February 23, 2016- March 1, 2016

In February 2016, I received a wonderful opportunity to visit Japan courtesy of my graduate program, Georgetown University Asian Studies Program and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This program, Kakehashi, invited a group of eight students and one coordinator from my graduate program with five other groups of researchers to learn about Japan. The purpose of Kakehashi was to strengthen United States and Japanese relations through emerging professionals from across industries who have little background in Japanese affairs. The MOFA, with my graduate program, organized cultural outings, wonderful meals, and educational meetings covering economics, US-Japan relations, defense, and Japanese politics. While I found most meetings to be quite interesting, the highlights will always be the tour of the National Diet Building (the Japanese parliament building), Kamotsuru Sake Brewery and the Miyajima temple near Hiroshima

While I am extremely grateful to participate in this program, I seemed to struggle to adapt how the program operated. With my extensive travel background, and most of it solo, I rarely had to adhere to the itinerary of a group trip. Being shuffled from one location to the next, with very little freedom to visit places I had not visited on a previous trip proved to be a challenge. I found most of the meetings interesting, but I wondered why the program assigned meetings on something no one with my group had any background or interest in studying. I think because my graduate program is designed to analyze the US relationship with other Asian countries, we were more interested in the cultural and diplomatic ties between the US rather than industry-related topics. While at one meeting with a Japanese energy corporation, we inquired the office not so much on energy, but more on the stresses of working for a Japanese corporation and the effect of cultural hierarchy in the workplace. I also struggled with the regiment of group traveling. We were required to do everything with the group, from eating meals and going to meetings, so that we had no more than 2 or 3 hours to ourselves to explore on our own. Usually those few hours occurred after dinner, after all shops, sites and the metro closed. Our group was lucky enough to have a coordinator that convinced the program managers to let us miss one dinner so that we could explore on our own.

Overall, I enjoyed the program and learned a lot, despite my criticisms. I do not know if I would do this specific program again if I had the chance. The restrictive nature proves to be quite a challenge for me. I would, however, recommend anyone who has not experienced Japan to, given the opportunity, go on Kakehashi and enjoy the experience. I could also see how this program is great for those with little experience in traveling. They did a wonderful job at accommodating the participants and maintaining responsibility for participants. For example, I dislike shellfish and noted that I was “allergic” to shellfish, so they provided me with meals that did not contain shellfish.

After Kakehashi, I am quite grateful to having lived in South Korea and not Japan. I think my personality better fits Korean culture than Japanese. The strict regiment often found throughout Japanese life would have been an obstacle for me to overcome in daily life. However, I still find Japan as a wonderful country and of course I want to visit again. I still have skiing in Hokkaido and visiting Kyoto on my travel bucket list. I also have to go back just to stock up on all products Green Tea (matcha KitKats, matcha Pocky, matcha and more matcha).

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