A Lesson to be Learnt

by Anna Holmes (Australia)

Making a local connection Japan

I love to learn. I truly believe learning could solve a lot of the problems our world is currently facing. However, I have always failed to believe that learning could take place anywhere but in a classroom...until I had this experience. An experience so prominent in the course of my education, that no school, TAFE or university course has held a tea to the knowledge I had gained on this trip. There’s a picture that I had framed and anyone from generation z going around framing pictures is a little unusual, that sums up this trip perfectly. The photograph entails a cluster of Australian high school aged children standing under a cherry blossom tree, laughing as our Japanese host families shook the branches making petals rain. Yes, my unforgettable educational experience was a high school cultural exchange trip to a small town in Japan called Taiji. Yes, five years later I can still recount the details of marching through their town hall, to ‘Land Down Under’ by Men At Work. Hand in hand with our host families, the Taiji community gathered around rejoicing, also as if we were warriors coming home from war. It’s here that we shared parts of our cultures with one another, Australians singing ‘Saltwater Cowboy’ by The Pigram Brothers. The kids from the local schools drumming and performing traditional dances throughout the evening. Yes, I remember paying tribute to the Shinto gods at their temples, but it was mostly an excuse to rid yourself of one yen coins. The shrines themselves were absolutely glorious, their architecture is something so innate to the Japanese culture, every part symbolic and meaningful to the god/goddess the shrine represents. Our experience at the temples was also a window into the ancient Shinto way of wishop and a glance at the beginnings of Japanese culture. Yes, the image of the Hiroshima memorial is still ingrained in my memory. In the months before this trip, we had made a conscious effort to research a respectful way for foreigners to honor the memory of the lives lost to the atom bomb and we had found one. There is a story about a girl dying in hospital of the repercussions of the nuclear radiation, in honor of the story people made thousand paper cranes strung together and put in a memorial. The site of this particular memorial is one to be awed of. Thousands upon thousands of locals and tourists alike come together to hang rows to brightly coloured origami, in a display of respect and remembrance. It was after experiences like this that we suddenly gained some local perspective and made us uncomfortable in going activities such as dressing in kimonos, when we weren’t of Japanese heritage. As tourists we tend to ‘overstep’ the boundary between admiration of a culture and being a little culturally insensitive, things including dressing traditional clothes, partaking in rituals or event taking photos of something sacred. There are also prominent memories of the mundane things. Like how the toilets in japan go from one extreme to the next. It would either be highly technical complete with a seat warmer, sounds of water running and a squirt of water to clean yourself or a drop toilet where you squatted and hopes from the best. There were many juxtaposing experiences had in Japan, from my host mother providing vegetarian pizza for breakfast to a traditional breakfast had at the hotels, consisting of rice, fish and steamed vegetables. It almost seems as if Japan as a society is battling the western influence and becoming a very sliced version of traditional practice and Americanised convenience. It’s these flicks of western culture that allowed us to relax a little, such as going for a late night maccas run to cure the homesickness. Experiences like this taught me how to respect people as global citizens, but also to rightfully appreciate their traditions and culture. It is a lesson that I could not have learnt any other way and I believe it's one of the most significant lessons to be learnt.