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Welcome to my blog

  • saracooperamun
  • Apr 21, 2024
  • 2 min read

Updated: Jun 29, 2024


I have always been a curious person, who dreamed of far-away lands, loved languages and wanted to live different lives. While I have been travelling for awhile now, it is only now during my Working Holiday in Japan that I want to start sharing with you all my experiences, in the hopes of helping you find less well-known places in an efficient and relaxed way. In total, I have been in Japan for 15 months, from February 2023 till end of May 2024 - on holidays from March-May 2024.


Whether you are looking for tips for your upcoming Japan trip, or are dreaming of moving or sometime visiting the Land of the Rising Sun, welcome to my blog ☺️



If you wish to know more about me you can find more information by expanding the About Me section at the end of this post :)


The good thing of staying a year in Japan as a Working Holiday-er is that I could experience some places at their best due to the season. You can see my Google Maps with the places I have been to, in total it has been 38 prefectures out of 47! It does seem like most of the country, but believe me there are still many places left to be discovered.





I will start by sharing some of my main trips and itineraries from February 2023 to May 2024 in and around Japan, press the link to guide you to the respective post. I will be updating this list as I add more travels, not only limited to Japan, so stay tuned!



Travel tips:


Tokyo


Japan: by timeline



Japan (Alphabetical)





About me

My name is Sara Cooper. I was born and raised in Donostia, a beautiful coastal city in the Basque Country, north of Spain. We have our own language called Euskera, considered to be the oldest in Europe, and unique cultural traits within Spain. We love eating Pintxos (small snacks), drinking cider, hiking mountains as the area is very green and mountainous. I would not necessarily say traditionally Basque people are travellers though, at least not remote travellers. But my generation onwards is leaning further towards world exploration 🌍



While my mum is Basque, my dad is British, as such I have always grown up speaking Basque, English and Spanish. I always liked visiting London for family and my first contact with a big city.


I went to University in the Basque Country, to study Biomedical Engineering. I have always been passionate about healthcare and contributing to society, but also liked building things and questioning everything. My degree allowed me to play with sensors, design hip implants or electrocardiograms, and introduce me to programming!!


I spent a year in London for my Erasmus. Oh, Erasmus. Those of you that have been know the post-Erasmus syndrome. It was then we I felt most alive, most me, and realised the world was wide and I wanted to explore. Not only did we visit all the corners of London but we also travelled to other parts of England like Liverpool, Bath, Cardiff, Brighton. As a Beatles fan Liverpool was definitely a highlight!




It also helped me find my real passion: socially assistive robots.


In case you are not familiar, these are robots that can communicate with you through verbal and non-verbal interaction, that are aimed to assist in your everyday life. In London I developed cognitive games with SoftBank Robotics Pepper humanoid robot, to help older adults with cognitive stimulation.


Now, you may see where I am heading. Around this time is when I first visited Japan once, and already seen this Pepper robot (the company used to be Japanese). Which further increased my desire to move to Japan!


Anyway, I ended up doing a MSc in Robotics in Edinburgh, Scotland. Again, because I wanted to explore a new place too.




Before starting working as a robotics software engineer in Barcelona. I managed to work in healthcare projects where I worked with their ARI humanoid robot as a hospital receptionist, help older adults at care homes, and so on. Barcelona was also my first sunny city and since then I can understand why rain makes people sad.



Why did I tell you my career? To see that my love of robots was also a key point of my interest in Japan, as a place with ultra-technology. I wanted to visit robots in their natural environment! I will tell you about where to find robots in a separate post 😉


In parallel, I love anime. Ever since I started when I was 15, I also started picking up words and self-studying Japanese with the hope of understanding anime with no subtitles -something still hard 10 years later.


My favourite anime?? Mmmm I have to say Code Geass, followed by Death Note, Full Metal Alchemist and Kaichou was Maid-sama. Overall psychological anime but also shoujo anime with a tsundere lead. Depends on my mood.


I self-studied Japanese on and off. I always liked languages so I found it fun, to learn how kanji are formed and have unique meanings, the cultural nuances in the grammar and more. I passed JLPT N4 and later N3, but still felt my conversation skills lacking.


Then COVID happened in 2020. While I was happy in Barcelona I felt uneasy. Ever since I first visited Japan, that really impacted me, I knew I wanted to try living there. For my career, anime, culture, improving Japanese. I also wanted to travel.

So when COVID ended I started planning how to go to Japan. And working holiday seemed perfect, as you could get a visa without a sponsor. Note not all countries have this collaboration with Japan. I could also work while travelling and further experience life in Japan -also not spending all my savings in 2 months.


It was a tough decision, to quit my job and book the one-way ticket to Japan. It would require soo much planning. Not knowing anyone and meeting people. Finding a new job in Japanese! But it was my dream, and why not go for it now?


After applying for my Working Holiday visa late 2023, I finally moved to Japan 14th February 2023!!! Okinawa, Naha, was my first stop.



I was also lucky enough to find work in my field, working with a social robot named Haru at Honda Research Institute Japan. I will describe the process of visa and working holiday in another post though!



In February 2024, I decided to continue my journey simply as a tourist, as there were many places I still wanted to see, and wanted more time. I was also able to visit nearby countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Hong Kong, thanks to that.


It has been a hell of a ride. Not only for the work but also all the travelling, meeting so many people, but also importantly, the self-growth. I have learned to be a backpacker, to solo travel, live alone for the first time in my life, to be more sociable and open to people.


And now I want to share some insights here.




 
 
 

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