Let's Play Catch Up

ひさしぶりだね～

Once upon a time, I'm certain there were readers who wondered what happened after my hospital trip in Tokyo. Did she die? (Clearly not.) I actually wrote numerous blog posts that sat in drafts for these past 5.5 years, detailing the outcome of my doctor's visit, but long forgotten about. So, let's play catch up.

I went to the hospital in Tokyo, conveniently located a few blocks away from my school (Temple University Japan/TUJ) in Minato-ku. Due to my symptoms, I was worried that I had relapsed in Mononucleosis, but it turned out to be a severe case of allergies in response to Japan's sakura season. I was sent home with 5 different prescriptions (Japan tends to treat symptoms individually; heartburn, vomiting, coughing, fever, etc.), one of which I was also mildly allergic to, but clearly survived consuming it. (I am allergic to penicillin, and this particular medicine was in the same family.)

Despite receiving treatment and recovering from my allergies, the illness took a toll on me physically and mentally. My grades dropped and I became incredibly homesick. I struggled to come back from missed quizzes and poor-quality homework done while my head was in a feverish fog. All of this built up to a drastic and incredibly sudden change in plans: I was coming home 3.5 years early.

Of course, it wasn't entirely my illness that cemented this decision for me. While I had a fantastic experience in Japan and made plenty of life-long friends, TUJ was an overpriced school that did not meet my educational needs. The fact that missing 2 days of school could absolutely demolish my grades, left me questioning if this was the right program for me.

With some reluctance, I cancelled my plans to move into an apartment with my best friend, Michael, and booked a flight home for April 23rd, 2010. 

The day after I returned home, I was invited to help teach a "how to draw manga" library session. Throughout the following year, I did several presentations at my old Community College about what it was like to study art and language overseas.

In January 2011, I moved to Savannah, GA and began attending Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Sequential Art (comics and storyboarding, essentially.) This was a much better match for me, though they lacked any Japanese classes, despite offering a yearly trip to Japan for Sequential students prior to the March 2011 earthquake. The Savannah campus was huge, however, and I ultimately transferred to the Atlanta campus Fall 2011, where I lived until I graduated May 31st, 2014.

SCAD was an amazing experience for me, and improved my art by leaps and bounds. There were fantastic networking opportunities, and I have made even more friends from around the world thanks to their large International student body. My roommates were Sequential and Animation students from Singapore, and many of my other friends were from Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Dubai, Italy, and even Japan. I am incredibly humbled to be a part of the comics and animation community in Atlanta, and for the work opportunities going to SCAD has presented me.

Now, it's been a year since I graduated from SCAD and left Atlanta to return home to Spokane, WA. I applied for KCP International in Tokyo, Japan, and I was accepted. I leave for Tokyo in October of this year. My Japanese is rusty, but every day I realize I remember more than I think I do. Kanji is now a weakness, but I am certain my hard work will pay off. Every minute of Japanese study will count these next few months, and my weekly Japanese meeting will help boost my conversation skills.

Seeing as this post has become pretty ridiculously long, I'll end it here and talk about KCP and the application process in the near future.

またね！