Reflecting on My First Trip to Japan

It's June 2025, and I recently got back from my first trip to Japan. As I hope to return annually with a new crop of students, I figured why not take a moment to reflect on the trip. Standard Disclaimer on Cultural Observation In this article, I will be talking about my experiences in Japan, and I think it's important to acknowledge that any observations I make are not necessarily representative of everyone's experiences in Japan. I also think it's important to state than any observations I make may be out-of-touch or even offensive. Cultural observation is a delicate art, and I don't claim to be an expert on it. At the same time, I think it's also important to be truthful and transparent. I do not plan to mince words in an effort to protect myself or protect the image of Japan. Like any other place, Japan has its good parts and its bad parts. There's no good that can come out of being dishonest. As a result, what I plan to present here today will be my unfiltered thoughts on my short stint in Japan. As someone who plans to return annually, I expect my understanding and appreciation for the culture to develop and change. Perhaps I will look back on this article with a more mature lens sometime in the distant future. For now, let's get into it! Trip Logistics To help you get a feel for everything that I did during the trip, I wanted to share the trip logistics. To start, here's a brief schedule breakdown: May 6th, 2025: Depart for Tsukuba May 16th, 2025: Depart for Kyoto May 19th, 2025: Depart for Osaka May 20th, 2025: Depart for Tokyo May 21st, 2025: Depart for the US In total, we spent about 9 days in Tsukuba, 3 days in Kyoto, and a day each in Osaka and Tokyo. In the remainder of this section, I'll break down each log in more detail. Tsukuba Leg During the trip, the largest leg by far was the initial leg in Tsukuba. Specifically, we spent time in Tsukuba as a part of a partnership with the University of Tsukuba. During that time, we took our students on several lab tours, such as: Dr. Takayasu Fujino's Lab, which studies plasma and electromagnetic fluids Dr. Akiko Kaneko's Lab, which studies fluid mechanics, droplets and bubbles Dr. Toshiyuki Kanakubo's Lab, which studies building structures and materials Dr. Biao Shen's Lab, which studies boiling and heat transfer Dr. Takashi Matsushima's Lab, which studies granular materials Dr. Ahamed Tofael's Lab, which studies autonomous vehicles for agriculture In addition, our students were engaged with several lectures by faculty such as: Dr. Naohisa Okamoto, who spoke on the history of transit-oriented development in Japan Dr. Fumihide Tanaka, who spoke about his work on social robots Dr. Daisuke Kodaira, who spoke on energy systems and mobility Dr. Kenji Suzuki, who spoke on the Tsukuba smart city project Dr. Yoshinari Kameda, who spoke on the challenge of personal mobility Dr. SeungHee Lee, who spoke on Kansei design In addition, we took the students on several excursions in Tsukuba, which included a trip to Mt. Tsukuba and a trip to Ushiku Daibutsu for the Great Buddha. We also took them to a tea ceremony at Kaigaku Kinenkan as well as to the Kyudo Hall to experience Japanese archery. Likewise, we even took them to the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (or JAXA) as well as the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (or NIED). In addition, they had a free day where most students went to Tokyo. Ultimately, students were expected to work with their peers at the University of Tsukuba (UT) to put together a presentation on the theme of the future of mobility. Needless to say, it was an action packed nine days. Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo Legs The remaining six days were split across Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo. In Kyoto, we spent about a day exploring the usual tourist locations like Kiyomizu and Gion. Then, we gave students a free day before heading out to Osaka. In Osaka, we spent about a day at the Expo. Then, we spent about a day in Tokyo exploring other tourist locations like Asakusa as well as one of the teamLab museums. Given travel time between these cities, there wasn't a ton of room for activities. Any space that wasn't specifically allocated was considered free time for the students. Broad Takeaways Having spent about 15 days in Japan, I could speak to many, many different ideas. That said, there are some pretty broad takeaways I'd like to address first. Transit Is Phenomenal But Complicated When we got to Tsukuba, we stayed just outside of Kenkyu-Gakuen station. As a result, we were able to easily access the station, which was just one stop from Tsukuba station (and the university). It was also 19 stops away from Akihabara in Tokyo. When we weren't taking the train back and forth between these two stops, we were taking buses directly from Tsukuba station onto campus. These two forms of transportation were seamless as we'd basically get off the train, walk out of the station, and line right up for the bus. Both sets of transportation made use of the same IC cards (in our case, Icoca), which could easily be loaded into the wallet app on my iPhone. Because public transportation was so ubiquitous, it was really easy to get anywhere with just a tap of a card. The only hard bit was actually navigating the stations, especially in massive cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. The stations were extremely large and somewhat challenging to explore. In fact, several of us got lost in them at various points throughout the trip. Of course, once we got the hang of it, it wasn't too hard to get