By Ana Cuellar:

When it was time to go, I walked towards the doors, looked back and realized that everybody was waving at me and saying goodbye as if we were old acquaintance.

On my first trip, I only spoke with my tourist guide and some staff from my hotels – mostly about asking for directions to finds places. Whereas, on my second trip, I was able to talk with average Japanese people about any topic and created cultural connections. I had an amazing time when my Japanese language classmates and I went to a karaoke with some students from Hakodate High School. I interviewed a 5th generation ramen chef for my class project: it was challenging but fun because I had to learn the Japanese names of some of the ingredients. I talked Japanese politics with my host dad. I had a random, short & lovely chat with a senior lady in a street market when she saw me seated by myself waiting for the bus; she wanted to know if I was Japanese, which I found funny because both of my parents are 100% Mexicans. I took part in Hakodate’s Squid Festival Parade, and students from Hakodate’s schools taught me how to dance the “Squid Dance.” I can keep going with all the examples of me meeting people in a seemingly never-ending story!

If you have a place or country that is very important to you – and, you want to immerse yourself in its culture and learn from its people, knowing the language is the best thing you can do. The first time I visited Japan was in the spring of 2007. I did not speak a bit of Japanese, other than “arigatou.” I was like any other average tourist when visiting a country for the first time: camera always on hand, taking photos of everything I saw (especially all the fancy vending machines that sell almost everything.) I gazed at the colorful maps provided by tourist kiosks and tried to tip our waitress (in Japan is not customary to tip in restaurants) and visited some of the most popular attractions that Japan has to offer: the Tokyo Tower, the big Buddha of Toudai-ji, the Kinkaku-jin and the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. And, after the shortest 11 days of my life, I returned home.

Then, 8 years later I set foot in Japan again. This time, I came not as a tourist running blindly between attractions in Tokyo, but as a Japanese language student who was ready to dig deeper into the Japanese culture. I stayed with a host family living in a small city – Hakodate, in Hokkaido. There I experienced the humble and relaxing part of Japan not normally found in the big city. Despite the obvious differences between my first and second time visiting Japan, one remarkable difference was that I was able to speak basic to intermediate Japanese after 3 years of studying Japanese language in college. This language skill gave me two significant advantages the second time: the ability to visit more places frequented by locals, as well as the ability to talk with them about any topic.

As mentioned before, on my first trip, I only visited Japan’s “must see” places. Those places would usually be packed with tourists. I remember the tour guide would always take us to the restaurants specially catered to tourists. The food was good, however, the locals probably never visited those places, as they were mere tourist attractions, not actual restaurants.

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However, when I stayed in Hakodate I was able to interact with only Japanese people who did not speak any English at all. I never saw any foreigners in Hakodate other than my group of classmates! While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit their Konbu (Kelp) Museum and learn about konbu’s medical properties. I went to a karaoke for the first time (I was so glad that some songs had hiragana too because I am bad at kanji!!) I attended a soba-making workshop. My most fond memory, however, was when I visited a yakiton restaurant. The first thing that I noticed there was that many of the patrons were apparently regulars because they said hello to everybody waiting in line. The seat setting of the restaurant allowed you to freely speak with your seat neighbours and, after some beers and lemon sours (the restaurant only serves alcoholic drinks!), everybody was happily chatting with each other.

As mentioned before, I was the only foreigner there, so some of the patrons were curious about me. At first, they tried to speak to me in English and I answered in English, l but when I mentioned that I spoke a little bit of Japanese they became more excited and felt more confident to speak with me. My table neighbors and I spoke about topics such as the Japanese soccer league, Japan as the next Olympics’ host and about the best onsens in Hakodate.
I was also able to learn more about all the dishes that we were eating by talking to the owner of the restaurant who happened to be the head chef. I discovered that some of the meat dishes were organs like heart and liver! Feeling shocked, I told myself that maybe next time I would just stick with the questions like “how long you been working here?” Some foods are meant to remain a mystery.

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When it was time to go, I walked towards the doors, looked back and realized that everybody was waving at me and saying goodbye as if we were old acquaintance.

On my first trip, I only spoke with my tourist guide and some staff from my hotels – mostly about asking for directions to finds places. Whereas, on my second trip, I was able to talk with average Japanese people about any topic and created cultural connections. I had an amazing time when my Japanese language classmates and I went to a karaoke with some students from Hakodate High School. I interviewed a 5th generation ramen chef for my class project: it was challenging but fun because I had to learn the Japanese names of some of the ingredients. I talked Japanese politics with my host dad. I had a random, short & lovely chat with a senior lady in a street market when she saw me seated by myself waiting for the bus; she wanted to know if I was Japanese, which I found funny because both of my parents are 100% Mexicans. I took part in Hakodate’s Squid Festival Parade, and students from Hakodate’s schools taught me how to dance the “Squid Dance.” I can keep going with all the examples of me meeting people in a seemingly never-ending story!

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