The next day began in a complicated way. (And yes, we did end up being late, but let's ignore that, shall we?)
Here's the backstory to the day: back in Pittsburgh, Jenny (my roommate here) took some Japanese conversation classes at the public library. Her teacher there insisted that she get in touch with a friend of hers who lives in Saitama, which is about an hour north of downtown Tokyo. Either Jenny or the friend did get in touch, and it all ended in Izumi-san offering to show us around the entire city for the day. (Apparently this is regular bsns as usual for the Japanese...)
So our day began in Ueno, where we met Izumi and her husband, Tetsuya. We drove around Ueno and saw the various museums and parks that are there. We also stopped in/at Ameyoko, which is a big shopping street with all kinds of cool things that you can buy and bargain for. :D AND AN ARCADE THERE HAD STUFFED LLAMAS, DO WANT.
From Ueno we went to see the Tokyo Sky Tree. It's still under construction, but it's possibly one of the biggest freaking things I've ever seen. So Tokyo Tower is just an aesthetically pleasing antenna, right? Well everything around it is taller than it now, so they're building an even more gigantor tower to bounce various waves and signals off of. And that is the Tokyo Sky Tree. It's awesome.
Then we went to Asakusa. There we were 1) interviewed by Fuji TV about our own thoughts on Maid Cafes. (Jenny'd never heard of them, the innocent.) I was like, "They're weird, but to earch their own I guess." You know, being a poster girl for normal and all. I suppose if I hadn't been taken off guard I would have had something clever to say about feminism and otaku culture, but I'd been all over the place and hadn't even had breakfast yet sooo. Apparently Japanese are very interested in what foreigners think about different bits of Japanese culture, and the show I was interviewed for is a very popular show that quizzes gaijin on their opinions. (Also, why do I attract news reporters/interviewers regardless of country or current activity?) and 2) we investigated the temple at Asakusa (different from Meiji-jingu, which is a shrine, not a temple).
There we did all sorts of neat stuff. Between the main Kaminarimon gate and the actual temple there are about a million little shops selling traditional candy and food and clothes and gifts and shinsengumi happi coats and all sorts of ridiculous stuff. We walked all the way down to the temple first, where we did a fortune-telling thing that involves pulling numbered sticks at random from a container, then taking a fortune from that number's drawer. I got a 'BAD FORTUNE' the first time, so Izumi-san bought me another fortune so I could try again (I got a 'MEDIUM FORTUNE' >.>) They had a stand that you could tie your BAD FORTUNEs onto so that the bad luck wouldn't follow you, so I left it there (after taking its picture). Then we went into the shrine and threw in a coin for a wish. On our way out we stopped at a stand selling agemanju (I'm not sure what they were besides delicious and deep-fried) and were treated to green-tea flavored agemanju by Izumi-san.
Then we met up with Tetsuya-san again (his position for the day seemed to be glorified chauffeur - his meishi said he was the president of his own company but I think Izumi-san's the brains behind the throne, haha). Next was lunch, and after some discussion we asked if we could try nabe (like hotpot/soup with everything just thrown in and cooked together). We headed over to Ginza to have delicious delicious lunch. (To top off its awesomeness, the restaurant we ate at was playing Gee by SNSD when I came in. K-pop ftw.) Besides the soundtrack, however, the restaurant was really traditional Japanese where you sat on the floor and took your shoes off and everything. :O And I was adventurous and ate pretty much everything that was put in front of me, including many many green things :O (I am not big on green things, like at all.)
Oh, and did I mention that even though Izumi-san spoke English very well, we spent most of the day talking in Japanese? LIKE A BOSS? Haha we're by no means fluent, like at all, but it was really great practice to be able to talk freely with real and patient Japanese people about any number of topics. Izumi-san said we were very skilled, at least. (I begged to differ, but she pointed out that all Japanese kids have to take six years of English and can barely introduce themselves, and I've only been studying Japanese for three years... well, at this point it just gets into a complicated back and forth about the politeness of accepting compliments regardless of implicit truth and depending on variable societal norms so I'mma get back to the story.)
