MY STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCE

The thing about Japan is that people love to talk about how different and unique it is. There seems to be this strange internet-fueled mythos surrounding the country that makes people believe it's somehow wildly different from any other place they've ever been to before. As I prepared to study abroad in Spring of 2023, friends and family inundated me with videos about racism, sexism, difficult college experiences, and news articles about strange or controversial incidents that occurred there. To put it short, this stressed me out.

As a biracial woman who already experiences these problems in my daily life, I didn't want to start my trip with a long list of negatives to look forward to. I wanted an open mind. What I found, in the end, was that Japan is quite similar to America. Of course, there are cultural differences. There was a lot of bureaucracy and it took way longer to make friends than I expected. It's a totally different culture. But in the end, people are people. Despite everything, I wasn't treated any differently from how I've been treated elsewhere. I never experienced any of the crazy things people were warning me about.

Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan and noticeably has fewer foreigners. I was aware that I stood out, just like how back at home, I also stand out with my odd sense of style and ambiguous ethnicity. People didn't refuse to touch the things I touched or cross the street when I passed by. People didn't stare. When people asked where I was from, it wasn’t followed with weirdly specific questions about my genetics. Which is actually something that I experience in the USA quite often. When I told people about my family being from Haiti, I don't recall any rude comments, just honesty curiosity.

Something I have learned from traveling abroad to more than just Japan, is that despite linguistic and cultural barriers, most people tend to be kind. Maybe it's because of my experience as a visitor, and not a resident, that I have this viewpoint. But I stand by it. Nagoya

Somehow, my experience in Nagoya became centered around jazz music. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened. I made some friends who wanted to join a university club, and I thought it could be fun; a way to make some more friends. Everyone there seemed pretty serious but I figured maybe it was a cultural difference. Then, halfway through the semester, I realized that I hadn't joined a club. I'd joined a special university-funded group that was going to perform at the Be Happy Jazz Festival. That's when the pressure really started to hit. I'd played piano for years, and I'd performed before. But I was totally unprepared to have to find an all black uniform and play in front of a huge crowd.

I tried to get out of it, but we'd already been listed in the official even magazine so I had no choice even though I didn't have a black suit. The club leader, Souta, told me that maybe I could borrow some clothes from one of the girls. I kind of looked at them, who were all a soldi foot shorter than me, and then looked at him, waiting for him to put together what the issue with that suggestion was. He figured it out and decided that maybe I could just wear black and it would be good enough. So, on one ridiculously hot summer day, I draped myself in all I had - a thick black skirt and shirt - and hiked my way through train stations and bus stations to the event hall, which was in a shockingly rural area. I was sweating like a pig and looked nothing like the other participants.

But in the end, it was a good time.

As if jazz was somehow written in my future, I at one point met a man lugging a drum kit up the stairs of the subway near my university. I offered to help and he refused, but we exchanged Instagram accounts to keep in touch. This led to him inviting me and my friends to see him perform. His Jazz band, Yamada Yasuku Trio, was incredible. Yamada's family, as it turned out, also owned a mochi shop. So, after seeing him perform twice, he invited me over for a personal mochi-crafting lesson. I definitely didn't expect one of my best friends in Japan to be a random dude from the subway, but life can be funny like that. He thought it was cool that I performed at the Be Happy Festival and asked me to play with his band at a bar. I was sick, so I had to refuse. Maybe one day we'll get to play together.

My musical experience in Japan had a deeper impact on me than I let on at the time. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2017, I lost my ability to play piano. Before then, I had competed at a national level, and had such horrible stage fright that even practicing in front of family members terrified me. I was really held back musically because of it, but always loved playing for myself so I was happy despite it. After my diagnosis, it felt like I’d lost one of my favorite hobbies due to the memory issues that resulted. Suddenly, I couldn't even play for myself anymore. It was miserable to even try.

In the years since, I'd been working on recovering and healing, but never felt that I had made progress until I joined the NSJO club and met Yamada. For whatever reason, talking to my new friends about jazz music really encouraged me to practice again. It became fun, instead of a painfully frustrating process of relearning how to do something I'd been able to do so easily a only few years previously. I even learned how to bass guitar from one of the guys at NSJO, which pushed me to practice even more.

To this day, Daisuke and I share songs with good basslines that we want to learn, and I update him on my progress. Through the inspiration to learn a new instrument, I have gained the confidence to challenge myself despite my diagnosis, and I find myself winning. My memory may not be what it was before, but I have noticed progress that I can only attribute to this new wave of motivation gifted to me by the people I met in Japan.

So, there were cultural differences. There were good times and bad. I definitely made a bit of a fool of myself more than once. But overall, I think my time in Japan changed me for the better, and that I should continue to challenge myself despite my MS, like I did while there. I may be immunocompromised and easily affected by heat, but I managed to survive Nagoya in the summer. I think I can survive a lot more. I am walking away from Japan with my heart set on returning one day, but with an open mind as to where I may end up next. Who knows what other hobbies I may pick up elsewhere?