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Izzy has travelled to many different counties around Japan, where she has experienced a mix of climates and amazing memories to take home from her year abroad.
Something very important to me when thinking about my time abroad is the travelling. The year abroad is an incredible opportunity to take advantage of being based in a completely different country where travel opportunities can be wildly different!
Japan is known for having an incredible mix of climates and each prefecture (i.e. county) has so much to offer, giving me almost too many options for travel! Although I still have many months to go in my exchange (and many camper van trips planned), the travel highlights of the past few months have been amazing. There鈥檚 Hokkaido during the annual Snow Festival, Okinawa and its clear-as-glass beaches and turtles (even in late November), Kyoto with its beautiful temples and the Natural World Heritage site - Yakushima. This list gives you a taste of the genuinely life-changing places I鈥檝e been lucky enough to experience during my time here.
Relatively regular holidays and a lovely 2 month break in the middle of my exchange has been the reason why I鈥檝e been able to visit so many places (as well as the generous Turing Scheme grant). So, during your year abroad, if you have the means to travel (please don鈥檛 miss too many classes!), it is the most wonderful opportunity. Cheap-ish travel has been a great option in Japan, including overnight buses (which were much nicer than Flixbus) so shelling out 拢60+ for the Shinkansen bullet train (although super cool) is not needed to have an amazing trip!
Festivals and the change of seasons can be a huge draw for tourists in Japan such as the Snow Festival in Hokkaido in the North. The ice and snow sculptures took over the streets of Sapporo and we enjoyed playing in snow piles and finishing up with traditional local cuisine, such as the interestingly-named Ginghis Khan dish and a 2am chocolate parfait (the Sapporo late-night parfait culture is beautiful to behold). Even within the same country, the experiences to be had are so different that taking full advantage during your time there is key!
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Another amazing experience I had in the complete opposite end of the country was visiting the famous temperate rainforest of Yakushima, climbing the snowy Mt. Miyanoura, eating some of the most delicious sushi and flying fish, and seeing the famous Sakurajima volcano! Travelling during my year abroad has pushed me to do all sorts of things I would never have imagined I would do and I鈥檓 immensely grateful for the opportunities my year abroad has given me!
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