Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2013

When I arrived at Narita Airport to spend one year studying abroad at a Tokyo women’s college, the fear of being homesick or suffering from culture shock never crossed my mind. I thought I was prepared for every challenge. Back home, I was enrolled in a cultural studies degree with a dash of business administration on the side. Japanese wasn’t officially part of the curriculum, but I’d been learning the language since high school.

Originally, this effort was borne of that fascination with Japanese pop culture—manga and anime and otaku—that so many teens worldwide share. But I’d become rather serious about my interest in Japan. I studied for the JLPT and read up a bit on history, culture and etiquette. Naturally, I fancied myself quite the expert when I stepped off the plane.

I knew my Japanese wasn’t good enough for most university classes, but my exchange program was mostly geared toward helping visiting students improve their language skills—besides, it would look great on my CV. Above all, my year as a gaijin would provide the perfect opportunity to experience life somewhere very different from my mid-sized German university town far from my loving—but somewhat clingy—family.

My mum tearfully bid me farewell at Frankfurt Airport and my “dorm mum” came to personally collect me at Narita. (“Dorm mum” was the nickname bestowed on Mrs T., the middle-aged woman in charge of the exchange students’ housing.) I greeted her with a polite bow, in halting Japanese, which resulted in an exuberant compliment on my language proficiency. Once we made it to the accommodation in Tokyo, I remembered to take off my shoes. The following night, during the welcome party for the new arrivals, I didn’t point at anyone with my chopsticks and didn’t drop a single onigiri.

All in all, I seemed to be off to a great start. It didn’t even put a damper on my excitement that Charlotte, the French student I shared a tiny apartment with, pointed out that Mrs T.’s praise for my language skills should be taken with a grain of salt. “If you get a compliment on your Japanese,” she said sagely, “it’s mainly a polite acknowledgement of your effort. When they criticize your grammar, you’ve made it.” Bah, I thought, she’s probably jealous.

I threw myself into life in Tokyo headfirst. Since I arrived a couple of weeks before the fall term started, there was enough time to get plenty of sightseeing done. I gawked at designer garments in the Ginza department stores, took the elevator to the top of Tokyo Tower and spent a whole day among little kids at Disneyland. Once college started, I saw it as an occasion to make even more new friends—this time among the Japanese students, rather than the foreign girls from my dorm. I joined the basketball club: I didn’t learn to slam-dunk, but acquired some essential new words from our socializing: shinkan konpa (drinking party) and futsukayoi (hangover).

After the mad whirl of the first few months, though, the newness started to wear off. Christmas was looming on the horizon—and I couldn’t afford to fly home for the winter vacation. My parents had agreed to come and see me in the spring, but suddenly that seemed a long time off. Now the honeymoon phase was over, and homesickness hit home.

I cursed nearly everything about living in Japan as an expat. There were too many people everywhere; I had a terrible cold, had to wear a gauze mask all day long and couldn’t even blow my nose in public. To add insult to injury, I was looking for a new dress for the dorm’s Christmas party and couldn’t find a single thing to fit my sturdy European frame.

Let’s draw a veil over what exactly followed. I might have been sobbing into my tea that I was missing my parents and my sister, home-made cookies and traditional carols, and that Japanese clothing made me feel like Godzilla.

Several moms saved me from wallowing in misery. First, I set up a long phone call with my own, as well as a Skype chat with my sister and even my technophobic dad. Then the mother of another German student in my dorm dropped in for a surprise Christmas visit. She dragged her daughter and me to an English midnight mass and brought along a gigantic “care package” full of home-made gingerbread.

All this helped with the homesickness. But what about still being stuck in Japan for what seemed like an eternity? Mrs T. to the rescue! She must have dropped a hint or two to my friends from the basketball club.

Yuki, one of the girls I’d regularly hang out with, issued a last-minute invitation to spend the Japanese New Year with her family in Chiba. As oshogatsu is as important to Japanese families as Christmas is to most people in Germany, I felt very honored. And when Yuki’s mother gently corrected my attempts at keigo over breakfast, I knew I’d truly started to settle in.