{"id":1574,"date":"2018-10-25T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/?p=1574"},"modified":"2019-05-20T16:35:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T07:35:00","slug":"min-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/min-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Homesick or Japan-sick?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi it’s Min here!\u00a0<\/span>How many of you have experienced homesickness?
\n<\/span>I know I have, but it\u2019s not exactly \u2018homesick\u2019.
\n<\/span>There\u2019s not really a right term for what I am feeling right now – it would probably just be referred to as \u2018longing for\u2019 or \u2018missing\u2019 something.
\n<\/span>If \u2018homesick\u2019 refers to the distress of missing home when abroad, what would the opposite be called? <\/span><\/p>\n

When I was 15, I went on an exchange program to Japan for a year.
\n<\/span>I lived with a Japanese family, went to school like all Japanese high school students would, and even joined an extra-curricular activity or \u90e8\u6d3b.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the year I was in Japan, I did not feel homesick at all.
\n<\/span>I guess I was really immersed and caught up in the whole experience of being in a country that I have never stepped foot in before.
\nI know many other exchange students were amazed by the bidet toilets, but I remember being more fascinated by the existence of Japanese dialects (\u7530\u820e\u306b\u4f4f\u3093\u3067\u3044\u305f\u306e\u3067). <\/span><\/p>\n

Since I had only been learning Japanese for two years before my exchange, I assumed there was only one form of Japanese, the standard Japanese or \u6a19\u6e96\u8a9e, that I was taught in school. So when I got to my host family\u2019s place, I literally couldn\u2019t understand a word they were saying and thought to myself how bad my Japanese was!<\/span><\/p>\n

But anyway, one year passed and it was time for me to head back to Melbourne. I started to develop symptoms of homesickness when I came back home.
\n<\/span>I would get so happy when I stepped into a Japanese grocer or an Asian grocer that stocks Japanese food (even though they are overpriced).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

A Japanese food section at my local Asian grocer<\/p><\/div>\n

Lucky for me now, all supermarkets in Australia stock some kind of Japanese food. The most common ones would be instant miso paste, nori sheets and wasabi paste.<\/p>\n

But then I realized what I was missing wasn\u2019t actually the food I had in Japan.
\n<\/span>It was more due to the fact that I have experienced so much there – every day was a new experience – then suddenly coming back to a more routined lifestyle that was making me miss Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than ten years have passed since my high school exchange and even till today, I do miss my time in Japan. I just try to incorporate some form of Japanese, be it the food or culture, into my everyday life. The photo below is of a Sakura tree in Melbourne.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Cherry blossom viewing (\u82b1\u898b) in Melbourne<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019re a non-Japanese and have been or lived in Japan before, have you experienced something similar to what I have?
\n<\/span>And if you\u2019re a Japanese, have you been or lived in another country and miss the life and food of that country when you\u2019re back in Japan?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, like they say, “Home is where the heart is.” There are many ways to interpret this. For me, I believe a home is not just where we grew up in, but where we feel most at home. And having lived in a few countries before, ‘home’ to me is not fixed in one place or country. So if Japan is my second home, I guess what I’m feeling now could be termed ‘homesick’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi it’s Min here!\u00a0How many of you have experienced homesickness? I know I have, but it\u2019s not exactly \u2018homesick\u2019. There\u2019s not really a right term for what I am feeling right now – it would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":1582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[276,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-native","8":"category-learning","9":"article cf"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions\/1625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}