12 10, 2015

Travel Missteps: Clearing out Starbucks

By |October 12th, 2015|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

I had never been to a Starbucks prior to my trip to Japan. Crazy right!? The key reason was that I didn't drink coffee, as I'm highly sensitive to caffeine. I also was a bit intimidated by ordering, as I had no idea what to order (or in fact what I would be ordering.) That hesitation was thrown out the window when the other students in my exchange group insisted they get their morning coffee. It was much easier to ask questions when the entire group had no idea how to order what they wanted in Japanese. So I could

4 02, 2013

Travel Missteps: Not Lost on Translation

By |February 4th, 2013|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

I am in the center of the photo next to Chris and in the front left we have my host sister. In the summer of 2004 I participated in a student exchange through the Sister Cities program to Chino, Japan. I was the first person in 13 years of this exchange to speak some Japanese. This was great for me as I could talk to my host family and strangers and absorb more of the culture. For example, on our first day in Tokyo we went to a "one yen/one coin" store where everything was just 1 yen. We