My name is Bryon Cook, and I’m John Tyo Keating’s friend. I’m happy that he has asked me to tell everyone about my experiences in Hiroshima, Japan. Before I do though, I think I should say that I’m from Michigan in the USA, and I live near Detroit. Also, the reason I got to go to Japan was because I won a scholarship though my high school when I was 17 to go be a foreign exchange student in Hiroshima for the summer. It was best experience of my life.
When I arrived in Japan, the first thing I noticed is how everything looked so different from my culture, from the buildings, cars, people, food, weather, trains, and so much more. The weather there in the summer was very hot, I would say about 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit on average, and it was very humid outside. The humidity was bad for me because I was not used to such hot temperatures so I sweated a lot, and with how humid it was it would take me a long time to stop sweating. Because of the weather and how much I sweated, I would drink over a gallon of water a day just to stay hydrated.
The school I went to was very different from my own, and also it was a drastic change for me because in my school in Michigan, I stayed mostly to myself and my small group of friends, but at this school I was the only student out of about 1,000 that was not Japanese. This meant that everyone knew who I was and I had no idea who anyone was, and people treated me like I was a famous celebrity to them. I used to be a shy person when I was in my own school, but because of me attending this school I became an outgoing person that actually talked to strangers and tried to meet new people. The school itself was a five story building that was on top of a hill. To get to school every morning with my Japanese sister, Ai, I would walk to the bus stop, take the bus to a transit station, at the transit station me and my sister would get our bikes that were locked up there to ride to school. It took us about an hour everyday to get to school. My school back in Michigan was just down the street from my house that I would walk to, and it was only a ten minute walk. As for the course material in the schools, I can’t tell you how different it was from mine because I don’t know Japanese so they didn’t have me do the actual school work like the rest of the class. I was already graduated from my high school back in Michigan so they didn’t need me to do any work because it wouldn’t have changed anything for me.
All of the students would try and talk with me to practice their English, in Japan they are required to take at least three years of English, while in my school we weren’t required to take any foreign language classes, although I did take Spanish for two years. They did have something similar to what my school had though, there school had festivals while my school had assemblies. There they had special shoes you also had to wear in school and only at school, also they didn’t have anyone working to clean the school, all of the students cleaned it. In America the students don’t clean up after themselves sadly, I think it’d make a lot more of the students in America more responsible if we had to take care of our schools like they do in Japan.
Their cars are smaller than what I was used to, they had a lot more public transportation as well than we do in Michigan. We have buses and trains in Michigan just like they do, but no one uses the trains and not many use the buses, while in Japan everyone uses the buses and trains. A lot of people in Japan ride motor-scooters, mopeds, or motorcycles too, while in America only motorcycles are common and ours are a lot bigger than theirs. Their roads are a lot narrower than American roads as well, to the point where I was scared a few times for no reason when riding in a car.
The buildings in Japan were much smaller than the ones in America also, specifically the ceilings were a lot lower than I was used to. I did hit my head on the ceiling before when I was trying to walk down some stairs, it hurt and I did not notice how low the ceiling was before I hit it. The reason I was able to hit the ceiling is because I am about six feet tall, this meant I towered over most of the people there. The people themselves were much shorter than me, on average they were about a foot or two shorter than me. The style of the buildings were different too, they were built much closer together, and no one had a yard in front of their house or behind their house, while in America almost everyone has a yard in front and behind their house.
My older Japanese sister, Yuka, took me to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which was a building built in dedication to those that died from the bombing. It told a lot about the war and had many items that survived from the war. One display that they had set up that interested me was a bottle cap that had been through the bomb, they had it in a special case with a tool that measured radiation inside, and you were able to move the tool with a crank to and from the bottle cap to see how much radiation it gave off depending on how close it was. When the tool was two feet away, it measured 200 radiation units, and while it was right on the coin, it measured over maximum level of radiation. They also had wax figures of people that had their clothes torn apart, their skin peeled back or completely gone and the muscle exposed. Those were some of the people that had survived the initial blast, but did not survive for long because of the acid rain, radiation, nuclear fallout, and due to their injuries as well. They even had a piece of sidewalk on display because in the middle of the square, it was white, while everywhere else it was black. They said the reason the sidewalk was white in the middle was because someone was sitting there waiting for the bank to open up that morning, and so they took the impact of the blast at that area instead of the sidewalk.
I also visited an island, I do not remember exactly what the name of the island was but I think it was Mao-jheng or something close to that. On the island though, there were deer trainer there, they had many deer walking around the island, just going up to people and trying to get food from them. My family had got me some deer feed to give the deer, and I had a group of deer surround me and attack me almost for the food, one of them bit my stomach almost on accident cause there was a piece of deer feed on my shirt, and another ate my map I had with me cause it had deer feed on it. The deer in America are afraid of people, and are also hunted for fun, so this was very different for me.
I swam in the ocean while I was there also, I had never swam in the ocean before then because in Michigan the only bodies of water we have around us are lakes, ponds, and rivers. The stores were very different from what I’m used to, because of the money exchange rate, they have yen in Japan, we have dollars in America. You could be walking down the street and there were many different types of stores and places to eat. While in Michigan, places to shop and eat at are much further apart.
Something that surprised me about the students in Japan was that they did not really interact with the opposite sex that often. Many of the boys that were my age in Japan hadn’t kissed a girl even though they were in high school, while in Michigan, you are considered gay or that no one likes you. It is common for kids in high school in America to already have had sex. For example, in America we have a TV show called 16 and pregnant, while this would be unheard of in most countries. I personally hate the fact that America is known for things like that, but it is nothing that I am able to change.
I loved every minute of my trip in Japan, and I plan on going back there again before I die, If I’m able to I would love to live in Japan for the rest of my life. Many of the people that I have talked to about my experience in Japan plan on going there one day because of how amazing it sounds to them. I would recommend a visit to Japan for everyone if they are able to before they die, it is a place that is like no other. Japan is my favorite place in the world to be and I hope that you may consider taking a trip to Japan one day.
