Looking back at 2017

Hello. Since it is the new year, I want to do a wrap-up of 2017. I want to look back in 2017 and recall the events that made me who I am today. And, share a little bit of my insecurities and how I overcome them last year.

At the beginning of 2017, I got a chance to do an internship with an embassy. It was the best decision I made to kick start the year.  I also met some of the most amazing people. Taking up this internship gave me a huge boost in confidence in my Japanese skills, interpersonal and creative skills.

After the internship officially ended, I focused on the dreaded Japanese-style job hunting. This job-hunting is the most mentally stressful thing I ever had to experience throughout my entire 4-5 years in Japan. This was one of the most difficult hurdles I have had to face so far. And I thought settling in and university was difficult. My Japanese language had been stagnant for about two years now and there was hardly any improvements even though I had no problem with everyday conversations. But the series of interviews and re-write of my Japanese resume helped improved my Japanese to the point where I am a lot better at conveying my opinions and in general, things that I want to say without feeling like I half-assed it. Nevertheless, I feel like this experience really helped improved my Japanese language a lot. Overall, I felt that this experience was really eye-opening. Overcoming this really made me feel a lot more confident and that there is nothing I can't overcome as long as I keep working hard on it. I am really thankful to my university's career adviser for helping me with the whole job-hunting process because I couldn't have done it by myself without him.

At the end of summer, I had two unexpected news and opportunity presented to me. Firstly, I received two job offers. I was so happy when I got the news as it was completely unexpected. After months of getting rejected from interviews, I thought this would have the same ending. Initially, I struggled to decide which company I decided to go for because both had their strengths. Eventually, I had to make a decision, so I did. And, so far attending newcomer get-together parties had been quite enjoyable.

Secondly, I received a part-time job offer that was completely unexpected. It was like as if god made this possible so I will be ready when the real deal comes in 2018. So, I begun my part-time job working in a Japanese office for one of their side projects as a social media coordinator. Everyone was so kind and friendly that I did not want to leave this job after graduation but due to some visa regulations, I had to. Nevertheless, the few months in the company was a good learning experience for me and I will take all the things I've learnt to my new job starting in a few months. I will forever be thankful to the opportunity given to me.

Finally, I managed to graduate from university with a Bachelors in International Affairs, minoring in Japanese. I struggled with three writing intensive classes during my final semester because my motivation levels was close to nothing. All I wanted to do was graduate since I already settled my job-hunting. The biggest take-away from the semester was my Japanese capstone class (Basically, a class that Japanese majors need to graduate, kinda like a final thesis class if you will?). The class wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be but the real worry was doing a full-on presentation and a 5000 words essay in Japanese for the first time. Despite living in Japan for close to five years, my writing skills had been the worst and I haven't done presentations in Japanese at all. All these while, it had been one of the reasons why when people compliment my Japanese skills, I'd flat out say "no, I'm not good at it." It wasn't even tatemae, it was what I really feel deep down inside. So knowing that I need to overcome this before i actually start work, I took on this challenge (though it was unintended) while I am still in a protected school environment and pushed through the semester. By the end of the semester, I can confidently say that all the insecurities about my lack of skills in presentation and writing (or typing if you will) in Japanese has been debunk! I'm still not 100% perfect in my language but I don't think it is a huge hurdle for me anymore since there isn't a huge mental block in me anymore.

To sum-up, 2017 was a intense but a very fulfilling and enriching year. This is one of those years that I felt that I overcame a lot my uncertainties and grew a lot as a person. I am very extremely lucky to be given these opportunities and I am forever thankful. x

With Love,
C.


PS: I begun writing short records of my days on my Instagram because I don't have the time to write a blog post all the time. I am glad I did because it was an alternative for me to share my days and life in Japan. I hope to continue to do so in 2018 and share more things about my life in Japan. Of course, I am not saying goodbye to this space.

PPS: I am reaching my 5th year anniversary in a few months time and I want to do something memorable about it. I'm not sure what I want to do yet but I want to make it something I can look back on and feel proud about my journey thus far.