Talofa, my name is Karez Hunt Tiumalu from Bishop Viard College, in Porirua and I was one of the ten Pacifika scholarship students that were chosen to go to Japan for two weeks.

The main highlights for me of the trip would be touring in my group, CM7. This group was made up of different people from all around world and also my home stay experience. In the tour group we got to see many beautiful attractions and learnt so much about the Japanese culture, for example we saw many shrines, castles and temples, a hot spring site and we also visited a samurai costume shop and enjoyed many meals at Japanese style restaurants.

The place that really stood out for me on the tour was when we visited the Hiroshima bomb site. I felt a lot of different emotions, especially anger and sadness for the Japanese people but I learnt from the actions of the Japanese people that nuclear warfare and retaliation is not the answer, peace in your heart is the answer and these people are true ambassadors of this great gesture. I hope if I ever get into a situation where I have to practice peace that I think about the Hiroshima people first.

My home stay was awesome! I stayed in a town called Matsue, also known as the "water city". I stayed there with my host mother and host sister and I got paired up with a student from Malaysia, Jun Wee, so I was one of the lucky ones as we got to do things together and he is now one of my brothers. Although my host mother and sister spoke very limited English we tried our best to communicate as much as possible, it was fun and made me realise that there are other ways of communicating. My host mother and sister were very friendly and they accepted me into their home as if I was part of their ‘real’ family - I will never forget the kindness and hospitality that they showed to me and I consider them as a part of my own family. During my home stay I got to experience school life in Matsue. There are definitely obvious differences with their school and mine such as they go to school 7 days a week, they wear two pairs of shoes (which are kept in separate public lockers) and they are so tidy and take great pride in their appearances. On my first day, I had to do a speech to the whole school, over 1000 students, to introduce myself and I also experienced a tea ceremony, to write my name in traditional Japanese writing and I made sushi.

Japan was a great cultural experience for me and although it was only two weeks (not long enough!) I got to meet new people from all around the world who are now my life long friends and I learnt so much about the Japanese culture and lifestyle.

This trip was a journey that I will never forget and I will cherish for the rest of my life. I would do anything to experience this trip again and I strongly recommend anyone who is interested in applying for an AFS experience to go for it!

Lastly, I would like to thank all those who made this trip happen for us especially the following; AFS Porirua team for all their time invested in preparing us for this wonderful trip, AFS Japan staff for being so helpful and friendly to everyone and to the Japanese government for funding this amazing trip as if it weren’t for the funding, me and my fellow Porirua students wouldn’t have been able to experience this life changing opportunity of learning and adapting to a new culture, meeting new people and learning new skills.

Fa’a fe tai lava, thank you very much

Karez Hunt-Tiumalu