Six Square Meters in Japan

When people ask me what the best things I experienced during my academic mobility were, I almost always answer: “Living in a room of six square meters, the fatigue and the intense cold I had never experienced before.” There are many reasons behind these facts that became so positive and charming.

Before my stay at Chiba University, Japan, one of the things I heard repeatedly among my peers who would also travel abroad (and I include myself) is that we were afraid that, upon returning, things with our friends, family, and context would no longer be the same as when we left them. How could I know that the opposite would happen?

UNAM’s General Directorate for Cooperation and Internationalization (DGECI) played a vital role in this process. Without their support, living abroad would never have become a reality. From the moment I landed, I was determined to take Japan as my home: to take the good and bad things it had prepared for me, to adapt and make the most of anything that would teach me something new and be part of this experience.

Japan is a country known for its cultural charm but also for its earthquakes, so I soon got used to changing my alarm clock for a morning shake. I soon learned that there are also typhoons, which would have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for the fact that I had the luck of witnessing the biggest typhoon in the last 50 years. Although it might seem these factors could have represented an obstacle during my stay, it wasn’t so. If it wasn’t for these characteristics of the country, I would have never been able to start a conversation with the people who became my adventure companions.

Living in the dorm provided by the host university was also an interesting experience: your room has a kitchen, bathroom, bed, wardrobe, and a balcony in a six-square-meter space. I was located on the fourth floor, which wasn’t convenient for carrying up my three suitcases. Still, it definitely turned out to have an advantage over the rooms downstairs, where people had to keep themselves away from enormous spiders. When I arrived, it could still experience the last days of summer’s intense heat. For those unfamiliar with Japan, it is a country with very pronounced seasonal changes; temperatures are extreme, and landscapes change drastically. Not only did this make the nights feel as if they never ended, but it also invited a hoard of bugs the Japanese are already used to. However, as a Mexico City native, I wasn’t. Pests come out and find a cozy spot in a corner and although I sometimes thought it was an unpleasant situation, it helped me understand Japanese lifestyle’s deep respect for and close contact with nature and its preservation.

It’s quite an impression to attend for the first time to your new place of studies; everything seems intimidating, and all the confidence acquired after years of studying for a bachelor’s degree vanishes momentarily because you don’t even know where you have to take your classes. Although you carry all the information you have studied previously, the language always betrays you a little. You think you have arrived on time, but when you look closely, you realize that you misread one of the kanji (characters in Japanese writing) and are actually in the wrong classroom. But I realized that, even though this was stressful because I wanted to represent UNAM abroad positively, it isn’t so troublesome once you get to the right place, and, after apologizing, all your classmates and teachers tell you kindly that there is no problem. After all, Japanese people possess this attribute: they are friendly and curious at the same time. They always have a thousand questions and comparisons to share with you, even if their English is not good and you speak zero Japanese. I remember fondly a place called Popoki, a very popular restaurant among Chiba University’s students that cooked homemade traditional food near campus; it was where I ate the most delicious food during my whole stay. The walls were full of pictures of a couple who had traveled to almost every corner of the world. The first time I went, the owner asked me where I was from. With great effort, I let him know I was from Mexico, and quickly, without uttering a word, he enthusiastically showed me the pictures of different Mexican sites he had visited. Although we didn’t change words, I was grateful for taking part in his happiness; it didn’t matter that he was just pointing with his finger.

Although UNAM prepared me solidly to face academic learning abroad, I’m grateful for everything I learned in the courses I enrolled in. Taking classes and having adventures at the same time became a difficult combination: since I had to keep up with studying, gathering with friends, and traveling, I started sleeping fewer and fewer hours. Sometimes, I had to read on the train or arrive before morning to do my homework, but I never felt happier for being so sleepy.

Most of the time I spent during my mobility was in winter, so much of the cultural sightseeing inevitably ended up with frozen feet. It rains a lot in Japan, so keeping yourself dry and warm when walking on the streets is an almost impossible task. To enter any temple, you must take your shoes off; if you’re lucky, you’ll get some slippers; if not, you’ll go barefoot. To many, knowing new places under these circumstances might be very uncomfortable, but when you go with friends, you end up feeling fond of cold. If it wasn’t for it, it would be impossible to become an expert ramen taster or make races from the train to the dorm to see who gets to the heater first.

For me, mobility has three stages: the first one is full of expectations; some of them come true, others don’t, but every experience will be part of an unforgettable story. The second stage is appreciation. During it, you learn all the good and bad things that a country different from yours has to offer; this makes you treasure what you have and also motivates you to look for what can be better for you. The third stage is assimilation; just like arriving in a new place, returning after a long time is also a drastic change. In the beginning, I was afraid that everything was going to be different when I got back, but I realized that time passes very slowly at home while outside it flies by. What changed was not everything I knew; it was me. They say that these experiences change your life: I can confirm it’s true. Not only do I keep in my memory one of the best times in my life, but I also keep what I learnt there and, more than anything, there is a seed ingrained in me that motivates me to follow a professional and personal trajectory that would allow me to live moments as beautiful as these.

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