Selasa, 26 Februari 2013

My Experience In The First Month In Japan

       It has been 5 months since I came in Japan. The first place I stepped my feet on in Japan was Akita Airport. Beforehand, I was so nervous to fly from Indonesia to Akita alone for about 13 hours including transit hours. I had my transit in Incheon Airport, South Korea and no one I know there. What  worse, was that I don’t speak any korean.



      However, so many surprises I got soon after I was done with my trip. These all were started from, when I arrived at Akita Airport, completing all arrival procedures, and then entered the airport lounge to meet someone whom was arranged by Akita university to pick me up.  Not so long after I saw her face then we greeted each other. But suddenly, a young man came to us, introducing his self briefly in a polite way. It was getting strange when he showed me, from his wallet, something that made me a bit shocked, his identitiy card as a police officer! I asked myself, did I break some rules? or probably it was just because I looked like a suspicious stranger with my muslim dress? However I tried to answer his questions serenely. He asked me some questions, about my destination, if it was my first time to come to Japan, how long I will stay here, have I ever made any crime before (of course, my answer for this question was “Never”), and  those all intimidating questions were finished by saying “ Arigatou gozaimasu”.  Even now, I still have no idea why I had to be asked some offensive questions by a policeman? Does every foreigner get the same treat like me? (Or it was just because I came to Japan from Akita Prefecture, not from Narita International airport that it used to be.



    After a month spending my time in Akita, the suffering came over me.  Some frustating things were happening around, for instance,  the problem about I can’t have a phone cellular because it required alien resident card to have contract with the provider (and nothing I can do for because I would get that card one month after my arrival). Having no mobile phone made my communication with foreigner friends and with my tutor so difficult. In one month I had to call them by public phone which is relatively expensive. Sometimes the phone was cut off during  the conversation because I ran out of coins, and I was too lazy to get some other small changes. There was a time when  I missed a trip just because my friends were not able to reach me by phone when they wanted to invite me. I felt I was like living in my own world in a strange planet, eventhough I can speak Japanese a little bit. The worst thing was, during my first two weeks here I coudn’t access internet connection from my room eventhough I plugged the cable into my laptop, and another problem was : my laptop’s plug doesn’t  fit well with japanese electric power socket. It means that I would spend most of my nights and weekend alone and it’s like a proverb “my world totally was just like a little bird in her cage”. Lacking of money and having not so many friends to talk to made it much worse. 



      But I have to admit that during my troubles happened around there were so many pleasing things I’ve found, like facilities I‘ve got in Akita. The public service is the best so far I’ve known. For example, when I and my tutor went to ward office to do some immigration procedures, they gave me very excellent service. I didn’t need to wait for the process for hours and it costed not so expensive. It‘s so different from my country where we have to be extra-patient to wait for them to get all done for days, event for 1 or 2 weeks!

It’s surprising when only old people here are friendly to me. During my time having no bicycle, some old Japanese ( most of them are male) were greeting me and giving me supports to live here when I was on the way to campus.  Of course young people here are nice but not  as warm as old people with foreigner. There’s something in young Japanese which I never understand. It’s like we have completely different worlds, and there is a wall between them that separates us and it seems it makes them to hold back theirself to get into my life too much. Or probably am I the one who restrains myself from them? I don’t know. But I hope someday we can tear down the wall so that we can welcome each other to our own worlds, despite of our differences.

 

       The difficulties are still around me since not so many muslims live in akita, even it can be said that muslim is rare here. I have not found any Muslim Communty yet, not also mosque, even there is no Halal Store in the city that makes me should cook my own meal. By the way, in Arabic, the word halal means permitted or lawful. Halal foods are foods that are allowed under Islamic dietary guidelines. According to these guidelines gathered from the Qu'ran ( QS.Almaidah: 3-6), Muslim followers cannot consume the following:

  • pork or pork by products
  • animals that were dead prior to slaughtering
  • animals not slaughtered properly or not slaughtered in the name of Allah
  • blood and blood by products
  • alcohol, sake, mirin
  • carnivorous animals
  • birds of prey
  • land animals without external ears

These prohibited foods and ingredients are called haram in arabic, which means forbidden.

Well, as a muslim I have so many restricted foods, but the good this is I have to cook my own meal, which means, it helps me to save more my money. ( And as to halal food, some of my friends have suggested me to buy it  by online, and I think thats not bad.) Moreover, consuming home-made seafood meals everyday is quite cheap and good for my health.  



     I have faced many difficulties here. And I felt some of them are obstacle to me. Some are enlighting, but some even really hit me down. Somehow I’ve still been strugling to adapt my new life here and have been trying  some efforts to make many new friends, and of course, to learn more about Japanese people and its society.


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