Excerpts from Jessica Tamblyn, exchange student
Day 1
The night we arrived they told us that we had a welcoming ceremony, which we had to wear formal clothing for. I hardly brought fancy clothes, but I guess I did alright by wearing a skirt/semi fancy top. When we got there though, all of the students were wearing SUITS, it was crazy fancy!! I definitely felt out of place, but luckily there were more foreigners that weren’t too crazy fancy, so it wasn’t so bad. The opening ceremony was basically like a school assembly, but I think it was only for exchange students? All the important school staff were there, like the president and the chancellor, they spoke all in Japanese, so naturally I didn’t understand much of what was happening. OH! And every time someone got up to speak (every time, doesn’t matter how important the person was), everyone in the audience had to stand up, wait for them to get to the podium, and then bow, then we were able to sit down, then when they were done we had to stand up and bow again. (I think all that moving around was the only thing that kept me awake at that point, actually.)
After the president, the chancellor, and some other people (teachers, maybe?) spoke, visitors from various embassies gave their speeches, some short and others a bit long. They were half in English though, which was a relief to hear after having everything thus far spoken in Japanese. There was someone from Poland, Norway, and somewhere else... No Canada or America though. The guy who spoke (he was from Poland I believe) was very inspiring!! He went off about how the true meaning of がんばって (ganbatte/goodluck) was work hard, try your best and most importantly, persevere. I should’ve recorded it, it was actually pretty a good speech.
Immediately after the ceremony we walked out, and there was a pathway of people clapping and cheering as we walked out. I don’t know how to explain it really, like two rows of people, and we walked in between them as they faced us. Anyways, it felt pretty cool, but weird at the same time. We then headed over to the English tea room. In here we had to find the table that had our country’s name on it, ours was combined with a lot of other countries since there was only 3 Canadians at our school. Here I met the 3rd student from Camosun that came to Josai as well! He had already been in Japan for I think a week by that point? Then we started to eat and mingle with people, I met a Californian girl named Kelsey who then introduced us to a few more people.One of them when they found out that I was from Camosun College told me that I need to introduce myself to the chancellor. I already realized during the assembly how important this lady was, and was quite nervous to meet her because I didn’t want to offend her in any way. So, apparently Camosun is some super famous school according to Josai, which I was really surprised by!! As soon as we went to talk to her, instantly 4-5 photographers were taking photos of us with her.
