Matthew Dowdie

2010-11 Outbound to Japan

Hometown: St. Augustine, Florida

School: St. Augustine High School

Sponsor: St. Augustine Sunrise Rotary Club, District 6970, Florida

Host: Omiya City Rotary Club, District 2770, Japan

Bio

Matthew's Bio

I blame many things on Kermit the Frog. The first of which is completely unjustified, but having a figurehead to point and shout loudly at is far more comfortable than pointing and shouting loudly in general.

I blame Mr. Frog and his rainbow connection for dreams.

The second of which is a severe lack of fried frog legs, but now I’m completely off topic.

Dreams are a given fact of life to the American teenager. It’s a hot topic of conversation-- ever present at the back of the mind, eternally standing at attention for the inevitable occasion where the friendly chat should turn to face them. To some, dreams are a subject of pride and a towering ideal to attend to without fail or rest; to others, a small interest and goal for the far flung future and unworthy of attention in the face of more current and pressing matters, attended to wistfully and in a detached manner.

Dreams are the hopes, goals, and wishes for the future—born from questions and remarks such as “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “Wow, look at him run… he’ll be quite the track star when he grows up, eh?”, and “So, how was career day at school today?”, and fostered by the presence of celebrities and idols: those who have presumably accomplished such dreams and reap the benefits of it.

It’s not so unjustified that I pretend to entertain notions of dreams, then.

Knowledge is information, anything you could find in a book from how to make filet mignon to how to read literature like a professor. It is something prevalent in public education. As is such, it is something I have much of, as do most all people.

Wisdom is the ability to act on the information, that which is determined in different circumstances to coordinate your own knee-jerk reaction to the situation with your knowledge. The more wisdom you have, the far better you are when it comes to personality and decisions. It is something unobtainable without due duress, and as is such, it is something I have little of, as do a great many people.

When you stick the two in a great big melting pot, stir slowly but methodically, you get a heaping pile of intelligence.

It is intelligence I seek at every turn in the walk of life—fulfilling all extents with which my mind can be applied—and it is in the pursuit of wisdom that I have applied to Rotary’s Youth Exchange Program. As is such I do greet you all like so:

Hello world! All of seventeen years old, my name is Matthew Dowdie and I stand before you ready to move forward and on to Japan in the name of personal growth. I’ve been and done a little bit of everything—from the piano, French horn, and acting to website design and programming—and will have much more to do during my year abroad. It’s my hope that as I grow in wisdom, you all return to read this journal-blog-hybrid for the pretty pictures and inevitable awkward moments I shall experience, and lord none of it over my head upon my return.

A futile hope? Yes. But if I don’t say it up from, I can’t lord your ignoring my request over your heads upon my return.

Here’s hoping for wisdom! ここに知恵を望んでいる！

Matthew マシュー

August 20 - Pre-trip journal

So.

Japan, huh.

You can’t see it, but I’m rubbing my chin in a kind of Hmmmm manner right now.

Hmmmmm.

I wonder what Japan’s going to be like.

More so than cultural nuances and “Is that a… um, um, wait it’s coming to me… AH! Vending machine! I knew I knew that word—er, phrase!”

In fact, let’s run on that tangent for a second.

I’ve done my fair share of musing on culture since signing on for Rotary Youth Exchange. Pre-Zero Day, here’s my thoughts:

Culture is autopilot.

First, autopilot. Then the culture analogue.

Autopilot is the brain’s shortcuts. It’s why you throw your hands down when you trip, why your hand goes flying skyward every time you hear an oddly purposeful silence in the classroom. Your mind doesn’t fly into overdrive, shouting, “HEY I’M FALLING WAHHHH”. It doesn’t waken from the inner monologue to murmur, “…wait, when’d he get quiet? This is oddly famil—oh! This is the part where I raise my hand, right?”

No, you’ve already done that plenty often. At this point, it’s second nature. Thought is eliminated from the process entirely after so many times, and the action simply happens. You’ve trained your body to react to different circumstances without a cue from the mind.

