“This is ten times harder than black tenting for the UNC game.”
Those were my thoughts as I was in my bedroom in my hometown of North Carolina, banging my head against the wall trying to learn Japanese (I’d like to clarify that I’ve never technically tented before, but it looks really hard to do). It was summer of 2023, and I’d be heading to Japan in a couple months for the fall. I was really excited to try all of the food, explore the bustling city of Tokyo, and make a bunch of new Japanese friends. There was only one little problem…I didn’t know any Japanese! I knew the odd random word like sugoi (“great”) from watching anime, but that wouldn’t help me much in communicating with the locals unless I wanted them to think I was a little strange.
Thus, that summer, I decided to spend an hour a day, every day studying Japanese. I had googled a list of the 500 most common Japanese words, and committed to learning at least half of that by the time summer ended. It was hard work. I ended up missing many days of studying, and when I would study I’d find it hard to not mix up the dozens of similar-sounding words in my head. Quizlet quickly became my best friend as it proved the most convenient way for me to study a large amount of vocab. I also really benefited from associating each word with an image, no matter how random the image would be, because I was then able to better etch each word into my mind. Eventually, I ended up actually surpassing my vocab goal.
But learning Japanese was not the only way I prepared for my trip abroad. I also completed a lot of research on how my experience in Japan would look like. Fortunately, the Duke GEO Advising team had shared a past participant list of Dukies that had attended my school in Japan before me. I ended up talking with two amazing alumni students who answered all of my questions and dissuaded many of my worries that I had.
Fast forward to a few weeks into my study abroad, life was going well. Japanese class was pretty tough, but the extra work I put in over the summer was paying off. I ended up already knowing much of the vocab that we were supposed to learn, which allowed me to focus more on the grammar and kanji. My teachers were all very nice and provided many resources to help me do well. And I made some cool friends that I got to explore Tokyo with in our free time.
Now that I’ve been here for several months, I sometimes get asked for advice from students looking to travel to a country with a foreign language. And I tell them that if they want to become conversational, they should practice speaking the language as soon as possible. Learning the language in books is fine, but the real magic happens when you are outside talking with the locals. You’ll quickly notice how much they appreciate you for attempting to speak their language, and you’ll gain the confidence and knowledge necessary to speak even more. Plus, you will start feeling like you're a part of the community!