After lunch we were pretty much stuffed. From Ginza we headed across the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba (which, according to my sources aka Jenny, is where Digimon is set, fyi). The view from the Bridge was awesome, and then when we got to Odaiba we got to go down to the beach and see the Tokyo Bay up close. :D Then we went up in the super-crazy-looking Fuji TV building (yep, the same station that wants to make my opinions on Maid Cafes a national broadcast). It has a giant metal ball at the top called the Hachi-tama which you can get tickets to go up into. We went up to check out the view and took a crapton of pictures from the awesome vantage point looking across at downtown Tokyo (we could see Tokyo Tower and the Sky Tree among several other things). We also were introduced to Fuji TV's adorable mascot, the coolest dog ever, Ruff-kun. He's blue, and rocks the Lennon shades.
From Odaiba we headed back across the Bay to Harajuku. This was exciting for me because we were going to learn where exactly that tricksy Takeshita-dori actually was. Turns out about a block away from where we'd been the day before, go figure. >.> Takeshita was bustling, like super-crowded, but we went in a few stores (one was wallpapered with Johnny's boys and K-pop bands along with some straight-up J-rock folks (they had Gazette phone charms); I also fondled some really nice boots along the way. :X I am having a problem with boots in this country.) They sell crepes all up and down the tiny-crowded-alleyway-cum-street, and when we finally emerged on the other side of the block, Izumi-san treated us to delicious crepes as well. (I got one with strawberries and whipped cream, both deliciously fresh.)
After nomming down our crepes, we hopped in the car for one last stop: the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku. You can go in for free and ride up to the 45th floor for a legit spectacular view of the city from above. (Unfortunately, it's difficult to take impressive nighttime pictures from behind glass with a point-and-shoot camera, but I did my best.) They had a bunch of little tourist-trap gift shops in the middle of the observation-deck floor, and Izumi-san bought us both a set of adorable erasers. (Mine look like desserts! :D)
From there, we went back to the car, and by the magic of GPSes Tetsuya-san managed to make it all the way back to Meguro to drop us in front of our house (despite our protests that dropping us at any train station would be equally fine). We went through a flurry of otsukaresama deshitas and hontou ni arigatou gozaimashitas for a few minutes, and then went our merry ways, utterly exhausted at least on our part.
And thus was an epic day had by us, following the incredibly wise decision to get into a car with two people I'd never met before and to let them drive me wherever they felt like. :D And God bless you if you actually read this whole giant thing. >.> (And God bless Tetsuya-san for driving in Tokyo, it's terrifying.)
Friday, January 28, 2011
part one of epic adventures
Last weekend was pretty epic. I posted a link to the pics a few entries back, but http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-bookw
Firstly, Saturday:
Saturday Jenny and I decided to explore the expanses of Shibuya and Harajuku once more. First we went to Harajuku to see the Meiji-jingu shrine. It's freaking awesome, to be quite honest. It's in the middle of a huge park that's basically a forest in the middle of Tokyo - and as much as I love being a city-dweller, I won't deny that it was nice to be surrounded by some tranquil nature for a while. To enter the shrine, we walked down an enormous gravel driveway that led into the woods. There are little pathways and shrines that trail off the side of the walkway, but most of them seemed closed for winter so we didn't really check them out. There are also three (I think three) gigantic torii that we passed under (and took a few pictures by), as well as some huge casks of French wine (I took a picture of the sign that had the whole story behind them on it) and some huge drums of some sort (whose purpose I could not divine, but which were lovely and many).
When we got to the actual shrine we wandered around a bit rather than going into the main building, since people were praying pretty seriously inside and I didn't want to interrupt or insult anything/one by bumbling about. There was a big courtyard, however, with my favorite thing: a tree covered in peoples' wishes. Every day the priests there pray for the intentions that people submit on little wooden board that are hung on the fence around the tree. The wishes I saw ranged from things as simple as "I want to go to an Arashi tour every year!" to meaningful wishes for family and friends. Jenny and I saw things in Japanese, Spanish, French, English, German, and I'm sure many more. It was really cool. We weren't sure where to buy the plaques, but we did write down paper wishes that we put in a collection box near the tree.
