with the life I would lead on the other end.

The truth of the matter is, moving abroad at the age of 19 (for most people the first time in their lives that they have spent a significant amount of time abroad), was never going to be easy. I do not believe you can summarise every single year abroad in every possible host country under this largely misguided stereotype.

I worked harder on my Japanese this year than I ever had before. I had no choice since I needed to obtain a certain level in order to live.

In Oxford, many students have stories of having travelled, either in the holidays or on a gap year ("this one time in....."). Having heard so many of these stories I think it is easy to underestimate, in this globalised world we live in, the extent to which culture and values of other countries can clash head on with your own. It is one thing to 'travel', but moving abroad, learning that language, engaging with the culture head on and dealing with homesickness, is an entirely different ballgame.

My advice to anyone undertaking a year abroad would be as follows:

1) Dont try to recreate your life in the UK. In Japan, this meant for example instead of going clubbing most nights since this is all we know back home (Japanese students do not go clubbing very often), try forms of entertainment in that host country (for me this was karaoke)
2) Make friends of the host country's nationality and don't fall into the trap of hanging out with expats all the time as this is not conducive to language learning.
3) Don't complain. There will be many times you see things you don't agree with, or you can't understand. There will probably also be times you feel very frustrated ("why is this language so hard!?" "why do people treat me like an outsider?" "why don't Kobe university listen to any of the feedback I give them!?") etc. The best thing to do is to accept it for what it is. You can never be happy living abroad if you spend your whole time being critical of what's around you.

Of course I can only speak from this one year abroad and I don't know to what extent a year abroad in e.g. Europe would be different from Asia.

I wish you the best of luck.

Now I must attempt to reintegrate back into my own country which sounds kind of strange but being in Japan for this long has definitely left a mark on me.

I do want to come back here after I graduate. Now I love the country for what it is and not for my idealised vision of what is was when I was back in the UK.

Seoul airport is huge so I have to get a move on. If you've been following this blog all year, thank you very much!

For the last time, sayounara.

Sean

The final month

As I write this post I have less than two weeks left in Japan. I am happy and sad at the same time. Happy because I can't wait to see all my friends, have some rest time away from Japanese for a couple of months and then get stuck into 3rd year back at Oxford. But this is also tinged with sadness since I know that when I get back so much will have changed. My two best friends are leaving the country almost immediately, I will be 3rd year not a fresher, and a good proportion of my best friends will soon be away next year on their years abroad.

Despite it being so soon I can barely think about going home at this point because there is an enormous amount of stuff to sort out next week. On Monday and Tuesday I have my end of year exams, Wednesday I have a mock presentation, Thursday I am going to see a baseball match with Chizuko, Friday I am seeing my host family and at the weekend I was planning to go to Osaka for a day trip. In between that I'm supposed to cancel my internet, phone, electricity and water, pack my own stuff, pack a box for my college daughter coming next year and arrange to have a load of books shipped home.

The following Monday is the 'speech/presentation' day at Kobe Uni and then the Farewell party which I will be showing my face at then going out for many drinks.

I know Oxford will be asking for my feedback on Kobe University when I get back and to be honest I have no more fucks to give. Giving feedback that will never be taken on board is a waste of my breath since I'm just told everything is 'bureaucratically impossible' to change. Never mind. I do feel slightly sorry for the group coming here next year who won't even have the same level of funding we did apparently. As far as this program goes, I don't think the future's bright...

There are more trips to update you on. The first is a weekend trip to Gangnam (Seoul, Korea) at the end of last month with two Oxford friends. To be honest we mainly just went for the clubs since Kobe is horribly lacking in this department. It was the same weekend that my college ball back in Oxford which only comes around once every four years. I was quite upset to have missed this but being in some of the best clubs I have ever been to in Gangnam made up for it nicely.

We did do some cultural things such as visiting the imperial palace (gyeongbokgung)

changing of the guard

And painting in traditional Korean style at the Hanok village

We also spend a lot of time taking advantage of Seoul's amazing shopping districts. If any of you have been to Seoul before you'll know I'm talking about Myeongdong.

But as I said, it was mainly a clubbing holiday, and Seoul delivered. I don't have any photos but the clubs we went to (called Answer and Ellui, both in Gangnam) were definitely the best clubs I've been to in Asia and Ellui is probably one of my favourite all-time clubs. It was a welcome break from the rather dire scene here in Kobe.

Last weekend I visited Helen in Tokyo for the last time. Not too much to report on this. We had a meal, did some shopping, had a stroll round the imperial palace and an art gallery. I went mainly to see Helen but also to kind of say goodbye to Tokyo since I have completely fallen in love with this city and certainly intend to go back in the future. Perhaps after graduation?

