Hayley, SPSE
About a week or two before school starts, I get hyper with excitement. Well, half of the excitement comes from my wondering: I wonder whom I will get to meet in the upcoming semester and what I will be doing with them.
By the end of March, just like any other semester, I was wondering, but this time, in front of my laptop. And I somehow ended up with the google search result “Waseda ICC Events” right in front of my eyes, clicked on it, and realized that there are events that I could participate in, even before school starts! My heart leaped with excitement; I couldn’t wait until the start of school to meet new people, so without a second thought, I marked it on my calendar and waited for the day to come.…
And the day finally came! Before entering the Welcome Café, we were supposed to tell the ICC staff which language we would like to use (English, Japanese, or both). Then, we had to write our name on a colored tape that indicated which language we would like to use during the event. I chose “both,” and I was able to interact with people who could or could not speak Japanese. Also, the event was divided into three different sessions, 30 minutes each, so that people can rotate and new participants can join for each session. Then participants would get to interact with different people at different tables….
The first day of the Welcome Café was actually the day of the entrance ceremony. (No wonder I could see waves and waves of people wearing suits on the way to the ICC lounge.) And because the ICC lounge is located in the SPSE building, I was able to meet a lot of kouhais from the same department, mostly Japanese, who dropped by after their ceremony. While I was talking with them, something in their eyes triggered my memory lane, back to the time when I was a freshman. It was a short 30-minute talk, but I was really glad to have interacted with them, and I hope they were, too ☺
I was also glad to meet with friends from different countries. As I am, myself, an international student here at Waseda, it was interesting to hear what brought other international students here—why they chose Japan and Waseda for studies. Also, it was interesting to find similarities and differences that I had not anticipated across cultures and between individuals. Some of us who participated in the event even stayed afterward to continue the conversation, and this conversation came to a stop only when the ICC staff came over to us to tell us that it was time for the ICC lounge to close.
I am so glad to have participated in this event offline, and I hope to participate in such events again in the near future, too!
