Many Japanese students go on a grad trip from the end of February to the end of March. Although it’s becoming easier to take paid leave for several days, even in Japanese companies, it’s still not so easy for Japanese to take long-term holidays once they’ve started working. So a grad trip is a very important event for Japanese students ─ it allows them to have a memorable experience and to bid farewell to their relative freedom. Various questionnaires on the subject indicate that more than 50 percent of students have gone, or will go, on a grad trip. The biggest factor in choosing a destination is their budgets, followed by their schedules. Perpetually popular destinations include the following:
Domestic destinations: Hokkaido, Okinawa, Kyoto and the Tokyo metropolitan area.
International Destinations: France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Korea and Taiwan. The average budget for a trip within Japan is less than 30,000 yen, followed by less than 50,000 yen. For trips to other countries, the most-mentioned budget is less than 50,000 yen, whereas the second is more than 200,000 yen. That’s quite a contrast, so how do those students with the larger budget get the money to travel? Many of them earn money from part-time jobs, but support from parents is also a very important source. In fact, a quarter of them are given the money by their parents or borrow it from them.
