Nice to meet you. My name is Hirasawa. I opened this blog account last week, and hope to write on the daily life and my experience. Today, I am going to specifically explain what I want to write here in this blog.
The reason I started to write a blog
The trigger I started to write a blog is actually STUDYING ABROAD.
I have currently studied at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University), NY, the United States as an EXCHANGE STUDENT. I arrived at the U.S. on August 19th, thus one month has already passed.
This study abroad program is two-semester, and I will stay in the U.S. for about 9 MONTHS.
This is the first time that I stay in other countries part from Japan such a long time that I noticed that there was a significant difference from the life I was in Japan.
That is, having a lot of FREE TIME.
When I was in Japan, I was studying in the university, meeting my friends, working as a part-time job, and drinking alcohol on weekdays, traveling and watching a baseball in the stadium on weekends, hence I was very busy. It was even a little bit hard for me to do the assignments, thus I had even never thought of writing a blog before.
In the U.S., however, I cannot meet my friends living in Japan of course and it is not allowed to drink alcohol because I am 20 now (the minimum legal drinking age is 21 in NY). Also, due to the INFLATION AND THE WEAK RATE OF JAPANESE YEN AGAINST U.S. DOLLAR, entertainments are very expensive, too.
Furthermore, except a particular job inside the campus, it is PROHIBITED TO WORK in the U.S. based on the rule of my visa, which result in having much more free time than while I was in Japan.
Even though I can stay in the U.S. for 9 months, which is a very long period as a study abroad program, spending a daily life with net surfing and smartphone games is a waste of time, and I also wanted to memorize my experience accurately, thus I decided to write a BLOG.
In the next headline, I am going to explain the concept of this blog and the contents that I will mainly focus on.
Concept
What I want to prioritize the most in this blog is WRITING BOTH IN JAPANESE AND ENGLISH.
As I mentioned above, I am studying in the U.S., thus of course, the biggest goal is TO IMPROVE MY ENGLISH SKILLS MORE than now.
Thus, I actually would like to write this blog only in English, but there are two problems. First, I may FACE A SETBACK. Second, ONLY A FEW JAPANESE WILL READ THIS BLOG. From these two points, I will write this blog in two languages.
For a while, I will first write the blog in Japanese and then translate it in English like this, but if I am able to write in English smoothly, I would like to WRITE THIS BLOG IN ENGLISH.
In this blog, I will concentrate mainly on TWO TOPICS in this blog.
Study abroad
First, I hope to write about anything related to studying abroad such as STUDYING, LEFE IN THE U.S., THE ENTERTAINMENT and so on.
Also, I am an EXCHANGE STUDENT from Waseda University, thus I want to provide some imporatnt information for students who have a desire to study abroad based on my experiences.
↑ This is the entrance of the Stony Brook University.
Travelling
Another topic is a traveling.
This is one of my hobbies, and I have a dream to visit ALL THE 47 PREFECTURES in Japan before I graduate from university.
I have already visited MORE THAN HALF OF THEM for a year and a half before coming to the U.S., but I had not posted anything except for Instagram, thus I am going to write my travel report while staying here.
Especially, I want to make an effort to introduce a good aspect of my home country understandably for non-Japanese who want to visit there by writing in English.
I will write about the details of my travel report soon.
↑ Before I came to the U.S., I visited Aomori and Akita. This is a Sannai-Maruyama site.
conclusion
This is the first blog for me, thus I will sum up here.
In short, I started to write a blog because I am STUDYING ABROAD NOW and HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME.
Mainly, the themes are the STUDYING ABROAD and TRAVELLING.
This is my first experience, thus I may face troubles, but I would like to overcome them by writing a lot.
Thank you.
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