Hanae Shiga ’11

Hanae Shiga ’11 traveled thousands of miles from Japan to attend Cornell. Three years later, after participating in a Japanese public TV documentary taking her from Turkey to China in a truck, she works in a Tokyo travel agency.

“We provide service to foreigners living in Japan or traveling, and to Japanese people who want to hang out in an international environment,” said Shiga. “After I did the documentary, I thought why not start something like this in Japan. I found someone already doing it, who is my boss now.”

In the documentary, “Traversing the Silk Road,” Shiga was one of 10 people picked to make the trip—and be filmed—interacting with locals as they journeyed in a converted truck carrying passengers, crew, and gear. Sometimes they camped, cooked their own food, and went as high as 13,000 feet in rugged terrain.

“This type of traveling was so new to the Japanese audience and I was pictured as a girl who is not happy with her current life and trying a new adventure,” she said. “I’m not sure if my background helped but definitely my time in the U.S. helped a lot as I was so interested in making friends in each country.”

Shiga came to the Hilltop from Aoyama Women’s Junior College, which has a connection with Cornell. She had been in the United States only once before, visiting large cities.

“What we value is not only where we go and what we see, but who we travel with, and in Japan there’s not many travel opportunities like that,” she said. “My Cornell background helps me a lot in English and culture. Those were the most difficult things I faced at Cornell, and because the foreign residents here are facing the same difficulties, I have a better understanding of the situation.”