My experience in Japan.

 

     Hello! My name is Abdulrahman(but you can call me Aboodi!) and I wanted to make a blog talking about my experiences in Japan, full disclaimer before we start that everything I say here is just my opinion and it may differ from other experiences that you might read about but without further a do, let's begin!

  Before I was in Japan, I was in Saudi Arabia enjoying my vacation with my family, but that time has came to an end and it was time for the semester to start, and so I embarked on this very fun journey, going to Qatar to transit in first and then heading directly to Japan, to the city where my exchange university was in, Osaka.

Anddd let me tell you, Osaka blew me away, it really did, from the moment I stepped foot into Osaka, I felt something was different about this place, and in a really great way, I finished immigration which surprisingly only took around like 15 minutes, grabbed my bags, and then took the bus to the city(I recommend doing this as the bus is basically 8x cheaper than the taxis), and from there I took a taxi to my hotel,  and from there I stayed a couple of days waiting for my exchange program to officially start, where I'd then move to my dorm.

Nearing my hotel wasn't anything special, but it did have two konbinis to try out, family mart and 7/11. Family mart had way more things than the Malaysian counterpart but at the same time it also lacked one of my favorite things to get there, the softserve ice cream, in Japan no konbini has soft serve ice cream machines which is a big shame. 7/11 was just a straight up upgrade in everyway though, but since we are at this part already I wanted to say, I am a muslim and if you are a muslim, it will be very hard to find halal options in Japan, I wasn't super strict about it myself as I understood I didn't have much options around me but others might not like that part so do be warned. A lot of the dessert options had gelatin but the ones that didn't, simply superb, I recommend the melon cream from Family Mart!

Next, it was the opening day of my student dorm, and that was my first time ever attending a dorm, I didn't know what to expect, so I went to the office and grabbed my keys where they explained a couple of dos and don'ts in Japanese apartments, for starters in Japan you just drink water straight from the tap, and you flush toilet paper in the toilet itself, no need to throw it away in a separate garbage bin, additionally, they have meticulous garbage sorting rules such as separating plastics, burnable things, cardboard, and some other things which can be a bit tough to get used to at first but once you master it you can do it naturally without missing a beat. And the greatest part about the dorm? All the people, I have made friends from so many different parts of the world! I have friends from many countries in Europe, friends from America, from Mexico, from many other parts of Asia that I otherwise would have probably never met had I not came here, it is such an amazing way to connect and make friends with people who culturally are pretty different from you but it turns out you have a lot in common regardless! 

 Next, I wanted to talk about the exchange university, this time around I was accepted into an exchange program with Kindai University(formerly known as Kinki University and I will not elaborate further on that but if you meet someone in Japan who doesn't know Kindai saying Kinki might ring a bell) , one of the largest universities in Kansai, and although it might not be on Tokyo University levels of prestige, it is still highly acclaimed. 

The university has a lot of modern and incredible facilities that I have never really seen anywhere else, for example, there is the E-Cube, a place where you go there to just speak English, and based from what I heard from English instructors from various universities they all tell me that Kindai has the strongest level of English speaking students even among universities like Tokyo University and Kyoto University, and I think the E-Cube alongside some of the universities other internationalization approaches is why that is the case.

 

Next up, my favorite facility on campus, the E-Sports room, and it is basically a room where you can book a gaming pc for use for up to 4 hours, comes preinstalled with practically every popular esports game being played in tournaments and I think this is such a wonderful and amazing idea, esports are a growing field and helping out students like this can help you get an edge on other countries especially as many countries have not adopted esports yet, South Korea for example have been investing into esports very early on and as a result South Koreans basically dominate every game they play, it is nice to see Japan also trying to get their piece in and I hope Malaysia and some other countries would also consider making things like E-Sport rooms more widely available in universities. 

 

Next up, I have met some really really really really really really wonderful instructors at Kindai both from the Japanese instructor side of things and the foreign instructor side of things, and the faculty members at Kindai's global education center are no different, all amazing people, they are a big reason to why I loved Japan so much and I will definitely come back and see them in the future whenever that may be, if you yourself(you the reader) considers going to any exchange program in the future, or basically anywhere really, I do recommend making friends and staying in touch with lots of people, sure you may be very far far away but with the age of social media all you really need to do to stay in touch might just be a couple of clicks away(use instagram or something).

 

Lastly, I wanted to talk about where you can go in Japan, what can you do in Japan?? What should you eat in Japan???

 For starters, my favorite shopping area in all of Japan, I will not keep it a secret. If you are a fan of anime, electronics, or some other niche hobbyist things, I wholeheartedly recommend going to den den town in Osaka(its near Nipponbashi station!), it is basically what Akihabara was decades ago but no longer is, there you can find lots of stores selling anime figures, mangas, dvds, various trading cards and even places where you can playing trading card games with others, dolls, airsoft shops, PC parts and customization shops, maid cafes, kebab shops, shisha shops, essentially LOTS of things like that, and here is the best part, it is not really visited by tourists that much, and the prices are basically normal prices, you aren't going to get price gouged(though be careful when buying pokemon booster boxes as they can be super expensive, just cross reference the prices on Mercari or buy them from the official pokemon shop). 

 

 

Tsurehashi in Osaka is basically just Koreatown, in there you can find lots of Korean restaurants and grocers, if you are into that type of thing you should give it a visit.

Of course there is also Dotonbori, too touristy in my opinion but it is worth visiting atleast once.

The smaller towns within Osaka like Yao for example are very chill and nice to explore, you can find lots of family owned businesses and restaurants and it is something I prefer over going to the city personally.

