Flying solo.

Friday, July 25^th

After my last post, as mentioned, I went to Newspaper Club. A lot of people didn’t show up; it seems like our membership has dropped by almost half. The bad news is, they seem to have given up on the idea of the small groups going places together, so the suggested outing to an omatsuri probably isn’t happening. The good news is, everyone approved of the idea of me writing an article about the butler café. No one had heard of it before, and I had to give everyone a brief explanation. When I tried to explain that it’s similar to a maid café, Fujimura-sensei asked if you had to dress up to go to the butler café. When I explained that, no, regular clothes are fine, he said something along the lines of wanting to see me in a maid outfit. I wasn’t sure how to take that comment. In my opinion, I’d look pretty terrible in a maid outfit, or any kind of Lolita-esque clothing. I’m too tall.

 

Anyway, after that, we had class as usual, with Iki-sensei, the Friday teacher everyone hates. Today seemed to be a particularly bad day, because not only was she as boring as usual, but she kept making these awkward mistakes when she was writing on the board. Watching a teacher repeatedly screw up gets to be pretty painful. After a while, I even stopped feeling sorry for her and just wanted class to be over with already. Luckily, she ended class pretty early (around 4pm or so) so everyone could work on the ouen.

 

I had speech practice again after that, but luckily it was with Takahashi-sensei instead of with Iki-sensei. At first, she was busy working on various things, though, so I worked on memorizing it and had it all memorized by the time she had time to listen to me recite it. She seemed extremely pleased; it seems that I’m ahead of schedule, so now she wants me to work on using more gestures when I speak. I don’t normally speak with my hands, so it’s very unnatural for me and will be pretty difficult. I do have almost another week, though, so I can try to make it work.

 

Overall, speech practice went more quickly than usual, and for the first time, I was out of there before 6pm. The bad news was, I had no plans. Shaunte hadn’t even come to school today because she was still out with Cat and her college friends. For as far as I knew, Evan had just gone straight home after class. Kelcy, Caslyn, Yana, Kevin & co. seemed to have been talking about plans to go out earlier, but nobody had filled me in or explicitly invited me. I started walking to the station when I ran into the awkward situation of being only about 100m behind Kelcy & co. and being headed in the same direction. In other words, I had a choice of joining up with them. However, I didn’t want to seem like I was inviting myself along; since they hadn’t filled me in, that probably meant that they didn’t particularly want me along, and I didn’t want to force my company on them. So, I ended up purposely walking slowly so they wouldn’t spot me and ended up going home by myself.

 

Once there, I didn’t really do too much. Shaunte was finally home when I got there, so we had dinner together. Then I showered and spent some time e-mailing a few people. Overall, I’d say buying the phone was a good idea after all. Feeling connected to the people back home makes the moments of loneliness much more bearable.

 

 

Saturday, July 26^th

When I saw Shaunte at dinner last night, she had been in her PJs, so I had assumed that she was staying in. Besides, she’d been complaining about being tired. However, when I woke up in time for breakfast, I saw Cat’s slippers weren’t by her door, and when I went to go check, I could tell by the name sign board downstairs that both she and Shaunte had spent the night out again. I was a little annoyed because I’d been hoping to convince Shaunte to go to Odaiba with me today, since she’d said earlier this week that she really wanted to do some more touristy things.

 

However, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from doing something today. The list of things I still wanted to do included going to Odaiba, visiting a few art museums (probably around the Ueno area), going to an omatsuri, and (if time permitted) going to Kamakura. There are more things on the list, but these are the things that require a whole day, i.e. not things I can do before/after class sometime.

 

I had heard yesterday during Newspaper Club that there’s an omatsuri in Asakusa today, complete with fireworks. Asakusa is pretty close to Ueno, so I briefly considered combining that with a museum visit. However, omatsuri within the Tokyo city limits are usually attended by tens of thousands of people. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that many people on a day that was bound to be hot and humid enough already, so I decided to scrap that idea. I also didn’t feel inclined to head to Odaiba because from what I’ve heard it’s not really touristy in the sense of actual sightseeing, but more browsing/shopping, hanging out by the sea, and going on attractions like the famous ferris wheel there. In other words, it seems more like the type of place you want to go with a friend. So I’d rather hold off on that and see if I can still manage to convince Shaunte to go with me sometime. I’d also prefer to go to Odaiba on a sunny day; today the sky was overcast.

 

So, Kamakura it was. At any rate, out of all of the things on the list (except maybe the museum visits), it’s the one that most lends itself to a solitary visit. I didn’t know much about Kamakura, but from what I’d heard, it’s mostly temples, shrines, and nature. Lots of sightseeing, walking, and maybe a little reflection and introspection. I decided I was quite in the mood for such a journey, so I got dressed, packed a backpack with a bottle of water, my sketchbook, camera, and wallet, and set off by myself.

