We Are Tomodachi Autumn 2017

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32At first I didn't know I was interested in Japan. I’d been watching anime since I was a little child, but not until high school did it dawn on me that anime was Japanese. By then, I had moved from watching anime to playing Japanese video games. I liked to try memorizing the game theme songs, even though I could not understand the words.Perhaps it was my affinity towards Japanese anime that led me to major in Japanese in college. I have to say, I fell in love with my Japanese class from day one. To be honest, however, I did not learn much of the language in my first two years. It was when I came to study in Tokyo for my junior year abroad that I made significant progress. Language school drilled us so hard in grammar, kanji, and writing that I could not help but to fall asleep at my desk doing homework. In Tokyo, along with language, I learned the tea ceremony from very strict teachers. If I made one mistake, they had me start all over again from the very beginning. My legs ached when I stood up from the seiza kneeling position. But being the last student to leave the room gave me a closer relationship with my teachers. At our final tea ceremony, they presented me with a yukata, a summer kimono. To me, it was a token of both our tight relationship and my hard work.I also took koto lessons in Tokyo. I had played string bass and guitar for many years, so my fingers were already calloused, making it easier for me to press down hard on the horizontal koto strings. Koto’s unique musical notation led to my interest in the katakana Campbell balances kanto, long bamboo poles with lanterns, which are used in Kanto Matsuri, a popular festival in Akita.At an Akita-JET organized sumo wrestling competition.At Tokyo Metro Museum in Edogawa City, Tokyo. (Campbell studied for a year in Tokyo.)Series: The JET ProgrammeFrom Anime to AkitaJennifer CampbellBorn in Wisconsin, United States. Has worked as a CIR in Akita Prefecture since 2015. Enjoys doing capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, in her free time. Loves visiting Akita’s beautiful beaches, hot springs, and mountains.writing system, now used primarily for foreign loan words. I surveyed different generations of Japanese as to how they used katakana, research that formed the basis for my senior thesis on the evolution of katakana usage.The day after graduation, the JET Programme accepted me as a Coordinator for International Relations (CIR) and I flew to Akita. As my plane was landing, everything looked so green that I felt I had not left my Wisconsin hometown. My state has a lot of nature, agriculture, and beer, and Akita has a lot of nature, agriculture, and sake. Like my hometown in Wisconsin, Akita has that country hometown feel. People know each other and greet on the street. Akita is known for its beautiful ladies, but I am more impressed by the beautiful hearts of the Akita people. After a flood in July 2017, the Shinkansen bullet train I was supposed to take to Tokyo to pick up new JET