Before I came to Japan, I've been repeatedly told that I should absolutely never, under any conditions and circumstances, socialize with non-Japanese people. Well, bearing in mind that one was about to live in Japan for a year, it not only did seem logical, but also like a relatively easy thing to do. No - the only right thing to do, even. Now, living in the international students dorm and simply not having any native Japanese students in my dorm to hang out with, I would only say: easier said than done.
The thing is that in such situation you might play a Virgin Mary of Japanese language if you wish, sitting in your room and not even paying attention to anybody because they are not Japanese. You can cram all day long and then watch your daily episode of Jドラマ, j-dorama, Japanese series/soap opera. You can scrutinize the labels of food in the supermarket and read awkward manga in the afternoon. But then, sooner or later you're going to realize that you're all alone in the far-away country and there is nobody around to simply talk to. You're going to save your Japanese so much for the 'real' Japanese, only talking to the teacher in class and occasionally outside that the year will pass, and you probably wouldn't open your mouth more than few dozen times, and when you do - well, nobody would either understand you very well, or genuinely want to listen to you.
Why not talking to international students in Japanese then, you ask? Well, that's a good point. It seems like a good way of combining the two, right? Well, not really. Firstly we are all at different levels of language ability. There are really good people who studied Japanese for years, but there are also people who have never seen any Japanese before. Even when we're so-called 'intermediate' in Japanese, we all have different strengths and weaknesses: there are people who can speak smoothly, but don't have enough vocabulary and get stuck; there are people who can read very well, but can't speak at all; there are people who's kanji ability is incredible, but have very little grammar supply; and last but not least - there are people who drop out from higher levels and need to go back to lower groups because their kanji is so poor that their perfect spoken Japanese is simply not enough.
So an effective communication in Japanese is slightly difficult. But this is not the worst bit.
As non-native speakers, not only can't we correct our own mistakes, but surely pronounce many things incorrectly and keep repeating the same sentence patterns all over again with little dose of flexibility. But foremost - we are always at risk of transferring our own mistakes and teach the less-proficient people something wrong, which will consecutively take them significant amount of time to correct in the future. Of course, when we are certain of a particular pattern/ vocabulary, we do speak a bit in Japanese. But for smooth and mistake-free exchange of information speaking in English is simply essential.
One could close in their room for the entire year abroad, but why? There are so many interesting people around, each with lots of interesting stories to tell. (Unavoidably, there are also extremely uninteresting types, but one doesn't need to be friends with everyone, right?)
What is called for is the golden mean. Of course the best thing you can do is to hang out with Japanese students, but you see, it's not that simple. Japanese society is highly hermetic, and without breaking the language barrier first it's extremely difficult for a foreigner to meet and make friends with many Japanese students. I was lucky so as to have a lovely Hiroha-san assigned to me as my guide for the first few days in Kyoto, and that she was and still is eager and kind enough so as to hang out with me every week and put up with my crappy Japanese. But not many foreigners are that lucky. Being a foreign exchange student, unless your Japanese is really good so as to allow you to follow a regular lecture for the Japanese students, you will have all the classes with other foreigners only. If you have particular interest in something, you might try joining the サークル活動, saakuru katsudo, clubs and circles of interest, but bear in mind this will be a club where the Japanese enjoy themselves in Japanese and don't really want to 'babysit' a foreigner in their club. (The clubs are taken really seriously in Japan, requiring at least 6 hours of weekly contribution). If you don't speak well enough so as to express yourself freely on the subject and to get all the jokes - you will feel awkward.
Giving oneself a break sometime, and hanging out with people who are the closest to you (foreigners) is not such a bad idea. Maybe not every day, not every weekend night-out, but just staying in touch. The truth is that for the time of your year abroad they will become like a second family, and they will sympathize more with you and your problems than even the closest of friends back home can.
So why not hanging out with foreigners? It's the matter of priorities. If you're so ambitious to perfect your Japanese that there is absolutely nothing more important for you in the entire world - go ahead, ignore all non-Japanese, watch these J-dramas, study all day long, don't even say hi to your classmates. But if you want your year abroad to be a fulfilling experience on other levels as well - try to open up for people, regardless of the language they prefer to speak in. Who knows what gems are hidden out there.
Speaking of which - look what I found today exploring the buildings of my school:
It's a real park! And all that found because my 好奇心(kookishin, curiosity) told me to open a plain toilet window! :)
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