Omiyage

The gift I chose was a pink-handled selfie stick—pink only for added novelty (and style). Throughout the trip, we often commented on the oddity of visiting such historic and sacred sites and seeing swarms of people taking selfies. Before arriving, we may have expected a different experience, of awe-inspiring and serene beauty, maybe affected by the readings we did. Also in our pre-trip meetings, many of us shared this expectation in our group slideshows, with the Google images we chose to represent our expectations of Japan. Those expectations slowly transformed over the course of our site-seeing. Probably as soon as Kiyomizudera, we anticipated less the magnificence of each temple and shrine to be visited, and anticipated more the heat, the exhaustion, the mosquitos, and the crowds of other people, like us, there to witness magnificence, and also to take cute pics. Maybe we realized that all of us tourists had the same experience of our expectations being challenged. Our expectations and experiences were largely similar; their selfies reflected something about ourselves. (And with the shared backdrop, our selfies would have looked the same.)

From the other angle, the theme of the trip had been to learn with and from Japan, to turn inward with travel, and to take a foreign experience as an opportunity for self-reflection. Undoubtedly, we all did learn about ourselves with and from Japan, but this is probably more apparent after the fact. During the trip, we were busy thinking logistically about traveling, thinking about our projects, and taking in everything we experienced. The selfie stick might act as a reminder to be self-aware and self-reflective when contemplating things outside ourselves.