First Experience: The Only Foreigner in the Japanese Circle

Hello guys!

So today I would like to talk about my experience as the only foreigner who joins Japanese circle. Honestly, I had never taught about joining a circle because I didn’t like the commitment and most of the time I just didn’t enjoy clubs during my primary school and high school years. Back then, the only reason why I joined clubs was because of the curricular marks and it was compulsory for every student to join clubs. Basically it’s a rule and as a rule-biding student back then, I joined those clubs simply because I had to. After graduated, I enrolled myself into a special education program which enabled me to pursue my further studies in Japan but before I got to that I had to spend three years in Malaysia studying. Due to the fact that it’s a special preparatory program for Malaysians to further studies in Japan, the timetable was freaking pack and literally there is no after-class extracurricular activity. I was really happy honestly because no more clubs that I had to join or there is no rule about joining clubs, marks for joining clubs, what-so-ever. Three years passed by and finally I further my studies in Japan(I’m in Japan currently).

Since I enrolled in Japanese university as a third year, I enrolled together with henyuusei students. Henyuusei students are students who graduated from kousen(Japan’s technical college) and just like me they entered Japanese University as a third year student. Despite the fact that I’m a foreigner, I always consider myself as a henyuusei student too simply because in my university system, I am considered as henyuusei student from oversea school. I was recruited into Japanese group of henyuusei student of the same department. There are 19 of us including 6 Japanese who just enrolled, 10 Japanese seniors,1 Malaysian senior, me and my friend who is also from the same preparatory program. During that time, all of us hadn’t meet face-to-face yet so we had our very first ice-breaking session via Line(hahaha). One of my Japanese seniors, probably the head of the group prepared a template for everyone to fill in such as full name, clubs that they join, past schools, interest, etc. As I was scrolling every of my seniors’ template, I realized most of them join one particular club called Stairs. Then, I made a research(sort of) on that club and basically the club is about learning programming languages, developing apps and creating web page. I was genuinely interested to join that club because in their website, they had interesting activities for programming beginner. I wasn’t a beginner honestly but my programming ability is so low that I can’t even consider myself as an undergoing programming learner despite learning programming for almost 3 years. To cut the story short, I joined the Stairs.

Then, I went to my very first Henyuusei Welcoming Party which was held at share house. In the welcoming party, I got a chance to meet my seniors and we had our actual ice-breaking session. We ate, we talked, it was really fun. At one point, one of my seniors asked us if we were interested to join Stairs. It turned out that the president of Stairs is my senior who’s in fourth year currently. I told him I’m interested to join in and he told me he already accepted my request to join the club(I joined right before my senior invited me). Yeayyy!!

Our very first meeting was after Golden week holiday. Right after Golden week holiday, I was really busy with Stairs. For almost two weeks straight, I arrived home at 8.40pm. The club activities started at 6pm and finished at 8pm. There were activities such as learning how to use HTML and CSS, learning how to use Swift(Programming for Apple) and learning how to create Name Card by using Powerpoint. It was really really fun and I enjoyed every moment when I was attending the club. Probably that was the first time in my life where I literally had fun joining the club. My friend wasn’t interested to join the club because she knew that if she joins the club, a lot of her free times would be consumed but me on the other hand, I prefer my free time to be consumed with something educational and beneficial.

Before I forget, it turned out that most of members of Stairs are henyuusei students. I don’t know why but it’s just that way. Even most of seniors of Stairs are henyuusei students. From Stairs, I started to get close with my Stairs’ seniors and I got new friends from other departments too, who are henyuusei students of course. Besides, I started to get close with my own department’s senior too. My senior of the same department helped me tonnes in programming. He came up to me every now and then asking if I was okay, and if I wasn’t okay, he’ll help me fixing my wrecked programming. I have a big crush in one of the seniors and that senior helped me a lot in my programming so in short, circle time is my Happy Hour. I tend to smile when I look at my senior that I have crush on so I decided to wear mask whenever I attend the club. I smiled the whole time and even when I’m writing this blog while reminiscing moments when I attended the club, I was smiling too. Lol.

