My Amazing Experience in Japan

I got back from Japan about a month ago. I know I was going to be really cool and blog while I was there, but the wifi availability was kind of sketchy and I didn't have my own laptop and didn't want to use my friend's for long periods of time. Sorry it's taken me so long to get this blog post, but come on it's summer! So, here is what I experienced in Japan. I'll talk about some TV stuff and just some normal stuff too about the culture and my experience.

Ready to leave for Japan with our passports in hand! 

First of all I want to briefly explain how I managed to go to Japan. This year my Japanese teacher announced that Cedar Rapids would have a very good chance in be able to send some students to Japan for free through the Kizuna project. Because our teacher is involved with the Laurasian institute (an organization that worked with the Japanese national government to put this together), Iowa does not have many schools teaching Japanese, and they were looking for places that have had natural disasters (we had bad floods in 2008), Kennedy was pretty much a shoe in. But of course, other Cedar Rapids schools wanted to go as well (as they deserved) so we split it up between the three schools (Wash, Jeff, and Kennedy). Sorry for my obsession with parentheses by the way! Anyway, so to pick which students could actually go on this once in a lifetime trip, we had to apply. I wrote an essay, got teacher recommendations, and gave my teacher a transcript. Within a couple weeks my friend and I were informed that we were both going to Japan! And that my friends, was the beginning of our journey.

Before we left we had to learn a lot about what NOT to do. It may sound weird to us Americans, but there was a lot of these in Japan. It's impolite to stick your chopsticks into food and leave them, to sit on the floor, and even poop without playing music! Not joking about that last one... I made a mistake one time of thinking that a music button was the toilet button. It was awkward. All of these cultural rules were kind of overwhelming and frightening. Once we got to Japan and stayed our first night in Tokyo we realized that we really were in a different culture. And that was a good thing! The Japanese people were all so very nice and welcoming. It became a lot less nerve racking and a lot more fun very quickly.

The beautiful pond.

After our first night in Tokyo we headed over to Fukushima, a large prefecture that was affected by the earthquake last year. The point was for us to see how the society of rebounding from the horrible affects of the disaster. Like remember the nuclear scare? They explained that their crops once detected radiation, but then went through the process of testing their current crops and showed us that in fact they were now radiation-free. The cucumbers that were tested were delicious by the way:) I really liked Fukushima because we got to stay in little cottages next to a beautifully scenic pond with a trail surround it. My friend and I got up in the morning to run around it and explore the wonders it held. To be brief, Fukushima really gave me a perspective on a natural disaster I had never seen before. I realized that it's one task to recover from an earthquake, and an entirely different task to actually return to how it was before. To get families and tourist to once again enjoy the town. I loved Tenei in Fukushima and if you ever want a really amazing hotel in Japan to stay in, go to the Regina Hotel in Fukushima near Tenei, you won't regret it!

Our cute little cottage!  

Alright so after Tenei we boarded the bullet train once again and headed back to Tokyo where we stayed a couple of nights. I. Loved. Tokyo! The shopping was so fun and exciting! During the way we had to go to boring museums, but at night our teacher would let us sneak off and explore different areas of Tokyo. I got to try out karaoke, eat ramen, shop in sketchy basements and super high end stores. It was really really fun.

Tokyo!!

It wasn't until after I started my homestay next that I encountered a lot of television. Yes, once and awhile I would turn on my TV in the hotel room or cottage to see what it was like, but we honestly didn't have much time to actually watch it. I was so nervous for my homestay. The fact that I was staying in some random family's house, talking a language I have only been studying for 3 years, eating their food, and keeping up with the proper manners, was so daunting. But right away my family was very nice and welcoming. Their house was near Mt. Fuji so they took me to nearby tower to get a good view. We also visited their grandparent's peach farm where I nervously talked to their family while we munched on deliciously ripe peaches and sat in the shade of their peach trees.

My host family.

Once we got back to their house I sat down in their living room and journaled about my day of activites and watched some TV. The show the family was watching consisted of some random talk show hosts talking about various musicians and showing their music videos. I noticed throughout my stay that there were a lot of  shows that were based around music. In fact, those were like the only kind of shows I ever really saw at their house. Maybe the whole show wasn't about showing music videos, but so many of them had some musical element to them. The next morning they had a morning talk show where they had a host and three panelists who were shown various videos and then the audience would watch their reaction to the video. Some were music videos, but there other ones that I don't even remember. It was really weird trying to figure our what was going on because I had absolutely no idea what they were saying.

At the host school.

During the homestay we also got to visit a school where we interacted with the students and learned about what they did on a daily basis. The homestay overall was quite overwhelming because you are deeply immersed in Japanese language in culture. With that said, it was truly one of the best experiences of my life. It was scary, but so much fun! I probably learned more about Japan in those two days than I have in my entire life.

After the homestay, we headed to Kyoto and Osaka where we ended our journey. Again we visited a couple boring sites but were also allowed to roam around and shop once in awhile. On one of the last days, I remember my friend and I were sitting in our hotel room and I decided to turn on the TV to see if I could find any TV to talk about on my blog. We watched a drama while we were getting ready and noticed some differences from American television. First of all the camera and lighting are like strangely different. Not to toot America's horn, but it's just better quality. You can tell that they shovel a lot more time and money into just the picture quality. I've noticed this in Japanese dramas I've watched back in the states in my class, but the acting is different too. It's kind of hard to determine exactly what the difference is because of course they're speaking a different language, but one thing that I've noticed over the years is how comedy is acted out. In Japan, the men always play the goofy almost weird characters and the girls play cute characters that are funny because they're clumsy or make mistakes. In America, you find more often women are funny because either they're totally stupid or they make super witty remarks. Of course there are also clumsy, goofy, witty, or stupid male and female characters in both cultures, but I think our two cultures definitely have a different sense of humor.

Kinkakuji in Kyoto.

Although my two week Japan trip was extremely fun and engaging, I was ready to come home to Cedar Rapids. I missed my bed, my family, my friends, my dogs, and especially the food! I loved the food in Japan, but I will always love my home food even more. I know traveling can be expensive, but if anyone is looking for an amazing place to visit, I would highly recommend Japan. I'm positive that someday I will visit again because I just absolutely loved it. The people were so nice and welcoming and I really felt like I learned a lot about not only the Japanese culture, but my own as well. It really gives you a way to see your own culture from sort of an outside perspective. It was really the best experience of my life.

My host sister and I wrote this with sparklers:)