Okinawan Fever

For Japanese students at Akita International University (AIU), the academic school year starts around April and ends around December. From December to April, students may decide to take classes during the Winter Semester from January to the beginning of March or take a break from January to April. I decided to take classes during the Winter semester, so I had a one-month break during March. 

After returning from Sendai to visit a friend from AIU, I spent about a week at AIU catching up with friends and making last minute arrangements for my trip. I was nervous because I decided to travel by myself for the first half of my trip, and had only reserved my hostels and my tickets for the night bus. Before leaving for my trip I thought about how to get to the sight seeing locations for the places I want to go to, but I was unsure about how easy the public transportation would be at Tokyo, Okinawa, and Okayama, so I thought it would be best to do this when I get to those locations.

On the day, I left AIU for my Winter break, it was really cold, and I had trouble finding my night bus from Akita to Tokyo. I downloaded the email from my night bus reservation to my iPod, but I was unsure of the location of the night bus despite knowing that it was located at the East entrance of the JR Akita Station.

It took me several minutes to find my night bus, but after finding the driver using my limited Japanese, I was able to find the correct bus. I was so happy to find my bus because there was a blizzard outside of the bus.