My senior that I have crush on is a friendly person who talks a lot with everyone. I don’t know how he actually finds topic to talk about with every each of us but he just did it. He does that always. Since I’m the only foreigner, he asks me a lot about English pronunciation. Sometimes, he tried to explain things in English to me too. I like the fact that Japanese people are trying to speak English with me because it feels like they are trying to reach out to me although they’re just simply practicing their English.

I still remember vividly when my seniors asked me if I had ever eaten sushi or do I know Doraemon or Pikachu, I laughed whole heartedly. The questions were so interesting and funny because I started to eat Sushi when I was 12 and I grew up watching Doraemon and Pikachu. To put it simply, I grew up in the presence of Doraemon and Pikachu so I am familiar with those. I probably didn’t know the very details of those two stories but I do know that Doraemon lives with Nobita who often gets bullied by Giant and Sunyo(my spelling probably wrong. Sorry!). Oh and Nobita has a crush on Shizuka too. I wasn’t that indifferent not to know that Ash is the owner of Pikachu and they collects Pokemon. Their rival is a purple-colored hair guy and dark pink-colored lady aka the villains in the Pokemon. When they asked me those questions, it felt like they were asking if I know what rice is. I find it really amusing that I couldn’t help but to burst into laughter.

Besides getting close with my club seniors, I have gotten close with my Japanese friends from the same department. Out of 6, 4 of them join Stairs. I sit close with one of them sometimes and whenever I didn’t understand how to do the programming, I’ll pat the person next to me(my henyuusei friend of the same department) on the shoulder and he’ll help me. Sometimes, he didn’t understand how to do it too so he’ll call our senior for me.

Honestly, most of my club seniors are very nice. I have never really felt discriminated so far in the circle except for the fact that most of the people that I didn’t know in the club wouldn’t sit near me if there’s a group sitting. During those times, my seniors or the person that I know would fill the void. I remember vividly my circle senior(not the one that I have crush on) who sat in front of me would literally stand up and went next to me just to listen to my problem(during that time I couldn’t install custom font from the internet). The laptop could just simply be turned over facing him instead he stood and went to my side. There was this one time too when I asked him where to find the questionnaire(it was inside Slack(an app that Stairs use to communicate with their member))on the phone and he stood up from his sitting position, bend towards me and slide the screen of my phone for me. Finally, he told me to touch one of the groups on the slack and I could see the questionnaire.

Up until now, I have been telling you guys about nice stories about the circle. Yes, everything is nice until I have to find and join group to create an app. The next Stair’s activity is to create a group of two or three people and create a web app. Currently I’m still in no group condition with almost 0 knowledge about Database, Git and everything that is related to web app. I dunno what to feel right now because most of my henyuusei friends from the same department aren’t committal which mean they attend the meeting when ever they like. Besides I haven’t been invited by anyone to join their group and I’m not surprise. I may be surprise if I have a group to create a web app though. Things gonna be tough after this. Wish me luck.

Thank you for reading.

XOXO,

JINN

First Experience: Welcoming party at Izakaya

Originally, I intended to write about my circle experience but after I read back my previous blog, I realized that there's a story that was left hanging and that is the welcoming party story. The event happened about a month ago. I was the only foreigner who attended the party because it was a circle party for Japanese student generally. I really wanted to join the circle because the circle seems interesting for me and I think I can learn a lot by joining the circle. BTW, the circle mainly about programming, creating apps and using software so that are the reasons why I wanted to join the circle even if I am the only foreigner and the dumbest in the circle(T_T).

The party started at around 7pm and it was held at Izakaya(Japanese style restaurant) near my house. Literally near my house because it only took like 4 minutes by walking and maybe less than a minute by bicycle minus the traffic light. Honestly it was an awkward party and yet interesting experience for me since that was the first time I ate at Izakaya. I had to sit on the floor and the place was quite small packed with about 40 guys++ from my circle and other different group of people as well(more than 10 people). I sat like literally in front of Beer corner. I don't know why I ended up sitting there considering that I don't drink beer but maybe because the place was empty and it was sort of near to the exit and there was people that I knew sitting there so I ended up sitting there despite the place was near Beer corner.

