What I learned from living in the US

I moved to California from a tiny town in Japan after graduating from high school. It was a huge transition to say the least. I didn’t speak much English.

Looking back, I think to myself..how did I pull this off? Quite frankly, I don’t quite remember. But my strong will did the magic.

When you want to make something happen bad enough, it will happen.  😛

So today I want to talk about five things that I learned in the U.S.

1) I had to learn to speak English: It is obvious because I was not living in LA for fun. I actually applied to a community college to start full-time. Even attending community college was a challenge because of language barrier. That was my most priority then.

2) I had to be very proactive and independent: In Japan, everything is very organized and people have this mentality that government or officials will handle the rest. All you need to do is to go to the city hall or make a phone call. But in the US, if you don’t follow up, you will often be forgotten. I learned my lesson the hard way. I had to constantly check up on the driver license’s registration..because it sometimes goes to the wrong address or does not arrive in a timely manner. When you get a car accident, you are supposed to document everything and report the incident to your insurance company.American police wouldn’t be very excited about helping you unless it is a big accident.

3) I had to become more assertive: My Japanese friend confused assertion with aggression. So she was very rude to American people instead of being assertive. So as Japanese, we have to be careful with the way we assert ourselves. We don’t want to com across too arrogant.

4) I had to change my Japanese mentality: Let me clarify this. There is nothing wrong with Japanese mentality. It is good to embrace the Japanese values and ethics but America is a completely different society. I had to change my idea about age. In the U.S., it doesn’t matter whether the person you are talking to is a year younger or two years older than you. Also, I had to learn to adjust my sense of boundary. America is all about space and you wouldn’t want to violate that boundary.

5) I had to exercise my common sense: People are allowed to own guns in the U.S. In Japan, it is relatively safe to walk by yourself in the evening but I don’t even go outside alone after dark in the U.S. I live in a decent neighborhood but even then, I don’t want to take a chance. Everything is much more spread out in the US and even on campus, criminals are hiding in the hidden areas that few people even go. There are 30,000 students but the campus is so huge so there was recently a warning released especially for women not to walk alone on campus in the evening. The ridiculous thing is that the campus is supposedly located in the resort area!

I can come up with more things that I’ve learned during my stay in the U.S. It has been an adventurous journey and I do have to admit that I did learn some hard lessons. But each experience taught me new things about myself so i don’t regret my life.