We wandered around there a bit more, and then went back out of the shrine. We wandered through the gift shop (everywhere must needs have a little shop ;D) for a while before heading back into Harajuku main. At this point we still hadn't been to Takeshita-dori yet, but had not yet figured out where exactly to find it, and as it was getting dark, we abandoned that quest to jump on a train back to Shibuya.
In Shibuya we mostly shopped and sight-saw. We wandered all over into a million little shops. We found a fabric store (the prices were so cheap >___<) and a bunch of exciting-looking clothes stores and restaurants. I bought a pretty ring for Y300 in a little shop that smelled so strongly of incense it made my head hurt. Jenny was also on the lookout at the time for a bar in which we could watch the Asia Cup finals with camaraderie rather than quietly in our room (the final is tonight, unfortunately, and Jenny is curled up in bed sick and asleep, so that plan failed a bit...)
By this point in the night we were starving and exhausted, so we wandered a bit more before heading to a small restaurant in the bottom of a department store where Jenny had katsu-curry and I ate my body weight in hamburger (it comes without a bun; mine came with pasta and mashed potatoes on the side) and an enormous omurice that was super-delicious. :D
After that we pretty much waddled back to the train station and back to home. We had plans for the morrow, (and we were sooooo full) that we opted to turn in early so as not to be late in the morning.
Firstly, Saturday:
Saturday Jenny and I decided to explore the expanses of Shibuya and Harajuku once more. First we went to Harajuku to see the Meiji-jingu shrine. It's freaking awesome, to be quite honest. It's in the middle of a huge park that's basically a forest in the middle of Tokyo - and as much as I love being a city-dweller, I won't deny that it was nice to be surrounded by some tranquil nature for a while. To enter the shrine, we walked down an enormous gravel driveway that led into the woods. There are little pathways and shrines that trail off the side of the walkway, but most of them seemed closed for winter so we didn't really check them out. There are also three (I think three) gigantic torii that we passed under (and took a few pictures by), as well as some huge casks of French wine (I took a picture of the sign that had the whole story behind them on it) and some huge drums of some sort (whose purpose I could not divine, but which were lovely and many).
When we got to the actual shrine we wandered around a bit rather than going into the main building, since people were praying pretty seriously inside and I didn't want to interrupt or insult anything/one by bumbling about. There was a big courtyard, however, with my favorite thing: a tree covered in peoples' wishes. Every day the priests there pray for the intentions that people submit on little wooden board that are hung on the fence around the tree. The wishes I saw ranged from things as simple as "I want to go to an Arashi tour every year!" to meaningful wishes for family and friends. Jenny and I saw things in Japanese, Spanish, French, English, German, and I'm sure many more. It was really cool. We weren't sure where to buy the plaques, but we did write down paper wishes that we put in a collection box near the tree.
We wandered around there a bit more, and then went back out of the shrine. We wandered through the gift shop (everywhere must needs have a little shop ;D) for a while before heading back into Harajuku main. At this point we still hadn't been to Takeshita-dori yet, but had not yet figured out where exactly to find it, and as it was getting dark, we abandoned that quest to jump on a train back to Shibuya.
In Shibuya we mostly shopped and sight-saw. We wandered all over into a million little shops. We found a fabric store (the prices were so cheap >___<) and a bunch of exciting-looking clothes stores and restaurants. I bought a pretty ring for Y300 in a little shop that smelled so strongly of incense it made my head hurt. Jenny was also on the lookout at the time for a bar in which we could watch the Asia Cup finals with camaraderie rather than quietly in our room (the final is tonight, unfortunately, and Jenny is curled up in bed sick and asleep, so that plan failed a bit...)
