My Kansai Gaidai Student Exchange

It’s weird, this entire time I’ve thought that when Jace said that we were going to Japan what he was saying was a fact when in reality, it’s not a fact at all.. I’ve just submitted my Application. Ahhh I tell you, truly and sadly, the application process was pretty intense! in the good old Japanese fashion of doing everything in the most absolutely longest and trivial way possible I’ve had to submit: 10 passport photos, 3 academic references from university level professors/tutors with a background in sociology, 1 language reference from a Japanese lecturer and a bunch of forms that asked the same questions over and over.. funnily enough I keep imagining this as an indirect method of Japanese interrogation whereby they are making, no.. INDIRECTLY DEMANDING! that I repeat the answers to these mundane questions over and over in hopes that I may slip up.

The following takes place in a basement room below Kansai Gaidai’s administrative building:

Old Japanese detective consult for KGU:
Aha! he has wrote his name differently here, tricksy gaijin trying to trick us! DENY ENTRY.
Young KGU staff member:
Uno, it is still the same name, just lower case. Like Hiragana sounds to Katakana, the same.
Old Japanese detective consult for KGU:
Naruhodo, tricksy gaijin indeed.. I am being tested! he will not get the best of mee! YOSSH!

Hah, yeah that’s how I imagine it anyway. On that note though, am I accepted?
Yess, I know whenever QUT nominates a candidate the host university almost always excepts unless something horrible has happened and that Kansai Gaidai itself has a great track record but the fact of the matter is, at this point in time, I can’t say for sure if I’m going to Kansai Gaidai for 9 months or not. So to make it more official you could say that plane tickets were bought!

Shameless promotion, I just hope my plane doesn't crash.

Soo 29th of August is the magical date, where we set sail, yes you read correctly.. sail, in an AEROPLANE — and probably tick off our first mission on the T2D List (refer to the list to see if you can find out what I’m talking about =P). So now, even though I have a ticket to Osaka I’m still pretty annoyed because I’ve gotta wait for 4 months. Plus there is the situation of my dwindling finances, however on that note I did do some more recalculating as I like to do and it looks like I’ll be fine. If worst comes to worst and I’m almost out of money I’ll loan a few thousand off my parents for a few months until I get my 5000 dollars of OSHELP annnd I haven’t factored in that I might be a lucky person this year and nail a scholarship for a few thousand as well. So finances aren’t worrying me too much, I might even pick up a job in that 2 month gap where I’ve gotta wait and wait.. who knows, that may pass the time quicker. Gah, but I don’t know, I should be super happy right now but I’m only content.

Let’s just wait til I get my host package from Kansai Gaidai.

This is the first post of my episode (mini blog) of me, Mitchell Pearson in Japan on student exchange at Kansai Gaidai. Now, there isn’t alot to cover here that I haven’t covered on my main blog. Buuut, to recap.

This is it!

Woo, my name is Mitchell Pearson and I have been selected (in additon to Jace) to go to Kansai Gaidai for 9 months, or two semesters.. however you want to read that. I’m really really excited even now and I’ve still got just over 4 months to wait until I land in Osaka’s International Airport. I’ve been studying Japanese for a few semesters now but I haven’t really been taking it seriously until I got accepted into this program. So, the purpose of this blog is to well.. blog the entire experience and hopefully help those or just entertain / excite others that read it. Seeing as I have a while to wait I’ll be blogging for just over a year and will be detailing the application process, visas and all that, getting over there and then whatever else happens afterwards. Seem pretty generic but even now, at this point I am not completely aware of what to expect. So there’s a recap, I’ll post again soon in an effort to make this blog pretty comprehensive.

Until next time.