In America, I never used to make my bed in the morning and I used to leave my clothes lying around the room. The Japanese room would force me to break these habits. This experience taught me that if I know something is good for me, I should force myself to do it even if it is newer, harder or less familiar.
After I got used to my new room and house, the next thing to get used to was life as a university researcher. I really wanted to make friends, because spending time with friends makes me happy. Usually, at school, there are many people like you who you see frequently, in your class or during recess. However, now I was spending most of my day in the lab programming robots. Plus, I was in a different country and didn't speak the language well. How could I make friends?
I decided to try as many different ways to make friends as possible. I went to welcome events for international students and researchers. I joined university clubs. I spent time with the people who lived in my house. I spent time with other students in my lab. Every time I met someone new, I made a note of their name and contact information and organized events with them afterward. A few weeks later, I looked at my calendar and realized that it was completely full. Every meal, every evening, every weekend, I was doing something with a new potential friend. This was not the way I split my time back home, where I'd see some friends but spend more time doing work by myself. But in this new place, such a change was necessary to meet a variety of people and make a true friend. Eventually, I not only got one close friend but several and my schedule freed up because I was spending more time with just those friends, instead of many different people.
