HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-02-26, Page 6PAGE 6. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2009.When Brussels-arearesident Darby Alcorn heardshe was heading to Japanthrough the Lions Youth
Exchange, she pledged to try
everything and be open to
anything.
This is what made her trip
worthwhile, she says now.
Japan was Alcorn’s second
choice out of three, her first
was Korea and her third was
Ireland.
Japan was available, so for
a month last summer, Alcorn
spent time in some of the
world’s most scenic land. She
visited temples, castles,
Japan’s famed entertainment
district, Kyoto, Hiroshima, a
baseball game, Universal
Studios Japan and and a three-
storey tall statue of Buddha.
Initially, however, Alcorn
said she found Japan
intimidating. Before even
officially entering the country,
she was photographed and
fingerprinted, as all foreigners
are. Visitors are also required
to list an address where
they will be
staying.
Alcorn
could not
provide
this, as she
did not yet
know where
she would be
staying, so
getting through
Japanese
customs, she said,
was not as easy as it
could have been.
Upon entering the
country, Alcorn was
greeted by six
businessmen, all wearing
suits and was
immediately escorted to a
Lions meeting. In Japan, she
said, Lions are often very
powerful businessmen, CEOs
of companies, etc. She soon
found herself in a private,
upper-floor restaurant with a
large sushi spread.
“Japan is really hot and the
custom is that you take off
your shoes when you’re
inside,” she said. “So my first
experience in Japan was the
Lions meeting that smelled
like warming fish and feet.”
However, once she was
placed with her first of threehost families, she began toexperience the finer points ofJapan, finding the languagebarrier to be not a large issueat all.“I learned a lot about
communication on this trip.
People in Japan are very
curious, but they’re also very
reserved and very shy,” she
said. “I really learned that a
smile knows no language
though. Smiling opened a lot
of doors for me there.”
Alcorn said one of the
strangest parts of the trip was
the feeling of being tall that
she is not used to. At 5’2”
Alcorn is considered shorter,
however, she said she was
taller than most of the people
she encountered in Japan.
One of the more touching
experiences Alcorn had in
Japan, she said, was when she
visited Hiroshima.
Speaking to an English-
speaking Japanese girl,
roughly her age, when
she was there,
Alcorn
inquired
about the Japanese
equivalent of Remembrance
Day. She responded, however,
by saying, “Not really. We
were the bad guys, so we
really have nothing to
celebrate.”
The Japanese, however, do
observe a moment of silence
at the time the atomic bomb
hit Hiroshima.
There were also many
festivals that Alcorn attended.
Each one was very elaborate
and well-decorated.
The festivals and
celebrations were filled with
hundreds of people, she said,
all very outgoing, which is
different from her day-to-dayexperiences there. “For the most part everyonewas pretty reserved overthere, with the exception ofthese festivals, or when theywere singing karaoke,” she
said.
The food, however, was
largely sushi-based. Having
promised herself she would
try everything, she put up
with the food she didn’t like.
“I learned early in the trip to
not ask what I was eating. I
ate a lot of sushi and
traditional Japanese food that
I still don’t quite know what it
was,” she said.
Alcorn said she had not
travelled too much before this
trip, heading only to New
York City and Costa Rica.
It was her host families and
the Lions that made the trip
exciting and helped her to
navigate in a country where
English is not a widely-
spoken language.
The first family she
stayed with consisted of
two parents along with
three children who
were all around her
age, which was 18 at
the time.
However, over
time, Alcorn
found the
families that she
stayed with
grew older
and more
traditional
each week.
The second
family she
stayed with knew very
little English and the last
family was simply an older
couple who knew no English.
Alcorn closed out her trip at
the Lions International Youth
Camp for 10 days before
returning to her first host
family for a few days before
her flight back to Canada.
It was her open mind,
however, that made the trip
great, she said.
“I had a lot of good times. If
I didn’t go into this trip with
an open mind, I would have
been miserable. There were a
lot of things that were weird
and that I didn’t understand,
but I just played it down and
told myself it wasn’t a big
deal and it turned out to be a
great experience,” she said.
Brussels student visits Japan through Lions
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I M P O R T A N T N O T I C E
By Shawn LoughlinThe Citizen
Samurai masters
Brussels-area student Darby Alcorn, above, was fortunate enough to witness
a samurai demonstration during her time in Japan thanks to the Lions
Exchange. Alcorn was staying at a hostel that was used during the 2002
World Cup, where the demonstration took place. During her trip with the
Lions Exchange, Alcorn saw much of what Japan had to offer, including
visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima and this, the Himeji Castle, left. The castle, built in
1333, was overhauled in 1580 and remains largely-untouched since that
major expansion. (Courtesy photo)
Potting in the work
Brussels-area student Darby Alcorn recently participated in the Lions
Exchange program which sent her to Japan for approximately one month.
She spent her time there wisely, seeing the sights, attending a baseball
game and eventually getting her hands dirty, making some pottery with her
host uncle, Mr. Den. (Courtesy photo)