After a 17-hour plan ride, nine Cass Tech students arrived in Japan with former Japanese teacher Renee Packzowski and foreign language department administrator Lori Singleton.
The trip was about $5,000 including plane tickets, hotel stays, food, entertainment and transportation. The company EF Educational Tours allowed students to pay in monthly installments, since I enrolled in Japanese my freshman year. Students were in Japan for nine days.
Upon landed, the group was welcome by tour guide name Peace, who was was 20 years old. Most of the younger generation within Japan are able to speak English. While there the group visited five cities: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hakone, Atami and Osaka.
With the help of a tour guide, the group immersed ourselves in the culture, eating the typical Japanese diet of seafood such as shrimp tempura and sashimi. There were also visits to the famous shrine Shinjo Inari in Kyoto, which is guarded by statues of foxes; a symbol of fertility.
Japanese shrines are places of worship for prayer spiritual purposes. Before approaching the shrine, you are required to perform a cleansing ritual. Women that wished to become pregnant visited the shrine to pray for a healthy baby, and beautiful pink cherry blossoms adorned the inside of the Shrines.
The students also shopped at many different malls and marketplaces that sold unique sweets and confections.
One of the most interesting parts of the trip for the students was the hot springs similar to an American steam room or Jacuzzi. In the last two hotels the group stayed, they were immersed in the Japanese style of community bathing.
The tour guide took the group around Japan using all forms of transportation, as well as the Bullet Train that was extremely fast that goes 320 km/h (200 m.p.h.)
Cities like Tokyo were very modern and resembled New, York; the other cities were more traditional with a lot of farm land.
Ananda Irving contributed to this report.
