I will be traveling to Osaka Japan in May of 2012. I am going through a study abroad program and class. We are preping for the trip right now and talking a lot about the geography of Japan. I am looking forward to staying near the campus of the college there and having the ability to take classes while I am there as though I am an actual student there. This will be my first time traveling internationally and I am so glad that I am finally getting the opportunity to do so. I will be posting many assignments and other things that I will be learning while I am there. I am ready to open my mind to a new culture and live in it for a month.
REFLECTION:
The most helpful in preparation before Japan was the reading of Hirshima because I was able to know how some survivors felt during and after the bombing, then I was able to visually see the affects of the bombing when I visited the Hiroshima museum. The literature was helpful too because I was able to see how different the culture of Japan is compared to the culture of America. The journeys of different temple grounds was unreal in comparison to the readings of the Buddhist and Shinto beliefs because I was able to actually experience the peacefulness of the presence of the temples and beliefs and values of the Japanese people.
This trip and experience of Japan has helped me in a positive aspect of my life tremendously. I have so much more respect for our land, I am so astonished by the Japanese people and the way they treat each other and their land. I hope to take this great quality and spread it to everywhere I go and become a great example. I have gained so much respect for the Japanese culture because of the level of care they have and how so little garbage cans they have scattered around yet rarely did I ever see any litter, whereas in America there is litter everywhere along with garbage cans nearby.
I don’t believe I really had any particular stereotypes of the Japanese culture before I went there except the thought of how their fashion would be. I thought many Japanese people would dress similar to the punk scene but that was hardly the case, everything was pastel and dressy. I also did not expect them to be so kind toward us, the first kind thing was right off the airplane with my luggage broken and a kind woman had gathered my items and put them in a bag for me with my name on a sign.
The globalized view of Japan involves the thoughts that Japan is too heavily populated in some areas and not in others, many want them to be more spread out upon their land whereas the localized thoughts are not the same.
The only thing I wish I could have been able to do before the trip was to do more research on the places we journeyed to. I felt very unprepared and unknowing of exactly what we were going to be doing each day and I feel I could have appreciated all of the sites we saw even more with more knowledge of the areas beforehand.
