After returning to Texas, being greeted by rain for two days and a week of sickness was certainly testing my patience in wanting to be back in Japan.
For the next couple of days, Texas felt like a foreign land instead of the other way around. No Family Mart in sight, no public transportation, no ramen shops next door, no shopping districts, and most disappointing, no warm toilet seats.
Now that I’ve settled back into my normal life before Japan, I find myself continuously reminiscing about the trip and flipping through my thousands of photos hoping one day I’ll be back at the check-out counter of a Family Mart.
For about two years, I wanted to go on this Education Abroad trip to Japan so my expectations and ambitions were high, as you can guess. I wanted to be part of this program because I had a dream of visiting Japan for the longest time and a goal to study abroad during my college career.
It ended up being perfect that my major had Japan as one of the locations for Education Abroad during the summer. Before the trip, my most looked-forward-to activities were seeing various historical landmarks, enjoying the street life of Tokyo, riding the bullet train and eating amazing food. While these things did turn out to be very exciting and some were the highlight of my trip, I certainly found hidden gems along the way that I wasn’t expecting.
Every day brought new adventures, and I was completely willing to let them take me away. I told myself before the trip that I would push myself to be more flexible and adaptable so that I could experience as many new things as possible.
One of the most interesting things I did with a small group was adventuring around the district of Shibuya. A group of us decided after taking a tour of the Tokyo Fire Museum that we wanted to visit Okubo, Tokyo’s Koreatown, which is near Shibuya. Plans immediately changed when we stopped by Shibuya Crossing — it was too massive not to spend more time at.
Therefore, the music lovers of the group ended up setting our sights on visiting Tower Records. Tower Records is a massive, eight-story building filled with all types of music from Western artists to Japanese pop. We immediately made our way up the different floors to explore all the music albums and it was mind-blowing how much inventory they had. We also visited other inside malls and stores that were around Shibuya Crossing which ended up taking the rest of the day because there were so many things to look through. Every time I stumbled across a shopping district in Tokyo, it was always a culture shock due to the sheer volume of consumerism that Japan has.
Another interesting thing we did as a whole group was visiting Rikkyo University. This experience ended up being my favorite group activity of the whole trip, which was surprising since I didn’t know what to expect.
After we introduced ourselves to the Japanese students, we played some icebreakers and the students took us on a tour of their campus. All the students that I got a chance to converse with were so welcoming that it made it very easy to connect and relate to them. I learned one of the students loves the same band as me, so it was awesome being able to talk to someone from across the world about this band, and they knew exactly what I was fangirling about. I loved conversing with the students and learning about their everyday lives so I will cherish that experience for a long time to come.
Throughout this amazing Education Abroad trip, I have learned a lot about myself, specifically my personal habits and my future career. Immersing myself in Japanese culture for two weeks certainly had an impact on my own habits.
Some habits that have already shown themselves have been purposeful daily walks, eating cleaner foods and being more respectful of others. In Japan, I took over 18,000 steps a day which had a positive impact on my health during the trip, and it always made me feel very accomplished at the end of the day despite being exhausted. Hitting that goal every day in Texas might be a stretch due to the heat and non-walkable cities, but I have walked around my apartment complex and on the treadmill more than I did before the trip.
Another thing I noticed about Japan is how much they care about food quality. A perfect example is the food they serve at convenience stores — everything is freshly made and reliably clean. I certainly can’t find a convenience store like that in America, but I have an H-E-B that provides fresh foods for me to eat.
The last thing I noticed about Japan compared to American culture is that Japanese people are very respectful towards each other. Respectfulness can be found in many ways in Japan, but the most common way I witnessed was how quiet crowded places were. Even if there were thousands of people lined up for the subway during rush hour, you could still hear a pin drop because no one was speaking or drawing attention to oneself. I hope I will continue to take these habits into my future lifestyle so that I can better myself.
Along with personal habits, I learned about my future career and how to successfully develop that into a solid plan. I have always known what I want my ending career goal to look like — a news anchor for a major broadcasting network.
However, I left the path to achieve that goal open so that I could discover various occupations along the way. In electronic media, there are many different career paths you can take, so my mindset has always been to try everything and become proficient at a lot of diverse skills.
The classes that we got to take in this Education Abroad program have shown me two different sides of media that I have already been exploring, and it certainly solidified that I want to be a writer above all else. My skills in social media are strong. and I love when I get to be creative in that aspect, but I have found through this trip that I excel in my writing skills. Even though I will still maintain the mindset of “playing the field” during my future career path, I now know that it will always involve my love for writing.
I will be forever grateful to this program because not only was it an amazing experience for personal reasons, but also, I know it will follow me throughout my professional career as a rare find on my resumé and a great talking point for future connections.
Overall, this program and its classes meant the most to me because it allowed me to grow as a person and a professional, gave me new lifelong friends and provided me with an opportunity to see the world in a unique way.