around. Personally, I found Google maps to not be as good as everyone says for navigating transit. It doesn't really give you a walking guide in the way I might expect in the US, though it's very detailed in terms of which train to get on and when. It also tries to find the most efficient route, which often involved way more transfers than I cared to navigate. Overall, I found it much easier to go to the station and just follow signs. Though, I should mention that there's this mix of rapid, semi-rapid, and local trains, which determine which actual stops a train will make. So, that definitely adds to the uncertainty of public transit. For the record, a student and I did get lost in the Kyoto station one morning, and we also got lost getting back from USJ. The train stopped before getting to Osaka, and we weren't really sure where to go. Luckily, a local helped us get on the right train. Malls Are Nice But Also Complicated Like transit, Japanese malls are really nice. Because we were right outside of the Kenkyu-Gakuen station, we were also walking distance from the Iias mall in Tsukuba. While I don't do much shopping myself, I found it to be one of the nicest malls I've ever been. One of the cool things about the Iias mall is that it's really well organized. Specifically, it's setup so that similar stores are all right next to each other. For example, there's a "restaurant avenue" where several restaurants are situated back-to-back. Likewise, there's a "wellness alley" where massage shops are all right next to each other. In fact, before I realized how nicely organized the store was, I grew somewhat frustrated because I couldn't find any clothes for kids. As it turns out, there are three kid-centered stores all right next to each other on the third floor. Had I known that, I wouldn't have browsed every single clothing store I passed. In addition to Iias, we also spent a bit of time at the Q't mall right outside of Tsukuba station. Of the two malls, I like Iias a lot more. The main reason being that the layout of the Q't mall is incredibly confusing. It's a bit of an indoor-outdoor mall, so you can come in from a variety of stores and end up on the inside. In addition, Q't doesn't really make a distinction between when one store starts and another ends, so it's really common for shops to sort of share a floorplan. It's setup almost like country borders, where the line between shops are less crisp and more fluid. You can take a peek at the floorplan to see what I mean, but I don't even think these pictures do it justice. The mall is just that confusing on the inside. Beyond Tsukuba, we also explored a few malls in Kyoto. In bigger cities like Kyoto, the idea of keeping things organized is still the same. However, stores tend to be organized by floor, as buildings are constructed to be dozens of floors high. Overall, I enjoyed just about anywhere I shopped. Knowing Japanese Is a Must Personally, I've been casually studying Japanese for a couple of years. As a result, I'm able to read some katakana and hiragana. The problem is that you cannot survive without knowing kanji. Everything in Japan is covered in kanji, which makes reading an almost impossible task even if you know the other two writing systems. Now, translation apps like Google Translate are really good, but it does make things a bit awkward when you have to take a picture of everything because you can't read anything. Sure, you can get away with pointing at menu items—and Japan even has a lot of places where you order food from a machine first—but, you just cannot avoid speaking Japanese from time to time. For instance, I asked our hotel staff if they spoke English (in Japanese, of course), and they immediately pulled out a translate app. I don't know if it was because my Japanese was so horrible, my accent was so bad, or they legitimately didn't speak English, but it was a bit frustrating to have to bust out the translation app. Of course, I'm thankful enough that the Japanese are kind and patient enough to entertain these sorts of dialogue, but I'm sure I would have connected with the locals a lot better in Japanese. Likewise, it didn't seem like the Japanese were very good at English across the board (no disrespect). Even some of our tour guides who spoke English had a hard time understanding us. Therefore, I would say that if you plan to go to Japan, you would probably be better off speaking with the locals in Japanese. Academic Research Seems More Hands-On This is perhaps a more niche takeaway, but we saw so many research labs during our trip that I wanted to talk about something I noticed: research seems more practical than theoretical in Japan. To illustrate what I mean, I want to talk about some of the things I saw. For example, one of the research labs we visited does work on material strength for earthquakes. In their lab, they have these massive machines that are meant to simulate earthquakes on materials. Naturally, their research involves constructing large pillars for testing, which is a very hands-on form of empirical evidence. I noticed a similar trend in most of the labs. For example, another lab develops social robots, which I imagine involves a lengthy design process and a short experimental process. One of their robots was meant to squeeze a person's hand during painful activities like getting a vaccine. The experimental aspect of the work looked at whether that kind of robot offered any pain reduction for a participant. Again, to me, this is a very hands-on form of research. There were no shortage of these kinds of labs. For instance, another lab was developing autonomous vehicles for agriculture, such as