Japan Experience

Japan is a beautiful country with its cities full of life. You will see many beautiful buildings and many people all over.

 

 

 

 I enjoyed visiting the many temples and shrines during our stay. The temples and shrines are very beautiful and it was very interesting to learn the histories of each and to observe and perform some of the rituals taken place, such as the cleansing of our hands before entering the temple and the ritual during prayer. I especially found the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum fascinating and informative, to be able to see the effect of the bombing that took place in 1945. In addition, I found our visit to Nara to be very interesting, especially to be able to see and pet deer that are roaming freely. We also had the opportunity to feed the deer, but be careful, because they do bite, as I had experienced with a bite on the rear! Overall, it was a fun experience!

                

The lectures that were given by the Japanese professors and our visit to the hospital and the pharmacies in Japan were very informative. I especially enjoyed the lecture on Kampo medicine and found our visit to a Kampo pharmacy to be very fascinating. Kampo medicine is based on the use of herbal medicine to treat various ailments. I found it very interesting that in the Kampo pharmacy, the pharmacist and his staff have various herbs stocked on their shelves and measure quantities of various combinations of herbs to be used in a formula that is packaged for a patient. It is very fascinating that a physician in Japan must know many combinations of herbs to make a formula to prescribe for a patient.

The visit to the fish market was such an amazing sight and experience. As you can see, octopus are very plentiful in Japan!

                                     
I enjoyed trying various Japanese dishes, including okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake), takoyaki (Japanese octopus ball), and ramen. My favorite Japanese dish is the ramen noodles, which contained pork, a boiled egg, and the broth was very flavorful, which I will surely miss, as my ramen experience will never be the same again!

My Japan experience would have not been possible without the company of my classmates and professor and the Japanese students and Japanese professors, whom I am very grateful to have had the pleasure of meeting. All of you in Japan will be missed and will never be forgotten!