This is why she has to travel...

Once upon a time, a naive yet cocky 19-year old girl from Japan moved to the United States to attend a school. After living for four years, she thought she had seen pretty much of the country and there was nothing much new to experience, but certainly she didn't. She was wrong, wrong, WRONG! All she knew then was a segregated, college student life in a small town in Iowa, and she knew nothing about...

1. Life of a suburban housewife with a part-time job as a physician and three small kids in a WASP community in Connecticut which dates back in 17th century...

2. Life of a businessman who works at and lives 3 blocks away from the Wall Street...(basically, 24/7 service)

3. Life of a suburban Indian family on sunny Sunday in west New Jersey...(BBQ and playing soccer in the backyard with daddy)

4. Traditional life of Amish families in Lancaster, PA...(actually, their life looked much more civilized than she thought)

5. Taste of prototype of what we now call “hamburgers” (To my great sadness, the cafe was closed all days in August - so she still does not know its taste....sob.)

6. Taste and aroma of a hot muffin fresh out of the oven in the morning for breakfast, full of berries picked from farms....(one of the best ways to wake up in the morning)

7. Taste of homemade "gaspacho" with yellow rice and Cuban bean dish...(yum, yum)

8. Taste of famous, historical “Pepe's Tomato Pie” (what can be translated as "pizza") in New Haven....

9. Mouth-watering taste of “Philly Cheese Steak” with melting cheese...

10. Mouth-watering taste of hot “cinnamon rolls” fresh out of the oven.... (oh yes, she can live on this)

11. That Amish youngsters "can be wild” until they “choose” to be baptized to become an “Amish”....

12. That Amish man never cut his beard after marriage ...

13. That the biggest Amish community is not Lancaster, PA but in Ohio...

14. That Benjamin Franklin was the first one who introduced “Tofu” to the United States...(Ben, good job buddy!)

15. That Amtrak can be 90 min behind the schedule but still charges you extra $9 if you do not buy tickets in advance... (believe me, Japan does have the best train system in the world as other people say)

16. Life of the King Tutankhamun and how his tomb was excavated...(wonderful opportunity in prep of her trip to Egypt)

17. "IMAX" theater and its most advanced projection technology...

18. That Ken Watanabe was on GAP ad with other celebrities!

19. How it feels to jog across the "Blooklyn Bridge" on a sunny Labor Day...

In a nutshell, this is the lesson she learned from the last 6 days: the more you know the world, the more you realize that you know nothing about the world you live in.