In this journal, I’ll discuss the first few weeks of my time in Hakodate. I arrived here a few days before the start of my program, and stayed at a hotel in the Matsukaze-cho area. I had been in Japan for a few weeks at that point, and the little speaking experience I had built up proved to be very valuable at the check-in desk and with the cleaning staff (people speak English in Tokyo but not really in Hakodate). I spent these first few days doing very little, only going out to the konbini or to order food. On Thursday of that week, all of the program participants gathered at a hotel and began a lengthy orientation that culminated with a placement test. This year the program was downsized from the usual 60 to 20 students out of an abundance of caution. As a result, there were only two classes this year, one at a “300” level and another at a “400” level. Having just finished Japanese 202 at Williams, I joined the ~300 level C-gumi.
I also met my host family that weekend. My host father and mother picked me up from the hotel, and we drove to their house in the northeast part of town. I was nervous, and it became clear that the “speaking experience” I had built up to that point was not really useful for full conversations. At home, I met my host brother and moved into my own room with a western-style bed (!). Our dinner that night was massive, and they have continued to be very sizable, as a result of me claiming that I “eat a lot” on my pre-program report. After a long first weekend, I found myself turning off the lights at the early hour of 9PM, and slept my last night before class began.
Classes that week were a bit of a shock. No matter how prepared you feel, and even if you are only studying one subject, three hours of class and three hours of homework are quite a workload after doing nothing difficult for the three weeks prior. At that point I had the fleeting motivation of starting something new, and tackled my homework as soon as I returned home from class. I took runs after dinner and showered before bed– a change that I somewhat unhappily made from my usual schedule. Though the days felt long, before I knew it that week was past.