最近の留学生活で色々な面白いことがありました。まず、先週のゴールデンウィークの前に多くの授業のことを終わりました。それで、学校で様々なことをしました。一番面白かったのは、「もっと日本を知ろう！」というプロジェクト・ワークの授業のために、今学期先生と行った日本の美意識に関する研究を発表したことです。それは、初めてアカデミックな環境でそういう社会的な研究について発表することでした。みんなの前でずっと緊張していたし、日本語で全ての言いたいことがきちんと伝えられなかったとわかるんですが、とにかく最高の経験でした。日本で社会的な研究の結果を使って、観察と印象について発表が出来るようになって、嬉しかったです。先生のおかげで、日本の美意識と社会の理解が深まれました。日本語について少し自信がつきましたが、もちろんこれからも日本語をたくさん勉強しなきゃいけないことも分かりました！そのプロジェクト・ワークの他に、日本語の授業で楽しい「終わりのパーティー」も行いました。でも、普通のパーティーだけじゃなくて、みんなが同級生と先生の前で何か面白いことをさせられたというイベントでした。同級生の友達とスキットもダンスをして、すっごく恥ずかしくて楽しかったです(^_^)。最後に、先生と居酒屋に行って、初めて打ち上げの晩御飯を食べました。食べ物が美味しかったし、面白い話ばかりだったし、楽しかったです！
それから、ゴールデンウィークは本当に思っていたほど色々ないい所に行けました！僕が、一ヶ月ぐらい前からゴールデンウィークの休みのことを知りましたけれど、その時にはもうホテルとか電車が予約が取られたんですから、ちゃんとう旅行ができないことを実感しました。代わりに、名古屋の周りのいい所をインターネットで調べて、友達といきました。藤祭りと海と山と滝も見に行って、素晴らしかったです。後、二人の大学二年生の時からの友達が東京から名古屋に来てくれたので、僕は初めて日本人に名古屋を少し紹介することをしました。やっぱり、中部地方の中でも一週間の休みをたっぷり楽しみました。
今週の金曜日に最後の試験を終わります。それから、関西地方の広島と姫路市と神戸と大阪に行く予定です。その「関西ツアー」について書くのを楽しみにしています。
旅行と探検と打ち上げすることって楽しいですが、実は心には重い気持ちがあります。本気で日本で出会った友達と先生に「さようなら」が言えないと思います。みんなは兄弟達みたいに中がよくて、大事な人なんです。それに、こんなに日本が好きになってから、どうやって家に帰って、普通の生活に戻れるか全然知らないんです。「アメリカにいるみんなは自分がなんだか変わってきたと理解してくれるかな？」とか「日本語を忘れると困るなー！どうしよう？」とか「いつ日本に戻れるかな？」などの悩みがあります。でも、こんな質問が自分で答えられません。ただ、頑張って、残りの時間をゆっくり過ごすことさえできます。みんなはこんな経験があると思います。なんとなくこんな気持ちが自然かもしれませんが、切ないですね。日本、本気で好きになってしまったんです。
それでは、また書くのを楽しみにしています！
I'm sitting in my room on this mild May afternoon, studying for my reading/writing Japanese final. A gentle breeze passes through my open screen door and drifts out through the window. It carries a faintly sweet incense from the temple overlooking my street. Somebody must be praying up there in that dark grove of trees. The toddler next door is playing with his mom on the patio, and breaks out in improv song. My quiet neighborhood is filled with beautiful new greenery, and it looks like a separate world compared to the grayness of just a month ago. May is certainly a beautiful time here, but the impending Nagoya summer is notorious for humidity, and the air is getting a little heavier every week.
There have been some interesting times since I last wrote in late April. Most classes ended just before the Golden Week holidays, and with that came some projects and reports. Particularly stimulating was my final project for an independent research course. In that semester-long class, I researched and conducted a survey on Japanese aesthetics (a topic I chose for myself). For the final project, I presented the results, my impressions, and my arguments in an academic style lecture in Japanese- my first time for that! I was nervous the whole time, and I couldn't express every idea as clearly as I may have been able to in English. But I was thankful for the opportunity to practice. Thanks to my teacher's amazing help, I gained some confidence in my Japanese, but was also reminded just how much I have left to study in the language and the culture. I also got practice in giving an academic lecture, and including accepting commentary and debating with listeners in an audience (important, regardless of language). Besides that final presentation, the three sections of Japanese 500 threw a huge end-of-semester party with the professors. It wasn't a conventional party, because everyone had to do perform some sort of entertainment in front of all the classmates and teachers. Well, it was super embarrassing, but a lot of fun all the same to break out a little bit of goofiness in front of everyone. Finally, we went out as a class with one of our professors to an izakaya, which is a Japanese tavern. In typical izakaya style, everyone sat at a huge group-sized low-table and ate two-and-a-half hour's worth of grilled goods, laughing and joking in loud voices the whole time. I had been to several izakaya's up to that point, but this was my first time in a huge group- it was fun!
Golden Week itself was really enjoyable- I got to go to many more places than I had expected. There's actually a little story there. For those of you who don't know, Golden Week consists of a few national holidays: children's day, greenery day, constitution day, and Showa day (a holiday dedicated to reflecting on the turbulent times in Hirohito's reign). It is one of the very few nation-wide holiday periods in Japan that lasts more than a couple of days, so this is a time of year when the Japanese middle class (over eighty percent of the population, mind you) make their move to get out of town on a trip. Hotels, trains, and planes were booked up months in advance- and yours truly wasn't even aware of what Golden Week was until about a month before. Sure enough, I was much too late to make a reservation anywhere for a trip, so I chose to hunker down in Nagoya and explore the surrounding region through a number of day trips. I went to see a wisteria flower festival (gorgeous), the beach (first time to touch ocean waters in Japan), and a lovely waterfall (inside an enchanting mountain forest). On top of that, two Tokyo-ite friends came to visit Nagoya, and I got to introduce my adopted city to visitors for the first time! Golden Week was a peaceful time to explore Nagoya and get to know the region better.
This Thursday and Friday I will finish my last finals, and then I plan on taking a trip to the Kansai region of Japan: Hiroshima, Himeji, Kobe, and Osaka! I look forward to writing about all of that as well!
Yes, trips, parties, and touring have been great fun, but there is a really heavy feeling in my heart. That's because I honestly don't know if I can say "farewell" to my friends and professors, and this country. Everyone has grown so close to me like extra siblings, and I truly treasure them (although I don't say it so much). I know it sounds juvenile and dumb to worry about this kind of thing. But I don't know how to go return to normal life at home, and leave this place that I grew to love so much more than I had anticipated. How does one do that? "Can I return and perform well in life at home, even though I've changed much more than I know?" "What if I forget the precious little Japanese I know?" "When will I get to come back to this place? Soon?" These kinds of questions are flooding my mind right now, but I can't answer a single one of them. I can only try to enjoy my remaining time here, with my dear new friends in this place. I suppose these feelings of resistance are natural, but they sting a little bit like that sweet pain that I wrote about earlier on this semester. All I can say now is that I really did grow to like my dear Japan, through and through and through.
With that, I'm looking forward to writing very soon!
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