Hello! I’m Simon Socolow, a rising sophomore, and I am studying Japanese in Kanazawa, Japan in a program called Princeton in Ishikawa. My first week is almost up, and I will take you through it.
My flights went without trouble, the long 14 hour Detroit to Haneda (Tokyo) flight was like other super long ones — a bore and I wished I wasn’t on a plane. But the food was interesting and kinda good. I made friends with the two people sitting next to me, they were brothers going to travel around Japan for a couple weeks and they had ChatGPT write their travel plans! One had graduated from University of Florida and is now working an IT job, the other was still there, both in Computer Science.
Then I met a couple from Kentucky in Tokyo when we were waiting on our flight to Kanazawa when I asked them if I could trade some USD for some yen because I didn’t have any and I thought I would need it for the bus ride I would take. It worked! Most people never think to ask. Then on the flight I sat next to a Japanese couple with a baby and I talked to them in Japanese which was cool. They thought I was very good at Japanese until we talked a lot, then my weaknesses were apparent. We had an awesome view of Mt. Fuji from the airplane; after PII I will try to hike it.
Then I got to the hotel and met the other PII students, some of us went and had dinner together. Then the next day we were taken with our host families to our houses. My house is in Komatsu, which is a bit away from Kanazawa, so every morning I leave the house at 7:30am, my host mom drives me to the train station, I take the train to Kanazawa, and arrive at the Rifare building around 8:47, so my commute is a little longer than an hour.
The Japanese classes are super fast paced, I’m pretty much always studying. But I have made some good friends, and being able to use what I’m learning in everyday life is motivating.