Japan Student Exchange Q&A Part2

Again, thank you to everybody who asked me questions in emails!! :D

Before I start, I would like to remind you that today is the opening day for World Cup 2014 in Brazil! Canada is, unfortunately, not part of this amazing event. However, the Japanese team, Samurai Japan, is going to be playing this year and their first match will be on Saturday >_< I mainly look forward to Atsuto Uchida and Makoto Hasebe!! They are my two athletic crushes recently :3 They're so cute *_*

Uchida Atsuto

Hasebe Makoto

 Ok, before this post becomes a rant about my Japanese crushes... Lets get to the questions ;)

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Q7. What if I experience homesickness?

I didn't get any homesickness while I was in Japan! I was really busy with school and school clubs. So the best way for me was to keep myself busy and find close friends in Japan to feel less lonely. 

Q8. What happens when I have a problem with my host family?

Try to communicate about the problem with your host family first but if it doesn't work, then go to your counsellor. The company will try to find a new family or they will try to talk about it with the family on their side. 

Q9. Can you chose the city you were going to?

I wasn't able to chose it myself. I was lucky to be placed in Kanagawa since it was only 40mins by train from Shinjuku station which is downtown Tokyo. I'm not sure how the companies decide on locations but I assume it has to do with your application and what they think your personality is. 

Q10. Will you be with another exchange student in the same school?

I had four fellow exchange students in my school. My host school was very focused on English and foreign languages, like Chinese. Therefore, there will be many exchange students every year coming from different countries. Our company didn't allow us to "hang out" too much with other exchange students but it was close to impossible since we basically all had the same friends and all knew the same people. 

Q11. Can you wear makeup to school?

My school was very westernized and they didn't have much rules for how you looked. They allowed everything reasonable and didn't have an uniform. However, most schools in Japan do have regulations for your looks so be careful! 

Q12. How do you make friends in Japan?

It's different from person to person since our personalities are different. I personally love sports so I joined sports clubs at my school and became very familiar with people on the teams, mostly guys since we didn't have a lot of girls in my school. Another thing is to become close to your classmates so that you can get to know other people from other classes through them. Go talk to them yourself since most of them are too shy to talk to you and make conversation with them. I got really close to the girls since there was only eight other girls in my class and there was a total of thirty. Don't think that you're special because you're a foreigner! This might sound weird, but it's important to consider yourself one of the Japanese students in order to blend in with them. 

Hopefully this wasn't too long for you to sit through and I wish this helped people with questions. If there's anymore questions that you want me to ask, comment down below or 

Email: liumanou@gmail.com

Youtube: Manou Liu

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Japan Student Exchange Q&A Part1

First of all, I would like to thank everybody who sent me emails with questions about my trip, thank you for reading my blog!! So many questions make me happy :3

I had to separate this into two posts so that I don't have a massively long one and bore you all to death.

Just a reminder: I'm not in Japan anymore! I came back to Canada in January.

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Q1. What academic requirements do I have to have?

This depends on the company you chose. Greenheart Travel has a requirement of a GPA of 3 but that's a system rarely used in Canada so I'm not quite sure what it actually means. My school told me it should equal to at least a C student, so as long as you're not failing school, it's fine.

Q2. How old do I have to be?

This depends on your company again but I've seen from 13 to 18. A lot of companies think that 19 would be too old to be in a high school exchange program but they usually have gap year options. 

Q3. How much pocket money do I need?

I had about 300$ per month. This might sound like a lot to some but if you think about it, you have to pay for transportation (train, bus, etc.) to school everyday (unless you walk or take the train), food which is irresistible. You have to base it on your own spending habits and add a little more to that to go out and have fun with your friends. 

Q4.  Can my parents visit while you are on exchange?

My company didn't allow my parents to visit and they had a limit of two calls (skype or telephone) max every month. My mom was really mad about this since she doesn't understand why they did that. The reason is to help you overcome homesickness since the more you talk to your friends and parents back home, you get more sad. 

Q5. How were you supported in Japan?

I had a counselor who worked for the company who met with me every month to talk about any problems I encountered. If there was anything uncomfortable (host family, host school, etc.), she's the person I should go to. She was fluent in English so it was easy to talk with her. 

Q6. Do I need to be fluent in the language? How fluent are you?

I think it's a good idea to know some of the language to survive better and to make the lives of people around easier too. In case of emergency, it's always better to speak in Japanese for people around to understand and react faster. It will make your life much easier too. 

I had six years of Japanese school training before deciding to go to the country. I'm Chinese originally so I could read the kanjis pretty well and I was lucky enough to have Japanese friends to practice with so I got around easily.

Please go to the next post for part2! 

If you have any questions I didn't cover, please comment down below or...

Email: liumanou@gmail.com