The School of Flirting by S. B. Sheeran

CHAPTER 1
     
          Culture Gap
    …
     
    This is the letter that I wrote on my flight in to Chicago six months ago:
    “Hello, my name is Mina Yamada. I am very pleased to meet you! My blood type is AB and I was born in the year of the rabbit. I am 158 centimeters tall, that is five foot two in America. This year I am coming from Japan to study in America! I have been studying English very hard so that I could understand my American professors and make friends. This is very important to me because I am only half Japanese. My father is an American. My mother says I look very much like him. My friends at home in Japan think I look like a foreigner because have round eyes and brown hair. This makes me have a very fashionable style at home, but I am nervous of what people will think of me in the U.S.A. Will everyone talk too fast because they think I am American? Lucky for me, I have good friend at my exchange University.
    Leann came to my school in Kyoto when we were children. Her family traveled much and so she stayed in Kyoto for two years. She did not know Japanese when she came to school, but she studied very hard and speaks very good Japanese now. We wrote many letters to each other over the years. I sent her secrets and we practiced our second language writing. I always knew that I would travel to the U.S.A. one day. I am lucky that our university has an exchange program and I got this chance!
    Now I am very nervous because I have not seen Leann since we were thirteen. She has sent me photos and I will try to recognize her from those pictures. I hope that we are still the best friends we are in letters!”
    I know, awful isn’t it? Six years of studying English and my language skills were still so unnatural sounding. I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise. I learned English by reading text books and practicing with other nonnative speakers. Slang? Never heard of it. Okay, I had picked up a library book on that but it was so outdated it was useless, unless I ever have to go to a disco theme party, then I’m set. Groovy, baby!
    I wrote that letter thinking that I could submit it with my application to be in a sports or hobby club. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Of course not. It turns out you guys don’t have that here. Not only was my English not quite up to snuff, but my cultural knowledge was seriously lacking too. In Japan, joining a university club is practically mandatory and it really shapes who you hang out with and how you spend the majority of your free time. (That free time is actually tiny and precious when you think of all the classes, exam prep, extra tutoring and part time jobs we also have to juggle.)  At Leann’s university it’s a different story. Sure, there are extracurricular activities but you just show up if you want to, stop going if you aren’t loving it. No application and no obligation. There’s also no exam prep or tutoring necessary.
    You can see how this was a huge culture shock for me when I arrived. Suddenly I had all this free time and nothing to do with it. There was also my “fashionable style”. Yes, at home my gajin, or “foreigner”, look was very hip. Here in the states? I blend in. My long brown hair is a bit mousey, my round eyes are the norm, and being short and slim just gets me lost behind towering blonde glamazons. All in all I look like a librarian. And I study like one too.
    Luckily when Leann met me at the airport we connected immediately. It was as though we had never been apart; which is pretty amazing for not seeing someone in almost seven years. It was probably because we had been such faithful pen pals. It’s hard to write that often and not share your deepest secrets. Leann really understood what it’s like being dropped into an alien culture too. If I was feeling the bewildered and hopeless about ever learning everything I needed to; I could just look over at Leann and know that she’d had this exact same experience when she arrived in