So here's the very umm.. I would say fangirling part. T sat on the same table as I am!!😍T literally sat in front of me on the left side. Basically not really in front of me but T sat in a position where it was accessible within my eye range😂In that party, I saw T drank beer for the first time. In the previous party, T did not consume alcoholic drink because T drove to get to the party place but this time T came by bus. Honestly, my heart broke a little as I saw T gulped down the beer because since I don't drink alcoholic drink, I was hoping the person that I like would adopt the same lifestyle as I am but nevertheless it was still a sight that couldn't be missed. Despite my heart broke a little, I was slightly intrigued by the way T gulped down the beer. Cool or in Japanese they would say kakkoii.

The party went on and the peak was the eating session and also exchanging friends session. My favourite was of course eating session because I love eating so much that just by eating I can be as happy as a little child who always get their ways. I couldn't eat the meat that was served there and the food that I could eat was mostly seafood-based or plant-based food. T asked me like is there any time where I can drink alcohol or I couldn't drink at all and me with my broken Japanese falsely told T sometimes I drink alcohol and T was literally shocked and I was shocked too and I realized that it wasn't the right answer so I told T no I don't drink at all. I wanted to tell something else but I ended up delivering wrong message due to my Japanese vocab limitation. Silly me. Actually I wanted to tell T that generally people don't drink but there are still people who drink but instead of saying that I ended up telling T that I sometimes drink. LOL😂😂   

T also asked me why I didn't eat the chicken and before I could answered it, T uttered the answer. I didn't know if T was disappointed as to why I have so many restrictions but I replied

"It's okay. Since I cannot eat the chicken, you can eat more chicken, right?" <- in Japanese

and T laughed shyly. I didn't know whether T laughed shyly or simply laughed without any hidden emotion but my mind told me T was laughing because of shyness. I was only stating the truth though. They should bring me out to eat often because they can eat the portion that I don't eat like meats which they love so much.

The party was great until the exchange friends session which I didn't like so much but I still had fun at the very end of the session(probably 5 minutes before the party was over). Earlier I sat with T and friends that I know but this time I sat in a group where I literally didn't know any of them and had never seen their face before. It was awkward and the senior who was sitting beside me(God knows who he is but I don't), probably he didn't like me as much or he was just simply drunk. I couldn't tell. The saddest part about Japanese culture is they have the high tendency to use alcohol as a medium to communicate with people easily but from my observation, alcohol could make or break you. It depends on people I think. He was friendly enough to speak with me at first but then as he consumed more alcohol, he became more passive and started telling me or us that he was sleepy. He ended up scrolling his phone and ignored me. In a table, there were about 6 people sitting and talking together. The senior sat in the middle and I sat on his right side. On his left side, there's a guy who was genuinely interested to speak with me about my country because he had been there before but because the senior had never been to other countries before, the topic was out of the question. The guy who sat in front of the senior also had been to my country before even it was a really really short visit and he was eager to share his experience too but since the senior who SAT BESIDE ME has never been to other countries before, we couldn't talk about it. The other reasons why I probably don't like the senior so much was because he was annoyed at me for keep speaking casually. I didn't realized it at first but since he was giving me gestures like speaking under his breath about his friend being a senior and me keep speaking casually, I realized he didn't like it that I was speaking casually with them. Probably he demanded me to speak formally all the time since him and his friends are seniors. It was my fault though for being careless but the interesting part was his friend was born the same year as I am but because he was born in January, he could join the school with the people who were born in previous year.

The reason why I knew those two person wanted to talk me at least during that time was after the senior got up and went somewhere else, they asked me about my country and told me their experience when they were visiting my country. It was a happy moment because I could listen to many stories that were related to me and we could share many similarities. Unfortunately, that moment only lasted for about 5 minutes as T got up from his seat and told everyone the party was over and the bus had already arrived.

So that's the story about me joining a circle welcoming party at Izakaya. It wasn't really an interesting experience to tell but it was an unforgettable experience for me because ever since the senior expressed his unsatisfaction as I keep speaking casually, I'm more careful with the way I speak ever since that day. BTW, in Japan if you're speaking with someone who has higher status than you like your teacher or your boss or someone who's older than you, you should speak formally with them. Of course, there are some Japanese who doesn't really mind about the formalities or the Japanese that would excuse you for speaking casually because you are a foreigner but there are also some Japanese who would demand you to speak perfectly like them or like how their juniors talk to them.

That's all from me.
Bye~

JINN