 

To get to Kamakura, I had to take the subway to Ikebukuro and then take a train from there. Kamakura is located pretty far outside of the Tokyo limits, south of Yokohama. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, the relationship between Tokyo and Yokohama is somewhat comparable to the relationship between Houston and Galveston.) Even though the train didn’t make too many stops, it still took well over an hour to get there. Also, because it’s far, the train fare wasn’t cheap—¥890 for a one-way ticket.

 

I’d left around 10am, so I got to Kamakura around 11:15~11:30. So far, I’ve been navigating Tokyo without any sort of tourist maps or guide books, and since I’ve lasted this long without them, I don’t feel like getting any now. In any case, the idea of exploring places on my own appeals to me much more than following a tourist guide book’s instructions, and I’ve always had a passion for traveling by my own instinctive sense of direction. However, it’s true that when I arrived at the station, I had no earthly idea where to go. Luckily, there was a map just outside the station which I spent some time thoroughly examining.

 

I had known that Kamakura’s main attraction was the large number of temples and shrines, but I’d had no idea just how many there are. As it turns out, there’s a good 30 or so, and they’re not just regular shrines—many of them are very old, and some have a distinct place in Japanese history. I also had not known just how close Kamakura is to Sagami Bay. A large number of the people on the train, as it turns out, were headed for the beach. I ended up following a group of them, because as soon as I realized that the sea was within walking distance, a wave of homesickness washed over me, and I longed to splash my feet in the water.

 

I spent almost an hour walking along the beach, enjoying the water and the breeze and a bit of people-watching. The sight of the sea always calms me, and soon I felt happy and at peace, my troubles of the past week or so forgotten. It was an excellent start to the day; when I headed inland again, I felt ready for an afternoon of visits to temples and shrines.

 

The first shrine I headed to didn’t turn out to be anything too special, and I left pretty quickly. After that, I was smarter and followed large groups of tourists who were all headed in the same direction. There’s a very large temple near the center of Kamakura that seemed to be the first place everyone goes. The complex was very large, and the buildings were beautiful. I prayed at the shrine—my first time doing so, because previously I’d never known what to ask for.

 

I probably spent a good hour or so at this one temple alone, because the grounds were so large and contained a couple of beautiful gardens, including one with the most massive water lilies I have ever seen. I took a lot of pictures and sat in the shade for a while, soaking in the beauty.

 

Afterwards, I had a choice of either heading east or west of this temple. The east side of Kamakura appeared to have more temples and shrines in slightly closer proximity to each other, while the west side, which is more mountainous, features a more natural setting, including a hiking trail that leads to the large Buddha statue, called the Daibutsu, which is one of the things Kamakura is most famous for. Rather than trying to cram in over 10 different shrines and temples in one afternoon, I decided I would much rather do a couple more shrines and temples and then take the hiking trail to the Daibutsu. So, I headed west.

 

I visited three more temples. The first, En-noji Temple, was rather small, but the cool thing about it was, it was built to worship the god(s) of the underworld, and inside the main shrine (where we couldn’t take pictures), they had statues of these gods which were quite interesting to see. The second, Ken-choji Temple, was much larger and spread out. I had to pay ¥300 to get in, but it was worth it. It was another temple with a long history, especially with regard to Zen Buddhism, and included several famous artifacts, like a large bell that bears some importance in Japanese history and some really famous juniper trees. It also had a beautiful temple garden whose sight alone was well worth the entry fee. I saw several Zen Buddhist monks who had apparently come on pilgrimages here, which also reaffirmed that I had picked a temple worth visiting.

 

The last temple, Chi-oji, was located right by the start of the hiking trail. I got close to it and took several pictures but didn’t actually go inside. They, too, charged an entry fee, but I didn’t see any other tourists there, so I didn’t get the impression that it was worth the money or the time. So, I just took a few pictures of the outside and then headed for the woods to begin the hike.

 

The hike wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was satisfying. The trail was fairly clear—there weren’t many signs marking the path, but there was usually only one direction you could go, and even if the path split, eventually they would all end up in the same place, so I didn’t really have much trouble finding my way. It was also much cooler up in the woods than on the sidewalk along the road, making me doubly glad that I’d chosen to take this way to get to the Daibutsu.

 

As an aside, let me just mention that I was not at all dressed for hiking. Because I’d known I was going to visit many shrines and temples, I’d decided to err on the side of being slightly dressed up. After all, they’re religious places, and I didn’t want to be the ugly tourist in a T-shirt and jeans. So, I was actually wearing a skirt. As for shoes, I was just wearing regular canvas flats. Perfectly fine for walking long distances, but not exactly designed for hiking. I got a few weird looks from people I passed along the trail—probably due to the combination of being a young female hiking a mountain on her own, and not at all being dressed for the task.

