Japan, Finally

By: Cathy Campo, Co-Editor-in-Chief

I don’t remember the first time Japan found me, only that it arrived early and never really left.

My mom likes to tell a story about me at four years old, sitting across from her at a restaurant, quietly eating sushi off her plate with chopsticks—far more patiently than she expected from a preschooler. Later, I rented Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service on DVD from the local library and watched it on repeat, rewinding my favorite scenes until the disc froze. Long before matcha became a lifestyle in the U.S., I was drinking it daily as a high school freshman, convinced I had discovered something rare. Japan wasn’t just an interest—it was a constant, woven into my childhood curiosities and comforts.

As an undergraduate, study abroad wasn’t an option available to me. When I transferred to Brown University as a junior, I brought with me the maximum number of credits allowed. A semester abroad would have meant delaying graduation, something that felt both expensive and impossible. It was a quiet disappointment I carried with me, a sense that I’d missed something formative.

Exploring a temple on Miyajima Island, outside Hiroshima

I had traveled my fair share, but never for more than a week or two at a time. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, but my mom never let our world feel small. Once or twice a year, she would take time off work, pack up me and my sister, and take us somewhere far, far away: Thailand, Morocco, Croatia, Italy. She taught us early that the world was global, interconnected, and worth understanding firsthand. Her father, a first-generation immigrant from Egypt, spoke three languages and traveled often for work. She learned from him, and I learned from her, how disorienting and exhilarating it can be to travel somewhere unfamiliar—to listen more than you speak, to notice the small details that make a place feel alive.

When I graduated Brown, my mom gave me the best gift I could imagine: two weeks traveling across Japan. It felt like stepping into a place I had somehow already known for years. The trip was just enough time to fall even harder in love—and to want more.

Japan, not as a tourist but as a student, has fundamentally shifted how I experience the country. Daily life here is quieter and more textured than the Japan of guidebooks and itineraries. It’s the rhythm of the morning commute on the JR line and the careful politeness of classroom interactions. It’s learning to live without trash cans, holding onto an empty matcha cup for hours because public cleanliness is treated as a shared responsibility rather than a municipal one. It’s noticing that people don’t eat or drink while walking, or on trains. It’s waiting for the crosswalk to turn green even when the street is empty, a small but constant reminder that the rules here aren’t suggestions. For someone accustomed to the chaos of New York City, this has been a daily exercise in unlearning urgency.

So much here is communicated without being said. Through pauses, through order, through what isn’t done just as much as what is. Japan is often described by cultural theorists as a high-context society—that meaning is embedded in shared norms, nonverbal cues, and situational awareness rather than spelled out directly (a framework introduced by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in Beyond Culture).

Meanwhile, I scored at the very top for direct communication on the MyGiide cultural agility assessment, and I grew up on the U.S. East Coast, where bluntness and saying exactly what you mean is considered efficient.

At Keio University, I’m constantly aware of what it means to be a guest and a learner. I’m pushed to adjust to social norms that value restraint and indirectness—and to confront how little I actually know about a culture I once thought I understood simply because I loved its art and food.

Moments I once romanticized now feel ordinary in the best way—grabbing a quick onigiri between classes, overhearing conversations on the train, walking through neighborhoods with no agenda at all. Japan has shifted from an imagined place to a lived one.

Studying abroad later in life—in graduate school, rather than college—has also changed how I approach the experience. I’m more intentional now, swapping sake bombs for museums. I think about how this time fits into a larger life, not just a quarter. I ask different questions. I notice different things.

In many ways, this experience feels like a long-delayed conversation—one I started as a child with animated films and a tummy full of nigiri, continued through fleeting glimpses, and am now finally able to have in full sentences.

Enjoying the famed Sapporo Snow Festival. Freezing but smiling!

Kellogg gave me something I didn’t realize I was still waiting for: the chance to slow down, to go deeper, and to live abroad in a way I once thought I’d missed forever. Studying at Keio isn’t just about being in Japan; it’s about honoring a curiosity that’s been with me for as long as I can remember and letting it grow into something more mature, more complex, and more real.

Since arriving, I’ve stood quietly in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, absorbing a history that demands reverence. I’ve wandered through the Sapporo Snow Festival, surrounded by towering sculptures that feel surreal in their scale and also their impermanence. I’ve sipped ceremonial-grade matcha in Kyoto, tasting a drink I once loved abstractly and now understanding the ritual behind it.

Most importantly, I’ve done all of this alone.

Ramen for one! Favorite local joint: Teuchi Oyatori Chūkasoba Ayagawa

Growing up with a single mom, I watched her do it all on her own and feared a similar path. Independence seemed difficult, lonely. For a long time, I equated solitude with abandonment. This fear followed me well into adulthood.

After my acceptance to Kellogg, something shifted. I started solo traveling, and somewhere between unfamiliar cities and quiet hotel rooms, I realized that being alone doesn’t mean being unsupported. Studying abroad in Japan has deepened that lesson in a culture uniquely fluent in solitude. Here, being alone doesn’t feel like absence; it feels intentional. Solo ramen shops with individual booths and counter seats designed for one quietly affirm that independence is neither something to explain nor outgrow. There is cultural permission to take up space alone, and in that space, I’ve learned to trust myself. I can navigate foreign systems and cultural misunderstandings. I can sit with loneliness without being undone by it. And it feels fitting that it’s Japan—the place that first sparked my curiosity about the world—that is teaching me how to stand in it on my own.

Some dreams don’t disappear. Sometimes, they just wait for the right moment to meet you again.

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