お茶会 (おちゃかい / ocha kai) translates to “tea party.” We really don’t have an equivalent term here in the states, perhaps “afternoon tea.” It’s all about friends hanging out at a cafe and enjoying good conversation.

My story is about how a language exchange blossomed into an amazing, amazing, lifelong friendship. After meeting on the first day of a Saturday Japanese language class at UH-Mānoa, we somehow discovered that we lived in the same condo. I say “somehow” because at the time, my friend could only speak a little English, and I couldn’t speak 日本語 at all.

We started to meet weekly at a boba tea cafe in our building. Soon her daughter joined in, and I met the entire family. Everyone was so incredibly kind, and we got along so well. This led to dinner at a nearby microbrewery, barbecue in our condo’s shared space, and lunch in my unit.

The turning point was actually the city’s lockdown order due to COVID. Social gatherings were not allowed. We were still able to take walks together. We bonded and became the best of friends. When things opened up, we were able to go on outings around the island. Because my friends were here in Hawaiʻi for a limited time, it created a sense of urgency. Every bit of time was extremely precious.

Now I will talk about what we did at お茶会。Because we’re all students learning a second language, we often had questions regarding grammar & vocab. We also realized that there is “school” language and “real” language, so we tried to learn what a native speaker would say. For fun, we answered survey questions (アンケート) and learned a lot about each other.

In the last few months, we started journaling in our target languages ジャーナル。This was a great practice. You had to compose sentences, write them, read them (speaking & listening,) get feedback, and work on pronunciation. Here are my journal entries (from newest-to-oldest.)

In the beginning, we just wanted to learn a new language. But thanks to お茶会、we became family.