Alright,
Since at the time I actually made this trip, there wasn’t even Instagram or others, just Facebook, i have a 300+ folder of pictures and videos that have been waiting to see the light,
Until now.
I had published a few posts before but since this trip, I took so many pictures I knew this one would take me a bit to preselect everything.
Here it goes,
It was 2011, i was 24-25 at the time recently graduated college, embarking the world of working and no longer studying. At the time I had 2 jobs, one in the morning at a call center and one in the afternoon as an English teacher. (I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic) I can’t quite recall how i heard about the ad: The Japanese local embassy was promoting a one-month scholarship to Japan, all expenses paid to learn about their culture, “International Youth Exchange” its called.
3 categories to apply, Education, Environment and Culture. I had to write a one-page essay of how this would benefit me and why,
I did the interview which I apparently made an impression to the reps from the embassy, mind you i can be quite a charmer 
, but my experience also spoke for itself. You had to turn in your resume, at the time i did beach clean-ups along with 350.0rg which was still in the country along with education experience and a perfect English. So I applied for 2 categories. Culture and Environment.
I applied with 200 other applicants from all Dominican Republic. and i got the callback. 12 got picked. Completely mind blown i began to prepare for one of the most amazing life-changing trips i’ve ever had.
Since it was a month-long trip I will not dive into ALL the details as for it would take me more than 4 post to do so. But we stayed in Tokyo, the first 2 weeks, then Ogawa town, then Tottori, then Tokyo again. The program consisted (in the environmental category which is the one i was placed in) was to learn about Japans environmental structure, the second and last part of the program was to spend a week with a Japanese family and exprience their culture.
I had the fantastic idea of wearing army boots to a 19-hour flight, #nevergain. Most uncomfortable flight of my life.
Needless to say, it was almost as if i would of walked straight into a dream when i arrived. I remember pinching myself when i got there.
We stayed at Ana Intercontinental in the middle of Tokyo, a breakfast buffet included.
They handed us an envelope and the envelope had the amount of money outside and price references for each thing so it was enough for each week.
Room key, off you go.
The first night out I actually got lost, clearly my Japanese was not great, but i gotta tell you. Ppl can be helpfull there. Japanese dress like there on a fashion runway and they’re actually on their way to work. I felt completely underdressed at the time and also amazed because I loved it.
Streets were spick and spam, no dirt no nothing. Everything was electronic, i found myself at some point not knowing how to open a pharmacy door because i wasnt sensored, you had to tap it to open ( of course you did). Toilets! electronic,buttons, i think i even made a video of a toilet seat going up and down i must of looked like a complete fool.
Now the food was a 2 way street for me, I gained quite a few pounds because they seemed to put egg in everything and had rice for breakfast. It was a bit tasteless for what i was used to. Us caribbean ppl accentuate salt and other spices on food and also, sometimes the breakfast came raw sea food and at some point i almost cried cuz i disliked the smell. So i mostly tried sticking to the buffet. (no offense to any Japanese member here!) I did get to try several varieties of interesting dishes and i tried the best sushi in my entire life. Also #greenteaineverything
I attached some pics here, clearly not all, but some to give an idea of that dreamland
I actually purchased a video-camera at the time because i said i needed more than pictures to remember this experience and i had actually uploaded some of them to Youtube that same year (no idea why i guess at the time i was afraid of losing data somehow) and here are the links of the videos i made: