After a few minutes, we finally reached the admissions office. 

 

I politely greeted the older woman who was sitting at the front desk. 

 

"Hello there, I'm here to talk about a mistake in my information." I said, while handing her my papers. 

 

She smiled gently at me."What seems to be the problem young lady?"

 

"The name and gender are wrong on the list here. My name is Yasuko Nijimura, but on the sheet it says 'Okuyasu Nijimura'." I replied.

 

She went to the back and pulled out a big binder filled with papers and information. 

 

She opened it up and examined it. "Let's see here…Oh there it is. Your legal guardian, Keicho Nijimura, came in this morning and corrected the issue already, miss Yasuko."

 

'Is that why he left so early? As expected, Aniki is always on top of things!'

 

"That's my Aniki!" I yelled excitedly.

 

She nodded with the same gentle smile. "Don't worry, miss Yasuko, from tomorrow onwards, the roll call will be updated, your student ID number will remain the same, but your information will be updated." 

 

'Alright! We're all set now!' 

 

I thanked her and headed back out with Sumiwa. Now that my problem had been resolved, I was free to do whatever I wanted with the rest of the break.

 

I spent the remaining lunch time walking around the school and chatting with Sumiwa. As it turns out, she was the perfect person to guide me around. 

 

Like me, she was a first year highschool student, but unlike me, she had attended the middle school portion of this highschool, (it's a combined middle and highschool) so she had already gotten herself well acquainted with the buildings. 

 

*Ring*Ring*Ring 

After a while, the bell rang signaling the end of lunch time. Our lunch break is about 45 minutes in total. After which we have our 5th class period. 

 

Sumiwa accompanied me to my next class.

 

We were greeted by a classroom full of noisy, loud, and boisterous teenagers. They were chatting, laughing, and talking.

 

The kids had just gotten back from lunch and they were still a little rowdy. I guess they just wanted to get those last minutes of fun in before class started.

 

I went up to the teacher, introduced myself, and he told me to pick a random seat.

 

I turned around and met a familiar face. As it turned out, Josuke, by chance, was also in this class, so I went to greet him before looking for a seat. 

 

"Hey Josuke." I smiled at him.

 

He smiled and nodded back at me. "'Sup man, wait for me after class, ok?"

 

I nodded at him, and went to find my seat. Lucky for me, the seat beside Sumiwa was free, so I sat down next to her. 

 

Soon as the bell rang, class started. This was my Japanese Lit class. Definitely one of the hardest classes for me. We have to read a lot of Japanese texts. From the ancient to the modern, properly decipher them, and discuss them in this class. 

 

For my previous self, this would have been an impossible task, as I had almost no understanding of the Japanese language. 

 

Sure I liked manga, anime, and had an interest in the culture. But that didn't mean I understood the language. Everything I got was directly translated by someone who actually understood it. At most I could only understand a few words every now and then, but that was as far as it went. 

 

As for my current self, this is still a difficult task. I've lived in this country all my life, and have what's probably considered a 'good enough' understanding of the language. I can speak it and read it well enough to understand what most people are talking about. I can read manga, newspapers and the like, but I'm by no means an expert.

 

The problem for me, is the writing system itself. The Japanese written language actually has 3 different writing systems. 

 

Two of them, Hiragana and Katakana, function in the same way the roman alphabet does for english. Though they do have more ‘letters’ with a total of 46 characters each. These are very simple, easy to read, and most people can easily memorize them within a matter of weeks.Hiragana and Katakana have different characters, but they all correspond to each other. I think of them as lower case letters and capital letters in english.

 

The 3rd writing system on the other hand, is a lot harder. Kanji, which originally came from the Chinese script, is a writing system which is composed of symbols that each individually represent words. Like hieroglyphics, they can be thought of as tiny pictures that are read as words. It's a lot more complicated than both hiragana and Katakana. There are literally thousands of them. But that's not all, when they are written down, they can be read and interpreted in all sorts of ways. They are usually combined together to create new words, mixed and matched in order to add different meanings and pronunciations.

 

By the end of middle school, most students know about a thousand of them, though that's only really the bare minimum. In highschool they're expected to learn even more. 

