A Typical Day at J.F. Oberlin University

January 31, 2017

Depending on the day, I wake up at different times. For example, on Mondays and Fridays, I have a class at 9:00 a.m., so I wake up at 6:00 in the morning. As for the rest of the weekdays, my first class starts at 10:40 a.m., which I take advantage of by sleeping an extra two hours. I wake up a lot earlier than most of the other international students because 1) my morning routine—getting ready and eating breakfast—takes about an hour (mainly because of how slowly I move while half-asleep), and 2) my commute to school takes about an hour. My daily commute consists of a 30-minute walk to the train station, an 8-minute train ride, and a 10-minute bus ride, plus a couple of minutes depending on how long the line for the school shuttle bus is.

By the time I get to the Machida campus, I have a good 50 or so minutes of free time before class starts. During that time, I sit in the common area and do some last-minute studying or homework until my friends come and talk to me.

Four times a week, my first class is Japanese class, where I learn about the complexities of Japanese grammar and kanji for an hour and a half. After that class, I either have a two-hour break until my next class or my part-time job at the on-campus English conversation café. During my break, I do some homework, eat a snack, study for an upcoming test, or watch a TV show on Netflix with my phone. Sometimes, I even video chat with my parents or my friends back home in the United States, if they are available.

At 12:40, I either have a class or work. (I work at the café 4 hours per week, helping native Japanese speakers practice their English speaking and listening skills.) On days when I have work, I have a class immediately after it. When I don’t have work, I have a class at that time. After my afternoon class, I usually spend another couple of hours on campus either talking to my friends or doing homework.

I usually head home between 5:00 and 7:00. After the one-hour commute from the school to my homestay, I take a shower and then eat dinner with my host family. The final few hours of my day consists of alternating between completing an assignment for school and checking my emails and social media. On most nights, I go to bed by 11:00 pm.

Written By

Yvette Ortiz

Hello! My name is Yvette, and I am a fifth-year student here at Northeastern. For my final semester as an undergrad, I decided to study abroad in Tokyo, Japan. One of the main reasons I chose to go abroad was my desire to push myself out of my comfort zone, and I figured traveling alone to a foreign country where my native language is rarely used would be a pretty effective way of doing that. Aside from improving my Japanese, my main study-abroad goal is to not be afraid of making mistakes. Since I will be immersed in a completely different culture, I will receive ample opportunities to initiate conversations with native Japanese speakers. I’ll probably make tons of mistakes, but that's okay, because that's what normally happens when you're learning a foreign language while living in a foreign country.