One of my favorite moment of the week is Thrusday after class. I have a meeting with my obasan (grandma). She is an alumni from Rikkyo University, part of the Ladies’ club. A group of retired former Rikkyo students that want to spend time and teach international students Japanese.

My obasan, barely, speaks English. I, barely, speak Japanese. So it is a fun time. We, mostly, use Google translate to communicate. It is a great opportunity because she teaches me a lot that I won’t learn in class and also she teaches me a lot of Japanese culture and traditions.

It is also great to have somebody in our life that takes care of us. She will ask how I am going, what I did during the week, what I am planning to do. Some of my friends have one as well and they all take care of us. We sometimes complain about how badly we eat, because vegetables are very expensive and they brought us healthy snacks the next time.

My obasan is so great and I am enjoying so much talking to her. It is really one of the best time of my weeks.

Rikkyo university offers a lot of different opportunity and programs to either visit the city or get include in a community. We receive tons of emails every day concerning concert, events, …

I, therefore, try to sign up to as many as I can, but so many people apply we can not always get into all of them. But the one I really wanted to be include into is the one with the kids. Rikkyo is not only a university it is also connected to an elementary, middle and high school.

The program I signed up for was with the elementary school and consisted on spending a few hours with the kids around lunch time. Yesterday was the day. I show up to the school. I met the other students participating and then some kids arrive they all come to me, since I am the only non-japanese speaking person and ask me to follow them.

I arrived in a class full of 3rd graders, all boys (it is a boy school). They guide me to a table where I had lunch with them. Then we went outside to play for a few minutes, where they killed me. I haven’t played those games in years and I don’t know where they found so much energy. After this we went back to class to study mathematics. I pass. The teacher is having fun asking me to say the numbers in French, to make the kids play French games,…

An hour pass and the teacher ask me to get out so that the kids can change. So they have dress up outfit for when they come and go from/ to home and another one for PE, playing outside and class. When they are finally ready, they worked on their Kenji.

I had such a wonderful time with those kids. I see them everyday, because I live next to the school and I already found them so cute with their uniforms but spending a day with made me love them.

Sensei teaching mathematics, in Rikkyo Primary School, Ikebukuro, taken by Audrey BALLY on November 19th 2019.

Tokyo is an amazing city but it is true that after leaving for a few weekends there. I need some fresh air. Some time in the nature to relax.

The most iconic nature spot close to Tokyo is of course Mt Fuji. The hike’s trails close in September, which I did not know. So we had to find another way to go to the volcano. And what is a better thing than climbing My Fuji ? Is looking at it.

We, therefore, woke up at 5am a Sunday morning, which I have done in weeks. Took 3 trains down the country trails and finally arrived to the foot of My Fuji. A few steps’ climd led us to the beautiful Chureito Pagoda, a fabulous temple.

In Chureito Pagoda, taken by Audrey BALLY, 11/17/2019

It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too in Japan. And although the trip was long it was completely worth it.

Plus it was a great relaxing place to take a breath out of the city.

I am part of the VWU tennis team and I really wanted to keep practicing while being abroad. But getting to a new University is hard and I did not know how it worked here. I heard it was too late to join the University team, but they have circles, as they call it, that I could enter.

I, therefore, started to ask everyone in my classes if they knew somebody that played tennis. Some would say yes and they will text me when the person agree on me joining and they would never come back to me. So after a few weeks I finally was able to have contact with a player and joined my first practice.

I really enjoy the circle because we have daily practice time, but we can show up whenever we want. Meaning if I have class or a tone of work to do, I can skip it and come another day. There is no pressure.

Plus it is a huge group of 30 people, most of them don’t speak English at all, so it really feels like I am learning Japanese culture. Also some of them are better than me and I live the challenge to have to beat them.

Can’t be more happy than finding a good group to play tennis with.

It was something I have heard about Japan before coming, but I did not expected to be as pronounced as it is. There was the “rumor” that Japanese men after work would go straight to the bar before getting home. And in fact, it is not completely wrong.

Drinking in Japan is popular. The parks at night are full of young and older people that hang in group or couple drinking alcohol. Bars are full any night of the week and weekends. It is socially accepted to take drinks any time a day as well.

I do not believe it is a bad thing, knowing that Japanese are pretty quiet and alcohol helps them get close to others, but it is crazy to see on a Monday night a person passed out on the street. Or at 11p.m on every nigths, see people trough up or taking the train home completely drunk.

