How I came here

Prologue. Kouhou waits for the Hikari's doors to open while thinking of past events.

Stepping onto the Hikari's platform, I drew in a deep breath. I can't quite tell what I was feeling that moment. I think it was a mixture of anxiety and confusion. But mostly confusion. It was funny. I've spent the last year and a half learning the language that everyone around me was speaking in, yet I can't make out a word they're saying. I managed to form coherent sentences back at the airport, thank God for that. But standing there waiting for the train's doors to open might have caused my brain to function abnormally. Or was it the jet-lag? 11-hour flights do get to me. But I think it wasn't the wait and the jet-lag that got me confused. It was probably the realization of what I had to do to get here.

I mean, how often does a 14-year-old girl get sent to Japan for a year all thanks to an exchange program? In reality, not very often, I suppose. It almost seems like this can only happen in books. What events could have led to such abnormality?

It started long ago. When I was about 9-years-old. It was my fourth grade summer. One fateful day, my dad and I began to discuss how unfair it was to other languages to not be part of a school's curriculum. Like, why is it that the first second language that most people want to learn was Spanish? Why not Tagalog? Or Deutsch? So one day, while I was browsing through On Demand, I found a language learning show. I was curious, so I watched one episode. The episode's topic language was Japanese.

Before long I was bragging to my friends on the phone how I could say the colors of the rainbow in four languages. The first one was English, since that was my first language. The second one was Tagalog. Since my parents are from the Philippines, they taught me the colors and the alphabet when I was still very little. Spanish... I don't know how I learned the colors in Spanish. It was either because learning Spanish was part of my school's curriculum, or because I liked watching Dora the Explorer. And of course, Japanese was from Comcast. But that summer was only the beginning. It was the next summer that got me crazy for Japan.

Or, to be more specific... Anime.

It was the last day of school. One of my classmates showed me a book. She presented it in a way that told me that I should've known what the comic was about. I didn't, but I said, "Oh, woow." I thought that was the appropriate response. She let me read it but... It took me awhile to learn that it wasn't printed incorrectly. It didn't take me long to learn how to read it, and by the time Syaoran let Sakura keep his teddy bear, I was hooked.

I was sad to give the Manga back, but I learned that it was also a T.V. show. So I went home and checked youtube. The audio wasn't working, so when I found the show I had to read subtitles. Then when my auntie fixed the audio, I heard the heroine's voice.

My first thought was, "HER VOICE IS SOOOO HIGH. AND WHAT LANGUAGE IS THIS?" But after a few episodes I got used to it. But then I found out that the order was different from the Manga. So I decided to watch the whole series. Starting from episode one.

Thus, Kouhou Mei Myounoshi the otaku was born.

The whole summer was devoted to watching anime. Other anime series popped up and appealed to me as well. There were times when I would have finished 26 episodes in less than two days. I stayed up until 2 AM and woke up at 9 AM to continue where I'd leave off, If I ever did. My dad tried changing the login passwords, but I always found a way. I went so far as to ask my mom what the passwords were when she got drunk during a party. It was the prime of my otaku life. But during sixth grade, my interests began to expand.

I wasn't only interested in anime anymore. I still was, but I wasn't the stay-up-till-2-to-watch kind of person anymore. I was getting more interested in the Japanese language. In fact, watching anime had already made me learn more than twenty phrases. There were times when I accidentally said, "Eh, nani?" to my teacher when I wasn't listening.

Luckily for me, my sixth grade teacher was partly Japanese, so she knew what I said.

My dad became interested, too. So much that when I entered seventh grade, he enrolled himself in a Japanese learning class. Each day we'd converse in the Japanese we knew. And the more we learned the language, the more I fell in love with its culture.

I would watch anime during the weekends, read manga at school. At home my dad and I would watch Japanese game-shows and listen to J-pop. And every day we would talk about how someday we would visit Japan. Even my classmates saw how Japanese I wanted to be. They said I looked Japanese. One day I got carried away and told new students that I was Japanese. But one day I suddenly realized something.

You see, my family isn't very well-off. We're not super poor or anything, but we're close. We've been living in my grandmother's house for about three years, and we can barely pay me and my siblings' school tuition. There were also bills and debts. Even though no one said it, it was an unspoken agreement that me may never set foot on the land of the rising sun. That made my heart ache.

Then, I went to my friend's house.

It wasn't the first time I've been to her house, so I was pretty comfortable. I knew a lot about my friend's house and her family. I knew that they had a dog named Ema. I know that my friend's brothers' dad is different from hers. And I knew that they acted as a host family for exchange students from around the world.

I've met a few of them. The students I mean. But that day I met a new student. His name was Hiro. And he was from Japan.

Hiro talked to me about many things. He talked about how nervous he was to be in a different country. He told me about how different the mannerisms were between America and Japan. And finally he told me about how easy it was to join the exchange program. That day, I came home with a fire in my heart.

The next few weeks consisted of begging, glaring, spanking, and more begging. I pleaded to my parents for me to join the program. They very well knew why I wanted to join, but their answer was always "no". If not no, it was either a countdown to three, a parental stare, or a spank. And sometimes it was all three. But I couldn't give up. Day after day I begged and pleaded and tried to reason with them. And then my efforts were rewarded.

Although they still discouraged my about it, my parents let me join the program. My parents had to attend a few meetings to discuss the risks, but I didn't care. I was getting closer and closer to my dream of visiting Japan. But I had to finish my eighth grade in America and wait until April to be able to depart. I agreed.

I wasn't going to leave my middle school and friends just like that. So the day finally came when I graduated my school. It was emotional. Some of the guys who were complete snobs the whole time I've known them cried. I told my friends good luck and to e-mail me often. And the goodbyes did not end there.

The next few months were devoted to learning the Japanese language and culture. I was learning so much that I seemed more Japanese than Filipina. Of course I still had my summer program. But I still studied. Even during my 14th birthday I studied. And then the time came when my family brought me to the airport.

It was a lot more dramatic than I thought it would be. Everyone was crying, including my dad. That was a first for me because he himself hates people who cry all the time. And then I had to go through the checkpoint. Before I left them, I said, "It's only for a year. I love you guys. And this isn't goodbye." We stayed waving at each other until I lost sight of them.

So that's how it came to be. There I was, finally. Standing before a shinkansen train. Thinking of how I was a few years ago is kind of funny. Like how I used to think that Japanese people are no different than Chinese people. How I used to think Manga was stupid. How just a few months ago, I was worried that I would never be able to set foot on the land of the rising sun. Yet there I was. And the program deal says that five family members can visit during the third or fourth month of my stay as well as Christmas and New Year's. I smiled to myself, looking forward to the year I get to spend here. And I was still smiling as I entered the train's open doors.

Author's Note

Hoho, I wonder if anyone knows which anime Sakura and Syaoran are from. "Eh, nani?" can translate to "Eh? What?". Hikari is a bullet train in Japan. The second fastest of the Tokodai, I believe...? Well, I know that this beginning is kind of boring, but please look forward to the romantic comedies and adventures Kouhou will face in the future!

Reviews

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

This is excellent, how in the world could you say you are not literate........this is a wonderful story and written so well.