My first day of school consisted of writing a placement exam, orientation and welcome ceremony.

For the exam, it consisted of about 100 questions with increasing difficulty. In addition to that piece, we also had to take a verbal conversation exam with the instructor. The instructors have probably gone through this so much, that they were very good at recognising where your knowledge of the language plateaued and then continued the conversation at a level where you could excel.

The examination was about 2 hours in total which is something I haven’t done, in a school setting, for quite a long time now.

After lunch, which was ramen (so, a blog post coming soon for that one), I participated in an orientation about the program, the school itself and even included a walk about of the various other buildings and amenities that I have access to.

Immediately after that, was a short welcome ceremony where the new students (3 of in total) introduced ourselves to the existing students in the program. Also, one student was departing, so he gave a farewell speech.

Before leaving the school, I was given a binder of materials and the placement results for the class that I would be participating in going forward. After having gone to one day of normal classes on Friday, I can definitely say I was placed in the right group.

One of the new students that I made friends with immediately is from Taiwan. His Japanese is much better than mine, so I feel guilty that I can’t converse with him as much as he tries to converse with me. Though, I definitely appreciate his willingness to hang out considering the language gap. Though, it is pretty cool, that people are getting together from various parts of the world and communicating in the common language of Japanese.

And I also appreciate that other students try to avoid speaking their native language as much as possible in order to maximise their speaking practice.

It’s really only been a couple of days, but by the time I get back to my room at night, I feel so tired. The mental strain in trying to operate in a different language for so much time during the day, especially when learning, is definitely a real thing.

To those that have a great proficiency in a another language other than your native one, I commend you on the hard work you put in to get there.

I am definitely looking forward to the challenge ahead over the next 2 months.