Japan: Lost and Found - Episode 12: Beyond the Classroom

Without a doubt, my best lessons in Japanese language and culture took place outside of the classroom.

I learned quite a lot of kanji from bus and train announcements of all the stops during my trips around the city.

And my speaking skills gave way to actual conversation largely from going to bars and drunkenly chatting with friends or random people there.

Not to mention, one of the main draws of Temple University’s Japan program was that the school had its own campus in Tokyo, where Japanese students could take classes in English and get an American degree.

This design helped to facilitate our direct interaction with Japanese peers. Thanks to the Japanese students I befriended, I learned a lot about the local life and culture that I never would have known otherwise.

But one particular experience, during my second semester studying in Tokyo, managed to kick-start a much more significant process of learning, growth, and adaptation. This experience helped to take cultural exchange to a whole new level for me, well beyond those of a study abroad program.

The experience in question was falling in love with a Japanese resident.

A fellow student at the school.

At the start of the second semester, there were a number of American students who had arrived in Tokyo for the first time. Since I had already been there for a few months, I volunteered to serve as a guide for the school’s introductory student tours, to help show the newcomers around the city.

As our group wandered around the streets of the Roppongi Hills district, I found myself getting along rather well with another tour guide.

While many Japanese girls have a hyper-“ladylike” demeanor that can come across as ethereal, this girl was down to earth: friendly, open, and ready to crack jokes.

A friend of mine saw me laughing and flirting with this girl, and later he let me know that she was already dating someone. And not just someone. She was dating a guy I had known from my first semester. A total dude-bro. We had disliked each other almost immediately upon meeting. What the heck did she see in that guy??

Anyway, throughout the semester, I would see this girl at the school, and sometimes we’d chat in the student lounge.

We also started to meet up among friends for lunch or karaoke or whatever. We legitimately became buds, though there was clearly another chemistry at play as well.

But she was still dating that other guy, so nothing happened.

In fact, it was only after I had returned to the States that she finally admitted her feelings to me. She later explained that as she gained competence in English, her attraction to her boyfriend had begun to wane. But she had felt guilty about it, so it took a while for her to be honest with herself.

She also told me that she would be coming to the States to study, at the school’s main campus in Philadelphia.

And so, despite being thousands of miles apart from one another, we marked the start of a relationship together. And we counted down to when we could see each other again.

She came to study in Philly just as I was finishing university, and preparing to apply for graduate school. We went to school together, and she spent a lot of time at my place.

I showed her around the city, and she taught me how to cook the meals that Japanese people make at home.

It was a wonderful time.

My family got a kick out of getting to know this visitor from a foreign land. I met her family just before heading off to grad school. In both cases, there was plenty of curiosity, novelty, generosity, and warmth to go around. Vital components for a real cultural exchange.

That trip to Japan I took was shortly after she herself had left the States. I got to see her one last time before heading off to graduate school.

With graduate school came a real challenge.

This was a doctorate program that would last five years, or more! We would be living in different countries for that entire time. Completely apart, give or take some short visits.

This reality was extremely hard to take. But we had gotten engaged before she had left, and we were committed to waiting it out.

We Skyped every morning and every evening. We wrote letters and sent gift boxes. I drew her some comics. We visited each other as much as our schedules and wallets would allow (including a surprise visit that I managed to pull off with the help of her mom and a lot of luck). And whoever was doing the visiting was always horribly jetlagged, constantly nodding off.

It was rough, it was lonely, and it was stressful.

But we weathered that five-year storm. As I finished up my research and worked on my dissertation, I was also applying for a fiancée visa. It took a year to process. And I managed to land a few job offers in advance of my graduation.

One of them was a postdoctoral research fellowship at McGill University. In Montreal.

So, while working on the US visa and planning our wedding, I was also working on a work permit and the paperwork necessary for my wife to join me in Canada!