I can't go to Japan because I'm too opinionated?

Question:

My high school has a Japan exchange program where one year the students from Japan come to the US and the next year we go to Osaka, Japan for 2 weeks and vice versa. My sensei, Japanese teacher, said that she's worried about me going because I question things a lot of times; but that's only because I've been in her class for 3 years and I'm familiar with her but with other teachers I'm fairly quiet. I already know Japan is homogeneous and I know that I should just comply and follow the rules, so why is my Japanese teacher worried?

Answer:

I can understand her concern - she doesn't know how you act in other classes with other teachers and you're talking about going to a foreign country with a vastly different culture to your own. Even if you already know most of the "rules" so to speak before you get there, it's still difficult to adapt your behaviour, plus there will be certain unwritten rules in the culture as well that you wouldn't have heard about (every country has them). Those problems are faced by absolutely everybody who goes to live or study abroad, particularly if you naturally have a personality that in some way goes against what's deemed socially appropriate in that culture. That said, a friend of mine went to study in Japan for 5 weeks and she didn't step on that many toes, despite the fact that she was suddenly put in a strict Catholic school. Explain to your teacher what you've written here: that you ask a lot of questions in her class because you're familiar with her and with being in her class, in most classes you're a lot quieter and that you're well able to comply with rules and not question things when it's appropriate.