I just got back from a two week trip to Japan as a foreign exchange student sponsored by the Columbia public schools (and my parents). I left Columbia at 5:30 in the morning on July 15, 2008 and returned on Tuesday July 29th. For our trip we traveled to Hakusan City in Japan. First we had to fly to Chicago which was the first time I had ever flown! Then our flight to Tokyo was delayed for two hours. From Chicago we flew to Tokyo which took a whopping 14 hours. During this flight, we watched a movie called “21” (I have a crush on Jim Sturgess). I also watched “Horton Hears a Who” eight times. After we landed in Tokyo, we took a small commuter flight (which was supposed to be first class, but stupid Chicago delayed our flight and we missed the plane) to another city and then we took a bus to Hakusan City. Long trip!

Hakusan City is located southwest of Tokyo. I stayed with a host family that consisted of Akari Handa (she stayed with me last year), her Parents, her Grandparents, and her sister, Ayumi. Their house is mostly constructed from bamboo wood, and has sliding doors not swinging doors. The bedrooms are tiny but they each have a piano. They also have a big garden in their back yard.
Akari and Ayumi, spoke excellent English and their parents spoke good English, but the grandparents spoke none. I think the biggest difference between Japan and the United States is that everyone is nicer and more polite in Japan. It is now summer in Japan and it was very hot and humid when we were there.

The city of Hakusan, which was our host, assigned a guy to follow us around and take pictures everywhere we went. No one knew his name, so we randomly assigned him the nick name Charletto!!! So Abby, Adam, Gena, Zach, and various other people who wanted to be in the cool group (ha-ha) started calling him Charletto, which totally confused him.

The coolest things we did was to go and see the 1000 standing Buddha’s and the giant sitting Buddha. I would have taken a picture; but they are sacred so you can’t. I also really liked playing volleyball at their high school, which Gena and I got really worked up about. We lost by a land slide, but had some pretty Kodak-ish moments! (Where is Charletto when you need him?) We also sung Beatles songs with the volleyball team, and preformed head-shoulders-knees-and-toes multiple times.

The lamest thing we did was two whole days (5am to 9pm) of tours in Tokyo. I hate tours and you couldn’t even see anything from the bus. But seeing Tokyo from atop Tokyo tower was utterly rad, you could see all of Tokyo pretty much! They don’t cut down trees there, so they were growing everywhere through out the city, which is one of the best things about Japan, its so natural and SUPER green!


The best part of the trip was meeting a lot of rad people, who were so nice, and almost all of the exchange students made a MySpace after we left……which was my suggestion! Also seeing how beautiful the mountains and trees are. I was totally amazed at how green everything was.



The worst part of the trip was the awful fake tea ceremony we went to during one of the tours, they didn’t even make us sit on the floor and the tea wasn’t completely mixed right, so it left the powdery stuff in the back of our throats which was DISGUSTING!

My favorite food was Onigiri, a snack of Japanese rice formed into triangle or oval shapes and often wrapped in seaweed; it is also called a rice ball. Traditionally, the onigiri is filled with pickled ume fruit, salted salmon, or any other salty or sour ingredient. Since the onigiri is one of the most famed and popular snacks in Japan, most convenience stores in Japan stock onigiri in many popular fillings and tastes. We also had Mochi, (a sort of dough like substance with some kind of filling in the middle) which I don’t particularly like but Zach and Gena bought twenty dollars worth, which consisted of strawberry mochi, chocolate mochi with chocolate in the middle, chocolate mochi with white chocolate mochi in the middle, and red bean paste mochi. I also loved Raspberry Mushrooms – which is a chocolate raspberry candy that is shaped like a mushroom.

I spent lots of my mother’s money on this trip. With the cash she gave me I purchased souvenirs and gifts for my friends at the 100-yen store (the equal of a dollar store), mostly because it was the last host family day and we’d only been shopping once, so I was like… “I’ve got to buy something for my friends!” and she said… “Like what?” and I was like, “Er… Chopsticks or Fans or something Japanese-ish…” So she took me to the 100-yen store! And on the first shopping trip I bought two pairs of shoes, (thigh high converse and plaid pink high heals,) and a pair of over-all sort of shorts that everyone wore there, and a poncho type shirt.



Akari and I went to Mayu’s house on the second host family day, and they decided to dress up Akari, Mayu, Gena and I in Yukatas, I’m not really sure why, but we went to the store, walked around and took pictures, and that was pretty much it. Yukata is Japanese traditional clothing which is considered a Summer Kimono or a Casual Kimono, the yukata can be worn by Men and Women, and Children.

We had 4 translators and one of them was a British lady. On one of our tours, she said in her heavy British accent, “There is a hot spring over there but you’d have to go in your birthday suit but you can ‘pop in and have a go’ if you'd like that.” Adam Zach and I had already been making fun of her accent but that just burst the cookie, so we made fun of that for DAYS, she heard us one day too, so we gave up on being secretive about our jokes. She also called a trashcan the rubbish bin.

Akari and Ayumi at the beach

everyone in front of their school

English class