Second Week in Japan

Been another week in Japan and my first week at Waseda.  Slowly getting used to the day to day routine and finding people to chill around with.  I know I will only be in Tokyo for 6 weeks so it is hard to make lasting friendships but I guess as long as I hang out with people and am not bored that is good. 

Something I find interesting is how people’s personality seems to change based on the language they are speaking.  It is probably because they are not as fluent in one compared to another which makes them have to use different means to communicate.  I feel I say more random stuff when I speak Japanese, but others sometimes lose the ability to be funny at all when speaking Japanese.  It is pretty interesting how you have to adapt yourself based on the language you are speaking. 

I try my best to speak only in Japanese but I can’t fully communicate in Japanese so if I ever want to have a deep conversation I have to switch to English.  Like today talking to Kohei at dinner I spoke Japanese but when we were talking seriously we switched to English because that was the only way I could do it.  These conversations are when I feel bond me to other people so if I can’t do it in Japanese then how can I connect with others?  Limitations Limitations. 

I joined two clubs but in Japan it is close to the end of the semester so everybody already has their established friend groups and it is hard to penetrate them, especially since finals for them is coming up and they will have less time than they do now.  Still I just try my best to eat lunch with people and also go out to dinner with some. 

I think the scariest thing is that since it is starting over with me having no friends and being in no clubs that it feels like first year again.  That means I act like I did when I was a first year like I didn’t learn anything from it.  I am worried that I may make the same mistakes I did before like for the sake of experience doing a lot of things but not really getting anything out of it.  For example a group of Chinese students were going to go to Roppongi and I wanted to go see it but Mike, one of them members said that I will probably find it boring since everybody will be speaking Chinese and I will not understand.  That for me is something I learned first year at UVA but I was about to make the same mistake again and if it wasn’t for me finding some of my other friends first I would have probably made that mistake.  I understand that people make mistakes in life, but then one should learn from it.  If I didn’t learn from it then I feel truly stupid.