 

In order to be properly considered ‘literate’ in Japan, most people need to know about 2000-3000 of the most commonly used kanji. (Though there are literally thousands more out there.)

 

In English, the alphabet has only 26 letters. Every single word in the entire language is composed of these 26 letters. Sure, grammar and spelling are important to know, but fundamentally you really only need to learn the alphabet to start reading and writing. 

 

In Japanese there are literally thousands of kanji all with different readings and meanings, all used to represent different words and meanings. 

 

The difference in difficulty is astounding. Honestly, I think it's a miracle that we Japanese have such a high literacy rate when our written language is so unbelievably complicated. 

 

Speaking Japanese is easy. Anyone can do that. But reading and writing Japanese? That is a challenge.

 

I say all this to emphasize just how hard Japanese literature is as a student. Because not only do we have to learn and memorize new kanji every day, but we even have to learn and memorize ancient variants of our modern Kanji. (Right, I forgot to mention, the Kanji writing system was updated after World War 2. It was simplified.) So now If I read older texts, (and I definitely will in this class) even the Kanji I already know are going to be a little different from what I'm used to. 

 

If Kanji is so difficult, why not just use Hiragana and Katakana? Well the problem is that Kanji is essential to understanding written Japanese. There are many reasons both cultural and practical for this but in my opinion the most important one is that there are no spaces in the written language. Kanji is used to separate words, with Hiragana and Katakana interspersed in between. The written language is meant to include all 3 writing systems and without one, it just doesn't work. Thats just how it is. Unreasonably complicated, and probably inefficient, but necessary all the same. 

 

'Uhg…I just want to say, I love Japan. I love my country and our culture, but I absolutely despise our writing system.'

 

For an hour, we read some old Japanese poems in class. Well I guess 'read' isn't the right word in my case. I just copied down notes as the teacher went over the most difficult kanji, translated, and taught them to us. Of course she also explained the meanings behind these poems and what not, but I had my hands full just trying to learn the Kanji, so I ignored this aspect of the lesson.

 

Finally the bell rang and I slowly trudged out the door. 

 

There she was, waiting for me. I smiled at her with a guilty conscience. "Sumiwa-chan thank you so much for everything you did for me today. I have class with my cousin Josuke next, so he'll help me out for now. See you tomorrow, ok?"

 

I said my goodbyes to Sumiwa and she nodded back at me. Then left for her last class. Our school has a total of 7 classes per semester for us students. But only 6 actual class periods. So this was the last time I'd see her for the day.

 

5 of my classes are required, but 2 of them are electives. 

 

Though I guess one of them, kind of isn't. For PE, we have the option of taking the general PE class or picking a sport. 

 

All through middle school I took baseball, but this year I just took the general class. 

 

The other is more of a 'true' elective. I picked art because I thought it would be easy. Anything to boost my GPA. 

 

I remember in my past life, art was pretty easy for me. The teach' even said I had a knack for it. It was one of my best classes. I liked to draw every now and then on my own. But I dropped it because life got in the way. 

 

'Maybe I'll take it up again…'

 

I went up to Josuke, he’d been waiting for me and watched from a distance as I bade farewell to Sumiwa. 

 

"You picked up a new friend so quickly. What if I get jealous?." he said with a cheeky grin.

 

"Bro don't say that, even as a joke. I seriously might get murdered for it." I replied. 

 

He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

 

'He really doesn't know!?'

 

I glared at him in response. " Lucky bastard! Why do you have so many cute girls just hanging off you? Why can't I get some of that!"

 

He raised his hands up in an attempt to pacify me. "It's not like I'm doing it on purpose! I told you, I'm a true love kind of guy! I'm not interested in superficial girlfriends…" He retorted.

 

I glared even harder at him. "I don't care if you're serious about them or not, but Jealous girls are scary! If anyone asks, I'm your blood related cousin, you got that!?"

 

He nodded quickly while keeping his hands up in surrender. "Yep yep! Don't worry about it, I got this!"

 

I snorted in contempt, and changed the topic. "Whatever…what about that stand user you mentioned earlier?" 

 

Josuke's eyes instantly  lit up."Prepare yourself! Koichi's already there! We'll meet him real soon!"