Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
My personal terrible experience was some really awful bullying at their hands because when the leader pulled the "We do NOT get in onsen outside of Japan - there is NO WAY we are getting in there naked. It is just common sense for non-Japanese. We want private baths in a private room! It is our religious and cultural right!" card, I wasn`t about to let her ruin my chance to get in a rotenburo for the first time... So I rolled my eyes and went to enjoy the onsen anyway.
Suddenly, it wasn`t "common sense that any non-Japanese would agree with". My choice not to go along with them made them look bad. My actually *wanting* to get in and telling the teachers I thought it was a wonderful chance was even worse for them. Why was *I* willing to do something they had thrown such fits about being "common sense" for foreigners, even though I was a foreigner too? Maybe they should try some of the cultural stuff too for once. Maybe, just maybe, all those "No foreigners would ever do this!" excuses in the past were exaggerations...
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@Nyororin
Wow, I have to say, you're kind of awesome.
I know it may not sound like a big deal to you, about not following the crowd, but where I come from you're completely shunned from being different. I keep an extremely low profile.
I actually want to go to Japan as a foreign exchange student myself, my senior year of high school in 2013. Unlike the exchange students you met, I want to go because I really do have a desire to learn the language because I have an absolute passion for the culture. & it's NOT because of anime.
(people on here might not have thought that to begin with, but there was a website where exchange students could talk to each other, and nearly all of them told me that I was close-minded for wanting to go to Japan, and that I was going for all the wrong reasons, when they didn't even know me! I don't even watch anime [it doesn't interest me])
Ever since I was 3 years old I've wanted to go to Japan. I was always pulling my mom into Asian antique shops so I could see oriental art. My mom always tells her friends how long I've wanted to go. Not many people have had an interest since three years of age.
I'm learning the language, and I've researched practically everything about Japan, but I truly will never know what it's like until I go. I hope that I can make a positive impression on you as an exchange student.