 

After about 1~1.5km, I arrived at a park near the top of the mountain. At least, they called it a park, though it wasn’t particularly park-like (how do you designate a park when you’re already in the woods?) aside from the fact that it had restrooms, a water fountain, and a few vending machines. They also had a shrine, though it wasn’t a particularly interesting one to see, so I only took one picture of it. In addition, the park included the grave of Yoshitomo, some important historical figure from Kamakura—do not ask me his significance, because I do not know. I only know the broad outlines of Japanese history.

 

Luckily, they had an area map and more signs here, because beyond the park the road split into several directions. Though there were several other shrines nearby that I would’ve loved to visit, the hike was taking longer than I’d expected, and I decided not to tarry and head straight for the Daibutsu. The trail headed a little further upward, and at one point, the trees cleared enough that I could see the town of Kamakura below. It was a very satisfying sight, especially because I could clearly see the beach I’d walked along that morning, and realizing just how far I’d walked since then gave me a sense of pride and accomplishment.

 

After that, the trail was mostly downhill. Another kilometer or so in, there was a rest stop with a café that sold expensive drinks. The scenery was lovely, though, so I decided to invest, and was particularly gratified when the little girl helping out at the family-owned restaurant brought me mosquito repellant and lent me her paper fan. She called me oneechan (big sister). It was cute.

 

Feeling invigorated after my brief respite, I headed down for the last leg of the hike. The trail came to a pretty anti-climactic end—it led to some stairs which led to a normal sidewalk. The last 300m or so to the Daibutsu were along the road. At this point, there were a lot more signs pointing the way.

 

Once again, I had to pay to enter, but it was well worth it. They weren’t lying when they said the statue is large; it was pretty imposing. The most interesting thing about it, though, is that the statue is hollow. You could actually pay another ¥20 to go inside (which I did), where you could get a better view of exactly how it was constructed. It was interesting to see, though I didn’t stay inside for more than 5 minutes because it was so hot.

 

After leaving the Daibutsu, it was already after 4:30pm. Most of the larger temples and shrines—the ones actually worth visiting—close to visitors around 5:30pm, so if I wanted to see anything else, I needed to do it within the next hour. However, there were no other temples or shrines within the proximity, and the only other shrine I’d really wanted to see, Sasuke Inari Jinja, was too far to walk to in less than an hour. Besides, I was beginning to grow very tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk much further, so I ended up heading toward the train station.

 

I was a bit disappointed to be leaving so early. I’d been planning on spending as much of the day outside the dorm as possible. However, with the shrines closing, one of the only other things left to do would be to head back to the beach, and even that would quickly grow boring. I was also quickly running out of steam and decided that above all, I really wanted to shower. So, there wasn’t really anything left to do except head home. However, I was growing hungry, and knowing it’d be another 1+ hour ride back to Ikebukuro, I stopped by a suupaa and bought some bananas before boarding the train.

 

By the time I’d make it back to Ikebukuro, crossed all of Ikebukuro station, took the subway, and walked back to the dorm, though, it was almost 7:30pm. I took a long and satisfying shower, ate dinner, and headed to my room. Shaunte and Cat were still out; from the looks of it, they hadn’t been back all day. By 9pm I was already ready to go to sleep, but I’ve forced myself to stay up until at least 11pm. I’m still not used to getting more than about 6 hours of sleep a night, so I don’t want to risk screwing up my sleep schedule.

 

 

Sunday, July 27^th

I woke up around 7am and just lay in bed for a couple of hours, relaxing. My body was pretty sore from the day before. I probably haven’t walked that much since I went to New York City in April.

 

Mom called around 9:30am, and we spent a while catching up. After that, I got dressed and ready to go. Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back (surprise, surprise), but I wasn’t going to let that keep me from going to Harajuku today, since the weather was dry and I felt reasonably energetic.

 

Rather than taking the subway and then walking to Harajuku, I took the train from Ikebukuro that stops at Harajuku station. I figured that would give me the best starting point, since I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. Like any other neighborhood, Harajuku is fairly large, but it seems that the touristy area it’s famous for is concentrated around one little street they call Harajuku St. It’s a very narrow street, with mostly clothing stores running along both sides. It was around noon when I got there, and the street was completely packed with people. The sight of the mass of people crammed into such a small space almost made me want to bolt, but I pressed on.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar, aside from the shops, the reason Harajuku is famous is the Japanese youth who frequent it on Sundays. Clad in the strangest outfits inspired by music and/or otaku culture, they basically hang around showing off their style and artistic skills. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t seen the pictures. If you Google something like “Harajuku fashion”, I’ll bet a few will pop up. If you’re very interested, you may want to see if your local Barnes & Noble carries a copy of Fruits or Fresh Fruits. It’s usually in the photography section. Anyway, though the shops at Harajuku are open every day, these youths only come out in these strange outfits on Sundays, which is why I’d been so determined to go. I own both Fruits books and have seen many other pictures, but I wanted to see them for myself.

