Japan I Can

 
Writing a blog is most definitely a new experience for me, mostly because I'm the type of person who likes to keep my feelings bottled inside and then when I finally go off it seems like there was no reason to get angry in the first place. But, after a deep conversation with myself and a full sized mirror, my reflection and I both agree: I cannot stay quiet forever.  Not only am I writing this blog to express myself, I am also using this as a way to get my ultimate goal out into the world: I, "Aidan Burnes," want to study abroad in Japan for my Sophomore year of high school. 
   
I understand that this isn't too surprising considering that the name of my blog is Diary of a Misunderstood Otaku, and it's only natural for someone obsessed with manga and anime to dream of traveling to Japan one day. Here, I would like to draw attention to both the name of my blog and what my ultimate goal actually is; when most people that I've talked to heard that I want to study abroad in Japan, they automatically assume that it is because I want to be in a country where anime and manga is not only the norm, but a place where I most likely am not going to be judged for liking (a.k.a. being totally obsessed with) both of these things. Those people are incorrect. Although manga and anime were the embers that sparked my passion with Japanese culture, they are not my only reason for wanting to travel abroad. Hence the name of my blog, Diary of a Misunderstood Otaku.  

By now, I'm assuming that you would like to hear (or read) my actual reasoning for traveling to the Land of the Rising Sun and I am more than happy to comply. I have listed my top five reasons for wanting to study abroad, starting with the least influential and working my way up.

5. I love anime and manga

Yes, anime and manga is ONE of the reasons I would like to study abroad in Japan. The worst thing in the world is to walk into a bookstore looking for some great manga and seeing only 1-2 cases full of the crappiest shoujo and shonen titles when there are about 5 entire bookshelves on vampire love stories. I'm not going to lie, but to be in a country where there are entire walls of manga does appeal to my otaku self. And if I really only wanted to go to Japan to read manga and watch anime, it wouldn't make any sense to go study there since I would have to participate at a school for most of my time. It would be easier to stay at home where (thanks to the internet) there are thousands of already translated manga at my fingertips, for free.   

4. I get to interact with tons of different people

This reason may not seem valid, but for someone in my position it is more blessing than curse. I live in a tiny city/ large town in Florida with only four local high schools and I would love to go into deeper detail about why meeting a lot of people would be fun and exciting, but I am posting this on the internet and have no desire to be tracked down by strangers since 99% of my reasoning is based off of the school I go to. Let's just say that I have been around the same people for multiple years and I cherish every new person I meet.

3. No other country grabs my interest

When I proposed the idea of studying abroad to my mother she was less than thrilled to hear that I wanted to travel to the other side of the world, God forbid in a country that didn't even speak English! My mom didn't want me to study abroad at all, but after weeks of endless begging, preaching, and multiple powerpoints, I had finally convinced her that studying abroad would be a good thing for me. The only problem was...we couldn't agree on how long my study should be. I wanted to go away for an entire school year and my mother only wanted me to leave for a summer or at least travel to a country where they A) speak English and B) have people of color. 

As a child, it was hard for me to understand why she wanted me to go away for only a summer when I could the full immersion experience. Soon, mom and I could see eye-to-eye after a nice, deep, mother-daughter conversation. I found out that my mother was worried about me living in a house full of strangers and being isolated because of the huge language barrier.

So, in order to ease some of her pains I called AFS (the program I am going to travel with) and thoroughly questioned their host family selection process. I also decided to check out some of the other potential countries that I could study abroad in, (Russia, France, India, China, Thailand, Costa Rica, etc.) and although some of the countries did catch my eye (i.e. Russia) I knew that I wouldn't want be nearly as satisfied because all of the countries had one unappealing factor: they weren't Japan.  

For all I know, I'm completely and utterly in love with this country. Whenever I see a word I immediately ask myself, "How would I write that into hiragana, katakana, or kanji?" (three of the four Japanese writing scripts) I have a J-POP station on my Pandora radio, I even say itadakimasu (thank you for this food) before every meal. Partially because it's faster than saying grace and mostly because it's something that the Japanese do. Studying abroad in Japan is not just a dream for me, it's my hobby and right now, one of the only things that keeps me occupied. I spend every moment I can learning about the culture, expanding my Japanese vocabulary, and learning the language (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). I don't and didn't do any of these things for the other countries I researched and looked at, because I had no genuine interest in any place other than Japan! 

Pretty soon my mom's reluctance towards the year program quickly faded after she spoke with other parents with children who had studied abroad for a year and found out that it was a great experience for your children and that everyone was able to survive.

2. It's a chance to learn more about myself

   

I believe that you truly begin to know yourself through isolation and being thrown into a completely different atmosphere to see how you cope. As a teenager, I am beginning to question whether or not I can really make it in the world on my own, and that is why studying abroad in Japan during my Sophomore year is beneficial to me. Not only can I be "on my own" for an entire school year, but I am also able to come back to my home country and improve on myself using the knowledge I have collected before going to college.

My mom told me that I can go to Japan as long as I do everything myself. That includes making the $13,200 to cover my AFS tuition and setting up my own fundraisers to do just that, so I am willing to admit I am a bit freaked out about having to raise 10 grand since I have never even seen a thousand dollars in my fourteen years of living. Besides the whole money part, I am extremely excited to see what it's like to be fluent in a language other than English and prove to some of the ignorant haters that Japanese is amazing. Watch, I'm gonna wow them with my Asian Persuasion. Mwahahahaa! Not only will learning another language further open my eyes to the entire Japanese culture, but it will also help me create poetry that can have power in two completely different places (and everyone knows that the number one way to relieve teen angst is through poetry)! 

1. Studying abroad involves my future

I have spent a great deal of my life asking myself what I wanted to become, or what I want to do with my life and every time the occupations I had in mind had the same things in common: 

• Traveling the world
• Working for the government
• Interacting with different cultures

So after discussing more of my options with my mother, she helped me cut out the middle man (this is after I said I wanted to become a linguist) and put all of my interests into one category and one occupation that offered everything I wanted. It turned out that what I truly wanted to be wasn't a linguist, an international spy, or Secretary of State. I want to achieve as close to total empathy as possible, to improve my country and the world. I want to help all cultures see eye-to-eye and be able to walk in all of their footsteps. For my entire life I had wanted to be a cultural anthropologist.  I guess it all started after I read Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
          
At the time, I just thought that I wanted to learn more about Greek mythology and why their religion was they way it was. But soon, it had turned into so much more than just the Greek gods. Before I knew it, I had delved into the deepest cracks of Ancient and not-so-ancient Grecian culture. I knew all about every folklore or myth, I knew what a typical day in Grecian life was like, I had read numerous books on slavery in Ancient Greece and I had acquired knowledge way past Greece but into Roman history and I never even noticed. It just seemed so natural to be learning (one of my favorite things to do).  So studying in Japan seems like a great way to test out if being thrown out into cultures is going to be a suitable life for me, since cultural anthropologists spend a lot of their work immersed in other countries/cultures. 

Well, this has been an interesting first blog post for me and I hope that you enjoyed entering the Mind of Aidan since it's a place where no human has ever entered. Donations are appreciated, please contact me through email if you would like to support my study abroad. 

I do not own any rights and take no credit for the pictures (besides my self-taken picture at the top) incorporated into my blog.