By this point in the night we were starving and exhausted, so we wandered a bit more before heading to a small restaurant in the bottom of a department store where Jenny had katsu-curry and I ate my body weight in hamburger (it comes without a bun; mine came with pasta and mashed potatoes on the side) and an enormous omurice that was super-delicious. :D
After that we pretty much waddled back to the train station and back to home. We had plans for the morrow, (and we were sooooo full) that we opted to turn in early so as not to be late in the morning.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
normal life and some more pics :D
Herro! Normal blog post here, and then blog post filled with tales of adventure later on. :D I shall separate them to avoid extreme longness.
So here is the dealio, in the life of me:
I have class Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. I'm taking four classes so I'm just barely a full-time student. I walk twenty minutes to the train station in the morning, take the train for twenty minutes from Meguro-ku into Minato-ku, and then walk another ten minutes to class. My calves are going to be even more monstrous than they already were by the end of the semester. I usually get lunch from one of the convenience stores near the school building, and my lovely roommate cooks our meals at home (if we don't go out). (I do the dishes in return... I'm not good at cooking things that a) don't come out of a box or b) don't involve butter in some way... She is excellent at making Japanese-ish food. Recipe suggestions are love, btw.) We usually go to bed freakishly early on MWF days because we stay up freakishly late doing homework on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays.
The first class is Art History, which is interesting but unfortunately has a really-annoying-question-asking guy AND a legit hipster guy who are rather annoying. So far we've covered Miyazaki Hayao and Noguchi Isamu.
The next one is Religions of the World, which is interesting and far less terrifying than its CMU equivalent. (We've only had one reference to performance studies so far, and I made it through without ptsd-tears.) We're doing Hinduism right now, which is a really fantastically interesting religion. :D I sit next to a fun gay boy and a really hot Japanese guy who's totally hopeless at the class.
Then I have my lunch break. Sometimes I eat with people, sometimes I eat alone; my friends' breaks start an hour and a half before mine so I usually don't make them wait.
Next up is Japanese - Advanced II. It's actually nowhere near as bad as they made it seem at first, although it is pretty tough. I actually like it a lot better than CMU's program, if only because it's something new and different. We spend enough time on one topic that I actually remember most of the vocab, for one thing... *glares at giant vocab worksheets of yesteryear*
Finally I have my Japanese History class. It's both interesting and annoying and probably worthwhile. For one thing, we are tested on geography weekly so I can now tell you where pretty much any major city in Japan is as well as naming all 47 prefectures and some various and sundry landmasses and bodies of water. The class itself hasn't progressed too far into history yet (still talking about hunter-gatherers and wet-rice farming) but the teacher's more than a little nuts and all of my friends are in the same class so it's quite fun. :D
On my off days I mostly sleep an indecent amount (I'm beginning to suspect my body is making up for all the sleep I've ever missed, ever) and sit around putting off doing homework until very late; recently this procrastination has involved a lot of k-pop music videos. I spend a lot of time hitting up the various Seven Elevens and Lawsons and whatnot for chocolate-themed desserts also, it is a failing that I have no strong intentions of casting aside. >.>
One nice thing about one of the peeps I hang out with (specifically Wyatt, who reminds me a lot of Collin in a lot of ways) is that he's pretty much on the same level of Japanese as Jenny and I, so when it's just the three of us (or when it's not, to mess with the rest of the group, always fun) we talk in at least half-Japanese and text each other entirely in Japanese for practice. It's quite handy. :D
And tomorrow is a long day of catching up in reading for my art history class; I am unfortunately over a hundred pages behind from not reading for two class periods. >.> therefore, I shall bid you a fond farewell and goodnight, and shall post about last weekend's adventures in great detail on the morrow. Adieu!
(for pics of the adventures, they are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-bookw
Oyasumi nasai!
So here is the dealio, in the life of me:
I have class Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. I'm taking four classes so I'm just barely a full-time student. I walk twenty minutes to the train station in the morning, take the train for twenty minutes from Meguro-ku into Minato-ku, and then walk another ten minutes to class. My calves are going to be even more monstrous than they already were by the end of the semester. I usually get lunch from one of the convenience stores near the school building, and my lovely roommate cooks our meals at home (if we don't go out). (I do the dishes in return... I'm not good at cooking things that a) don't come out of a box or b) don't involve butter in some way... She is excellent at making Japanese-ish food. Recipe suggestions are love, btw.) We usually go to bed freakishly early on MWF days because we stay up freakishly late doing homework on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays.
