Social Experience Challenge
Travelled to Japan with Introtravel
Introtravel - Japan
For my Residential Experience, I traveled to Japan with the organisation 'Introtravel', a travel company that provides a range of international trips for travellers who want to explore the world with other travellers in a small, pre-organised group.
The trip I was apart of was named 'Japan Adventure'. The programme allows travellers to explore Japan for 13 days, starting in Tokyo and visiting other places including, Nagano, Hakone, Osaka, Koyasan and Kyoto.
I booked onto the tour to travel in October 2023. When I booked onto the trip, I knew nobody else who I would be travelling with and had no idea who I would meet. Before flying out, I joined the Introtravel Facebook group and met Jess, Tania and Charlotte who were all also booked onto the arrival date I was on! Before flying out I video called Jess and arranged to fly to Tokyo with her from London Heathrow, with Tania and Charlotte on another flight landing just after us.
The video below is from the Introtravel YouTube page, and shows some of the highlights that we got to see on our tour!
About Social Experience Challenge
The focus of this section is to challenge yourself in a new setting and do something you have never done before. You will develop your interpersonal skills by meeting new people, trying a new activity, attending a new event, or visiting a new place. You can do these things through Girlguiding or another organisation.
Assessor: Tania H, participant
An overview of the Trip
Tokyo
The 4 of us arrived early in Tokyo after a 14 hour flight. Jess and I were the first to land, with Charlotte and Tania arriving shortly after, we met them in the luggage claim area. Once sorted, we made our way to the exit and tried to navigate our way to our hotel, where our tour guide Rachel was meeting the group. We stayed in a hostel near Ueno station. Once checked in, the four of us headed out to explore Tokyo, getting tickets to go up the Tokyo tower, that evening, we went back to the hostel to meet up with the rest of our group, around 16 of us in total, and we went out for our first group meal of the trip, to a short walk away from our hostel. It was lovely getting to know everyone and find out where everyone had travelled from. Our group was made up of 7 from the UK, 2 from America, 2 from UAE, 2 from Canada, 1 from Australia, 1 from Germany and 1 from Finland. Everyone got on really well which was fantastic!
We spent day 2 exploring the Senso-Ji temple and Meiji shrine, eating on Harajuku street before heading to the famous Shibuya Crossing. On day 3, we went out to learn how to make sushi at a cooking school, before having free time. Another member of the group from the UK, Amy, and I went out into Tokyo to go and visit the Skytree, which usually has amazing views over Tokyo, however this day it was super cloudy and we couldn't see anything from the top! We later headed to a shopping centre and Tokyo aquarium before going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, which was so good. We spent a lot of the time in the city just getting to know everyone and spending time together.
Nagano
On our fourth morning, we got to experience our first bullet train, heading north to Nagano. Here we stayed at a local hotel, which had the traditional futton beds. I got to share a room with Jess, Tania and Charlotte, it was really interesting staying and living how Japanese locals live,
At the hotel, as a group we learnt how to make origami from locals. We made paper flowers, cranes and butteries. We also got taught how to make noodles. On our free time whilst in Nagano, we explored the mountain town together, visiting small shops and visiting the cemetery. After our day exploring the town, we headed into the mountains to 'Snow Monkey park; to see the famous Snow Monkeys! The monkeys here are famous for spending time in their locally-made Onsen, We learnt that during their history of living near the town, the monkeys would often climb down the mountain and visit Nagano to bathe in the local communities onsens. To help keep the monkeys up in the mountains and out of the town, the local people built the monkeys their own onsen, which they still use to keep warm!
There was tonnes of monkeys on the mountain, including lots of baby ones, we got to explore the mountain for a while and at our own pace, taking loads of photos. On the way back down the mountains, we stopped together to get some food, before spending more time in the town.
Hakone
After our stay in the mountains, we had an overnight stay on our travels to Osaka. On our way to Osaka, we traveled by a range of different transport, including train, cable car, boat/pirate ship and bus, with so many options we got to see some really beautiful parts of Japan on the way which we wouldn't have seen other wise, and although it made for a long day, it was really lovely.
