"So what do you think of the new place Ken?" I snapped back into my senses. My dad chuckled as he casually put his suit on. "We'll be going in about ten minutes so go get ready." I climbed the stairs back up and had butterflies in my stomach as I sat on my bed and started packing up my back, getting ready for school. "New school, new me" I kept saying that to myself as I went back downstairs to meet my dad again, who was already in the car waiting for me.

Moving out to a different country and joining a totally new school in a different place is pretty tough. I was hoping I'd make friends today and just be social and attentive in class. As we kept moving we approached bustling streets of Tokyo and literally everyone there too was going to work. We approached a four way crossroad where we experienced the early morning rush hour traffic and had to wait for about fifteen minutes to reach school.

"Nervous huh?" My dad kept looking at me and I was sweating bullets off even though the air conditioning was on full blast. "Yeah" I replied. My dad chuckled again, "there's really not much to be worried about. Just go in and be yourself, and always remember to have fun and make new friends." Advices like this which came from my dad time to time was the only thing that helped me to calm down.

As we approached the school building, dad slowed down his car and it was time for me to go. There were a lot of students already going in and most of them were in groups. Happy to see each other after the two month long summer break. "Remember what I said okay? There's nothing to worry about. Go make friends!" My dad being the usual cheerful self motivated me and drove off as I walked into the school entrance, nervously looking for the class which I'm supposed to be in.

As I walked into the building, I had to take off my shoes and slip on the school shoes. Not being super familiar with the building's layout, it took me a few minutes to find my classroom. I walked in and settled down on a seat near the windowsill. A few moments later more students came in and our teacher for that class too, walked in.
Everyone wished her in unison and we were all asked to sit down. Then she started taking our attendance. One by one, everyone responded to their names being called out.

"Ken Fujikare?" "Present ma'am!" I exclaimed as she called out my name. Being in eighth grade, classes weren't really boring or tough, but I still havent really talked to anyone yet and honestly speaking, I wasn't in the mood to talk to others about myself.
Time flew by faster than I had anticipated, and before I even knew it, the bell for the school lunchtime rang and everybody rushed out to the cafeteria. Talking to others about the episodic to shows which they watched, anime or even about other random things.

As I collected my lunch, I ran into my first problem, you see, the cafeteria had four seated tables, and I had no idea on which table to pick as I was new. Optimistically I took this as the first move to make new friends here, or so I thought. I could not gather up enough courage to sit down at one of these tables, soon I found one table in which my class teacher, Maeko ma'am, sat along with a co worker of hers. There were two empty seats. "Hey ma'am, may I sit down with you?" I asked. She looked at my face and understood that I still wasn't really talking to anybody. So she happily agreed. "Yeah sure, you can sit here with us and have lunch." A smile crept upon my face and I was just relieved that she was okay with it.

"Ken, meet Prof Satoshi, our senior Chemistry teacher. I greeted him and they let me join in on their conversation. "So ken, how's your new school? So you like it here?"
He asked. "I'm still adjusting to these abrupt changes, school's fun, I really like it here!" I tried my best to sound competent as possible, he then shared his story about when he moved to Tokyo.

Even though they were teachers, and they were most probably more than twice my age, I seemed to resonate with the topics which they talked about, and I too added a few points into the mix.

Abruptly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and when I turned back, I was greeted with a smiling face of another student who looked about my age. "I just noticed that you're sitting along with teachers and are kinda alone, mind if I join you guys?"
I gave him my signal of approval and so did the other teachers. "Hey by the way my name's Ken." I blurted out. I was just too desperate to make friends and this was one of the best chances I've got till now. "I'm Dansei, I too am in eight grade." I had a big smile on my face when he said that, my assumptions were correct!

Dansei talked about how he had too joined the school a year ago and he understood what I was going through,"even though everyone's extremely friendly, you'll find it difficult to make good friends, I was in that situation the other year, and now that you've too joined here I just wanted to make you feel comfortable and I wanted to have someone I could relate to." He kept talking about other things and his assumption was correct, we did have a lot of things in common! After lunch, we parted ways and promised each other to have lunch together from now on.

During the souji(cleaning) time I was assigned two classes, and surprisingly Dansei was there too along with me! He was assigned the windows and I had to go through
Sweeping the classrooms. "Feeling weirded out by Japanese school customs huh?" He jokingly asked. I'm really not used to even cleaning up ,t room and now I'm out here cleaning up some random classroom. "Yeah this wasn't something I was used to doing back in my old school. Things feel so different here. It's extremely modern but at the same time deeply rooted in old traditions." I replied. "Well welcome to Japan, get used to working hard from now on." To be honest he wasn't lying.

"By the way have you decided which club you're going to join?" I looked up, this wasn't something I thought about, I'm really not the type to engage in extracurricular activities and now that I think about it, the only thing I mostly do after I go home is play videogames. "I dunno" I sheepishly replied. "Well if you're open to anything then I'd recommend you to join the art club, it's an open community and you'd even be able to meet a lot of new people in this club. I found a lot of people with common interests in the art club!"

"Well I guess it's the art club then!" I did not want to make chances and blow the first person who was willing to talk to me by rejecting their offer.

As the final bell rang, we got dismissed and I walked out of the building to see my dad waiting there for me. "So how was school?" He was interested in knowing how this new charge has hit my life and how good I am at coping with this new change. "It was pretty good." I happily replied. When you think about it, it was not as bad as I had thought it'd be.