The strength of Japan’s soft power is undeniable. It’s hard to conjure up an image of Japan that’s anything but the grace and beauty of Japanese traditional arts or the glimmering Tokyo steel and glass skyline littered with 24-hour karaoke companies and technicolored billboards. Japan attracts people from all walks of life, each person seeing Japan through their own lens. However, there is another side of Japan that most people fail to acknowledge when they construct this utopian image of the country.

I tried driving today for the first time and I thought the break was the gas…

Hello everyone!

A 9 hour flight, 8 hour layover, and 2 hour flight later I am home. When you study abroad you think about all of the changes you will go through when you arrive to the new country and experience new things. But most people (including myself) forget that you will experience changes coming home too.

I’ve heard this phrase a lot lately, that “I’m on a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity”. As grateful as I am to be on this journey – one that I would not have been able to embark on without the gracious assistance of wonderful, loving people in my life – I have to politely disagree. The idea that studying or living in a foreign country is ‘once in a lifetime’ is limiting, and ideally in my case, also inaccurate.

Events are only ‘once in a lifetime’ if you make them that way.