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
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