My Memorable Trip to Seattle

My Memorable Trip to Seattle

Last year, I went to Canada and studied there for about eight months. At first, I lived in Victoria, but I moved to Vancouver after staying in Victoria for three months as I wanted to see many places. Though I enjoyed and loved Vancouver very much, I missed my friends in Victoria, too. Therefore, I made a plan to see one of my best friends, who was from Hokkaido and same age as me, in Seattle. The reason why I chose Seattle is that I knew she wanted to watch a baseball game in which Ichiro play. We booked a cheap youth hostel in downtown for two nights. I decided to go there by bus and she decided to come by ferry from Victoria. We were looking forward to seeing each other again. However, it wasn’t easy trip for both of us.

At first, I didn’t know I had to pay money at the border between Canada and US in US dollars and I hadn’t change my Canadian dollars to US dollars before I got to the border, so I didn’t have money to pay though it was just six dollars! Fortunately, a nice person who was in the same bus lent me six dollars. After arriving at US, by the way, I gave her back six dollars with deepest appreciation.

Secondly, my friend from Victoria mistook the hostel and went other hostel. Since we were going to meet at hostel, we couldn’t see each other for two hours at a strange place and I was almost on the verge of tears because of the loneliness. It was almost eight at evening when we could finally meet. That was the most memorable moments in recent time…

Then, we enjoyed dinner together at a wonderful restaurant. However, disaster on that day wasn’t the end. We had another misfortune at a hostel at that night. Due to a mistake by staff, though we reserved two beds in the biggest room which had fourteen beds, there weren’t enough beds for us. We claimed in our poor English and at last we got two beds to sleep. We were totally exhausted at that night and fell asleep as soon as we went to bed.

Although we faced lots of difficulties, the trip was exciting and wonderful over all. For example, we could see Ichiro and he was fantastic. After seeing him at the stadium, we became proud of him more than before since he was loved by everyone in Seattle and many people were cheering him up passionately. In addition, a huge outlet mall in Seattle was amazing though we regretted having bought clothes too much. Moreover, we enjoyed famous lovely market, which name is Pike Place Market, and went to the first Starbucks! We got a tumbler which was only sold at the Starbucks at Pike Place Market. Above all, we loved people who live there as they were very kind and generous.

Thus, despite many problems our trip to Seattle was fantastic!! Furthermore, perhaps, we could learn lots of things from these troubles. Anyway, we enjoyed the trip and our friendship was cultivated through this trip, too.

Gender equality is still a hard goal for Japan to achieve



Nowadays, it is often said that the number of women who work outside has been increasing every year. However, Japan is still lagging behind other developed countries in women’s social advancement. Promotion for women at a company, for example, is much more difficult than men in Japan. In my opinion, women receive such an unfair treatment due to Japanese old tradition.

Firstly, many people in Japan still think women should stay home and do their housework and take care of children after they got married. As a result of such a way Japanese think, women are thought to quit a job after they got married so they cannot get promotion.

Secondly, even if women continue to work after marriage, it is hard to combine childcare and their job in Japan. The reason is that most of Japanese men do not help housework or childcare after they get home. According to statistics, compared to United States where 40 percent of men help housework, only 10 percent of men do in Japan. Therefore, Japanese women cannot concentrate on their job and it is difficult to work fulltime. Thus, besides the old way of thinking, lack of help by men at home is also one of the reasons why women cannot move up to managerial positions in Japan.

In conclusion, Japanese old tradition, for example women should quit their job and stay at home after marriage or men should not get into the kitchen, is what makes women’s social advancement difficult. Unless Japanese change such an old way of thinking, gender equality cannot be achieved.