'Arigatou'

On November 2, at 5:30 a.m., the morning of my exchange to Japan, I was not thinking about how much I would enjoy being in Tokyo, or how excited I was to meet my host family. The only thing running through my head was the question:

 

 

I could have gone home, to my own bed and my little dog and my car with its freedom, but instead, there I was, hauling my overweight luggage onto a Shawnigan bus at an obscenely early time. I won’t lie and say that the feeling diminished on the 10-hour flight, or during the many forms we had to fill out to enter the country, or even in my host family’s car while we were driving to their house. 

 

Now, weeks after I’ve gotten back to Shawnigan, I can confidently say that my 2024 exchange trip to Azabu was one of the best experiences I’ve had in my five years at this school. Nothing has rivalled the experiences I had living with a family in the heart of Japan, and going to school with students who, despite living on the other side of the planet in what felt like a different world, were like my friends back at Shawnigan. 

 

Just the other night, I was leafing through the photo album my host family, the Wakimotos, had presented me with on the final night of my stay with them. I had noticed throughout the trip that my host parents were very fond of taking pictures of whatever activities we had done, whether it was me making crêpes for them one morning, or travelling to Nagoya Castle on a day trip, but I had no idea they would turn them into an album for me. Their touching gesture of immortalizing those memories in a small booklet for me to reminisce over captures the essence of Japanese culture, I believe. Small acts of kindness, done for friends and strangers, no matter the situation.

 

On the train ride to Nagoya, we took the Shinkansen, or the bullet train. It was my first time taking such an elaborate subway system to get around, and I was using the PASMO card Azabu High School had supplied me with for everything. When we had to take the Shinkansen, however, I wasn’t sure what to do with my ticket when trying to pass the gates, and my host brother, in his rush to make the train, had assumed I was following behind him, when in reality I was still at the gate, trying to insert my ticket. Seeing a foreigner in distress, a kind young woman came up to me, and, without a word of English, showed me how to put my ticket into a slot and receive it on the other side of the gate. I tried to thank her, “arigatou” being one of the only Japanese words in my arsenal, but she had left without a word, presumably to catch her own train. My exchange was made up of hundreds of little moments like that, of people sharing little bits of Japanese life with the bumbling foreigner, with no motivation or reward other than to help. I will forever remember how the practice of politeness and courtesy can create a beautiful culture.

 

A conversation held with a few other members of the exchange group piqued my interest upon hearing it. They were speaking of how, when travelling to countries in which they were completely foreign – not speaking the language or understanding the customs – they always experienced some guilt. Were they not, by default, forcing our North American ways onto the local people? I had never thought of that before, as whenever I had travelled with my parents, one of them had always spoken the language of the various countries we had visited, and knew how to be respectful of cultural differences, being from diverse backgrounds themselves. This trip was my first experience being entirely out of my depth. After this conversation, I started noticing small imprints of America and Canada, with most signs being in both Japanese and English, and all public services used both languages in their signage and announcements. During an English class at Azabu High School, we were discussing globalization, and how exchanges of culture can both harm and benefit the participants. In my group of five Grade 11 students, I brought up my observations around Tokyo’s westernization, and the effect of tourism on the preservation of Japanese culture. I was expecting them to disparage these remnants of the West, but to my surprise, they did not see it as a depreciation of Japanese culture, but rather an evolution of global interconnectedness. I thought it was so touching that these kids, my age or older, all believed, and even hoped for a greater collective understanding in the world. 

 

Writing this reflection, and thinking back on the amazing time I had and the ideas sparked in my mind evident here, I hope that I can go back soon. As a Grade 12, I know that when I return to Tokyo, my perception of it will be changed because I will be changed. It will probably be in my university days that I am able to visit again (a prospect that makes my uni applications to Australia much more attractive) but I know without a shadow of doubt that despite how much I have changed, I will always look back on the time I spent and the people I spent it with as a highlight of my younger years.