what I actually learned while studying abroad in Japan
I learned some Japanese, and a lot more about what it means to be a Canadian student.
A note: I have a serious condition called being a sociology student. There is no cure. Seriously though, I may be generalizing heavily based on observations from my personal experiences. In no way do I claim to accurately represent these cultures. I welcome your perspectives!
In a decision few people understood, I turned down a third internship at Microsoft and delayed my graduation to study abroad. I’ve been away from Toronto for a year and a half: mostly spent in Tokyo, but also places like Hawaii, Okinawa, Thailand, and Indonesia.
Did you notice the strong tropical island theme? Nothing could be a more glaring contrast from the vast expanses of Canadian land. The saturated heat abusing my sweat glands. The aggressive volume of colourful flora. The secret underwater societies of neon fish. Boats, boats, boats. Between tubes of sunscreen and litres of cold bottled water, snow was a calcified memory.
I didn’t forget about Canada, though. The differences in my environment reminded me that I was nowhere near Toronto, Torontonians, and the University of Toronto. I only realized how truly cold it gets in Canada after feeling how hot it is elsewhere. Precisely by being away, I was learning so much about home. Leaving opens an opportunity for gathering data, for calibration. We think we have a sense for our university and work culture here, yet we rarely pop the bubble and break the surface for some fresh air.
Do we know who we are, if we haven’t encountered who we aren’t?
In Japan, I could fully digest how the North American1 relationship between university and career is not universal. Japanese university is sometimes described as being “the summer break of your life”. Why? To start, we’ve all heard about the stressful Japanese work culture that students encounter after graduating. Their high school experience is also tough, since they study hard to be accepted to a top school. But while companies care about the university name, they care less about a student’s major or grades, since they expect to train new hires from zero. Japanese university is thus sandwiched between past academic stress and future career stress.
Students capitalize on this zero-gravity university environment to work part-time jobs, do extracurriculars, and get wasted at parties.
Personally, I found their upper-year liberal arts courses to be about high-school level. I never used to take UofT’s ‘academically rigourous’ reputation seriously, believing university was tough for everyone. Then I met friends who came to Toronto on exchange from top Japanese universities, like the University of Tokyo or Osaka University. They told me their most academically challenging experience by far was at the University of Toronto. You can probably imagine the shock I received when I explained my school’s popular nickname, UofTears, to local Japanese students.
What about work? We might say we live in a hustle culture in North American cities, but our perspective on the extent of our hustle is limited until we leave. We can whisper about the languor of Spanish siestas and drool at the standards for paid vacation in France (minimum five weeks, often more). But trying to imagine this lifestyle from afar is like trying to taste a new spice only from its photo.
There’s only one way to find out — get on a plane, and see for yourself.
You don’t actually need to go to Europe specifically to see how Europeans live, though. Here in North America, I don’t often meet Europeans. I’ve since figured out that it’s because they’re ALL IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. On a 40-person tour in a Thai national park, I was one of two Canadians among endless Brits, French, Germans, Dutch. There, I was first exposed to this cross-cultural vacation gap: they seem to travel often, just not to Canada. Canadians might not realize how much these guys travel, because we 1) don’t leave as much, and 2) don’t get many tourists2 in Toronto.
By being abroad, I could sit in front of the mirror and see all my culturally North American features.
Staying in France during Vacation Month (August) helped me confront how deeply married we North Americans are to our future careers. There, seasonal work and gap years and backpacking are mundane, not mythical. I can’t help but admire how our European counterparts advocate for having diverse experiences during your youth (such as the Erasmus program for studying/interning across the EU).
Don’t get me wrong — the point is not to screw around wasting time and collecting passport stamps. Rather, I believe North American students also deserve to explore without fearing that their future careers will evaporate. We’re told that the ‘undergrad→ grad school → job’ pipeline is the formula for capital-S Success, so students can’t afford to interrupt this recipe by trying something temporarily. Your dreams — say, moving somewhere new— will have to wait, until you’re more stable.
Except, the timing for risk-taking will likely never get better in the future. If you’re stable, you have more at stake (a job you love, a house you bought, a family you’ve started) when you finally think you’re ‘ready’ to e.g. move to Japan. Why, then, are students delaying their dreams for a time when it makes the least sense? No wonder my university peers talk about their futures with a sense of imprisonment and defeat. We need the opportunity to learn outside the classroom, to own our time and experiences.
I’m certainly biased, but I’m not the only gap year supremacist out there. When I was debating my gap year before university, I talked to a lot of people who regretted not taking a gap year. Conversely, I never met someone who did regret their gap year. Today, my gap year is the reason I study computer science and sociology instead of psychology. I had also debated the length of my study abroad — one semester or two — and approached my advisor for an opinion. She told me: in her experience, students usually want to extend their semesters (and are often unable to), but she’s never had a student want to return early from their full-year abroad. You already know how I interpreted this information.
However, I haven’t told you about the anxiety I encountered before choosing to study abroad. I struggled to turn down my internship, knowing it probably costed me a full-time job. Plus, no one likes the idea of being behind and graduating later than everyone else. Part of the learning experience from studying abroad, then, was just sitting with the weight of my decision. An exercise in my sense of agency: first, choosing the regret I’d rather have (I’d rather regret the experience than regret not pursuing it). Second, feeling the fear, and doing it anyway. If the European work attitude taught me anything, it’s that I have a whole life ahead of me to make money, but being unemployed never gets classier than when you’re young and on exchange. Finally, understanding that some barriers are entirely self-constructed. When I talk to students who want to study abroad or travel, but won’t, they often cite financial barriers. Yet I found the cost of living in Tokyo to be cheaper than Toronto — renting alone for a 1br was about $800/mo — not accounting for the $8,000 my university gave me to study abroad, which means I paid no tuition3. I say, don’t worry about whether it’s possible. Worry about whether you want it badly enough to make it happen.
Between being a local in Toronto, an exchange student in Tokyo, a solo traveller in Thailand, and a spectator in France — I’ve been forced to accept that, yes, we are products of our environment. Luckily, I’m not forced to accept the environment that I’m in. And neither are you.
Sorry for deceiving you. I was supposed to give you some juicy study-abroad stories, but you’ll have to wait a little. For now, would you like a sample? I…
…recovered from being a lazy girl and went feral for hiking solo
…warmed up to the art of being a good hostess
…visited every damn bathhouse
Also, if this piece has tickled the adventurous part of you, and you don’t have the option to study abroad, consider looking into doing a working holiday in 35+ countries like Japan or France.
this post was written at Daybreak Studio and Liu Loqum Atelier on College St W.
when I say North American, I mean Canadians + Americans. We really need a term that refers to Americans and Canadians, and specifically the urban populations of both countries. I think they are much more alike than urban Americans/Canadians are to rural Americans/Canadians. Let me know if you have a suggestion?
Speaking of tourists, we are bad domestic tourists. Only when I encountered the strength of domestic tourism in Japan and France — countries where holidays are often spent in another part of the country — did I realize our complete lack of it in Canada.
Just want to acknowledge the immense privilege that is embedded in this entire paragraph.