1.
1. It’s Story time.
When I was a senior in high school, my mother offered me a proposition. When I graduated, I could either have a grad party, or a trip to Japan using flight benefits. When I immediately chose the latter, she offered me another: you can either go to Japan with me, or your best friend. Guess who I picked?
Now, this isn’t as crazy as it may seem, so let’s put in some background.
All through my high school career, I took Japanese language classes. At first it was because I grew up being told it was a great language to speak if you wanted a good job while going to school here. I’d always loved the food, and I began to get into the anime and manga trend as well, so all these classes did was make me fall in love with the culture even more. I even planned to minor in Japanese (along side my English major), and looked forward to perhaps a career in teaching English in Japan for a little while. So, the culture and language were not unfamiliar to me. In addition, my best friend (we met on the first day of middle school and have been great friends ever since) took all the same classes as well, so in this area both of us were pretty set.
In the end, what was supposed to be a summer trip ended up becoming a winter expedition after our first semester as freshmen. This was absolutely for the better, as I’d taken the Japanese 201 course at my school, during which we learned how to call a cab, how to search for lost objects, and, probably the most useful of them all, how to ask for directions.
We hit Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara probably the biggest tourist cities of Japan, and we took pictures everywhere. It got a little strange at points, but it was the best. I’ll also tell you this—We ate everything! We have so many pictures of the best Japanese food we’ve ever had. I swear…
In short, we both absolutely loved the trip. It was a little stressful at times (Two American college girls spending two weeks in a non-English-speaking foreign country?), and we hit a few speed bumps, but it was the most amazing experience.
