By Morena Turnbull, 3rd year BSc Events Management student
“Travelling; it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller” -Ibn Battuta
The memories and experience I have had living in Japan will stay with me forever. As someone who loves travelling and does so at every possibility, Japan was truly a once in a life time experience, different to any trip I have ever made. You’re living and integrating into a society ad culture that is so vastly different.
The most amazing thing that Japan has given to me is friends from all over the globe, who share the same love of travel and adventure. These are the people I shared meals with, experienced Hanami with and have so many wonderful stories about.
When I say that this experience was worth the little stress to sort out visa’s and flights I mean it, as soon as I got into Japan, Rikkyo University had so much in place to help us integrate easily. Our dorm had wonderful representatives who helped us no end. From taking us to register, helping us work out the train lines and invite us to wonderful events. Our dorm was a big family unit, I never felt home sick because everyone supported each other and honestly when you look back on it, you really didn’t have time to think about anything at home because everything went so quickly!
One of the most memorable and arguably questionable bonding experiences was our dorm trip to the Kanamara Matsuri festival, aka “Festival of the Steel Phallus”. We had amazing Japanese street food like Okonomiyaki and spent the whole day exploring the local area.
Rikkyo also has an amazing group called ‘JoinUs’ who put together a lot of trips and events for the international students as well as holding picnics and lunches every day to help integrate not only the international students with one another but also the Japanese students with the internationals. Not only did they help set up Hanami picnics in Yoyogi Park, in my opinion one of the most beautiful places in all of Tokyo, they also took us to fireworks events and set up a weekend Summer camp where we travelled out of Tokyo to the beautiful green mountainous area.
The tutors at the university are extremely helpful and friendly, our Japanese language tutor actually made us a memory book of our classes as a going away gift!
Japan was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to go on this adventure. Also the friends you make are for life, not just for the duration of the stay, they’re a great excuse to travel the rest of the world!
By Morena Turnbull, 3rd year BSc Events Management student who spent a semester studying at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan