How did all of this come about?

I am born and raised in Oregon, USA. I spent the formative years of my life living in a rural community, near the Molalla River National Forest. Later, my family would move to the suburbs of Portland, where I graduated in 1991 from Tigard High School. My final year of high school, our school began offering Japanese as an option for foreign language credit, and I opted to take the class. My first teacher was an amazing human and educator, Noriko Roberts, and it was on the solid foundation she gave me that would forever change my life and continually serve me. I learned Hiragana, Katakana, and some basic Kanji. I learned some phrases, grammar, and cultural context. She taught us a lot in that short year, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

In the fall of 1990, my senior year began and, like my peers, I started to explore my post high school options, ordering college brochures, making plans to see a campus or two. As I found myself sitting at the kitchen table of my grandmother’s house with a FASFA form, I was struggling with the pile of paper with terms I hardly understood. “Dad!” I call into the other room, “What’s an asset?” I lived with my grandparents at the time, my dad and sister and four brothers live in a rental house down the street. My mother was incarcerated at the time, they divorced my sophomore year. My father worked sporadically and seasonally, as a roofer, and made money in other creative ways. He’d stopped by the house to see his mom, and I used the opportunity to ask him to help me fill out the FAFSA form. I was 16, he was 35. With 5 more kids at home. “How much money do you have in your checking account? Can I have a copy of your W-2?” I was yelling from the kitchen table to the living room, and as I finished, he walked into the kitchen, shirtless, and asked me, “Shannon, what in the hell are you doing in here?” “College stuff. I need a copy of your W-2, and what are assets?” He then looks me straight in the eyes, and says, “Shannon, I have $250 in my checking account, a 1976 Pinto wagon in the driveway, and the rest is none of your fucking business. People in this family don’t go to college,” and left the room. I sat there for a second looking at those papers, sixteen years old, graduating in the spring, wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with myself and my life. I didn’t even drive yet, I worked at the mall.

I went to school noticed a flier on a wall that said exchange student companies would be in the library sometime in the near future, so I asked Noriko Sensei about the possibility of studying abroad in Japan. She agreed it would be a great opportunity to learn a lot, and I found out that since I would still be 17 when the school year started the following April, I could participate in a high school exchange program and live in a homestay. It was the smartest thing I have ever done and it would change my life. The program was called World Experience, and it was the least expensive program going to Japan, which is exactly why I chose it, as I would soon have to figure out how to finance this adventure. I would be the first student from America to go to Japan with their program, so I was kind of a establishing the learning curve for them. That would help and hinder the experience, but overall, it was a wonderful program, and a life changing experience.

I would leave in April of 1992, almost a year after American high school graduation in June 1991. I flew down to LA and spent the night in a hotel room alone. It was the first time I had gone far away from my family and home. I was excited, terrified, nervous, thrilled all at the same time. I laid in that hotel bed and wondered what the heck I had gotten myself into, if I could do this crazy journey. A lot of the details are fuzzy now, almost 35 years later, but I will never forget that first night in LA, meeting the woman from the organization who would accompany me to Tokyo, and the first (of what would become many-) 14 hour flight from the west coast of the USA to Tokyo, Japan!

I arrived and met my coordinator, Nakagawa Sensei, and they took me on the train to meet my host family in Shinjuku Station. It was a couple in their 30’s, the Toyonoya’s, and they live in Koganei City, a Tokyo suburb. They opened their home to this tall, loud, fiercely independent American girl for almost four months. He worked for a bank, she taught cooking classes, studied English, did and taught Ikebana and other traditional Japanese crafts. She is a highly talented artist and creator, and she shared many craft projects with me, took me to museums and classes, exposed me to refined arts and was an amazing cook on top of all of that! She made me bentos everyday for school, she was always concerned I wasn’t eating enough or eating enough healthy foods. I had a very limited palate when I first arrived and she was patient as she introduced new foods I had no idea even existed. He was entertaining and hard working, a true Japanese salary man. He spent a lot of time with us on weekends, going to parks and festivals, gardens and museums. They were so incredibly kind and giving, and I am so grateful to them for so many things that made a life long impact on me.

I was enrolled in a program that had me go to an International Japanese high school for half of the year for intense language studies. Then, after summer break, I would transfer to a regular Japanese high school near Mt Fuji in Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture. The first school I attended is called Keimei Gakuen, and it is in a western Tokyo suburb, called Haijima. I will blog further about Keimei and the amazing people and adventures I came into contact with, but suffice to say, it was a mind blowing, life change experience. I know I keep saying “life changing,” but it truly was that kind of experience, almost daily. I spent four months at Keimei, and I cherish the memories I made there. I am fortunate that I am still in contact with some of the awesome people I met there. It was a short time, but the impact was forever.

