This week’s campus cutie is also my classmate in my Japanese Anime class! Meet Alex!
Amy Yonemoto:Okay. I’m going to throw out a random word to start the interview. Just tell me what comes to mind! Culture.
Alex Kang: I feel like I’m a mixture of cultures. Sort of like a foreigner on the inside, but completely Asian looks. haha
AY: Could you tell me more about your background?
AK: Both of my parents are Korean, but I was born in Sydney, Australia, and lived there for about 6 years. Then I moved to Japan and started St.Mary’s International School here in Tokyo for a few years. Then moved to Seoul Foreign School in Korea for about a year. Then back to Australia for another two years, and then came back to St.Mary’s International School in middle school and graduated class of 2014. Lots of moving around for me.
AY: I think having to move around and having to adjust to different surroundings make you more independent and better at adapting to new surroundings.
AK: Yeahh. Having to adapt to places takes some getting used to, but it comes naturally now.
AY: Recently, Her Campus Waseda uploaded an article written by mutual friend, Tae, on his view of SILS. What’s your take?
AK: Honestly, SILS is a joke. You’re required to take more Japanese classes than college courses if you can’t speak Japanese, and on top of that, classes that are suppose to be taught in English are taught by teachers that can barely read a sentence in English. Ridiculous. But the people are awesome. I’ve made some good friends at SILS. Haha
AY: I definitely agree. We take a fun Japanese class though.
AK: Haha we do.
AY: So in class, a while back, you mentioned that you used to sing! Could you tell me more about that?
AK: I started singing my freshman year of high school. Singing at St.Mary’s was/is huge. I was a part of Mens Choir, Show Choir, Honor Choir, Varsity Ensemble, and a student organised acapella group called Titones. Travelling and singing with the Varsity Ensemble was by far the greatest experience of my life so far. Words can’t describe how it felt to sing with the group. As for Titones, we were just a group of friends that got together and started to sing. As time went by, we sang for charity, school concerts, and even went through to the top 50 in Japan for Hamonepu! haha. Here’s a short video of our final concert as a group if you want to see.
AY: It’s so cool that you were able to apply something really positive along with something that you love to do. Do you still sing now?
AK: Yeah, it was a really good experience. Noo. I don’t sing at all now. Maybe when friends come back for break or something but thats about it. Haha
AY: Aw. I think it’s good to be in some sort of group or team while you’re in school . It gives you something to look back on, a major memory. We go to events, we date, we learn, but as great as those memories are, you’re more bound to look back on things like bukatsu(clubs and sports teams in Japanese) because you spend a majority of your school career doing it. And you also said you make pottery? And you also played soccer? What can you not do.. hahah
AK: Definitely. Especially because of the amount of practice and hard work we had to put into it, it lasts longer in our memory . And yes, I took IB Higher Level Ceramics and I sculpted and made many plates and all. This was just something I liked to do in my spare time and it was also part of the curriculum, so that worked out pretty well.
Soccer and Ski are my main sports. I’ve played soccer and have skied for about 15 years now. I played varsity for 3 years in high school and that was a lot of fun. We went to Hawaii every year for the Moanalua Soccer tournament during thanksgiving. Good memories. Hahah. Also every year I try to go skiing at least 2-3 times during winter.
AY: My laptop is about to run out of battery. Thank you for taking time to chat with me outside of class! See you soon!
AK: Also. I can’t ice skate. It’s just too hard.
AY: Hahaha. I wouldn’t have guessed that!