Japan’s drinking habits are very much far from the French one, where being drunk in the street is a crime and not accepted.

The hardest thing I found to be here is not to be able to read. When at the super market, we usually guest that this or this product is the one we are looking for. There are some fails, but most of the times, it is what we thought it was.

If you are able to read, then you can look for the things on the internet and found out what it is. Right now our only help is Google translate and I don’t remember a time where it worked.

To finally be able to read and write I am learning the alphabet. Because Japan can not make it easy, there are two different alphabet hiragana and katakana plus all the kenji. I can already bet I won’t be master all of them for a while.

Friday September 20 was the first day of school at Rikkyo University. The last day of the week being my longest of all, I was excited to meet my professors and see how interesting my classes were going to be.

I started off my day with Japanese class, where we saw a first few hiraganas and started to learn the basis of the language. I think it was very interesting for us, who were 20 years old and up, to learn how to read and write all over again. It has been a minimum of 15 years, since it hadn’t happened to us.

I, then, discovered that there is a lunch period for everybody, everyday, which is great otherwise I would have happened a full on day. The next class we just overviewed the syllabus. Then I had the moot Court class, which is in a court looking classroom. It is super realistic and I am excited to be participating for this project.

My last class of the day was very surprising, since when I got there, there were only Japanese students seating. I asked my friend who was in the same class, are you sure it is not in Japanese, three times. When the professor arrived I felt much better, he is British so no worried the class will be held in a language I know. Since they were not expecting any international to be in this class, the other students kept on looking at me. I am really happy about this class, because I really wanted to meet Japanese people.

I guess another semester has begun.

School was not going to start before Friday September 20 and the orientation events stoped on the Friday beforehand. So we have almost a week for ourselves. I, then, decided to travel and really wanted to go to the most Japanese cultural town on Earth, Kyoto. I was joined by three other girls.

First of all, I thought we booked a regular hostel, but it was a capsule hotel. I did not know what to expect when I was moving up in the elevator towards it. Finally, the place was extremely clear, kind of luxurious and although the “room” was a capsule. It was very comfortable and sis not feel like one.

We spent four days in Kyoto. We had time to go to so many temples, I do not have enough time to talk about all of them. So here is a sum up. There was too many people and it was not as spectacularry as I expected to be, for the most well-known temples, Kinkaku-ji. My favorite temple was Ginkaku-ji, because of its large forest and the trail that goes around it. And I guess like everybody who has been there, I completely loved the shrine Fushimi Inari-taisha. When you are there, you can not stop wondering how they did this. It was already hard enough to carry my body all around the trail how did they carry all these dedications ?

I really had a wonderful time in Kyoto. It is truly a place to see to discover more about th Japanese culture and beauty.

As much as I love Japanese people and their manners, there is one aspect I do not understand about them. The metro station seems like the Japan’s jungle. Anywhere else, they are extremely polite (sometimes too polite). They always look after others,.. But when it comes to get their way around in the metro nobody else exists.

A lot of people walk while looking at their phones. They don’t pay attention to where they are going, who is behind or in front of them, what is the distance between themselves and somebody else, … Therefore when walking in station, you have to be ready at any moment to see one of them jump off on your road.

I guess, for the rest of the civilians, it is just an otherway of surviving. There are so many people in some of the station, if everybody was watching out for each other, no one would move anymore.

Maybe, I just expected Japaneses to be polite and perfect everywhere, all the time that is the reason I am so shocked of their behavior in the metro. If I was in France, it would not have shocked me.

Tokyo is an amazing city. It is made for everybody. Every neighborhoods have its own personality, its own soul, where you can really see the different sides of the Japanese culture.

For example, Akihabara is a “nerdy” place, where you can find entire buildings dedicated to games. Some sell game cards that can go up to 700,000 yens. Others have seven floors of arcade games, where you can see people that meet up after work to dance on dance game machines or other crazy arcade games at which they are insanely good.

The “weird” aspect of this neighborhood is the enormous number of girls’ Cafe. Those places are served by very little dressed young women. To attract more people, many manga dressed girls stand on the street giving flyers away and trying to bring people in.

I think this neighborhood reflects an interesting part of the Japanese culture. The part where men, after work, go drink and de-stress. By 9:30, you can already see men stil wearing their work outfits drunk in the street.