Where to even begin! I’ve been back in the United States for two weeks now and I still am finding myself almost accidentally saying “sumimasen” to people at the supermarket. I think my experience in Japan will profoundly affect me for years to come.

In my life, I’ve been lucky to have travelled and lived many places, but I think this trip in particular was something uniquely special and extraordinary. As an experienced traveler, I know the fact that when going anywhere, and especially for a time as long as three weeks, you need to prepare yourself for things to go wrong. Nothing can be perfect and a complete walk in the park the entire time, and a good traveller needs to be able to to take the hiccups and bad moments in stride, move on, and not let them ruin their experience. However, for some magical reason, I feel like my Japan experience really WAS a perfect, walk in the park, complete dream. The worst thing that happened to me was a giant cockroach crawling on my leg at dinner one night. Even then, dinner was still pretty good. We had a big laugh about it after the chef came out and beat it to death against the wall and the whole restaurant clapped.

I think apart from extraordinary luck, (maybe from all the maneki-neko I bought, maybe from the fortune I got at the Kanda shrine) what made this trip so significant and exceptional for me was the sheer amount of new experiences. On this trip, it seemed like my motto and most used phrase was: “might as well, when are we ever gonna be here again?”. As such, there was nothing that was put in front of me that I didn’t try, no activity that I would say no to, and unfortunately to my bank account, no expense spared. My goal was to be the first one in line for every moment, and the last one back to the hotel at night. I was determined to not let a single second go to waste. The result was a whirlwind of new memories, friends, and an intoxicated level of serotonin.

I’ve always been a huge foodie, so something that I knew I was going to love and was even more blown away than I thought I was going to be was the amazing cuisine we had everywhere. Seriously, I think it’s impossible to find a bad meal in Japan. It makes me want to cry just thinking about how amazing every single meal we had was, and how much I miss it. Japan has such a vibrant, beautiful culinary tradition, and something I absolutely loved was how much care and expertise goes into every dish – from the ingredients, preparation, and presentation, its clear to see how much passion and love the chefs have for their craft, and how much they want you to enjoy your entire dining experience.

Something that surprised me about the trip is how much I enjoyed talking to so many different people I met. My Japanese language skill is definitely still beginner (at best) so I was slightly worried about this aspect before the trip. However, I was not expecting how fun it was to try to speak Japanese to locals and how excited they were to hear it, and speak back. Some people also wanted to practice their English with us. Even with the language barriers, there was ways to communicate that were just as effective and fun. At an empty sushi restaurant in Kyoto, Ryan and I had a great conversation with a young waitress who was in school to be a lawyer by googling pictures of different anime and manga and showing them to each other. Another time a bartender in Osaka gave us a whole lesson on Japanese whiskey through google translate. There were also so many friendly people around who would want to hang out for the night or have a conversation with us at their job. It was magical and so provocative.

I could go on for probably a whole novels worth of memories and favorite moments. So to wrap up this long blog post I will just say, THANK YOU, to my amazing friends for making every experience an unforgettable one, and to Yuko for making this trip possible and being the best professor ever. I will always treasure these memories!!