Over the summer, the AFM 334 International Study Course class had the opportunity to cross off a top destination on many of our travelling bucket lists – Japan!
Like many others who have had the opportunity to visit Japan, we set off for the trip with high expectations — visions of serene temples, bustling streets and shops galore — but as is often the case with travel, the reality we were met with was not entirely what we had expected. In this blog, we’re sharing how our expectations have stacked up against our real experiences and some anecdotes that we picked up along the way!
Weather
From the bustling cities of Tokyo and Osaka to the quiet beauty of Kyoto, they all shared at least one thing —humidity and rain. While we had known that visiting Asia during the middle of August would mean signing up for 30+ degree weather, blazing sun and humidity, not many of us expected it to be that humid or anticipated our suits getting soaked from the rain. We had naively thought that the rainy season would mostly be over by mid-July, so we were definitely in for a surprise when the edges of a typhoon hit us in the middle of one of our business dinners!
Lines at Theme Parks
While in Osaka for our first weekend of travelling, the fifteen of us had decided to spend a day at Universal Studios Japan! Like with any theme park open on the weekend in the summer, we had expected lines to be hours long, with a real possibility of us not getting to experience all of the attractions that we had hoped. In reality, however, we found that the rides with the longest lines marked as “Full of Thrills and Screams” typically had a “Single Rider” line that reduced the waiting times to virtually zero. This made these attractions so time efficient that many of us could ride them more than once!
Public Transit
We relied on public transit throughout our trip to get us to and from our different meetings and activities. Our Meals and Logistics team got us to all of our meetings on time and often early; however, some processes were not as clear as we had expected after hearing all of the positive reviews of the Japanese transit system. While none of the issues we encountered were major, there was some confusion when we learned that certain trains required extra ticket purchases on top of the transit card transactions. The sheer number of different transit companies that operate within the same station was a lot to take in when in a rush to get to our next destination. Overall, despite these few blips (and with the help of our Suica cards and Google Maps) everything was manageable, and we were getting the hang of it by the third day.
All in all, despite our trip not being exactly what we had expected, the memories and bonds we formed during this experience will surely last a lifetime.
