Packing Light, Except for the Historical Baggage
PGS: Rivalry, Competition and International Security in Northeast Asia
Lala, one of the Penn Global Seminar Correspondents, shares her experience abroad during the May 2025 travel period. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
I’m a history major who’s only ever taken one class that touched on East Asia. So when I got into a Penn Global Seminar to Japan, I wasn’t just signing up for travel, I was signing up to fill in a pretty big gap in my education.
Yet, before any of the intellectual challenges began, there was the more familiar one: paperwork. Getting a Japanese short-stay visa, I was reminded how much “global” learning often starts in waiting rooms, but Penn Abroad made sure I was supported throughout the whole process. (Fellow international students, start the process early)!
Once the paperwork cleared, I could focus on the more fun side of preparing. I learned that Miyajima Island, one of our stops, is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and I can’t wait to visit its Itsukushima Shrine. I’ve also been thinking carefully about what to pack: formal clothes for ‘corporate’ visits, comfortable options for city exploration, and (critically) extra space for whatever I inevitably end up buying. Since some places in Japan don’t accept Apple Pay or cards, I’ll make sure to have cash on hand too (and maybe add a wallet to the packing list).
As I’m brushing up on some very basic Japanese phrases (re-downloading Duolingo), what excites me most apart from the classic tourist stops is how this seminar blends learning with lived experience. I’m looking forward to the opportunity of attending a lecture at Sophia University and joining a class with local students to discuss Japanese foreign policy.
Since this is ultimately an international relations course, in the first half of the semester we moved chronologically through the region’s defining moments—from the First Sino-Japanese War to World War II, the Korean War, and the broader region’s economic rise. We studied in particular how China, Korea, and Japan each carved out distinct modernities, and how those paths still shape today’s political realities.
In the second half, we shifted to student-led presentations on contemporary challenges, from nuclear proliferation to the Taiwan Strait. My group focused on historical memory: how the past is taught or denied. Exploring these histories of war and colonization made me realize how so much is still unresolved. While this seminar has been a way to catch up on histories I should have known, it’s helping me understand how those histories are still being contested and reimagined in the present.
With my scattered prep and a lot of curiosity, I wonder what new insights I’ll gain once I’m actually in Japan. Stay tuned to hear how those experiences unfold.
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