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I am one of those people who just goes with the flow. After graduating from high school, I followed that flow to college, ending up at Drexel. I had to choose a major, and since I liked physics, electronics, and building things, I decided on electrical engineering. I had never really had anything I was passionate about until I started getting interested in Japanese culture my freshman year. I started taking Japanese classes, joined the aikido club, and then began to look into study abroad. Soon I was obsessed with the idea of studying in Japan.

I spent my pre-junior year looking into my options, talking to the study abroad office, talking to the coop office, talking to more advisers than I can remember, filling out applications, researching and applying for scholarships, applying for a passport and visa, buying airline tickets. In the end, I will be (technically) graduating from a four year program in five years with two coops and 13 quarters, rather than 12.

This was definitely not going with the flow.

But I was able to study abroad in Sendai, Japan for 11 months. I left September of my junior year, and entered a world of brilliantly clean streets with absolutely no trash cans, food that I can�t recognize, but probably comes from fish, girls walking everywhere, everyday in high heels, public transportation that is incredibly good, ATMs that close at 3 in the afternoon, and being one of the only blondes for miles. I didn�t just learn about Japan. Though classes were taught in English, the students were from China, Korea, Germany, Sweden, France, the Phillipines, and Finland, as well as the U.S. Not only was I able to travel to all over Japan, I was able to do research and stay on course with required engineering courses. Everyday was something new. I got to try all kinds of Japanese food and drinks, and attempt to make them myself. There were parties on the riverbank making various potato-based soups, parties staying overnight at a riverside cabin, trips to onsens (think Jacuzzis, except gender separated and no bathing suits), trips to various temples and shrines, and trips to festivals.

It was a Thanksgiving of grilled fish in place of turkey, and a Valentines Day where girls give guys chocolate, instead of the other way around. It was not only a year of classes and research, but a year of temples in the mountains and skyscrapers with their own mascots, overnight ferries with onsens, asparagus sandwiches and squid flavored ice cream, convenience stores where you can pay your bills, people dressed as cigarettes to campaign against smoking, arcade games where you have to walk a dog and crane games where you try to catch a lobster for dinner, sumo and Buddha statues and torii gates. It was towers, castles, fish markets, getting my picture taken with a guy in a Pikachu outfit, capsule hotels, green tea and taiko drums. It was everything I expected, and everything I didn�t.

It was worth it to go against the flow.

Roora in Japan

Dragons Abroad

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