I’m in 11th and I Signed up for my high school’s foreign exchange student program that’s going for this whole school year and I chose Japan in the heat of the moment, now I’m going to Japan in two weeks w/ little to no Japanese language background. How hard is it be for me? I’m freaking out because I’ve only dabbled in the Japanese language a few times and only know how to say “I’m American” and “hello”. Is this year going to be extremely hard? I need help before I end up in Japan.
4 comments
This will depend very much on the individual school you are going to and how much support that school will provide. You should be talking to your teachers / school counselors / study abroad staff members. They will know more about the situation you’ll be in than strangers on the Internet.
Knowing nothing about your school, I feel safe saying that, in general, despite everyone studying English as a foreign language, very few people are able to or feel comfortable having conversations in it. Also, while it’s getting better, accessiblity in terms of English can be hard to find in some areas of life. Furthermore, Japanese is very different from English and it is not as easy to just “pick up” for English speakers like, say, Spanish might be. I hope you have a smartphone and/or pocket electric dictionary.
I can’t imagine that you’re just gonna be dropped off at a random high school with no support…. But if that *were* the case, then yes, this year might be extremely hard.
A japanese phrase book would be handy, you can always just point at stuff. Also google translate or something similar on your phone. Learning about cultural things may be a good topic to dive into. How people conduct themselves, how they view the world etc. Google maps works well in japan..for trains and buses. HS should be pretty fun!
Hey I’ve done this 🙂 I did an exchange year to Japan when I was 17. The only Japanese I knew before was saying things like hello and where is the toilet. I also didn’t get any Japanese classes in Japan so I have learned Japanese pretty much only by copying others. But, you’ll be fine 🙂 it took me a few months to start understanding what people were saying and another few months to speak. If you don’t yet know hiragana and katakana I would study those now. Don’t worry about if you’re slow to read now, you’ll get plenty of practice in Japan.
My advice to you is to be brave and keep trying. My exchange year was a life changing experience and I wouldn’t change it for anything. It was at times really hard, funny, bizarre and amazing.
> Is this year going to be extremely hard?
Yes but it’ll probably be an amazing experience. Lean into it and make the most of it – you’ll probably never have another experience like it.