Life in JapanGenie Harrison
DS2021
I spent a lot of time talking about moving to Japan, before actually moving to Japan. The
middle child of our 3-cohort-bumper crop, my purgatory was only a year – others waited for
two – but this was plenty of time for my sense of anticipation (and anxiety) to escalate.
I had neither been to Japan, nor lived abroad before my Daiwa experience began; it would be
an understatement to say I was slightly nervous to move halfway across the world. In fact, Iremember phoning my mum from my EJEF conference bedroom after our first day wading
through hiragana soup, confessing my reservations about the 19 months ahead. However,
we’re just over halfway through now, and I’m very happy to say that the experience ofmoving to Japan and (very slowly) learning to speak Japanese has been wildly better than
explaining the contents of the Daiwa programme to members of my extended family.
One of the things I’ve loved most about living in Japan so far has been the variety ofcharacters we’ve met along the way. Last term, I was paired with a 42-year-old salary man
as my language partner, who was taking a short career break to complete a master’s in
hospitality accounting. I now proudly hold the title of First Foreign Friend to the lovely
Genta (both on Facebook and in real life). I’m hoping for lots of tax-related vocabulary
questions in our JLPT exam next week.
Whilst hitchhiking across Kyushu last month with a friend, I caught a lift from anincredibly lovely older Kyushuan lady who drove us from Saga to Takeo Onsen. Noticing
her vast stack of CDs in the car, we chatted happily about music and bonded over a shared
love of jazz. Our communication was only slightly impaired; apparently the name ‘Ella
Fitzgerald’ in Japanese bears no resemblance to its English equivalent, despite being
literally exactly the same word katakana-ized. It feels quite surreal, though, to be able tocross paths momentarily with people whose lives feel in some ways so different to mine, butto whom I am briefly connected.

It's also been useful to meet Japanese people who are considerably more proficient inEnglish that I am in Japanese to explain us to some of the more unusual aspects of culture.
In one of my favourite restaurants in Shimokitazawa, any restaurant-goer’s birthday iscommemorated with a remix of ‘Under the Sea’, from The Little Mermaid. When I asked myfriend Taka why this might be, he simply shrugged and said: “Japanese people don’t know

what the lyrics of this song mean, but it sounds good, so we like to play it.” This is how I
feel quite a lot of the time here: I don’t always know exactly what’s going on, but I’m having
a good time. Similarly, at the izakaya round the corner from my flat, if you order aparticular fish dish, you get to ring a bell in celebration, as the rest of the restaurant chants,“NICE LEMON!” I am actually yet to receive an explanation for this particular culturalnuance.
Whilst I was visiting some friends in Ishigaki, one of the Okinawan islands, a local
fisherman invited us to a beach bonfire. We had an incredibly jolly time eating gyoza on thecamping stove, making Japanese “s’mores” (crackers, red bean and what I think was some
sort of cream cheese?), and learning a lot of very technical Japanese fishing terminology,
which surprisingly has not yet resurfaced in any of my Waseda assignments. The evening
did, however, have a slightly galling end, when the Japanese concept of ‘burnable rubbish’
became all too literal. I have never previously known a blowtorch to be used as analternative to a bin bag.

Japan itself is hardly famed for its multiculturalism, but the sense of unity often felt between
fellow gaijins (‘foreigners’) here allows for other forms of cultural exchange to take place.
In class last week, I had a momentary diversion from my Nihongo studies, to learn how tosay my name in Indonesian with my friend Geo, and revise my Year 9 French with myfriend Leo. On the flip side, however, I have been concerned at the seemingly widely-heldbelief that I go home every evening to tuck into a plate of fish and chips. Unfortunately, I
have somewhat reluctantly added fuel to this particular fire: more than once during my timeat Waseda have I been required to present a ‘dish from my country’, and you would forgivethe other members of my classes for thinking we only eat beige-coloured foods in the UK.
The gold medal for Most Tolerant Stranger has to be awarded to an unfortunately namelessLawson employee, who allowed a group of us to camp out in the convenience store
overnight after someone (Veer) managed to fluff up our hostel booking for the evening. His
tolerance for our delirium-filled games up and down the aisles of the konbini (“What wouldyou buy with 1000 yen?” “What’s the weirdest snack you can find?”), was both appreciatedand incredibly necessary – I’m not sure I’d remember the evening with the same StockholmSyndrome fondness if not for his willingness to turn a blind eye to the strange foreigners
bedding themselves in amongst the microwaves.

All this being said, the most important characters throughout this whole journey have, ofcourse, been with me since the infamous High Wycombe days (arguably the best time of all).
Whatever the future holds for any of us after these 19 months, I can say that this slightly
strange social experiment has, for me at least, been a very successful one. Our Daiwa ClubSandwich will, undoubtedly, always stick out in the scholarship’s history, and I feelincredibly lucky to be nestled in the middle of it. Whether it’s Christmas Eve karaoke, anexpedition to whatever UNESCO site Veer’s insisted we visit, or just sitting round having
lunch in the garden at Waseda, I feel so privileged to be a part of such a bizarre, amazing
group of people. These have been some of the best nine months of my life, and I can’t wait tosee what the next phase holds for us all!