We all blinked like crazy in the bright lights of the arrival hall at Haneda Airport, in Tokyo, exhausted and exhilarated after the 14-hour flight. Over and over, I heard my students say, “I can’t believe we’re really here,” as we shouldered our luggage and prepared to meet the Japanese mass-transit system to get to our hotel. In that moment, I confess, I did wonder: Go to Japan with 12 undergraduates, none of whom spoke Japanese? What was I thinking?
I’m a faculty member in the Honors College at George Mason University who, in a prior life, spent more than a decade living in central Tokyo. Hoping to share a slice of that experience with students, I organized the trip as part of a three-credit course titled “Japan: Pride, Gender, and Sexuality.” We had a roller coaster of a journey in a storied land of the ancient and the new, with some lusty food experiences thrown in there, and in the end, I can only hope they learned as much as I did.
At a time when many faculty members are “flummoxed by a sense of acute disconnection” with today’s undergraduates, leading a study-abroad trip is a sink-or-swim immersion into intergenerational understanding. And if you’re going to do it, you need to go into the venture with eyes wide open. We spent two weeks in Japan, including 10 days in Tokyo, two days in Kyoto, and two days in Hiroshima. Here’s just a taste of what I learned about students and about the challenges of leading this kind of “classroom.”
Students crave independence. When we boarded the train from the airport to the hotel, the look on the students’ faces was one of utter fear. It was rush hour, the train was packed, and they’d clearly had little to no experience with city-train systems. But kids bounce. All 12 of them were about 20 years old, and they watched, listened, and learned. They quickly understood the way Google Maps works in Tokyo: It is spot-on with walking and train directions, including times and platforms in busy stations across the city.
The day after we arrived, we were loosely Velcro-ed together. By Day 2, most of them had left my side when free time presented itself and found places they wanted to go. Yes, over the next few days there were a few tears when students got lost and turned around in a city in which they couldn’t even read the letters on signs. However, that did not stop them from trying again the next day. Two weeks later, they were so comfortable with the city and the trains that they didn’t even want accompaniment to the airport to go home.
Students feel most comfortable when they know what to expect. Using the technology available was key. We had a WhatsApp group, and everyone posted daily. There was a post from our logistical guide every evening, giving the students (a) the time and place we were meeting the following morning and (b) a description of the day’s activities.
But they get the most out of experiences that surprise them. The first night we were in Tokyo, all of them agreed to just drop their stuff in their hotel rooms and meet me on the street to find a quick bite before going to bed. We walked a few feet from the hotel, and I saw a casual ramen shop. It was one of those places where customers had to buy a ticket for items on the menu from a machine outside of the shop and hand it to the chef behind the counter.
None of the students had ever had a huge, steaming bowl of authentic ramen in a place where no one spoke English — so there was some initial hesitancy. After a few fits and starts, we all squeezed into the tiny place, which sported a bar of only 18 seats. I told the students that slurping was a sign of appreciation and they all “appreciated” loudly and with glee, managing the chopsticks quite well.
I made it clear that I didn’t always know what I was doing either, and that it was OK to feel some initial discomfort with the new. But right from that first night, the students figured out that they didn’t have to understand everything around them, that they could mostly count on the food to be great, and that trying something new — everything new — was a great idea.
Nonacademic experiences offer plenty of learning. I had arranged a packed class schedule with meetings nearly every day. We met with companies run by women, founded by women, and the diversity, equity, and inclusion departments of major Japanese companies. There were dinners with professors and the like. I know the students learned a lot from the lessons I planned.
However, we had an entire day free in our schedule and I wanted to spend it in Kamakura, an ancient Japanese capital just under an hour outside of Tokyo. Most of the students elected to join me, and there was not a formal lesson in the entire day. But together, we found a beautiful spot for lunch, explored two of the major shrines of the city, crawled through the tiny, local shopping street, took a streetcar to see the most stunning Buddha in the country (my opinion), and chatted about life, culture, ideas, and more. In short, we just enjoyed a quiet day of discovery, and it remains my favorite memory of the trip.
Yes, it’s like herding cats. I had to juggle 12 students, 12 alarm clocks, and 12 personalities sharing rooms with relative strangers — all in a country that runs like a top. Nothing is ever behind schedule in Japan, and reservations are kept on time or you’re out of luck. We had a few stressful close calls before I learned that the early call that the logistics company always recommended was definitely necessary. I had to accept it and roll with it.
Pay attention to group dynamics. Next time I run a study-abroad trip, I will follow this advice more closely and pay better attention to who is registering as well as how room assignments are made. Most of the students got along just fine. But we had several challenges with personality clashes, an unruly temper or two, a student who rubbed some others the wrong way and ended up slightly ostracized. If I had paid more attention up front and acted more strongly, I could have nipped certain situations in the bud before they became challenges.
Never ask a question that you really don’t want the answer to. I heard that advice from two generous neuroscience professors who were preparing to take students away for the second time. All of my students were over 18 and most were of legal drinking age in Japan. It was not my business what they did after dinner so long as they showed up on time in the morning for class meetings in a good state of mind for learning. What they did with their free time was their business and I didn’t need to know what those activities entailed.
Pay close attention to the logistics. The company that the university hired to help me schedule the trip had a lot of plusses, including offering a second “adult” when needed, having access to the Japanese medical system, and other key details of the city that would have been hard for me to keep track of by myself.
However, there were days that I felt weren’t planned very well and it would have been better had I paid closer attention ahead of time. For example, I wanted to be sure that the students spent time on a Sunday in an area of Tokyo called Harajuku, where the young people go to show off their cosplay roles, buy activity-appropriate new and secondhand clothing, eat cool snacks, and hang out. I knew that my students, particularly given the nature of the course, would love it. The logistics company felt it was more significant for them to see the Meiji shrine, arguably the most important shrine in Tokyo. It took a bit of a public “discussion” on a train for me to get that schedule changed to the students’ priorities, not the company’s priorities. If I had paid better attention earlier, I would have avoided the fight.
Cultural sensitivity is hard. We faced countless moments of cultural misunderstanding — times when the essential Americanness of the students butted up against Japanese cultural norms. We had several meetings ahead of the trip and daily time for reflection and discussion, but the best I could do was mitigate culture shock, not eliminate it.
At a dinner with a Japanese professor, my students had unreasonable expectations (based on their experiences in American classrooms) of how they should interact with that scholar. Classrooms in Japan are more formal and do not conform to the same norms of questions and answers as my students were accustomed to. They did not enjoy the level of deference they were expected to give, and in turn, the professor was slightly bewildered by the students’ openness and critique.
On other occasions, some of my students had moments of inappropriate, uncontrolled emotions in Japanese places where more decorum would have been better. Honestly, I am not sure if there was anything I could have done better in any of the instances. The students learned. I learned. Mistakes were made. I had to forgive the students, forgive myself, and let the whole thing go. The one thing I knew was that we were all doing our best and we should expect difficult moments.
Watching them blossom is gorgeous. At the end of the trip, I was sorry to see the students head home. I had planned a few days on my own in Tokyo to connect with old friends and explore my old neighborhood, so they went to the airport without me. By that point, I was confident in their independence. They knew how to get around. They knew which snacks they wanted to take on the plane and where to buy them. A few of them had even learned some Japanese words.
Perhaps most important, the students had connected with one another and made some beautiful and, I hope, long-lasting friendships. They came from different backgrounds and locations to an unfamiliar place with different customs and ideas. On the trip, they might have learned more about themselves and their own problem-solving skills than anything else.
But whatever they learned, I am positive that each and every one of them made memories that will last a lifetime. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.