I have been blessed to have done so much travelling this year and seen to many beautiful places that each occupy their own space in my heart, from the untouched beauty of Takayama to the energy and cosmopolitanism of Tokyo. My only regret is not having been able to see Hokkaido and Okinawa, but perhaps its better that way since now I have even more of an incentive to come back when I move to Tokyo (I say tentatively).

Tomorrow I am going to the countryside with Chizuko and some of her friends so I must be going to bed now because it's an early start. 

I will compose one last post of my final thoughts on this year when I am at my hotel in Kansai airport on the verge of flying home. 

I look forward to that moment.

Sean

Is it already July?

Sorry for ending my last post with 'check back in a couple of days' and not updating for a whole month (I'm not really that sorry though). If you have been following this blog you will already know about the hollow promises I make every month about a prompt update.

ANYWAY

I would say that on the whole June has been quite a successful. I kicked off the month with a wonderful long weekend in Hiroshima and Miyajima.

I left for Hiroshima on Saturday morning and took the Shinkansen from Kobe which was about an hour's journey, and booked myself into a hotel for one night. It goes without saying that outside Japan most people associate Hiroshima with one thing and one thing only, and the bomb still has a very visible legacy. It reminded me of Kobe in a way; both places share a traumatic event in their recent past.

"Hiroshima-yaki"- Hiroshima is famous in Japan for its own take on the Japanese okonomiyaki, a fried pancake kind of thing with cabbage. It's good. The Hiroshima variation is also made with noodles hence hiroshimayaki.

view from hotel room

A-bomb dome. This building was one of the only ones left standing after the explosion despite being less than 100 metres from the hypocentre (i think it was). The building has been preserved since and is now an important symbol of hope and rebuilding for the city's people.

bridge leading to the 'peace memorial park' containing the a-bomb dome, a-bomb museum, victims memorial, a memorial for the Korean victims who died in the bomb who had forcedly been brought over to Japan for labour, and the Children's Peace Monument.

The water feature in the middle represents 8:15 on a clock, the time when the bomb landed

heiwa no ike- the pond of peace (i know that translation doesnt sound right but call it what you want!)

The box inside contains all the names of the victims which is opened and read out in a ceremony every year

The museum had many watches like this one all stopped exactly on 8.15am 

The nuclear fall out created this black-coloured radioactive rain which stained all surfaces in landed on,  for me of the most harrowing things I saw that day

I won't be giving my opinion here of whether I think the bomb was justified or not- the one thing we all know is that it should never be used again. 

Although the scars of the a-bomb on Hiroshima were clearly visible within the Peace Memorial Park, in the rest of the city it looked like things have completely moved on and people are looking forward not back. This is not to say the event isn't within people's awareness because I'm sure it certainly still is, but there was something very admirable about how much the city had moved on from something so horrific in the space of a mere generation.

There is in fact a lot more to this city than the a-bomb, as I found out. Bustling shopping districts and vibrant entertainment quarters stood side by side with the traditional architecture. As a lover of Japanese castles I couldn't resist taking a look at the one in Hiroshima for the remaining part of the day.

On the whole I'm a big fan of Hiroshima and would like to come back again in the future if I can. Whilst remembrance is obviously important, I think its a shame that Hiroshima is so synonymous with the past when there is so much more to be admired there.

The following day I spend in a place called Miyajima. Miyajima is a small island a few miles south of Hiroshima. It is most famous for a shrine called itsukushima which is a shrine built within an inlet on stilts so it appears to be floating. The floating torii (wooden gate) is iconic in Japan and may be recognisable to many UK readers too. Miyajima is also famous for its deer which are free to roam around the island in a similar way to Nara.

stopped of for lunch where I ate...

...more hiroshimayaki!

this is the iconic torii- a similar image has no doubt popped up on many postcards and travel brochures

the tide was unfortunately out so it didn't have the illusion of floating but still beautiful

there happened to be some kind of kendo display going on inside the shrine

this has nothing to do with ikutsushima shrine but this is actually the shrine of Taira Kiyomori- a famous Japanese warlord and a name recognisable by anyone who has ever studied Japanese pre-modern history.

tea break

I went for a walk round the island after to the less crowded and touristy places such as momijidani park to soak up more of the tranquility. I then took a cable car up to the top of Mt. Mizen to try to get a view of the whole island but the fog denied me of this unfortunately. 

Miyajima was right up there with Takayama and Tokyo on my favourite-places-in-Japan list. A great place to retreat to clear my mind and such.

There was a lot more I wanted to talk about in this post but I must leave it there because I need to sleep now. It'll have to wait until next time. Sorry!

Best,

Sean