The first class is Art History, which is interesting but unfortunately has a really-annoying-question-asking guy AND a legit hipster guy who are rather annoying. So far we've covered Miyazaki Hayao and Noguchi Isamu.
The next one is Religions of the World, which is interesting and far less terrifying than its CMU equivalent. (We've only had one reference to performance studies so far, and I made it through without ptsd-tears.) We're doing Hinduism right now, which is a really fantastically interesting religion. :D I sit next to a fun gay boy and a really hot Japanese guy who's totally hopeless at the class.
Then I have my lunch break. Sometimes I eat with people, sometimes I eat alone; my friends' breaks start an hour and a half before mine so I usually don't make them wait.
Next up is Japanese - Advanced II. It's actually nowhere near as bad as they made it seem at first, although it is pretty tough. I actually like it a lot better than CMU's program, if only because it's something new and different. We spend enough time on one topic that I actually remember most of the vocab, for one thing... *glares at giant vocab worksheets of yesteryear*
Finally I have my Japanese History class. It's both interesting and annoying and probably worthwhile. For one thing, we are tested on geography weekly so I can now tell you where pretty much any major city in Japan is as well as naming all 47 prefectures and some various and sundry landmasses and bodies of water. The class itself hasn't progressed too far into history yet (still talking about hunter-gatherers and wet-rice farming) but the teacher's more than a little nuts and all of my friends are in the same class so it's quite fun. :D
On my off days I mostly sleep an indecent amount (I'm beginning to suspect my body is making up for all the sleep I've ever missed, ever) and sit around putting off doing homework until very late; recently this procrastination has involved a lot of k-pop music videos. I spend a lot of time hitting up the various Seven Elevens and Lawsons and whatnot for chocolate-themed desserts also, it is a failing that I have no strong intentions of casting aside. >.>
One nice thing about one of the peeps I hang out with (specifically Wyatt, who reminds me a lot of Collin in a lot of ways) is that he's pretty much on the same level of Japanese as Jenny and I, so when it's just the three of us (or when it's not, to mess with the rest of the group, always fun) we talk in at least half-Japanese and text each other entirely in Japanese for practice. It's quite handy. :D
And tomorrow is a long day of catching up in reading for my art history class; I am unfortunately over a hundred pages behind from not reading for two class periods. >.> therefore, I shall bid you a fond farewell and goodnight, and shall post about last weekend's adventures in great detail on the morrow. Adieu!
(for pics of the adventures, they are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-bookw
Oyasumi nasai!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
pics!
It was recommended to me that I make a flickr for photo-sharing purposes. It is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-bookworm/sets/72157625782844670/ . From now on I'll try to post the pics with my posts.
In other news, today we missed the official tour we were going to go on, so we took the initiative on ourselves to visit Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku ourselves.
We went to Shibuya first and wandered around for a while. We finally found our way around the station to the side with Hachiko and the Times-Square-mitai-famous street crossing, which there are pics of in the above bunch. :D Then after much scanning of a map, we walked for what was apparently (according to google maps) about a mile, down to the entrance of the Meiji Shrine. (We may go back there tomorrow - there's a big coming of age festival, a national holiday in fact, for 20-year-old girls tomorrow, so everyone will be there in their kirei kimono best. (Too bad I left both my furisodes at home... :/) We window-shopped and actually-shopped along the way, and I almost impulse-bought the most beautiful grey pirate-y/steampunk-y/loligoth high-heeled leather boots. Everything was marked half off, and their tag said like 15,000Y, and they even closed over my monster calves, but when the lady went to ring me up she said that 15,000 was the already-discounted price, and holy frickin crap, I am not actually paying ~$200 for even the most beautiful shoes ever. (I was still sad about leaving them, though... :X)
We finally made our way down to Harajuku (at least to Harajuku station). There we had totally delicious takoyaki! I have been waiting to try takoyaki since I got here, but I wanted to get it from a street stand fresh and proper-like, not have the reheatable bento konbini takoyaki that they sell in all the Lawsons and 7-11s. We shopped around a bit more there (I was irrashaimase'd approximately one million times...) and then we headed into the metro station to go back to Shibuya for dinner.
