Orientation!

In my experience, (which is a vast and all-encompassing 24 years) orientations have always fallen into two categories. The business orientation and the summer camp orientation.

In the business orientation, everyone is professional, organized and appropriately nervous. There is either a long table which everyone sits around, or rows of chairs facing the front of the room. 9 times out of 10 you can count on some sort of projector or video set up. The orientations are usually long and boring affairs, and you are expected to take careful notes (which I rarely do) so as to remember all the vital information imparted in however many hours you are expected to listen.

The summer camp orientation, on the other hand, is a light-hearted affair, often held outdoors, or at the very least, somewhere the outdoors is easily viewable. People are split into smaller groups and encouraged to play teamwork building games, and activities focused on familiarizing ourselves with each other in a relaxed atmosphere.

I was wondering for a few weeks which type the Tokyo Animator Institute would have. On the one hand, it's a manga school, and like the college I went to, might have tended towards the summer camp orientation. On the other hand, I thought to myself, this is Japan. And Japan is serious business. Which would it be?

Either way, heading towards that first orientation, besides my idle musings over the type of orientation to be held, I had two big thoughts in my mind:

1) Exactly how OTAKU would everybody be?

2) How many other foreigners would there be?

I soon found out the answers. Very and None.

As I sat down in the lecture room, pointed towards the closest vacant seat to the front, (I had arrived a little early) I quickly scouted out my soon to be classmates - or at least - schoolmates. Which ones are in the Manga school? One student caught my eye. He had bright red hair, wore reasonably fashionable clothes and seemed slightly /chinpira/-esque.

For those who don't know, /chinpira/ [CHEEN-peerah] is that Japanese word for a young gangster, or any of those tough thug kids that are always the strongest most bad-ass ones in the high-school. Nowadays they are easily picked out by their long flowing mullets. Do a google search and I'm sure you'll come across some amusing photos.

I also saw my share of who you would figure to be the regular Otaku- some overweight, some skinny, most extremely shy. Very few people in the growing crowd were speaking to one another, and I definitely got the sense that this wasn't going to be an A+ social scene. Still, I myself was too shy to start up conversations with anyone, and not having complete confidence in my Japanese, I figured the longer I kept my mouth shut, the longer everybody might assume I spoke and understood Japanese perfectly.

After a lot of shuffling, people coming, and extended silences, things finally seemed to be getting under way. Papers were passed out. And a teacher took the floor. The long, boring, but definitely essential never-ending slue of speeches was about to begin.

I'm an English Teach- No wait, I'm not

Despite what you may have read or heard about heading over seas to live in Japan, not EVERYONE who does it is an English teacher. OK, given, most of us are. And yes, when I first came I was too. What can I say, it's the easiest way to get into this country.

But I decided, somewhere between the "kancho's" and the gross junior high lunches that maybe teaching wasn't where its at. I've decided to embark upon a different path, a path that some have boldly claimed (and half ridiculed) to be the "Weeaboo Dream."

For those of you who don't know what a Weeaboo is, it's someone who likes Japanese culture; is into all the crazy, colorful and outrageous things this small island exports to the rest of the world. Me? I live near Akihabara and in April of last year I started attending a specialist school for Manga. So I guess, yeah, I probably qualify as a Weeaboo. As they say in Japanese, let's get along well.

The path to achieving the Weeaboo Dream wasn't easy. There were months of intense Japanese study, visiting schools, speaking with teachers (or at least attempting to) and trying my darnedest to figure out which school would be right for me, and which school would actually accept me! Yes, it's true that I received emails from a few schools after I visited saying (albeit politely) that they were not accepting foreigners at this time (or ever?). Most schools were willing to accept me, given I passed the JLPT 2, a super high level Japanese Language exam essentially proclaiming me fluent. That's where the grueling hours of study came in. If anybody ever tells you Japanese is easy, they are either a genius, or have no idea what they are talking about. Or maybe they are Korean.

Of course, when test time came around, I was nervous. I had studied my heart out, but was it enough? Prior to the 6 months of intense study before the JLPT in December of '08, I had almost no classroom Japanese. Maybe half a years worth. And this is the kind of test that native Japanese speakers don't breeze through. The odds were against me. And you know what? I failed! I failed by about 5%. Oh so close! My dreams dashed! My hopes crushed! Would I have to be an English Teacher forever? Should I go home? What to do!?

Tokyo Animator Institute, a famous school located near Tokyo Dome was willing to take me without having passed the test. I had sent them an application (which consisted of only drawing and no essay to my great relief) and I was accepted. And thus began my journey through the grand unknown, the mysterious and strange place called, Manga School!

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Quick note: When I'm not blogging about what it's like to be a foreigner in a Japanese Manga school, I'll be posting up some character sketches and concept work I'm doing for the upcoming web-comic. Of course, once I've settled everything and start drawing the actual pages I will be posting those.