Q: What was your favourite food that you ate while you were in Japan?

Charlotte: I really enjoyed the okonomiyaki, and just generally shopping at 7-Eleven, and the street markets were pretty good.

Elisha: I really liked the mitarashi dango, that was really good, and I ate a lot of it. 

Josh: I really liked the Ramen that we got in Kyoto and some of the street food that we ate while we were there.

Kyle: I liked all the street food that I ate, and some of the candy as well.

Q: What was your favourite place you visited in Japan?

Charlotte: I think Tokyo was my favourite place overall. It was really fun going to the TeamLab Planets, that was such a cool art gallery kind of thing. We also went to Miraikan, which is a science museum, Questacon kind of thing. There were some pretty flowers!

Elisha: I really liked Tokyo as well, there were a lot of things to do. I really liked the TeamLab Planets a lot, and I really liked one of the nights where we went for dinner at the sushi place and had crepes. It was really fun. 

Josh: I also really liked Tokyo, specifically Harajuku – the main street – which was really busy and fun. I also loved Kyoto for all of its really cool culture and food that it had. 

Kyle: I liked Kyoto, because we got to go shopping, and Harajuku as well, we got to see some people cosplaying.

Q: What was your favourite attraction in Japan?

Charlotte: Universal Studios Japan was really cool, it was a bit of a rainy day but I feel like that probably made a lot of the lines (for rides) shorter, which was pretty good, the rides were pretty good. 

Elisha: I agree, I really liked TeamLab Planets as well. It was cool seeing all the lights and stuff, and USJ was pretty fun as well. 

Josh: Yeah, Universal Studios Japan, my favourite part was specifically The Flying Dinosaur, which was such a good ride there, and Harry Potter World as well. 

Kyle: Kyoto dance was very nice, we got to see some Geisha performances in Kyoto.

Q: What was a favourite, funny, or memorable moment from the trip?

Charlotte: When we went to that Sushi restaurant, we had no clue what we were getting into. There was a small group of us who didn’t have a teacher with us, and as soon as we walked in, basically every single employee there yells at you, but they’re yelling ‘welcome’ at you. As you walk past, all of them yell out to you, which was really funny.

Josh: I think that walking around on the first day was almost like a scene from a movie, where all the cherry blossom flowers are falling down on you as you’re walking around. That was really awesome, it’s a good memory.

Kyle: At USJ, there was a poster of a man who was posing, and it looked exactly like me [Ed: see below!], so Charlotte suggested to pose in front of the poster to  have a comparison, it was really funny.

Q: How did the trip help your learning and language of Japanese, and help shape you as a person?

Charlotte: Definitely being surrounded by the language and the culture and the people is really helpful, especially for studying Japanese in Year 12. Being able to talk to Japanese people, and making friends with them, is really helpful.

Elisha: Yeah, Mrs Brown’s friends were there, and we became friends with their kids, so I got to practice my Japanese a lot speaking with them. When we were practising our little diary entry thing, there were these two Japanese people, so we were able to talk to them, and show them our writing and get feedback for it, and it was just really good!

Josh: I think it was really awesome when you’re almost overwhelmed by all of the culture and the new language, and it really forces you to try and learn and really pushes you out of your comfort zone to try and do new things, so it was awesome. 

Kyle: It was challenging, because I didn’t know what most of the people were talking about, because of the language barrier, but it was inspirational because it was inspiring me to be motivated to learn Japanese.

Click here to see some videos of what our students got up to in Japan!