Tag Archives: Japan

“What am I doing here?”

The question, no doubt, came to mind as I failed to understand the language used by my classmates and professors, as I ran to catch the 8 am train, or as I stopped by a nearby kale smoothie joint on my way home.

That isn’t to say that I wasn’t having a good time. I loved being in Japan and in the town I consider my second home. I still couldn’t get over the fact that I had received funding for my summer language intensive, and I appreciated the independence and empowerment that came with something as simple as riding public transportation.

I loved it all, but I simply didn’t know what I was doing — or what I should have been doing, for that matter. What was I learning from this experience? How would it contribute to my future goals — whatever those may be?

I continued with the monotony of everyday life. Wake up. Go to class. Come home. Sleep. My language skills were improving minimally, and I found myself immersed in a culture I had already been accustomed to since the moment I first visited Japan at age two.

Things changed when I typed in a simple search on Google: “Kyoto University Field Hockey.” I wasn’t expecting much and yet, lo and behold, my nonchalant search yielded thrilling results. I was introduced to an assortment of season recap videos, player descriptions, and—much to my delight—an email address and open invitation for “students of all backgrounds and interests.”

As a field hockey player at Smith and soon-to-be junior captain, I jumped at the chance to re-immerse myself in team culture and physical activity, and I was eager to incorporate foreign strategies into my plans for the upcoming season.

I clicked “send” and what followed still remains a bustling, heartwarming blur of new friendships, athletic perseverance, and riveting cultural experiences. A two-day tournament on the countryside, the organized chaos of the Gion festival at night, and a makeshift “octopus ball party” are just a few of the many memories I will cherish forever.

Some of my fondest memories are those I now share with my captain at the time, Maki, a senior meteorology major with a passion for field hockey unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. Her unrelenting hospitality, compassion, and discipline continue to motivate me as I navigate my way through leadership experiences both within field hockey and beyond. She has solidified my values in terms of what it means to be an effective, inspiring leader, and she is who I envision when I think of “my captain.”

My summer experience in Japan was more than just a cultural and linguistic excursion: it was an opportunity for me to grow and learn from the leadership of others, and to follow my instincts and personal desires. By finding guidance in both others and myself, I learned to address change and monotony, to engage with my interests and future goals, and to appreciate what each new person and experience brings.

Aiko is a junior anthropology major currently studying abroad at the University of Amsterdam. As a neuroscience minor and translation studies concentrator, she is particularly interested in studying the relationship between language and culturally-influenced thought processes. Her hobbies include field hockey and pottery, and she hopes to someday work for a non-profit organization in Kyoto, Japan.

Fall 2017 Issue X: Immigration

Chameleon

October 27, 2017 Kela Harrington

I was born in Chicago. When I was three years old, my family moved to Okinawa. Two years later, we would move to Tokyo. I spent two years in Tokyo before moving to South Korea, where I lived for a year. For the summers, I lived in China with my mother’s side of the family. It wasn’t until right before I turned nine that I found myself in the United States again, though I never returned to Chicago. The Pacific Northwest has been home base for several years now. At one point, I also lived in the American South (which is a rather long story of its own). I will never forget my formative years in East Asia. I was always slightly confused about where I was and who I was. Was I an immigrant? An emigrant? An international traveler being dragged from country to country by my parents? What I did know and remember was having to cross linguistic barriers on a day-to-day basis. Translation was something I couldn’t live without; it was a natural part of my every day need to communicate. It wasn’t until I came to Smith that I was finally able to see the artistry in translation and how it brought together different cultures and languages. Before, I had perceived it first and foremost as a tool for survival.

In Okinawa, I was homeschooled. In Tokyo, I attended three different schools–a Japanese kindergarten, a Catholic Montessori school, and a school on an American military base. In the first space, I had to communicate in Japanese, in the second and third spaces I communicated in English. However, I spoke more Chinese at home than either English or Japanese. During the summers in China, I went to a Chinese school, where I spoke only Chinese. I knew a smattering of Korean, but it never quite reached the same level as the other languages, because I only spent a year there and was homeschooled. Only after I came to the United States, did English become my language of highest proficiency, simply because I was now required to use it the most in everyday conversation.

