Travel

It’s my last weekend in Osaka. I haven’t quite grasped that next weekend I will be in Hong Kong, and the weekend after that I will be home. This entire experience has been surreal, and I thought there would be nothing better to appreciate how lucky I have been this past semester than by spending […]

After my internship in Japan, I decided to spend 5 days traveling around Hong Kong and Singapore. I would have liked to travel all of Asia, but had to pick and choose because of time constraints. I settled on 3 days in Hong Kong, 1 day in Singapore, plus 1 day of travel time to […]

One of my coworkers yesterday asked me “what will you miss from Japan?” I gave a completely blank stare. Even though I have less than two weeks left of my internship, I had not thought about this question at all. The coworker rephrased, “what are you excited to do when you get back to America?” […]

Can you guess what I did this weekend in Kyoto? If you haven’t already pieced it together from the title, I got to finally try a kimono!! I can’t express how excited I have been for this day. I was a little nervous because I didn’t want to culturally insensitive, but the female coworker in […]

This was my most spontaneous trip during my time in Japan. I had originally planned to celebrate the week of my birthday by going to Wakayama Adventure world which has five pandas! However, as the week approached, I felt like I wanted to do something more than a day trip, and just two days before […]

I began my last day trip to Kyoto back in Arashiyama Bamboo Park. We arrived at 8 in the morning, before the tour crowds came, specifically so we could enjoy the natural beauty before the road turned into chaos. The next stop was Roikoin temple which you actually need to get tickets for in advance! […]

This might be the hardest blog to write of them all. I have tried to deny to myself that I am leaving Japan, but with my final presentation done and the last two days winding down I can no longer refuse to admit the inevitable. I have an open suitcase with a few bits of […]

900 meters high, two and a half hours from Osaka, 2 trains a bus and a cable car away resides Mount Koya (in Japanese it is called Koya-san with the “san” referring to mountain). I had planned to explore Koya-san after my supervisor recommended it; in fact my supervisor loves Koya-san so much he has […]

I’ve waited a while to write this because every time I think I’m over culture shock, something strange happens and it hits me all over again. My first indicator that I may be finally getting used to the world around me was when I went out for dinner with some co-workers and, out of the […]

The first week of May in Japan is called Golden Week (surprisingly even in Japanese it is called Golden Week). Golden Week is a compilation of national holidays that all just so happen to fall on the same week. Technically, only three or so of the five work days are national holidays, but everyone takes […]