No Culture Shock, Yet.

I haven’t experienced culture shock yet. I keep hearing that I’ll probably get it when I go back to the states—yea, you start calling it “the states”, and you sound so cool. Everyone here is really nice, and willing to help you. Tokyo is one of the cleanest, safest cities in the world. The other students are all in the same boat, and thereby really easy to talk to. You’ll find that study abroad is Viagra for your confidence (pardon the crude expression) and making friends becomes easy for even the shiest person. A warning to the ladies, in an exotic place, you are suddenly exotic and you will receive a lot of stares. You just have to deal with it. If you can, welcome to the new you.

To the new you, save your money once you get there as well, because you will want to buy everything you see. If you’re like me, you will. Japan, in particular, is known for a style called “lolita”, which ranges from baby doll to gothic princess. A good lolita ensemble can cost upward of 400$. If you’ve guessed where I’m going with this, you little genius you, I went in for one. I don’t regret it, but nor do I recommend binging like this. Be careful with your money, you have to stretch it all semester!

If I had to say one thing about making the choice to go abroad, I would say that it induces permissive spending. You can say about almost anything that you need it for (insert your country here). I need new clothes, I need an electronic dictionary, I need an iPod—the latest model, of course, so I can be cool in my new country. This, of course, doesn’t change when you actually arrive, so you buy all this stuff you later find out that you didn’t need (except for the iPod, everyone needs that).

For example, I bought an electronic dictionary, and then I signed up for a cell phone—which turned out to include a Japanese-English dictionary. At this point it was too late to return the 200$ electronic dictionary. This scenario of course probably only applies in East Asia right now, since the technology is so advanced, but this applies to everything.

So save your money. Don’t buy anything until you absolutely need it.

I spent the semester before I left freaking out. I wasn’t practicing my Japanese or reading books about Japan, just being consistently worried about the big trip. It’s extremely distracting. In fact, it’s all that’s on your mind. It trumps Christmas and birthdays. You feel scared and nervous and excited all the time, even as far as the plane ride. It only stops after you spend a day getting around, then settle down in your own room, that you realize everything is going to be all right.

That is the best advice I can offer you, aside from “know about your country before you go, so you don’t make an a** of yourself”. I don’t need to say any more. From here on out, this blog will be consistently story time with Taylor. Until next time.