Being half-Caucasian and half-Chinese, moving to Japan, and then to South Korea, required me to be constantly aware of the customs, culture, and languages around me.

I remember strangers staring at me as I walked down the street. They cast curious glances at me and my parents as mixed race couples still weren’t a very common sight in the various places where I lived back then. It seemed that everyone assigned me to a different category based on my features. When I spoke Chinese in China, I didn’t have an accent, and this startled many people. Still, I passed as a Caucasian person, despite being half-Chinese. And in mostly Caucasian spaces, I was simply Chinese, despite being half-Caucasian. The latter was most evident when I was living in the American South where I was the only student with Chinese heritage in the entire school. Looking back on it all, I was constantly considered someone who did not fit in any of the pre-determined categories, someone who was something of a question mark in almost all spaces. I had to learn how to blend in linguistically- speaking Japanese, Chinese, and English, all with varying levels of proficiency. I was a jack of all trades, adapting as needed to constantly changing environments. Like a chameleon that changes color, my appearance never seemed to be truly static in other people’s eyes. Yet this mobility–immigration, migration, emigration, each move across a cultural or linguistic border–shaped my identity. I now have a passion for language, travel, and bringing communities together. Most importantly, growing up among various customs, cultures, and languages, I’ve learned the value of being a global citizen.

Kela is a junior with a major in East Asian Languages and Literature. She also has a concentration in Translation Studies and a minor in Neuroscience. She is interested in doing research on how the brain processes linguistic information.

Spring 2017 Issue IX: The Narrative Behind the Photo

Green light, let’s go

March 8, 2017 ezhang63

I was walking with two huge suitcases around Shinjuku station. Google Maps told me that my hotel was only a four minute walk away, yet I had been wandering around for half an hour and was still incredibly lost. “I probably came out from the wrong exit,” I thought to myself, “but why on Earth did they have to design this place to be a maze?”

I decided to ask for help.

After asking five different people for directions, I eventually arrived at the hotel over an hour later. I was tired, but also intrigued by Tokyo’s transportation. How do people deal with these huge train stations and the endless crowd? Why do they move so fast yet all seem to know exactly where they are going?

I justified my confusion by the lack of public transportation in my home city. I spent my childhood years in Zhengzhou, a small developing city in the center of China. At that time, subways didn’t exist, and bus lines were limited and inconvenient. Transportation to me meant driving. My parents drove me everywhere in the city, and travelling time never exceeded one hour.

Thus, my first week in Tokyo I experienced culture shock. Firstly, trains are ubiquitous and extremely convenient. Walking on the streets, you can find at least one station every 15 minutes, and the trains can take you anywhere: not only to every corner in Tokyo, but also to nearby cities, such as Yokohama and Chiba. Secondly, my foreigner friend and I seemed to be the only ones excited to ride public transportation. Most Japanese passengers remained silent and avoided eye contact throughout the ride, looking down at a phone or a book. Meanwhile, we foreigners conversed loudly, busy expressing our excitement over this metropolis.

As I spent more time using Tokyo’s public transportation system, I started to understand it more and more. The reason behind people’s lifeless expressions is that the same group of people, mostly salarymen and schoolchildren, take the same exact route to work or school every day. According to my Japanese friend who lives in Yokohama, it takes him at least an hour and a half to go to school in Shinjuku-ku, making it a three hour round trip every day. He said that he finishes most of his academic reading on the train to kill time.

-“Then do you ever notice your surroundings? Different people who ride with you, the different activities they do to kill time, the scenery along your way…?”
-“えっ？あまり全然見ない…”(I don’t really look at all…)

These pictures were taken while I was lost around Shinjuku station. There was a girl in school uniform, looking down at her phone while waiting for the light to turn green. It represents the daily life of the population who use Tokyo’s public transportation, who spend a great amount of time traveling in and out of the metropolis.

