One of the things I enjoy about life right now, is that I not only the ability to meet and interact with Japanese people, but also the fact that I am given the opportunity to meet all kinds of people from all over the world.
Between the people I meet at school, to friends of friends, to random people in the street, I have had the chance to meet so many different kinds of people, and I think it's wonderful.
The world is extremely vast and extremely small at the same time. And the more people you meet throughout life, the more you start to realize this. You can live halfway across the world, and still find tons of commodities from home. And while living in this faraway land, you can meet someone who lived a couple of hours away from where you used to live, and live a world apart from them.
The more you interact with people, the more some stereotypes are destroyed, while others are fortified. But most importantly, the more you interact with people, the more you learn about the world, and about yourself.
It's obvious that I didn't have to travel to the opposite side of the planet to be able to talk to people from various cultural backgrounds. Montreal is a whole lot more multicultural a place than Tokyo will ever be. However, the way you interact with people of different nationalities is somewhat different when you yourself are a foreigner. And the way people act with you is different as well. It's somewhat hard to explain, but I think that anyone who's lived in a foreign country could agree with me.
There are a lot of difficulties that come with being the foreigner, but there are also a lot of good things as well. And being able to see the world through different eyes is no doubt one of these positive things.
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