Didn't see very many people in awesome garb, but that's probably because it was late and dark. (I did see two lonely lolis getting on the train when we left from Harajuku station.) Also, not having that much of a head for fashion, I wasn't sure whether there was a particularly famous street I should be seeking out or not. (I do want to eventually seek out Takeshita Dori and have oishii parfaits while creeping for kanon, though, haha).
We had cyborg soup for dinner - you order via vending machine thing, and it gives you a ticket, and you give the ticket to the cook, so it's definitely cyborg-y, being part machine and all. It was sooooo delicious haha, giant shrimp and all. Then we stopped in the big departo where we'd shopped before because they had a bunch of really cheap food places in the basement - we bought some super cheap croquets and yakitori for tomorrow (we're not sure how much will be open around home) and finally jumped the train home. All in all it was an awesome day of adventuring!
Things we want to do eventually:
try a Japanese Mcdonalds >.>
go to Akihabara, which is far away which is why we didn't go today
continue finding 50-yen croquets underneath overpriced department stores
In other news, today we missed the official tour we were going to go on, so we took the initiative on ourselves to visit Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku ourselves.
We went to Shibuya first and wandered around for a while. We finally found our way around the station to the side with Hachiko and the Times-Square-mitai-famous street crossing, which there are pics of in the above bunch. :D Then after much scanning of a map, we walked for what was apparently (according to google maps) about a mile, down to the entrance of the Meiji Shrine. (We may go back there tomorrow - there's a big coming of age festival, a national holiday in fact, for 20-year-old girls tomorrow, so everyone will be there in their kirei kimono best. (Too bad I left both my furisodes at home... :/) We window-shopped and actually-shopped along the way, and I almost impulse-bought the most beautiful grey pirate-y/steampunk-y/loligoth high-heeled leather boots. Everything was marked half off, and their tag said like 15,000Y, and they even closed over my monster calves, but when the lady went to ring me up she said that 15,000 was the already-discounted price, and holy frickin crap, I am not actually paying ~$200 for even the most beautiful shoes ever. (I was still sad about leaving them, though... :X)
We finally made our way down to Harajuku (at least to Harajuku station). There we had totally delicious takoyaki! I have been waiting to try takoyaki since I got here, but I wanted to get it from a street stand fresh and proper-like, not have the reheatable bento konbini takoyaki that they sell in all the Lawsons and 7-11s. We shopped around a bit more there (I was irrashaimase'd approximately one million times...) and then we headed into the metro station to go back to Shibuya for dinner.
Didn't see very many people in awesome garb, but that's probably because it was late and dark. (I did see two lonely lolis getting on the train when we left from Harajuku station.) Also, not having that much of a head for fashion, I wasn't sure whether there was a particularly famous street I should be seeking out or not. (I do want to eventually seek out Takeshita Dori and have oishii parfaits while creeping for kanon, though, haha).
We had cyborg soup for dinner - you order via vending machine thing, and it gives you a ticket, and you give the ticket to the cook, so it's definitely cyborg-y, being part machine and all. It was sooooo delicious haha, giant shrimp and all. Then we stopped in the big departo where we'd shopped before because they had a bunch of really cheap food places in the basement - we bought some super cheap croquets and yakitori for tomorrow (we're not sure how much will be open around home) and finally jumped the train home. All in all it was an awesome day of adventuring!
Things we want to do eventually:
try a Japanese Mcdonalds >.>
go to Akihabara, which is far away which is why we didn't go today
continue finding 50-yen croquets underneath overpriced department stores
Friday, January 7, 2011
first post from jolly old nippon! :D
Hello, everyone! :D
I'm currently sitting in my dorm room in Tokyo!! I live in a pretty nice suburban area called Meguro-ku (Meguro Ward) about a 30-min train ride from the school building (plus about ten minutes walking...) The dorm is pretty nice, although we had a bit of a time figuring out some stuff, like how to work the heater (the remote was, go figure, in Japanese) and how to take a shower (you have to turn on the water heater manually on a panel outside the bathroom, rawr).