Near Osaka, there are other cities within the Kansai region.
Nara is very beautiful and it is basically what you heard, it is full of deers, now these deers aren't always the nicest a lot of them are aggressive but it depends on whether they are the deers from below or the deers from above. The deers from below live below near the cities and are too used to tourists giving them stuff so they might get aggressive if they don't get any. The ones who live above can be found in the mountains and hills(fully recommend them as hiking spots! I recommend Wasakusayama!) and are so chill you would think that they and the ones below are completely different species.

 

 

Kyoto has lots of amazing and beautiful temples but believe it or not it is also a large, normal city and it is nice to explore both of these things, the city center has various stores that might interest you like the Nintendo and Pokemon stores.

 

 

Hyogo is very nice and quiet, full of beautiful temples and scenery and not that "city-ey" but it also holds lots of horse races including famous ones like the Takarazuka kinen! If you're in the timeframe when they are held I recommend checking out the horse races there because they are very fun to watch.

 

 Lastly from Kansai, there is Shiga, now Shiga is(you guessed it) also full of beautiful temples, but is also home to Biwako, or Lake Biwa, and it is one very very large blue and serene lake, 100% worth visiting, and if you are a K-On! fan, in Shiga lies the town of Toyosato where you can find Toyosato Elementary School, it is the school that K-On is based on and so a lot of the places inside the school are just 1 to 1 from the anime, you can go to their clubroom and see their instruments, their teatable, the white board, and lots of other things. And in one of the building lies a K-On mini museum, where they have lots of K-On merch and sooooo much instruments, and you have the ability to write a handwritten message to Kyoto Animation and to the rest of the K-On fans which I definitely did(if you go there maybe you can find my message among them though it is written in Arabic).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all, the Kansai region is great, lots of amazing historic attractions, beautiful nature, clean weather, and it is less packed than Kanto, in particular I recommend Osaka if you ever wanna live somewhere because in my opinion it is the best city in the world even if it isn't as touristy.

 Before I left for Malaysia, I went to the Kanto region for one week, and here is what I have to say about it. Tokyo... Tokyo just sucks honestly, horrible prices and an obscene amount of people combined with very overblown attractions makes for one of the worst cities of all time(in my opinion), and the major train stations there were unfortunately very very dirty, didn't even have soap either which is actually insane.

On the otherhand, Yokohama, Yokohama is great, despite being so close to Tokyo, Yokohama isn't packed to the centimeter with people, it is quite livable, decent amount of attractions too like Chinatown and so Yokohama has a very local vibe to it compared to Tokyo's... bad vibe. To top it off Yokohama is also one of the cheapest cities in the entire country which is always a good thing.

 

 

 

 

And lastly, if you want the best food in all of Japan, I have two recommendations.

Firstly, a lot of the Indian restaurants there serve insanely good food, quite different from the Indian ones in Malaysia, likely because it is Nepali people working in these restaurants. I've actually been quite missing them recently because I just can't find the same type of food in Malaysia... very unfortunate.

 

 Lastly, in Osaka lies a Jordanian restaurant called Seven Hills, and it is reservations only. The restaurant is always filled up and for good reason, I personally recommend the Mansaf as shown here. Go in with a group as the place can be a bit pricey but in return you get lots and lots of delicious life changing food, according to my friends testimony this restaurant has better Jordanian food than the actual restaurants in Jordan.

 

 And before someone points out that the two best restaurants I mentioned weren't Japanese, it is just my opinion but I don't think Japanese food is as good. Though if I were to recommend a Japanese restaurant, Sushiro would be my pick. Sushiro is both cheap and is the best sushi I've ever had. I don't think going for the more expensive sushi restaurants is as good to just going to Sushiro spending way less and eating sushi that is still so tasty. I love you Sushiro.

Oh and one final final thing, depending on your field of study Japan might not be the best option, I come from a mechanical engineering background and there weren't really any engineering related courses in any of the exchange options in any of the universities in Japan, it wasn't really a problem for me though because for my free electives I was planning to study things related to coding and business which I did find, and this may either be a good or a bad thing depending on the person but don't expect the studies here to be any hard, and it is not because you are an exchange student but in Japan the hard part is getting into the university not the actual studies themselves, for me I just took it as an opportunity to explore Japan and some more self studying in my free time. Which reminds me you don't really need advanced Japanese to get by in Japan if you just stay in the cities but it would be a nice gesture to show to the locals if you showed that you have an interest in learning their language, though you can probably get by with these couple of phrases that I will teach you here and now:

 1.Arigatou Gozaimasu(thanks very much)

2. Kekkou desu(No thanks/That is fine)

3. Konnichiwa(Hello)

4. Ohayou gozaimasu(Good morning)

5.Konbanwa(Good evening).

6.Sumimasen(excuse me/can also be used as sorry).

7.gomenasai(sorry)

8.Hai(yes)

9.iie(no) 

10.yoroshiku onegaishimasu(kind of like I'll be in your care) 

11.hajimemashite(nice to meet you) 

 

If you are buying food at a konbini, heres some phrases they might use.

 

1.Fukuru iremasu ka?(Do you want a plastic bag) 

2.Atatamemasu ka?(Shall I heat it up)(happens if you buy something that can be microwave'd)

 

You can now probably get by with just knowing these things, for transportation just use Google Maps it has literally everything you need to navigate through Japan, the stations and trains also have English signs and English announcements so you don't need to worry about that part.

 

To end this off, if you've read until here I wanted to thank you very much and I hope you find this blog useful in aiding you in your own exchange program or even just helping you think about it. Japan has been such a wonderful experience and I want to thank Taylor's University and Kindai University for making this possible.