{"id":26164,"date":"2023-11-27T15:35:08","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T06:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/?p=26164"},"modified":"2023-12-08T09:34:29","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T00:34:29","slug":"welcome-cafe-pax-report-2023-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/news-en\/2023\/11\/27\/26164\/","title":{"rendered":"Chatting brought me immense comfort    ICC Welcome Cafe Participant Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6 style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Vanessa Chan<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>School of International Liberal Studies<\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Before leaving Singapore for Tokyo, I asked many people, \u201cWhat was the most difficult challenge of moving overseas?\u201d Unexpectedly, every one of them had the same answer: Loneliness.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">So, in my first few weeks, equipped with only what I like to call \u2018survival Japanese\u2019 (<\/span><i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">konnichiwa, sumimasen, onegaishimasu, <\/span><\/i>and<i><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> daijoubudesu<\/span><\/i><span data-contrast=\"auto\">), I jumped at any opportunity to meet new people<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-contrast=\"auto\">I could converse with. The ICC Welcome Caf\u00e9, held across multiple sessions before the start of the semester, was perfect for this.\u00a0<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Although I had arrived slightly late, I was ushered in by the friendly student staff members, who gave me a cup and asked which drink I wanted. Armed thus with (free!) tea, I was randomly put into a group of graduate students from China, and then a mixed group of exchange and degree students from around the world.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Two people I met had actually studied in my home country! Chatting with everyone about their motivations for coming to Japan and similar language anxieties brought me immense comfort.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Uprooting your life, whether for six months or four years, plunges you into unfamiliarity. The strangeness of the new can be exciting, but it\u2019s the being unknown, the facelessness, that is hard to bear.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Being able to recognise and be recognised by each other as we moved about campus has been a lasting joy, which I am grateful to the ICC team for.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ICC welcome cafe memories!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,97],"tags":[84,116,94,70],"class_list":["post-26164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","category-other-en","tag-culture-en","tag-event-report-en","tag-general-en","tag-student-activities-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26187,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26164\/revisions\/26187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/icc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}