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Category: Eating and Cooking

  • My Heartland Stay Program—A Visit to Iowa

    My Heartland Stay Program—A Visit to Iowa

    For the past two decades, I’ve visited the cultural festival at Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School every year to see performances by Ms. Saigusa’s musical club. There, whenever I saw the display for the homestay program—organized almost every summer by Mr. Devin Kelso, an English teacher at the school, in which students from the school visit his hometown in Iowa—I’d dream of going there myself someday.

    That dream came true this year. During the week of Silver Week in September—which is packed with national holidays—I visited Mount Vernon and Lisbon in Iowa, Mr. Kelso’s hometown, as well as the filming location of the movie Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, the world’s steepest funicular train in Dubuque, Iowa, and the Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer museums in Hannibal, Missouri—destinations frequently visited by students on the homestay program. By driving a rental car on American roads, staying at motels, and eating at diners, I experienced America’s good old-fashioned culture.

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  • Visiting Taipei and the National Palace Museum

    Visiting Taipei and the National Palace Museum

    I visited Taipei last week. It was the first time I had gone abroad in four years, as the coronavirus pandemic, which began in 2020, had prevented people from crossing borders. Since the border opened this year, I wanted to travel somewhere overseas. I chose Taiwan for this trip because I wanted to see the entire National Palace Museum exhibition in Taipei. I also wanted to enjoy Taiwan before it was too late, given the possible unrest in Taiwan in the near future. 

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  • Changes of the World From COVID-19

    Changes of the World From COVID-19

    COVID-19 is dreadfully spreading throughout the world, hospitalizing more than 3,100,000 people and taking the lives of more than 200,000 patients as of April 29, according to Johns Hopkins University. It is no exception here in Tokyo.

    The virus is forcing all people in the world to change their lifestyles. Many have been grounded for months. Essential workers, such as doctors, healthcare workers, firefighters, law enforcement officers, supermarket clerks, garbage collectors, delivery service personnel, and staff involved in public transportation, work outside facing the fear of infection.

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  • Japan’s Northernmost End

    Though it was almost half a year ago, I visited Wakkanai, the northernmost end of Hokkaido. Since it was the beginning of January this year, it was extremely cold outside with plenty of snow, and the streets were very slippery.

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  • Visiting Maine

    Visiting Maine

    I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine, this September. I watched a musical play, Carousel, at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, performed by its musical club, a few weeks earlier. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.

    There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were with Delta Airlines.

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  • Taco Bell in Japan

    Taco Bell in Japan

    Today I went to the Taco Bell in Shibuya, which opened last Tuesday as Japan’s first Taco Bell store, and hundreds of people had waited in line for more than two hours in front of the store on the first day only. Today there was a long queue, too. A staff member at the end of the queue said I would have to wait up to two hours to be served. It was a bit tough for me to wait such a long time, but I couldn’t help but do it to enjoy the American taste I’d ever had in New York, where I had traveled for a business trip.

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