After months of planning and nearly two weeks in Japan, SJMC Japan 2026 has come to a close.
In this innovative content-creation Faculty-led Education Abroad Program to Japan, Academic Program Director Gilbert D. Martinez and faculty partner Sara Shields, both in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University, led 23 students on a tour of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Kyoto. In addition, day trips were taken to Kamakura, Enoshima and Miyajima. Program assistant Erika Costello, Texas State’s social media manager and SJMC graduate student, supported faculty and students during the program.
In addition, students met with professionals at the Yuri Group, a strategic communication firm based in Tokyo, toured the printing facilities at The Kyoto Shimbun, and met with Mayu Yoshida, a strategy and media adviser with 15 years of international journalism and strategic communications experience.
Students experienced an authentic tea ceremony decked out in kimonos and had an intercultural exchange with students at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto.
While students experienced many facets of life in Japan, they also got the chance to explore their bucket destination and earn six credit hours in MC 4359 Travel Writing, taught by Martinez, and MC 4360 Mobile Storytelling in the Outdoors, taught by Shields.
For Travel Writing, students added to their portfolios by writing daily blogs under deadline, travel stories related to Tokyo, Hiroshima and Kyoto, and most recently, attempted to finding meaning in this once-in-a-lifetime experience in SJMC Japan 2026 in personal travel essays.
Here are quick links:
Daily Blog Posts
Personal Travel Essays
Tokyo Travel Stories
Hiroshima Travel Stories
Kyoto Travel Stories
For Mobile Storytelling, students created Instagram reels, stories and posts documenting every sight, sound and tastes they experienced, promoting their travel stories and summarizing, in video, the highlights of their trip.
Check out their work on the Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/sjmcjapan/
We also want to take this opportunity to thank Zoe Gu at Asia-Pacific Academic, which arranged all lodging and managed our trip throughout Japan. For the second year in a row, APA has provided excellent support and guidance to SJMC Japan faculty and students. Also for the second consecutive year, licensed guide Michio Akutsu accompanied us and provided invaluable background, history and anecdotes about all the places we visited. We would not have had the success in the program without them.
Now that this fifth program is concluded, SJMC Japan faculty take a break but will soon start the work to offer SJMC Japan 2027 next year. With that, we’re proud to debut on this website the promotional video for SJMC Japan 2027 created by program assistant Erika Costello.
If you’re a Texas State student considering participating in SJMC Japan in the future, this video and all the content on this website and on Instagram will tell you what we’re all about. Questions? Please contact Martinez (gm19@txstate.edu).
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