a vehicle to reduce pesticide usage by collecting insects in a small area. Likewise, another lab was looking at Teflon patterns on copper for dissipating heat for servers. To me, this is very different from the kinds of work that we do in the US. In my experience, a lot of research involves constructing an argument ahead of time based on existing research. For instance, I did work on value congruence, but I wasn't able to do that work without justifying its place in existing research. It seems the research philosophy (at least at UT) was more about trying new things, rather than building on existing work. Regardless, I found the difference really interesting. Speaking of differences, I also noticed that there was this trend in research to want to commercialize the output. Perhaps that's why so much of the research we saw was hands-on. The goal of research seems to be to create a product that could be turned into a company, rather than advancing scientific research. I'm not sure if that's a fair assessment of the academic landscape in Japan, but it was certainly a perspective that came up several times. Flying Sucks While this isn't explicitly about Japan, I need to talk about flying. Prior to this trip, I think the longest flight I've been on was maybe six hours. After all, I went to the UK in 2014 and Poland in 2016. Meanwhile, the flight from Newark to Tokyo was literally 14 hours while the flight from Tokyo to Toronto was about 12 hours. While there are plenty of folks who fly this long regularly, I think most people I know in the states have never experienced this form of torture, myself included. For me, flights wouldn't be so bad if you weren't completely immobile during them. As someone who needs to move around, flying is an extreme form of torture for me. Not to mention that there is no concept of personal space: you sit basically in the lap of the person next to you as you fight over armrest space. Meanwhile, the seats are rigid and uncomfortable. They can lean back ever so slightly, just enough to annoy the person behind you but not enough to provide any form of relaxation. In fact, I swear I used to be able to lay on the tray table to sleep, but I've found that seats are so tightly packed now that I don't fit (and, apparently the seats have been shrinking). Even if you manage to get comfortable, the crew constantly walk about the cabin with the lights on trying to get you to buy stuff. This wouldn't be so bad if the crew actually respected time zones. After all, the advice I always get is to sleep in the time zone you plan to be. Yet, flight crews give meals at seemingly random times that don't seem to line up with any time zone. In fact, on my flight back to the US, they gave us breakfast when the local time was nearing dinner time. As a result, I've often used the "stay up as long as possible" strategy, which only kind of works. All of that is to say that flying really sucks. It was by far the worst part of the trip for me. It was so bad that on my way back I got a neck pillow and invested in copious amounts of caffeine. The caffeine helped me stay focused on reading, so the time sort of melted away. That said, caffeine really could only get me through 75% of the flight. That last 25% felt like an eternity. Japan Seems Isolating The last thing I'll cover is this concept of isolation in Japan. Again, I'll rehash the disclaimer that I do not live in Japan, so my observations are really just from 15 days. That said, I find Japan to be a bit isolating from the perspective of a westerner. To start, I want to talk about this idea of collectivism. Japan is often described as a collectivist culture, in that people value the group or the whole more than the individual. This shows up in interesting ways such as on trains, as people are generally pretty quiet on them out of respect for each other (as least during work hours). In a similar way, you'll find that Japan is generally very clean as people pick up after themselves. I even think it shows up in the way people dress: muted colors as if not to stick out. Interestingly, I think it's this particular manifestation of collectivism that leads to isolation. To me, Japan has more of an aesthetic collectivism. It's not that people do what's right for the good of everyone; it's that they do what looks right for the sake of aesthetics. After all, clean cities, quiet buses, and blending in are all aesthetically pleasing. Of course, the consequences of these kinds of ideals actually harm the whole. For example, if you get on a train or bus, not only are people quiet, but they're all on their phones (often with headphones or earbuds). Surely, chatting it up with a stranger would be more fulfilling and less isolating—though, even I don't want to talk to anyone during my commute. A more subtle example that comes to mind for me are elevators. In the US, when you get on an elevator, it's really common for you to ask the person standing near the buttons to select your floor. In Japan, the buttons are on basically every side of the elevator, so you never have to talk to anyone. In fact, once you notice this idea of contactless service, you see it everywhere. For instance, there were a handful of restaurants I attended where you didn't order from a person. Instead, you ordered from either a touchscreen terminal or an old terminal with dozens of buttons for food options. Then, you would directly pay the machine and take the receipt up to the kitchen. At no point, do you need to talk to anyone. Now, the reason I'm so confident to espouse these sort of ideas is that I had a few conversations with locals about them. For example, I told a Japanese