About 350 years ago, on July 13th, the famous poet Matsuo Basho wrote the haiku:
“How still it is here—
Stinging into the stones,
The locusts' trill.”

But according to the news this year, because of global warming, people in many places said that cicadas did not sing even after July began. Now, one month later, Japan is still in the grip of a very hot summer, I believe. How are you all doing? From the other side of the Earth, I am Rintaro Kamoshita, a 3rd year student at International College of Technology, Kanazawa.
Our life in New Zealand is very different—almost the exact opposite—from the summer in Japan. Every day we burn firewood in the fireplace to fight the cold. Today, I would like to tell you about my “unusual daily life” here in New Zealand, especially as the person who is sometimes called the “subculture manager” of our school.

First, I know you may not be the same, but for me, a day usually begins with solving a math problem, and ends with solving another math problem. When I was in Japan, at ICT, I did not have much time for such study, because I was busy with Robot Contest preparation and with many assignments. Only on holidays could I do math freely. However, after coming to New Zealand, my life changed a lot. Simply put, I gained “more than 24 hours of free time in one day.” Because of this, I could make a new style: at night, I study math for two or three hours and choose one problem, and then I try solving that problem the next morning. Thanks to this, I now have a lot more time to think about math in my daily life here.

On holidays, I often go to Otago Polytechnic. There, I write a math problem and its process of solution on a whiteboard, and leave it there before going home. It was like creating a secret code that only those who love math could understand—much like the one in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Dancing Men. Recently, one math teacher saw my problem and we were able to talk about it. Some people say that “math is a language.” I felt that it was really true, because at that moment, we crossed the boundary of ordinary communication by using the language of math.

But since I am supposed to talk about subculture, I should now speak about my “card game life” in Dunedin. First, let me tell you something surprising: in New Zealand, there are no shops that sell single cards. You may think “so what?” but for card gamers, this is almost like a death sentence. What is worse, in Dunedin, there is only one card shop in the whole city. Because of this, I had to spend three months without playing card games. This was maybe the first time since I was five years old.

However, in mid-July, something changed. One Saturday, I went skating with my friends at the southern ice rink. On the way back, I found a card shop, because I saw a sign with a very famous Japanese character. I went inside and looked at the card products. Then the shop owner talked to me, and told me that every Sunday they have a tournament. The next day, I joined the tournament with my friend, and I had my first international card game exchange.

There, I found something surprising. In general, New Zealand people are very free, and their way of thinking is different from Japanese people. But in the card game community, everything was almost exactly the same as in Japan. For example, if someone used a very strong deck, other players did not like it. And if someone was very unlucky and already almost losing, other players tried not to attack too hard. On the internet, I often saw people saying “foreign players act just like Japanese ones.” I found out that this was true.

Now, I want to finish my journal with a message to the students in the Hakusanroku Campus, and also to junior high school students who are thinking of entering our school. What I want to say is this: English ability is not the most important thing. …Okay, maybe I exaggerated. What I really mean is: communication ability matters much more.

I don’t play popular games, or popular sports. Also, I do not enjoy speaking with young people very much. In other words, I have some serious handicaps. But even so, I can still “fight,” thanks to two things I learned in Japan: the skill of talking with teachers, and the skill of talking through card games. These two skills have a special power: they automatically create a moment when the other person listens to me. So I recommend that you also make a strategy about how to communicate in English before you come to New Zealand.

For example, I live in a homestay with a Japanese family, so in daily life I do not use much English. But still, compared with other students, the amount of English I touch is not any less. That is, I can say I won by strategy. Dunedin is truly a wonderful place. So I hope you can make it not a place of suffering and homesickness, but a place of your own growth.

P.S. Actually, I am from Shinshu, so I wanted to start with Kobayashi Issa, not with Matsuo Basho.

Rintaro Kamoshita