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Essays from Akiko Hirano who studied in the U.S. at age 45. Reproduced and translated with additions from the 2000 Sojusha Publishers' publication (sold out).  
The dream of exchange to the U.S. An 8 million yen investment in me! The struggle with English begins Japanese food in My composition appears in a text book If only I had read more books The death of Finally, a real university student |
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Crossing North American Continent by carEver since I got my car, driving around was not a problem for me so I went to many places by car. I even ended up driving across the North American continent. One of my young Japanese friends who had been studying with me asked me to do so. He also had his own car and he was planning to transfer to another school in San Francisco. Therefore he was originally planning to go on the road trip to San Francisco with his German friend during the summer vacation but the friend got busy and canceled the trip. My friend didn’t have any other plans for the summer so he came to ask me, since apparently I looked like a person who would say yes to his plan. Yes, I was just a pinch hitter to him. He desperately wanted to take the trip by car because flying was too costly for him and getting around was much easier by car. Also he was not quite confident in going by himself. He stirred my curiosity by telling me wisely that if I miss this chance, I would never be able to have this kind of experience again. In the beginning I hesitated to go but my curiosity outcome my hesitation in the end. Of course I knew he would expect me to drive here and there but I thought visiting different parts of United States by going on a road trip would not be such a bad idea and we took off for the trip. I told my daughter about this trip but not to my mother since I didn’t know what she would say and she would worry too much about me. After leaving Connecticut, instead of going straight to our destination we dropped by different places we wanted to go first and finally got to the destination in ten days. First we started off by going to New York City and dropped by YaoHan in New Jersey. After that, we went to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Minneapolis, Utah, Colorado and then reached our destination San Francisco. I was alone on the way back. It took me three nights and four days on the Amtrak train to come back.
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