We have a stove and a little fridge and a toaster oven in the kitchen, so we've been creatively heating up the food we've been buying in the toaster oven. (We're not yet comfortable with cooking from scratch, so we've been buying ready-made bento-type things from convenience stores and munching on those instead. Mal made me promise to be an adventurous eater, so I'm proud to say my very first Japanese food I ate was a kabocha tempura, aka pumpkin tempura. (It was good, but veryyy pumpkin-y, so idk how often I'll be trying it.)
The toilet is in a different room from the shower and vanity, but it has a sink built into the top of it. (I'd prefer having a self-warming seat and having to walk to the other room to wash my hands, but whatever.) It's the first in what I'm sure will be a long line of cray-cray Japanese potties.
The bedroom is pretty much our center of operations - the heater's in here, so we usually keep the kitchen door closed and interweb away at our little table. Our beds are bunked and actually quite comfortable. The tv is also in here, but it gets about 10 channels (and half of them fuzzy) so we haven't really bothered with it.
Jenny and I have pretty much settled in, and we're getting along swimmingly. We had our first proper adventure the very first full day here, aka yesterday. After giving us a lecture about how Japanese people WILL leave you behind if you're running late, we made the mistake of being late to meet the group that was supposed to take us to the school for orientation in the morning. (7:45 after over 20 hours of traveling the previous day? rude.) Not one to allow myself to succumb to panic (at least as far as getting to places I need to be is involved) I grabbed a map we had been given before leaving (it was to give our cabbies directions to our dorm) and, crossing my fingers, we headed off to the station. we circled around it a bit before finding the entrance, but the paper we had also had directions to the school, so we hopped on the trains it told us to hop onto and voila! We arrived. So first morning here we got to experience the crazayness that is a train during Japanese rush hour - that is, smashed up against everyone else in the train, and deathly silent.
Orientation was relatively interesting but dragged on as orientations are wont to do. The basic things I learned from it are these: Go to Roppongi and I will be drugged and robbed and no one will care, and I am going to fail my Japanese class. As to the former, apparently the ubiquitous Japanese police force is fond of making sure foreigners are here legally, but not so fond of prosecuting foreigner-on-foreigner crime (apparently there is a lot of Russian crime syndicate activity in Roppongi?); as to the latter, this tiny hardassed Japanese lady came up to the front of the room to talk about the Japanese program, which was basically to inform us all that the language program here is harder than anything we could have possibly taken anywhere else, and that we should probably round down one or two classes at best if we wanted to not fail. "You can stay in the harder classes if you want to," she said, "but that's your choice, and when you fail, you won't be able to drop out, you'll get an F, and I will laugh at you." Like a tiny drill sergeant of the Japanese language. Terrifying. I am going to fail. (I'm taking a placement test today, but I'm not sure how well that will go. I can stay in AJII regardless of the results, but depending what the results say I may want to curl up in a corner and cry instead. :X
On a brighter note, tomorrow we're going on a tour of Shibuya, Ueno, and one other place that is either Shinjuku or Harajuku, and is probably Shinjuku. I am very excited :D And then Monday is a national holiday, so we don't start class till Tuesday, which means I don't start class till Wednesday :D Jenny and I are probably going to lay around like lumps on Monday (we've already planned it out) because we haven't really had a day to properly relax yet. Yesterday I went to bed ostensibly for a nap at 7 and slept through till this morning when my alarm went off at 9:30. :X
Things I'm still trying to get used to:
what time it is at home, for calling and skyping purposes
exactly how much a yen is worth in dollars and trying not to cry every time I spend them
Pictures will follow later, btw. I haven't taken that many yet because yesterday was so hectic that I didn't want to worry about photographing everything on top of all the stuff we were doing. :X
I'm currently sitting in my dorm room in Tokyo!! I live in a pretty nice suburban area called Meguro-ku (Meguro Ward) about a 30-min train ride from the school building (plus about ten minutes walking...) The dorm is pretty nice, although we had a bit of a time figuring out some stuff, like how to work the heater (the remote was, go figure, in Japanese) and how to take a shower (you have to turn on the water heater manually on a panel outside the bathroom, rawr).
