Japanese Trip

Our first flight took us to Auckland, from there we travelled for 13 hours to Tokyo. As soon as we exited the plane we were hit with the intense humidity and an abundance of Japanese adverts and people speaking the language. It took us a while to get used to the change in language, but after three weeks we became fully immersed and found it difficult to adjust back to New Zealand and English.

Our first stop was Osaka, where we visited Osaka castle, The Noodle museum - where we made our own cup noodles and the Doutonbori area and its vibrant array of shops and street food vendors. After our  four day stay in Osaka we took the bullet train to Hiroshima, where we stayed with host families from our sister school, Yasuda. We stayed for a total of six  days and travelled around with our host families and the school. We visited the Peace Museum, the Miyajima Island and did lots of shopping with our host families.

The next stop was Kyoto and we spent this time looking at temples and shrines and taking in the cultural aspects of Japan that we hadn't seen much of before. We gained an appreciation of a country with a very long history. We all made sure to drink the water of eternal youth at Kiyomizudera! From there we took a day trip to Nara and visited Daibutsusan (The Great Buddha) which is listed as a world heritage sight and spent two nights in Amanohashidate, which is sometimes called Kyoto by the sea. A highlight in Amanohashidate was the chance to swim in the Sea of Japan, and enjoy the “genki” (energetic) children at a local primary school where we taught the haka and enjoyed a game of “Oni Goko” (Tag).

Our final stop was Tokyo, where we stayed with our second sister school Bunkyo and had an amazing  three days with them. We had one free day with our host families where they took us to some of their favourite spots around the city. Our time with our host families was cut short because of our Disneyland visit the day before we left. We all had an amazing time at Disneyland before leaving the next day.

This was a wonderful trip that we will all remember for the rest of our lives, we have made new friends across the globe and increased our knowledge of Japanese language and culture.