Echo Zhang is currently a sophomore pursuing a major in Economics and a possible minor in Studio Art. Originally from Zhengzhou, China, she has been studying abroad in the U.S since age 14, and hopes to go to Japan next year to study urban economics and photography. In her free time, she enjoys videochatting her family, walking under the sun, and exploring the world through her lens. Her ultimate goal in life is to travel around the world with her family.

Spring 2016 Issue VI: Cultural Encounters

Selections from Global Encounters: Smith College’s Annual International Photo Exhibit

February 26, 2016 ifitzpatrick

Have you ever wanted a peek into someone else’s study abroad experience? It’s hard to predict which aspects of a foreign country will be most memorable. Sometimes, an architectural masterpiece becomes emblematic of time spent in a country. Or maybe it’s a simple moment that sticks out, something experienced in passing: a crowded commute on the Tokyo subway or a woman and child seen every day on the walk to school. Whether it’s Prague, Tokyo, or anywhere in between that’s pulled at your heartstrings from afar, we invite you to live vicariously through Smith students who have captured some of these exquisite moments from their time abroad s on camera, and been generous enough to share them with us.

For Yuka Oiwa, class of 2016, it was the majestic beauty of Floating Gate, a Shinto shrine, that stayed with her after leaving Kyoto, Japan. “During a weekend trip, my study abroad group spent a night on the holy island of Miyajima,” Oiwa recalls. The day she visited, tshe tide was low and she was free to walk through the orange gates that were usually waist-deep in water. “As the sun started to set I took this shot looking out to the mountains and at the last ferry boat coming towards the island.”

Anna Carroll, class of 2016, was studying abroad in Denmark when she took this photograph in the Danish Royal family’s private stables. Carroll was mesmerized by the centuries-old, marble-adorned stables of Christiansborg Palace. A self-described equestrian with a passion for horses, she treasured this grand stable, which she could stop by on her way to class. Rich in history, it’s the last remnant of an entire castle that was burned to the ground. In all the grandeur surrounding her, what struck her was the contrast of seeing this little boy and horse communing with one another. “Inside the stables’ chilly and impressive walls, I spotted this simple moment between an equally curious young Danish boy and a royal steed,” Carroll remembers fondly.

Tziona Breitbart, class of 2016, spent a semester in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. In this photo, she captured Cesky Krumlov, “a medieval town in the Czech Republic that survived multiple wars and communism.” The peaceful appearance of the town that is expressed in this photo doesn’t hint at its tumultuous history. “It represents where the identity of the country comes from, as it was one of the only cities that had Jews living in peace with Czechs during the 13th century.”

Sometimes it is the simple, human moments that linger with us. Elana Brooks, class of 2016, took this photo while studying abroad in India. “I frequently passed this family while leaving my host family’s home for school. The blue and orange colored walls, with the embellishments of gold chains on the child and woman, complimented with the touch of the woman’s hand on the child, was an emblematic tableau of daily life.

Chloe Beckman, class of 2017, shared with us a similar snapshot of one of the more quotidian parts of life: her commute from the Saitama prefecture on her way to school in Tokyo, Japan. Most memorable was the intimacy of spending so much of her day in such close quarters. “Taken on the train into Tokyo on my daily commute, this photo reminds me of the feeling you get when the train is so packed that you don’t need to hold onto anything but your bag. But more than that, it reminds me of that moment when you finally push out of the crowd and onto the platform, knowing all the while that at the end of the day, the ritual will repeat.” The journey especially made her reflect on time.

Travelling means something different to every individual. For some, it will be the intimacy of a subway ride that will linger on in our memories and for others, it will be the satisfaction of witnessing a historical monument up close. Regardless of how going abroad affects you, the most important aspect is how it expands your mind and your perception of the world . Seeing a woman and child on your walk to school every day, even if you never speak to them, or walking beneath the colorful gates of a shrine, offer insights into a culture that only being there in the country can expose you to. Whether you have had the good fortune to spend much time abroad, we hope that in reading this issue, you can get a glimpse of the vastness and complexity of the world through photos, and through essays about those photos.

