On Monday, June 8, 2026, 4th-year student NISHIMOTO Aki held a “Backpacking Experience Session” at Eikei University of Hiroshima.

As part of her Degree Project, the capstone course at Eikei University of Hiroshima, she traveled alone across 18 European countries over approximately three months, from June to September 2025. Under the theme “Turning the Dream of Going Abroad into Reality,” she is working to create a practical overseas travel guide based on her own experiences, aimed at students who hesitate to travel abroad due to concerns about cost, safety, and language ability.

Her overseas experiences began in March 2023, when she visited New Zealand with her older brother. She later traveled to Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, and in 2024, she stayed in the United States through the university’s Experiential / practical programs (Overseas). After completing the two-month program, she spent the third month backpacking within the United States. Following further trips to South Korea and New Zealand, she took on her first full-scale solo backpacking journey through Europe as part of her degree project.

During the session, she spoke about why she chose to travel as a backpacker, how she stayed in hostels, how she managed safety while traveling, the level of English needed, and the actual costs of the journey. She shared these topics through photos and concrete episodes from her travels.

During her trip, she traveled mainly by staying in hostels and using long-distance buses, and she also experienced a one-month homestay in Germany. In her presentation, she introduced actual costs for flights, buses, accommodation, and food, explaining in detail how she kept expenses down while traveling across Europe.

At the same time, the journey was not always enjoyable. She experienced various unexpected difficulties, including having cash stolen in Turkey, facing a flight cancellation in Switzerland that left her without accommodation, and being followed by a homeless person. Through these experiences, she learned practical ways to protect herself, such as speaking to people nearby, checking safety information in advance, and making phone calls immediately when in trouble.

One particularly memorable point was her reflection on the importance of relying on others. While abroad, there were many situations in which she had to ask people around her for help. She realized that even if her language ability was not perfect, trying to communicate could open up new possibilities. Based on this experience, she said, “More than English ability, what matters first is the willingness to communicate.”

The presentation also introduced the people she met during her travels. Through encounters at hostels, homestays, and on buses, as well as through shared meals and walks around different cities, she came to realize that travel is not only about visiting tourist sites. It is also about meeting people and broadening one’s values.

Students who attended the session asked questions about what motivated her to begin traveling and what kind of mindset is needed to take the first step overseas. While openly sharing her own mistakes, she encouraged them by saying, “I hope you will first take a step forward in a way that suits you.”

At Eikei University of Hiroshima, students undertake a graduation project in which they set their own theme, clarify issues, and propose solutions. After the first progress presentation in June and the second in November, students give a public presentation in February. Her session was part of a project that aims to go beyond her personal backpacking experience and turn it into support for other students who wish to take on similar challenges.

In July, she plans to travel around Asia with a junior student who will be trying backpacking for the first time. By incorporating not only her own experiences but also the perspective of a student traveling abroad for the first time, she aims to create a more practical overseas travel guide for students, covering topics such as costs, safety, preparation, and how to act while abroad.