We have a stove and a little fridge and a toaster oven in the kitchen, so we've been creatively heating up the food we've been buying in the toaster oven. (We're not yet comfortable with cooking from scratch, so we've been buying ready-made bento-type things from convenience stores and munching on those instead. Mal made me promise to be an adventurous eater, so I'm proud to say my very first Japanese food I ate was a kabocha tempura, aka pumpkin tempura. (It was good, but veryyy pumpkin-y, so idk how often I'll be trying it.)
The toilet is in a different room from the shower and vanity, but it has a sink built into the top of it. (I'd prefer having a self-warming seat and having to walk to the other room to wash my hands, but whatever.) It's the first in what I'm sure will be a long line of cray-cray Japanese potties.
The bedroom is pretty much our center of operations - the heater's in here, so we usually keep the kitchen door closed and interweb away at our little table. Our beds are bunked and actually quite comfortable. The tv is also in here, but it gets about 10 channels (and half of them fuzzy) so we haven't really bothered with it.
Jenny and I have pretty much settled in, and we're getting along swimmingly. We had our first proper adventure the very first full day here, aka yesterday. After giving us a lecture about how Japanese people WILL leave you behind if you're running late, we made the mistake of being late to meet the group that was supposed to take us to the school for orientation in the morning. (7:45 after over 20 hours of traveling the previous day? rude.) Not one to allow myself to succumb to panic (at least as far as getting to places I need to be is involved) I grabbed a map we had been given before leaving (it was to give our cabbies directions to our dorm) and, crossing my fingers, we headed off to the station. we circled around it a bit before finding the entrance, but the paper we had also had directions to the school, so we hopped on the trains it told us to hop onto and voila! We arrived. So first morning here we got to experience the crazayness that is a train during Japanese rush hour - that is, smashed up against everyone else in the train, and deathly silent.
Orientation was relatively interesting but dragged on as orientations are wont to do. The basic things I learned from it are these: Go to Roppongi and I will be drugged and robbed and no one will care, and I am going to fail my Japanese class. As to the former, apparently the ubiquitous Japanese police force is fond of making sure foreigners are here legally, but not so fond of prosecuting foreigner-on-foreigner crime (apparently there is a lot of Russian crime syndicate activity in Roppongi?); as to the latter, this tiny hardassed Japanese lady came up to the front of the room to talk about the Japanese program, which was basically to inform us all that the language program here is harder than anything we could have possibly taken anywhere else, and that we should probably round down one or two classes at best if we wanted to not fail. "You can stay in the harder classes if you want to," she said, "but that's your choice, and when you fail, you won't be able to drop out, you'll get an F, and I will laugh at you." Like a tiny drill sergeant of the Japanese language. Terrifying. I am going to fail. (I'm taking a placement test today, but I'm not sure how well that will go. I can stay in AJII regardless of the results, but depending what the results say I may want to curl up in a corner and cry instead. :X
On a brighter note, tomorrow we're going on a tour of Shibuya, Ueno, and one other place that is either Shinjuku or Harajuku, and is probably Shinjuku. I am very excited :D And then Monday is a national holiday, so we don't start class till Tuesday, which means I don't start class till Wednesday :D Jenny and I are probably going to lay around like lumps on Monday (we've already planned it out) because we haven't really had a day to properly relax yet. Yesterday I went to bed ostensibly for a nap at 7 and slept through till this morning when my alarm went off at 9:30. :X
Things I'm still trying to get used to:
what time it is at home, for calling and skyping purposes
exactly how much a yen is worth in dollars and trying not to cry every time I spend them
Pictures will follow later, btw. I haven't taken that many yet because yesterday was so hectic that I didn't want to worry about photographing everything on top of all the stuff we were doing. :X
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