Culture is a lot like that autopilot part of us.

Except that skipped thought process is the reasoning behind a belief.

The belief that it’s perfectly acceptable to head out regularly for ice cream on Friday nights.

The belief that the most polite thing you can do in a situation is give someone their space.

It’s part of our identity. That with which we define ourselves. The little things in life we take as a given, and from within this mental shell of what we consider facts of life—unchanging and solid before all else—we move forward, making our actions from within this worldview.

Changes in this identity-perspective are earth shattering. A massive paradigm shift is called on in moments of truth, where we must acknowledge a… less-than-minor clerical error.

The change that my daily life will no longer include my father, my mother, my sister, and my two dogs, for example, will no doubt leave me shamefacedly tearing up in the airport terminal come Friday.

The change that there might be days where I go without seeing a word in English will also likely leave me shamefacedly biting my pencil in a mildly perturbed state.

Youth exchange is not the incorporating of another culture into your own identity.

Cultural identities aren’t a two-for-one sale. There will be places where different cultures cross swords and thoroughly disagree, refusing any ground to that compromise thing. In these conflicting areas, a deliberate choice has to be made by the inbound.

During the year abroad, all the students whose names you see to the right will endure the most mentally trying situation any being can take on: cultural assimilation— making concessions that the home culture, if only in certain aspects, is not as homely as the newfound culture, willingly putting their identities on the line for a worldly perspective.

Most people aren’t brave enough to change their identities a little by cutting his or her hair an inch shorter than usual.

The only issue, of course, is that knee-jerk reaction we have to any situation. The one situation that tries to tell us the manner in which we think is about as right as the puppy drinking from the toilet.

People don’t take kindly to situations where they feel… as though their opinions and beliefs are but pebbles before another person’s supposed monolithic opinions and beliefs.

I expect controlling that kind of autopilot will be the greatest hurdle we’ll face this year.

…what a tangent, huh?

November 6

Japan holds many things in a higher regard than we Americans. We go so far as to assume a certain humility about certain things, and in many ways, are led to believe it best such certain things are left in a humble state.

January 15

Japanese high schools are not like American high schools.

But let me explain.

American high schools are, in many ways, the bare minimum educational level one can obtain in the hopes for a stable and long term future, as per the beaten path. Japanese high schools, too, are considered quite mandatory for any notions of becoming a salaryman.

Japanese high schools do a fair impression of colleges, with rigorous exams standing between a student and their hopes of academic non-failure, while maintaining its goverment-funded status.

I had the pleasure of being given a small tour of the high school I was to attend, way back in my second week of the exchange-- a tour I was looking forward too! Abounding curiousity aside, it would be a chance to try and familiarize myself with the building before school began.

I... may or may not have traumatic experiences from getting lost in a new school.

Regardless, I found myself surprised at quite a few things the school had to its name:

Multiple buildings, most of which were three stories high, with the main building managing four.

One of the wings was set aside specifically for the arts. I'm half of the impression this is mainly for show and tell, if you will, given the sheer number of works presented in view of many a nature-- traditional paintings, sculptures, and more were in sight in a large part of the wing, dominating the presence.

Though I didn't have to wonder why the showroom was quite so separated from the classroom, we quickly rounded around and--

Oh.

A music hall.

It's no secret that I've been playing the piano for the better part of a decade, and though I'll be the first to admit my initial fervent disinterest in the instrument leaves me with six years' skill, here and now, I find a certain peace with the piano. (Consequently, I'll be avoiding any occupations in relation to it, but that's another can of worms entirely.)

The tour guide was, quite eagerly, ushering myself and my first host mother over to one of the practice rooms, inviting us to step in. An orchestra-- brass, wind, strings, and I'm afraid I'm not too well familiarized with orchestras beyond these-- made up of students, were at work.

And what a work it was.

I'd heard lesser performances from Broadway. The orchestra, though in my own unprofessional opinion, lacking in subtlety, more than made up for a dulled sense of emotion out of sheer, practiced perferction.