Isabelle Fitzpatrick is a sophomore currently majoring in Mathematics and Statistics as well as French Studies. A lifelong world traveller and binational of France and the United States, she spends her summers and winter breaks visiting her parents and younger brother in Shanghai, China. She aspires to combine her love of languages and travel with her studies in math to eventually work for an international organization as a statistician.

Spring 2014 Issue I: International Photo Contest

Getting Lost in Kyoto

April 7, 2014 Aileen Brotherton

Brotherton - Getting Lost in Kyoto photo

The sun is setting, the sky is gorgeous, the weather is brisk, my feet are sore, and my friend Mara and I have gone astray on the wrong side of Mount Inari. I’m scanning the timetables at a bus stop (after a good bit of wandering in the wrong direction alongside the elevated shinkansen track, and then some wandering in the right direction that found us at a highway, a dead end as far as we pedestrians were concerned). Mara takes what I give her and attempts to trace something feasible for us on the accompanying route-map. Only days later do I realize, upon a closer inspection in better light at another bus stop, that the three timetables given—color-coded blue, red, and green—which I had assumed meant the blue, red, and green bus lines passed by that stop, are actually weekday, weekend, and holiday schedules, respectively.

The sky is gorgeous, but the sun is setting. I remind myself that it is after all only six o’clock in the evening, and other members of our group have come back to our room at the inn far later at night before without much fuss. At the very least I don’t need to worry about anyone worrying.

I have been afraid of cabs for a long time, which is part of why I am reluctant to go with Mara’s suggestion to hail one. (It’s also probably hubris—”I’ve just hiked barefoot up and down a mountain, darn it, I don’t need to PAY to get back to Kyoto Station!”) But after we finally give up on the bus, we wave over the first cab we see and something about the driver’s uniform—his cap and his white gloves—and then the way he gets out to open the door for us, puts me immediately at ease. I don’t even feel the panic I should feel at the prospect of being The One Who Speaks Japanese between the two of us; there’s nothing terribly complicated about saying “Kyoto eki, onegaishimasu” anyway, but even when he asks us where at the station he should let us out, I feel comfortable saying, in Japanese, “We’re just walking from the station, so please drop us off in front” (though it probably comes out a little less elegantly; he gets the point and is far too polite to correct anything). Later my father will tell me that there’s nothing like getting a little lost (“but not too lost!”) in a foreign country to put you “right smack in the moment.”

As we ride I find that I feel cheated, or perhaps like a cheater myself, for having to fall back on the easiest and most expensive way out. In retrospect I realize this is ridiculous: hiking barefoot up and down a mountain should be adventure enough in one day for anyone.
The noise of the crowded station contrasts greatly with the quiet of the mountain. Normally such dense humanity is overwhelming to me, but right at the moment, with its promise of food and our lodging nearby, it is welcome.

Next time, given more daylight, I think I’ll just take a shortcut back over the mountain. Nature Walks make me feel at home in unfamiliar places like nothing else, and that way “please don’t litter or smoke” is all the Japanese I need to worry about (although it’s nice to be able to read the signs that add, “because this is a sacred mountain and you will be struck with divine punishment if you do!”).
But if that extra trek should be out of the question, I’ll have my experience to use as a basis for my actions, not to mention support for my nerves—and an improved understanding of Kyoto’s transportation systems to boot.

Aileen Brotherton has been studying Japanese since middle school and recently made her first visit to Japan. That trip cemented her determination to keep on learning, reading, and speaking Japanese; Aileen’s hope is to find work involving Japanese-English translation in the future.

Global Impressions

Tag Archives: Japan

To Lead is to Follow: Learning from Others and Listening to One’s Internal Voice

Chameleon

Green light, let’s go

Selections from Global Encounters: Smith College’s Annual International Photo Exhibit

Getting Lost in Kyoto