If COVID never happened, how would we known each other …?

Today, I did an interview with my friend, Anjali Nautiyal. How did we get to know each other? She’s my language partner (Tandem partner): we’ve known each other for “mutual language practice”.

Due to COVID, many of exchange students couldn’t study in Japan. Additionally, we had less opportunities to communicate with them. I also expected a lot of cultural exchanges with them at the university, so that was really sad, but I found the interesting program on the website.

“In my university, there’s an online language exchange program for free, and if you apply for it, they introduce the partners who are students from university of English-speaking countries such as the UK, the US, and Australia. All of them are studying Japanese, and can speak English fluently, so we practice each language (Japanese and English) together and also learn cultures”.

COVID allowed me to spend most of the time at home, so I decided to apply for it right away and met her online in last May at the first time.

Please enjoy the reading about my interesting ang nice partner, Anjali!

1.Please introduce yourself

Hello! My name is Anjali Nautiyal and I am 20 years old. I am currently in my second year at Monash university and I am studying science. I have been living in Australia for more than 14 years but I was actually born in India.

2.Why did you apply for the language exchange program? How is it going?

In my university degree I also study Japanese, and my teachers recommended the students in the class to join this program as it would help improve our conversation skills and give us an opportunity to make new friends. On top of that, this was during a COVID lockdown in Melbourne so I had a lot of time as well and I decided to join it.

I really like it! I didn’t expect to continue it for almost two years but I’m glad to confirm it for so long. I am very happy to have become friends with you and I look forward to our skype sessions every week. It’s very interesting to learn about new things from Japan or Germany, and I think it really helped my speaking skills.

3.What made you decide to learn Japanese?How long have you studied?

In the first year of high school, we had to choose between two languages to study, German or Japanese. I chose Japanese because I was a big fan of anime and manga at that time and I wanted to watch things without subtitles and now I have been studying Japanese for almost 8 years!

4.What was the most fun part of learning Japanese? What was the most challenging?

The most fun part is learning new things about Japanese culture and being able to use my Japanese skills in real life! But definitely the hardest part for me is remembering how to read and write kanji….

5.Have you ever realized it was worth studying Japanese? Ex: you made new friends.

Yes! After going on exchange in the first year of senior high I truly realized how interesting Japan was and decided I wanted to continue learning Japanese until I was fluent. Learning Japanese has given me many opportunities, and the best one is making friends, such as with my host family and with other students in my class and you!

6.In your country, how many people speak Japanese? Is Japanese culture popular there?

Some people learn Japanese in high school but they don’t continue it for a long time so they don’t have very high skills and they forget it. Because of this, I think there aren’t many non-Japanese people who speak Japanese.

7. If you could give any advice to people studying Japanese, what would it be?

But certainly, Japanese culture is very popular in Australia, such as anime or fashion or music or history, so the number of people learning Japanese has increased compared to before.

Practice every day. It can be some kanji or some vocabulary or some grammar but it’s better to do a little bit than nothing because it is really easy to forget new things if you don’t revise them!

8.Do you consider yourself to speak Japanese fluently or not? Do you have any goals to aim at?

I don’t think my Japanese is fluent… I still have a long way to go. I think I can have decent conversations about some topics in Japanese, but I would like to be better because I know I still make many mistakes. My biggest goal is passing the N1 level on the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test).

9.Actually we’ve never met in person, but do you want to visit Japan after covid-19?

Of course! Ever since I went to Japan in 2017, I have always wanted to go back because there are so many things to see, do, and eat. I hope I can go visit again and you can show me around Saitama and Tokyo city!!

–The interview ends—-

Almost one and half years has been passed since we’ve known each other though, I always feel glad to have met her. The COVID affected on my whole school life, all classes were online and I couldn’t make new friends and meet people, which was really stressful for me, but the COVID gave us not only something negative, but also positive things, and one of the best was becoming friend with her. Thank you so much, Anjali! Look forward to seeing you in person after the COVID.

Yoshika