Beyond Your Typical Vacation Teen Spends Winter Break Exploring Japan On His Own

Sure, this may sound like a typical “what I did for Christmas vacation” story, but my winter break was anything but typical.

I spent my entire vacation from school in Japan. And yes, I ate raw fish (sushi and sashimi) and tons of rice (gohan), drank green tea (ochya) and sake, slept on a futon, sat on the floor (tatami) to eat with chopsticks (ohashi). I rode the bullet train (shinkansen), saw Mount Fuji and even had to use one of those toilets that are basically a hole in the ground.

In fact, I tried not to be a tourist at all. Everything my Japanese friends did, I attempted.

The one thing that sets my trip apart from others is that, at 17 years of age, I ventured to a foreign country by myself. I arranged everything on my own and paid for most of it myself. It’s kind of a crazy thing to do, but that’s what made everything so much fun.

This whole idea came to me around the beginning of last year as several exchange students attending Mukogawa Women’s University were about to return home to Japan. I had been studying the Japanese language and had developed a deep interest and respect for the culture. I don’t think they thought I was really serious when I voiced my plans to visit them, but now they know.

I wrote my friends and continued to think about visiting, but my big breakthrough came during the summer when I landed a job with Gonzaga University’s exchange program with Seikei University of Tokyo. This job allowed me to get paid to play with about 30 exchange students.

When the day came for them to return to Tokyo, I bought my plane ticket to see them again. A few of my new friends told me I would be able to stay with them for a few days. I just needed to find places to stay for the remaining days and a find a way to get around.

I started my holiday from school two days early. It was a bit of a hassle to finish last-minute tests and other mumbo jumbo, but it would pay off. My flight on Dec. 15 left Spokane around 6 a.m., beginning a plane ride that felt like eternity. After eating six airplane meals and changing to a time zone 17 hours ahead of Spokane’s, I arrived at the new hightech floating Kansai International Airport. A year’s worth of planning was finally coming to fruition; I was spending Christmas and New Year’s in the land of the Rising Sun.

I bought a JR rail pass (good for all trains, subways and buses) from the same travel agent I purchased my plane ticket from. It turned out to make things pretty hassle free, even though all of Japan’s trains aren’t run by this company. I also had to get a passport, because this was my first time going to another country (Canada doesn’t count). After weeks of endlessly checking the mailbox, the little blue book finally arrived.

After writing endless letters, reading a library of travel guides, books and maps, I finally felt prepared to handle any culture shock. I am still far from fluent in Japanese, but my friends were all English students and together we were able to handle any conversation.

While in Japan I did not run into any real communication problems, but people in shops were sometimes in such shock that Japanese was coming out of the mouth of a Gaijin (foreigner). They pretended not to understand me even though they could understand my friends saying the exact same words. This was basically the only frustration I experienced, besides not being able to read some of the Kanji (Chinese characters borrowed by the Japanese) that covered signs and store fronts.

Japan’s formulaic society was fairly easy to integrate into, but I will always be a Gaijin there. Foreigners stand out because of looks alone, but I found that most of the other Gaijin like myself were not American like the Japanese believe. My friends seemed to think that all the foreigners were Americans, but I could tell by their accents and conversations that this was not the case.

Back to my trip. I ended up staying at seven different places in six cities. I stayed in several apartments that would have made a claustrophobic scream and at a university-owned ryokan (resort) in Hakone. I took the trains every day. In Japan, they drive cars on the other side of the street (most streets we would consider an alley, but they accommodate two-way traffic, bicycles and pedestrians), and you must be 18 years of age to drive.

The bicycles in Japan all look the same, and very few are locked up (probably because no one would want to steal these basketed and fendered one-gear wonders). I even traveled by bicycle to school while I was staying in Nishinomiya (Spokane’s sister city). I made up those two days I missed by going to two different high schools in Nishinomiya.

I doubt most American teens could handle the intense conformity found in the schools I visited. Throughout Japan, all students wear uniforms to school, they memorize data like computers, do not have calculators in math and do not talk back to their teachers. Some things were familiar: most of the students were sleeping during world history. But they can participate in only one club or sport that will follow them to graduation.

Overall, I don’t believe they have the same high school experience we are so lucky to have. All through school, Japanese children are plagued with entrance exams to get into junior high, high school and college. It’s a very different system.

My trip took me from Osaka to the port city of Kobe, the temples of Kyoto, the deer and the great Buddah (Daibutsu) of Nara, the countryside by Shinkansen, the crowded markets of Ueno, the Emperor’s palace in Tokyo, to the beauty of Fujisan (Mount Fuji) and Lake Ashinoko of Hakone, to the long lines of Tokyo Disneyland in Chiba, to Yokohama and many other cities, shrines, castles and buildings that would have me talking your ear off.

While there, it never occurred to me that many of the same cities I visited would cover the front pages of the newspaper and make national television only a short time after my return. I am very thankful that I do not have to endure the same horrors that many of my friends are experiencing because of the devastating earthquakes that have rattled the Kansai area of Japan.

All in all, it was an adventure I believe will lead me to pursue business relations as well as to continue with my many life-long friendships in Japan.