June 2007, first visit to the United States

When I was 18, I flied 12 hours from Japan to California State in the United States
because I was accepted to Soka University of America (SUA) in Aliso Viejo city.

You can see many similar houses with white walls and orange yards from the campus.

I had chance to visit some houses around the campus and I was really amazed by those beautiful architectures.
Moreover, inside of those houses are also so artistic!
You can see beautiful well decorated decorations such as paintings, stones, pictures, and furniture.
Gardens and windows are also artistic,
like dreaming houses we can see on magazines or movies!

I visited some tourist sites there such as Disneyland, museums, and famous beaches.
However, I did not feel like I “traveled” there because those trips were decided by my English Second Language Program and also we went to one site for each day.
I think it was more like visiting each location rather than traveling.

My definition of “traveling” is to see around some tourist sites for a few days
while visiting is to go to places in certain amount of time and go back home during the day and usual days such as studying or working start from the next day again.
It might be the difference is just the amount of period,
but I think that traveling has more excitement than visiting.

I think that traveling to San Francisco was “travel”
while visiting tourist sites in California was “visitation.”

For these reasons, I feel like traveling to San Francisco was my first “travel” in America.