初めまして！"Hajimemashite," "Hello (when meeting someone for the first time!)"
My name is Elizabeth Roop, though you can call me Liz if you like. I'm a junior English and History double major at Morningside College in Sioux City, IA, though come next January, I plan to spend a semester as a student at Kansai Gaikokugo Daigaku (Kansai Gaidai for short) in Hirakata, Japan. I've already been accepted by my home college for study abroad (and have been ever since December 2017, actually), but there's still quite a bit left to be accomplished before I leave for a new school and a new country. From getting my passport, to applying for a visa, to arranging a homestay, to registering for classes, to continuing to strengthen my Japanese skills, to getting a plane ticket, I have a lot of things I have to get done over the next six months before I'll be ready for my four and a half months abroad.
And besides all of the obvious things listed above, there are a lot of other things I'm gonna have to make sure to get done before flying overseas. Public WiFi isn't as common in Japan as it is in America, so I'm gonna need to make sure to sign up for a pocket WiFi provider in order to be able to stay connected with friends and family back home. I'm going to need to make sure to sign up for a metro pass so I'll be able to commute from my homestay family's home to school (and hopefully get a fair bit of exploring done too). Oh, and I'm also gonna need to remember to apply for the Gilman Grant (a government-funded study-abroad grant often provided to recipients of the Pell Grant, which helps students from a low-income background attend college), because, let's face it, studying abroad is expensive.
My point is, there is a lot on my plate right now, and I'm simultaneously excited and overwhelmed.
As an undergrad student tackling the tasks required to make it from small-town Iowa (my hometown has a population of 1100, and my college town has a population of around 83,000) to big-city Hirakata (a population of over 404,000), I've found myself wishing several times that there was a step-by-step guide to getting from Point A (passport), to Point B (visa), and so on to Point Z (arriving in Japan and starting the alphabet all over again). Sure, it's not too terribly hard to find online guides for each individual task, but wouldn't it be nice to have observations and tips for each stage of the process all in one place? That, my friends, is the current goal of this blog: to track my experiences at each step of the journey, all the way from The Little Town in a Cornfield to Kansai Gaidai. As I figure out and can check each stage of the process off of my to-do list, I'll take notes about what was required to get it done, and what I wish I had known beforehand. In this way, I hope to create a helpful resource for any other students planning to study in Japan.
But what happens to the blog once I actually get to Japan? Why, I'm so glad you asked! At this point, the hope is that I'll continue to update the blog at least once weekly with a record of my experiences up to that point and/or an explanation of different parts of Japanese culture that I find fascinating, cool, exciting, or even straight-up disconcerting (I'm preparing for a healthy dose of culture shock, despite all the time I've spent researching the nation and culture over the past almost-seven years). Once I make it overseas, the blog's title will be slightly changed to read "An Iowa Girl in Japan." Of course, we've still got a long way to go until then, at least when it comes to everything that has to happen first. Time-wise, as the title of this post suggests, I'm planning to take off for Japan on January 16, 2019, exactly six months from today (which is partially why I decided to set up and start this blog when I did). Of course, it's easy to start a project when you're on summer vacation and don't have too terribly many demands on your time. Junior year might keep me from updating as often as I'd like, but I'll definitely do my best to make this blog as helpful and interesting of a resource as I can.
Oh, and if you're wondering about the title: "ヘンナ外人," or Henna Gaijin, is a Japanese term that means "strange foreigner," and can be used to describe those odd foreigners who actually know quite a bit about Japanese culture (and thus hopefully can avoid many of the typical embarrassing lost-tourist mistakes culture shock can lead to). My hope is to actually be able to earn this moniker, so I'm using it as my blog title in the hopes that it will actually turn out to be the truth. If it doesn't, the blog title might end up changing later, but for now, I thought it'd be a cool/quirky title that would help my humble little blog stand out a bit in the limitless realm that is the internet.
A last couple of notes: This actually isn't my first foray into the blogosphere. If you'd like to read more of my writing, you can check out my other (tentatively-completed) blog, Naturally Observant, at naturallyobservantblog.blogspot.com. This blog was written for an English class this past spring semester, and focuses on nature and my place therein. And lastly, if you have any questions or comments for me, you can tweet me @starrymisfit.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing my experiences (and hopefully some helpful advice) with you going forward!
宜しくお願いします！"Yoroshiku onegai shimasu," a phrase said at a first meeting which means something like "let's work together" or "let's be kind to each other!"
--エリザベス ("Erizabesu," "Elizabeth")
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