Gap Year

In order to choose an option for my gap year I started to think about the countries I'd like to visit. Well, as you might know I'd like to travel just like.. anywhere, but probably one of the places I've always had a big interest in is Japan. What a surprise, right?
Okay, now we've decided where to go. But what to do there? Honestly, I'd like to simply go out and see as much as possible of the country and its culture. Just understand these crazy people. Obviously the Asian countries are opposed to our western way of living and seeing the world. But I think that particularly Japan is such an astonishing mix of tradition and modernity, of technology and history, of people feeling a big responsibility for their family and their country and at once selling hentai mangas at the limits of child pornography... As an eager consumer of anime and manga but above all videogames I got a certain vision of that country, but I think it's impossible to actually understand the slightest bit of it without staying there for some time and just absorbing anything you can of that place and its people.
Buuuuuuuut, I can't just stay there for some months going around and saying "Tsuge!" (my own transcription of the word meaning "amazing" in Japanese). Well, actually it would be nice to learn a bit of their language. At least the basics, I don't expect it to be easy after all.
So, I thought that volunteering is an obligation... oops, just created a paradox. And the one I could imagine to do is to work in a care placement. There are different possible places to choose and I would have to think further about the place I'd like to stay at and the kind of center I'd prefer to work in. The best thing to me would be to go moving from one place to another. Maybe staying 2 months near Tokio in a care center for disabled people and then continue my adventure in a place for the elderly around Osaka? Further planning would be necessary, but it would be a great experience, definitely. Working in contact with people, taking care of them, maybe make some special friendship and seeing such a strange but interesting country from inside... These would be so many unique experiences, it could truly be life-changing!