professor about how wonderful the transit is in Japan. After all, Japanese transit is like a dream to the average American. Yet, his response was to highlight how wonderful Uber is in the US. As you can imagine, I found this really interesting because Uber is really expensive for consumers and really exploitative for drivers. Basically, drivers are just contractors who have to use their own cars to drive folks around for money. They get no benefits, and they have no bargaining power. To hear someone who has access to one of the nicest public transit systems in the world say they like Uber was a bit jarring. Later, when I talked to a foreign professor, I brought this conversation up with him. Being an outsider himself, he was quick to respond, "well, of course the Japanese love Uber. They don't have to talk to anyone." This sort of reaffirmed my belief that perhaps the Japanese are socialized to be a bit anti-social. Interestingly, that same professor went on to give the discussion a bit more nuance. He told me about how machines have made everything in Japan is so seamless (though, maybe a bit overcomplicated). The problem, of course, is now that the average Japanese person trusts machines unequivocally—perhaps even more than other people. He then told me about a man who I'll paraphrase as saying, "vending machines should give bad change sometimes, so people stop trusting machines so much." In other words, Japan (and frankly, the US) needs more tech skepticism. Ultimately, I would argue that the Japanese are not only socialized for isolation but also lean into it with their general preference for machines over humans. I wonder what their relationship is with LLMs and what role they might play in further isolation. Photo Gallery With all that said, sometimes I find it more interesting to just share some pictures! As a result, here's a dump of some of my favorite photos from the trip (check out the alt tags for details). Thoughts for Next Year Seeing as this was my first time running the program, there are a lot of lessons I've learned. Going into next year, here are just a few of things I plan to do: Study Japanese: I was already self-studying, but reading and listening only get you so far. You need to be able to speak, so I've enrolled in a Japanese course on campus to help develop my speaking. I'm hoping by the trip next year I'll be a lot more confident in my language skills. Provide More Language Resources for Students: We advertise the trip by telling students that they don't need to know Japanese, and they absolutely don't. However, one of our tour guides gave us a sheet with some Japanese phrases on it, and the students really liked it. It was like a Japanese cheat sheet that helped a lot of them chat with the locals. Explain That Tap Water Is Safe: Personally, I was drinking tap water the whole trip without issue. Yet, students seemed skeptical, often reaching for the vending machines to hydrate. While there are places in the world (even in the US) where tap water isn't safe, it seems weird to be skeptical of it everywhere. Hopefully, I can convince students that they just need a water bottle, and they can fill up in their hotel rooms. Buy a Shoulder Bag: Several of my students had these nice bags that they would just throw over their shoulder's to carry stuff. While I wore a backpack most of the time, I would have much preferred these smaller "fanny pack"-like bags. They definitely seemed like a game changer. Adjust Deadlines & Add Work Time: In general, we didn't give students a lot of time to work on their assignments. As a result, many of them were late or missing, and we had to do a lot of prodding to get students to submit them. I think next time we can push some of the deadlines off into the time after the trip, though it will be harder to get students to work on them. It also punishes students who choose to stay longer. In addition, we could build more work time into the trip, so students don't have to get the work done on their own time. Adapt Assignment Rubrics: To ensure assessments were aligned with learning outcomes, I crafted rubrics for each assignment. For the reflections, the rubrics were a bit aggressive, and students never really met the outcomes. In the future, I think I'll make the rubrics more flexible, so students can continue to reflect in their own ways while we encourage certain reflection topics. Figure Out Attire: When the trip went for the first time last year, students were advised to wear business casual clothes. As a result, when we ran the trip this year, I advised the same thing. Then, when we got there, several students told me that their Japanese peers thought we overdressed. In contrast, we had several group dinners where we went in street clothes, and I felt we were drastically underdressed. So, we were overdressed for school and underdressed for meals. Ultimately, I'm sure there were other lessons learned, but I don't quite have the student feedback yet. Perhaps I'll share some of that when I get it! Expect it to be a lot more critical than the feedback I usually get as this was literally my first time doing something like this. Anyway, this reflection is already closing in on 4,000 words, and I have other articles I would like to write this summer! As a result, let's call it here. As always, if you liked this, there's plenty more where that came from: Reflecting on My First Two Years as a Lecturer It’s Time to Collect Mid-Semester Feedback 5 Ways to Get Feedback on Your Teaching Likewise, you can help support the site by checking out my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, thanks for reading! See you next time.