I would spend the summer with another amazing, welcoming, generous family in Saitama prefectures. The Okada’s home was rural, and from my bedroom balcony, I could see rice fields. I didn’t know or understand at the time, that my host parents would move out of their bedroom and allow me to occupy it for the summer. Papa worked for Kikkoman, Oka-san worked at a restaurant in the kitchen. She was a wonderful cook, she had the most beautiful smile and laugh. She was a bright light and incredibly giving human being. My host sister was the same age as I was, and she’d just returned from a year at a Las Vegas high school, speaking English effortlessly. We bonded quickly and spent the summer with our parents. My older host brother was studying at the time, for college entrance exams, so I would see very little of him, and did not get many opportunities to see him during that summer. Since we share a July 26 birthday, we did have dinner and cake together.

After a short trip (another story for another time) to Hokkaido during the summer, I went to Shizuoka, to stay with my final family and attend a regular Japanese high school. I got placed with a family who owned a Juku, a cram school for students studying for school exams. They had two daughters, who lived there, and a son living in Tokyo. Their home had a second, older home attached to it, connected by a hallway. I stayed in the older home, while, the family stayed on the newer side. Students from rural areas also rented rooms in the older home, so it had a dorm sort of vibe. I would spend a month here, and it just wasn’t a good fit for me. I would move to another family in the community that had four children in the household, and I would end up connecting to that family in a profound way.

In March of 1993, I would head home, changed in unimaginable ways. This single year would affect the rest of my life, and would be the catalyst for everything that followed, up until even now. I wake with gratitude everyday, for that first year of language study with the absolute best teacher a young lady could have asked for, and for all the adventures that would follow as I dove into making studying about Japan my life’s passion.

Fast forward to 2021

I graduated from Pacific University in 2014 with a double Bachelor’s in Anthropology and Japanese Studies. I worked for a non-profit agency supporting Intercultural Communication by hosting Japanese college students in Portland, Oregon. We wrote and planned a program that would take these college students to various locations in the area that represented a stage in American life. They stayed a month, learning visiting places like the Nike Campus daycare, Cannon Beach for Smores on the beach, and pre arranged homestays with American families. But it was a temp job (with low pay) and real job prospects using the language were slim in Portland, Oregon. I fell into a retail management job in 2015 and went from content to misery quickly. I walked away from my last shop, knowing the universe gave me the absolute worst possible place to work so I would truly understand I didn’t belong in that world. I spoke Japanese one time in all of my time in retail management, and I was very quick to tell anyone who listened that it had been over 20 years since my last trip to Japan, and there wasn’t a single day I didn’t think about going back. My children were almost fully grown, I had spent the past 23 years parenting, unable to find the time or funds to return.

In 2021, my friend posted pictures on social media about her job as a tour guide. I inquired with her, “What are you doing and how do I do this?” She recommended a tour director certification program in NYC called TripSchool. I didn’t know much about it or the job, but I knew I did want to travel, and I had never been to NYC, and I definitely wanted to go. So I took a vacation, and on that vacation, I took some classes. Until I left, I was unsure about guiding, as it seemed the industry was focused on student tours on the East Coast. But I knew the job I had was not the job for me, so I left. “Leap, and the net will appear,” echoed in my ears. My same friend who referred me to TripSchool then referred me to a couple of local tour operators, and I quickly found myself leading tours to Multnomah Falls, the Oregon Coast, Mt Hood, Wine Country, and downtown Portland. I quickly started to establish a network in the industry and found myself getting repeat gigs from Midwestern Tour Operators.

When I was at TripSchool Boot Camp, I expressed my desire to work in my hometown and eventually guide in Japan, my beloved and sorely missed second home. I was told international guiding isn’t an easy world to break into, and that it probably was a bit niave to think I would find something anytime soon. But I knew I would find a way. My same friend (seriously, my ANGEL!) messaged me with an amazing opportunity. She works for a British tour operator that sells cruises, and pre/post cruise excursions. She meets their guests on the east coast and they do various tours before she puts her guests on the cruise ship. This company was looking for a guide in Japan, and she told them while she doesn’t know anyone in Japan, she knows someone on the west coast of the USA, that would be a perfect fit.

Next thing I know, I am in negotiations with the British tour operator and receiving a guest list and itinerary. I am scrambling to get a renewed passport expedited and buying a suitcase for the first time in 20 years. The next few years would be a wonderful blur of multiple trips, with different itineraries, challenges, and amazing guests! Temples, shrines, blistering humid heat, snowy walks, kaiseki food and onsen, Shibuya scramble and Meiji Jingu, we explored my beloved Japan.