We stayed in a small town called Hakone, roughly half way between Tokyo and Osaka. In the evening once we had checked in, we all headed out to explore the shops and find some food, we managed to end up at a Pizza place which was quite a hike up a hill, we didn't plan as a group to meet here, but everyone must have had the same idea and wanted pizza and it was a really great evening. We spent time together walking back from the restaurant to the hotel too.
We left Hakone early to continue travelling on to Osaka, on our way we got to stop off and see Mt Fiji from an old quarry, where lots of tourists and school groups go to see the famous view!
We got to a cable car which took us up and over the quarry, luckily we had a clear day and had amazing views of Mt Fuji. Once done exploring and taking photos, and eating the 'lucky black eggs' which are said to add 5 years to your life, we headed back down the mountain and to a lake where we boarded a pirate ship. The boat took us across the lake and once on the other side, we got a bus to take us to Osaka.
This evening, we went out of a BBQ dinner where we got to order so much food and cook everything for ourselves. After, a lot of the group headed out for Karaoke, but I headed back to the hotel with 2 of the other group members, stopping off on the way to play in some arcades and in some shops for snacks.
Osaka
Although we weren't in Osaka for very long, we managed to have quite a bit of free time, during that I spent a lot of time exploring the city with Amy. We used our free morning to go out for a pancake breakfast before getting the train over to visit Osaka aquarium, which was once the worlds largest aquarium and is home to so many amazing sea creatures, including dolphins, crabs and whale sharks!
In the afternoon, we met back up with our group to visit Osaka castle, a 400 years old castle, which has since been turned into a museum. We learnt about Japanese history and the countries warriors whilst inside. In the evening, we went out into the city for food. We went to an amazing street which was lit with bright light-up signs and decorations, we got to explore a street's food stalls and restaurants.
In the morning, we headed out of our hotel early to travel west to Koyasan, known to be the centre of Shingon Buddhism, and stay at a traditional, 1000 year old temple.
Koyasan
Once in Koyasan, we went for another group meal to a restaurant before having free time to explore the town. Although there wasn't many shops open, it was great to wander through and see an authentic Japanese town, which was filled with temple history. The temple we stayed in is over 1000 years old and still home to monks going about their day-to-day lives. Once settled in, and once it had gone dark, we met up with our group to have a tour of the ancient cemetery, we learnt about emperors and different meanings of structures found throughout the cemetery. During our time at the temple, we also learnt how to meditate from a monk, tried the food they eat daily, which was vegan and consisted of 7 different foods and we also had the opportunity to watch them preform their morning prayer ritual and fire ceremony before leaving for Kyoto.
Kyoto
Kyoto was the last stop on our trip. Once we had arrived by train, we went out into the dirt and had an evening tour from someone who had lived in the city of several years. The tour guide showed us around the flower towns, districts where geisha live and work, as well as temples, an old theatre and other areas of the city.
The next morning, we travelled by train out of Kyoto to visit a bamboo forest, which was in a super busy town filled with tourists, we stopped for lunch ad had time to buy souvenirs. Later that afternoon we stopped by another temple, known as the golden pavilion, we got to walk around the grounds and learn a bit about the area. That evening we went back to the city and went out to explore some more.
On our final full day together as a group, we had plenty of free time. We spent the time between going into arcades, visiting the famous torii gates of 'Fushimi-Inari', where hundreds of gates line the hillside. Amy and I also spent time having lunch in a really adorable cat cafe.
Later that afternoon, the group had the opportunity to take part in a samurai class on the day, however I went out into the town to explore on my own and see some more sites we had seen on our evening city tour but in the day, revisiting the flower towns, and I really enjoyed exploring the city at my own pace.
On our final day, people gradually started to leave to get flights back to their home counties or onward travel to other parts of Japan, A group of us travelled back to the train station to get the bullet train back to Tokyo. Jess and I had already pre-booked an extension of our trip to visit the Tokyo Disney resort for a few days before returning home!
