To visit a university is one of my enjoyable things for this semester, so I was looking forward to visiting a WSU campus, and could learn about various things.
First, I enjoyed landscape from the window
while I was on the bus. Actually, I was sleepy a little, but I didn’t want to
lose this opportunity to see fascinating landscape, so I didn’t sleep. In
Japan, there are a lot of mountains, so I can’t look around a landscape like here.
That’s why it was really attractive and I was impressed by land. Also, I felt
America is really large and Japan is really small. I thought if Japan had like
this land, we could solve a lot of problems, including disposing of materials
in Fukushima. Japan doesn’t have enough land. When I returned to MFWI, I
thought such things.
Second, I was impressed by Japanese cartoons,
because my group members learned about Japanese language from them. My group
members were from Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Korea, and China. The student who is
from Saudi Arabia said “I’m hungry” in Japanese, and it was an informal way, so
I was surprised. They knew a lot of Japanese cartoons, so we enjoyed talking
about it. I am proud of them because it can become a common topic in the world.
Then, we discussed our countries with image
each other. The students who are from Brazil and Saudi Arabia asked us, including
Chinese and Korean, Asian people could distinguish whether the person is
Japanese, Chinese and Korean or not. We all answered “Yes, we can.” It depends
on the people, but usually we can distinguish one Asian country’s people from
another. It was an interesting question for me. They said they could not
distinguish, so when they greeted Asian people, they paid attention to our
rejoinder: If the rejoinder is a big reaction, the person is not Japanese, and
if it is a small or shy reaction, the person is Japanese. I learned the
stereotype for Japanese exists in every country.
Finally, the student who is from Brazil
told me about her culture shock. It was how to greet someone. In Brazil, they
kiss each other’s cheek each when they greet. She said she prefers American
greeting to Brazilian, because actually, she didn’t like the style. I didn’t think
they, like people who have this culture, don’t like the way for greeting, and I
noticed it was a stereotype for me about their country. I was glad to hear
about her culture shock.
In summary, I thought it was really
interesting to communicate with people from other countries in English. I
thought we need a common language. This experience became a special memory and
an opportunity to think about my country and other countries.