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