So I wouldn't have thought of doing this without
Yoru-the-Rogue's mentioning it, but here's a little write-up of how my 6-week long Japanese study abroad program went! I found out in May that I'd won an all-expenses paid-and-then-some grant to study for 6 weeks at the Japan Foundation's Japanese Language Institute in Kansai! I was one of 40 college students from around the world who participated in it, and it was amazing! (I feel like at this point I should mention that my major is Japanese, haha!)
The view from my (single!!!!) room at the Institute! I never got tired of looking at this from my window... I'd leave the curtains open all night so it'd be the last thing I saw before I fell asleep, and the first thing I saw when I woke up!
The Institute is located 40 minutes (by train) outside of Osaka city, so here's a shot of the first train I rode into Osaka!
The view from Umeda Sky Building in Osaka! Being from a small town on a small island, this was so vastly different than anything I'm used to...!
Obligatory photo of my face.
The Namba area in Osaka was my absolute favorite thing about the city. So lively, so much good food!
The Dotonbori area of Osaka city!
The Institute's facilities were amazing.
In the 18-story dormitory building, there's these two-floor lounges with massive windows! My friends and I often hung out in this lounge on the 14th floor while we did homework!
While we were there, we were able to go to the Kishiwada Danjiri Festival in Kishiwada, a nearby town! It's one of the biggest danjiri festivals in Japan, so I was so stoked to be able to see it!
The giant danjiri carts that are pulled by hundreds! So much fun to watch!
40 minutes away from the Institute in the opposite direction is Wakayama, so I went there twice on my free days! Such a different feeling. My Tokyo friend calls Wakayama "the boonies."
I loved everything about Wakayama, though!
The view from the top of Wakayama castle!
Alright, that's the last of my Wakayama photos. It was such a peaceful place!
The program paid for us to go on field trips as well - one of them was to Nara and Kyoto! They took us to Todaiji, the largest wooden building the world! If you ever have a chance to come here, I highly recommend it - it's amazing! So huge!
(...And I'm not ashamed to say that the majority of my photos of Todaiji were taken for reference photos should I ever need to draw Fire Nation interiors ever again, hahaha!)The massive statue of Buddha in Todaiji.
We also got to see Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavillion!) in Kyoto as well! I had to read the book about this place by Mishima (...not one of my favorite books...), so it was cool to see the place I read an entire novel about!
The last weekend I was there, I took a Shinkansen to Tokyo to see one of my friends from high school! He lives in the Nishiwaseda area of Shinjuku - here's a photo of Takadanobaba, near his apartment!
Massive shrine in Asakusa! The day we went, there was a fall festival, so it was (a little too) crowded.
The only thing I really wanted to see in Tokyo (other than my friend!) was this, the famous Shibuya crosswalk! Mission accomplished.
The final field trip we went on was to Koya-san in Wakayama. It was so amazing! It really reminded me of a Studio Ghibli film setting...
Sorry, that's a lot of photos! (Although it's only like, 1/200th of the amount of photos I took...) I didn't want to post any photos with my friends in it for privacy reasons, so sorry it's mostly just landscapes and whatnot! Also, if you were to solely judge my trip by these photos, it seems mostly like a vacation, doesn't it?
Well, it kind of was since it was a break from work!! On most weekdays, we had classes all day, and we gave a lot of speeches and presentations - all in Japanese! At the level I'm currently in at my university, a good amount of my classes are in English, so it was definitely challenging - but amazing. Being immersed in the language 24/7 with other students (most of whom didn't speak any English!) really helped me. I've been back for a week and a half now, and I feel like I'm already losing most of the Japanese I learned...
Anyway, now it's back to work for me. T_T But at least now that I'm home with my art PC, I can draw again! That was one of the only things I missed while I was abroad! I was too busy studying and adventuring while I was there, I didn't draw a single thing there!