Back to Tokyo for Disney!
Jess and I got back to Tokyo and then got the subway to just outside of the city to the Tokyo Disney Resort! We spent 1 day exploring DisneySea, riding lots of rides and trying their unique popcorn flavours, and we spent 2 days at Disneyland exploring the park and hoping to meet characters.
This Disney park was such a different experience from Walt Disney World in Florida, and visiting this park was one of the reasons I had wanted to travel to Japan. We had a fantastic time in the parks before flying back to London from Tokyo! Overall this trip has been fantastic and one of my favourite counties I've visited to date. Everybody on our tour was lovely to talk to and we're already planning on meeting up hopefully in London in a few months!
Reflection
Describe your activity or role.
For my Social Experience, I travelled on Introtravel’s ‘Japan Adventure’. A group travel experience for like-minded individuals, similar to a book-and-go holiday. I spent 2 weeks travelling around Japan with 15 other people from around the world.
Why did you choose it for this section?
Intro Travel offers trips abroad for those who may not be confident planning solo-trips on their own. They offer trips to meet new people and allow people to explore cultures and stay in places you may not usually do. Japan was the furthest I’ve been travel wise, and offered lots of new challenges and activities I hadn't done before, which allowed me to step out of my comfort zone.
Looking into the residential flowchart, Intro travel’s Japan Adventure met all the criteria, including, exploring the Japanese culture as a purpose, the trip was led by an organised group, there were 16 of us total travelling (17 including our tour guide), and we spent most evenings exploring the culture on tours and activities or having an evening meal together as a group.
What have you learnt from the activity or role?
We were able to spend our time learning more about Japanese culture which has been amazing. We learnt about shrines and temples and more on the history of Japan. We explored, made and tried our own Japanese food, including sushi and noodles, and trying new dishes from local street food and restaurants. We learnt how to create origami under the directions from locals and we have been able to explore Japanese culture.
What core skills have you developed and how?
Resilience: Our main problems we encountered were days when we didn't have Rachael, our guide, with us. We would often be using local transport to get around cities, and with having a language barrier in place, which included the Japanese Katakana writing system. The main times this came up was when we first arrived in Tokyo, getting ourselves from the airport to Ueno station for our hostel, in our free time, and on our way to Disney. A Lot of these challenges were overcome by using google, or trying to communicate with locals, who were a huge help! Our communication relied a lot on locals who understood some english, or using photos of our attraction, or google translate.
Teamwork: We didn't use teamwork an awful lot during the trip, but the times we did we worked really well together, such as travelling back without Rachael, or making Japanese food together and helping each other with instructions and techniques.
Leadership: Not Applicable
Communication: Communication fell a lot on our free time and chatting with the group about where we wanted to visit and coming up with plans. I was able to visit places with others that I wanted to visit in smaller groups that was really lovely, and we would all often be messaging each other over phone too to come up with plans. At first, communication with others could be difficult as we were learning more about each other, but by the end of our trip, I think everyone felt comfortable around everyone and were able to go to the person they needed to with confidence.
Independence: Reviewing this at the end of our trip, I think I have gained more independence skills whilst away. From being able to make choices and decide what I wanted to do, to being able to take myself off independently away from the group to explore the city on my own. These aren't something I would usually be comfortable doing, but I felt I was able to step out of my comfort zone.
Reflection: I think I’ve pushed myself quite a lot whilst in Japan, from staying at places I would usually be nervous doing, or trying new experiences and foods.
What would you change or improve on if you did this activity again?
I think I would like to do another experience like this in the future, either with Intro Travel or another company which offers a similar experience, at the moment I’m hoping to travel to China, Africa or Costa Rica in a similar tour group. The main area I would like to improve on is getting to know more people and chatting to them on a 1-2-1. During this trip, I was more comfortable staying with Tania and Jess, and on a 1-2-1 level, Amy, to explore the cities and take part in activities. I would like to make sure on a future trip, I push myself to talk to others more and gain confidence in that area.
If applicable, how has it made a positive impact in Girlguiding
Not Applicable