It was a very fun trip but also one in which I learned a lot. The trip had a special meaning to me because it was the second time I was visiting the land of the rising sun. The first time was the summer after my freshmen year of high school. My friends and I went to Japan as part of an exchange program between our school and another in Japan. While there I learned a lot about Japan and developed a love for Japanese culture that I took with me to my college years. In college I took two years of Japanese language and various classes to complete an Asian Studies minor.
Unfortunately when I went last summer I hadn't taken Japanese for a year and I was really rusty. However, I often knew enough to ask simple questions and many of the people I met in Tokyo were more than willingly to help.
On the first night of my trip, me and some friends left the dorm we were staying in to try to find the nearby conveince store. We managed to find it alright but had a hard time finding the dorm again on the way back. We were hopelessly lost. After wandering around for a long time, we managed to find a woman who was coming home. We asked her how to get back to our dorm and tried to work through the language barrier. After getting some directions from her, we started off towards where she thought the dorm was. Here we met another girl out walking her dogs, who knew more English and offered to take us. As we were following her, we heard the sound of a bicycle approaching and turned around. We were surprised to find that it was the first woman we had met, who was looking for us to make sure that we had found our dorm alright!
While there, I observed other instances of people going above and beyond to help us, even though we didn't speak the language. Despite the strong prejudice in Japan against foreigners, I found it interesting and inspiring how willing many people were to drop everything and help.
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