"As a Black woman I was almost always the only person in the room who looked like me, which worried me a bit before coming to Kyoto, but this difference allowed me to offer a perspective that people were interested in hearing."
Before I left for Kyoto, my Japanese professor told me there was one thing I could not miss: Gion Matsuri. When July came, I finally understood why. I spent an evening on the street, in a crowd as vast as one’s eyes could see, under floats hung with glowing lanterns, listening to the musicians above me. The festival, a staple in Japanese culture for over 1,000 years, was a spectacular sight to witness.
The Global Learning Scholarship is what made this experience possible. I had studied around 2 years of Japanese at Columbia, but I wanted to fully immerse myself and challenge my language skills in a new environment. As a mathematics major, it was not the most clear step in my professional career, but from the support of the scholarship I did not have to talk myself out of it, and I could commit fully to the language once I arrived.
Surprisingly, what I valued the most during the program was the conversation, which came from both inside and outside of the classroom. The program included cultural exchange with Japanese students as a part of our language study, and these discussions ranged widely. We started off speaking about movies and music, but began to delve deeper into issues that students face in each of our countries and what we would each want to see change. As a Black woman I was almost always the only person in the room who looked like me, which worried me a bit before coming to Kyoto, but this difference allowed me to offer a perspective that people were interested in hearing. This exchange went both ways;
I was able to hear about lives different from my own, and realize that one of the most valuable things I could bring to these discussions was not just fluency but my unique experiences. From those conversations and the program’s cultural activities, I was actively taking part in a historically rich culture.
I also did not expect to get so close to the people in the program. Eight weeks goes by quite fast, but navigating a new country together definitely accelerates a friendship. I came home with sharper Japanese, a stronger interest in the country’s art and culture, and a group of people I now share unforgettable memories with.
