By John Rozewicki

Exchange student from Ball State Univ.

After living in Japan for about two months, the main thing that strikes me is how easy day-to-day life is. It's not that I imagined that life in Japan would be difficult. Nobody ever told me that it would be. It's just that the main difference between my life in the US and my life in Japan is the absence of a significant source of stress, my automobile. Now, there are many things I like about Japan. The lack of an automobile, at first blush, may seem like something inconsequential, but it has impacted my mood profoundly.

Just the simple act of being able to walk around is a big change. Walking is made very difficult in America. It is a fact that the current trend in building roads in the United States leaves them without sidewalks. Pedestrians are relegated to difficult, unkempt, and often dangerous terrain.

Japan doesn't seem to be like this, so far. I am able to walk not only more often, but almost everywhere. I walk everyday, and I am able to walk every place that I need to go. I can walk to the grocery store, the hardware store, the 100-yen shop. Satsudai is within walking distance, and there are more than a few restaurants in that range too.

It feels very freeing to not need an automobile to do very simple things. Where I lived in the United States, without a vehicle, I would not have been able to buy groceries, see my family, go to the post office, or go out drinking with friends. Some things were right on the border of being too inconvenient. The bank was possible on foot, but it was a decent hike. My university was close enough that I was comfortable walking there in the morning and walking back in the evening, but going back and forth in short order would have been prohibitively tiring.

Public transportation is a big change, too. It's actually something useful here, and it's useful to the point that a lot people don't really feel the need to own a car. Where I lived in the United States, public transportation was a joke. Nobody used it, and because nobody used it they never had enough money to improve it.

The main thing is that I do not like to drive, and I have not had to drive since I've lived in Japan. Walking is extremely convenient, and the public transportation is useable. There are only a few places where I kind of wished I could have had a car. For instance, when I went to buy a new desk and chair from the hardware store I had to make sure to buy a desk that I was able to carry back to my apartment on foot. A second trip had to be made for the chair. The hardware store could have delivered it, but it felt silly to pay almost as much for delivery as for the items. Although, this wasn't an impossible problem to solve, I managed the task just fine on foot, and situations like this are so few and far between that most often it doesn't really bother me.

I feel like a weight has been lifted from me because I have not had to deal with the stress of needing to own a car and drive all the time. I am better able to concentrate on the things that really matter to me like hanging out with friends and learning Japanese.

Thus far, living in Japan has been a very good experience, and this example is only one of the many things I enjoy about living here. Though, there are some things I miss such as Mexican food, but I find that there are more positive aspects than negative aspects. As with everything in life there is a pleasant mixture of both. There is no bitter without sweetness. I hope to find more positive things like this as I continue to live here.

"John Rozewicki is a 4th-year Japanese and Telecommunications

double-major from Ball State University in Indiana."