It has been a few years, but Seth Berbano still vividly recalls his first journey to Japan in the summer of 2009.

The native Iowan had been outside of the United States before, but this was different. This time he spent 10 weeks in Japan, where he studied and conducted research at Osaka Prefecture University.

“I flew to Tokyo before arriving in Osaka, and on the way over the sun was setting. I looked down from the plane and I could see Mt. Fuji,” says Berbano. “It was a honeymoon-like experience of Japan, an introduction to what was a mystical country to me.”