WANDERLUST AND ENTHUSIASM

WANDERLUST AND ENTHUSIASM After a 3 hour and 30 minute flight, from Manila to Osaka, I was exhausted and tired. The first word that entered my mind exactly when the pilot announced that we already arrived in Japan was: food. I know that most people would start thinking about what they're going to do the following day or they'd be amazed at this beautiful Japan, in our case, the city of Osaka specifically. We arrived at around 8 PM that night, I think the reason why I immediately thought about food was simple because I was hungry. Can you imagine having to eat dinner at 4:30 PM, that's about 4 hours and a half without eating, I was famished. Naturally, when we got here we had to go to immigration, customs, and then go claim our bags. Once we were done, we went outside to buy bus tickets from Osaka to Kobe, it was really cold when we got outside because it rained. Then I thought about how lucky I was because I was actually here in Osaka, Japan representing our school as an exchange student. Not to mention I get to miss out a few days of sweating and heat from the Philippines. It's not everyday that you're given the opportunity to become an exchange student, so now I felt excited but tired. The bus ride from Osaka to Kobe took about an hour, I told myself, "Yes! We can finally eat and then sleep," well I guess I was wrong. After going down from the bus, it turns out that we still had to walk a kilometer at most to get to the hotel and with our luggage! I guess you could say that I wasn't having the best time. We got to the hotel at around 11 PM, then proceeded to buy at a 7-Eleven nearby, finally I can eat. My roommate and I slept at around 1 AM. Now, imagine having to function for at least a whole day with only 5 hours of sleep, that was the case for us. My roommate and I woke up at 5 in the morning, we felt exhausted and wanted to sleep more, and to add to our exhaustion was the painful walk had endure from the hotel to Kobe station. It felt as if it went on for forever, finally we got on the train and made our way to Uozomi station. Excitement and anxiousness, this are the words that I can use to sum up the burst of emotions that I felt that time. By the time we got to Akashi we had to wait for at least 15 minutes and naturally, we took pictures. After a while, Yuki-sensei fetched us from where all of us stood and we were led to their auditorium. Shock and joy, these are the emotions that I felt once we entered, since we were greeted by the Japanese by singing our alma mater song. I felt to honored to be a part of this glorious experience and privilege. After a short introduction, we were led to our classrooms. Naturally, I was supposed to be nervous, rather there was something inside me that made me feel at home. Once we got inside our classroom, we where greeted by confused and happy faces. Thank God that their homeroom professor was nice, since he was the one who introduced us to the class. After that brief introduction, we took our seats and class started. We were taken by surprise, not because of what the subject was about rather by the medium of communication used, Japanese. We ended up using Google Translate in order to translate the handout given to us. Even when the professor started writing on the board, we tried to understand it by using icon text clues. Finally, after an hour and a half, class was done. After that period, our buddies introduced themselves to us, my buddy's name is Hara Syotaro, he's really nice and very helpful. Next class came and it was the equivalent of a mix of Trigonometry and Basic Calculus, we were really loss at this moment since it was math and it's in Japanese! Thankfully, the class went on for also an hour and 30 minutes, where the 30 minutes was spent for group studying. It is in this time where we finally had the chance to bond with our buddies. After that we ate lunch together with ourselves (exchange students), and prepared for our presentation for the next class. For the next class, we presented about the Philippines and what makes us Filipinos truly unique. For more than half of the remaining time left for class, our classmates took us out for a campus tour. When we got bored we played tag, what shocked me was how quiet they played tag. In the Philippines, a game like tag is supposed to be played with much screaming and laughing, however for them it's like reading a book, quiet and focused. When the free time was over we changed to our PE uniforms and got ready for tennis, tennis class was an enjoyable class even though we were complete noobs. I think that's what made the class more fun. However the fun doesn't stop there we had another program/presentation, but this time we had a different audience, 75 Koreans and at least 20 Japanese exchange students last year. This was fun since we got to sing what we call the Konnichiwa song and meet some of the other exchange students and student ambassadors.

Overall, it was a good day and when we got to the hotel, I was so tired that I immediately fell asleep. I wonder what'll happen tomorrow.