 

It took me a long time to find any, though. At first, I just walked down the little street, checking out a few of the shops on each side. The clothing isn’t cheap unless you can manage to buy something on sale. T-shirts, for example, cost, on average, ¥2000-¥2500, but if you hunt for sale items, you can find them for ¥500-¥1000, which is about as much as I’m ever willing to pay for a shirt. I didn’t have much cash on me, so I couldn’t really shop much, but I did find a shirt I really liked. It’s a green and pink tube top with yellow lettering that says “Ambition makes people diligent”. I liked the colors and the text, and it was only ¥399, so I couldn’t pass that up.

 

I’d almost reached the end of the street and still no sight of any weird people. The only people with slightly out-of-the-ordinary dress were a few Lolita girls, whom you’ll occasionally see around other parts of the city as well, so I didn’t consider that a particularly unusual sight. There were also quite a few tourists who had come dressed up, with several girls in their own Lolita dresses. In my honest opinion, I don’t think non-Asians can pull off Lolita clothes, especially if the girls are not short, and it kind of aggravates me that they’re completely oblivious to that. But, rant aside, it was an amusing sight.

 

I eventually wound up at the Omotesando without having seen any weird people. The souvenir shop that sold lots of yukatas happened to be right across the street, so after detouring to an ATM, I went and bought the purple yukata I’d seen last week that I’d been considering buying. I still wavered for a little while, but eventually went through with the sale.

 

I wasn’t sure where to go after that. I didn’t want to go back to the dorm without having seen any weird people, but it was swelteringly hot, and I didn’t think I could endure the masses of people for much longer. Still, I told myself that I would press on. So, I went back to Harajuku St. and started from the beginning.

 

I had just stopped to buy myself a crêpe when two very distinctively oddly clad girls walked by me. With my crêpe in one hand and my shopping bag in the other, it was impossible to reach for my camera without risking dropping the crêpe, and at any rate, they were gone in a flash. After I finished the crêpe, I walked down the street to look for them, and successfully managed to locate them sitting down on the left side of the street near the end. I don’t really know what the protocol here is with pictures, so I ninja’d a photo and quickly walked away. Since they were sitting down, you can’t really see their full outfits, but you can still get a good idea of their interesting fashion sense.

 

On my way back toward the station, I began to notice more strangely-clad girls. A few were picture-worthy, but since they were moving along with the crowd, it was impossible to grab a shot unless I decided to stalk them, which I wasn’t in the mood for. There seemed to be more oddly-clad people around now (it was after 3pm already), so I considered sticking around for a while longer, but I was growing faint and realized I had to get out of the heat. In the end, I decided to return to the dorm. I have two more Sundays left here, so I can always come back.

 

Back at the dorm, I didn’t really do too much the rest of the day. I napped for about a half hour, briefly talked to Shaunte, who was back (Cat had gone out again), and went to the suupaa to buy food for dinner. Since I was in the mood, I decided to buy myself a can of beer to go along with dinner. When I get back to the U.S., I’m going to have to get used to not being able to buy alcohol again. The prospect is slightly frustrating.

 

I showered, did my homework, worked a little more on my article about the butler café, and just relaxed. My legs are still sore, and lying in bed feels very good. I’m not at all tired, though, so I think I’m going to go read for a while. Ja, mata.

 

 

Monday, July 28^th

I went to school a little bit early today to use the computer lab, though not for the usual purposes. One of the other things we’re required to do as part of the program is something called e-learning, where we use the TUFS website to supplement what we’re learning in class by doing reading and listening exercises. They log our hours, and those of us leaving in August are required to do six 45-minute sessions before we leave. I’d been putting off starting on it, so today was my first time going. Honestly, though, I’m not sure if I’m going to do all six sessions. The software is not very interactive, so it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. I’m not convinced it’s really helping me learn.

 

Anyway, after that, I headed to class. I really hadn’t been in the mood for school today, but we had Fujimura-sensei, so I quickly cheered up. He was especially funny today because he acted out a lot of the things he was trying to say. He’s so fun! I really want to take him back to America and have him be my Japanese teacher forever, hehehe.

 

During class, the class ironed out the details of another nomikai we’d planned to have tonight. We agreed to meet at Shin-Okubo at 7pm. Shin-Okubo is kind of like Tokyo’s Koreatown, and several of the Koreans in our class who wanted to come have part-time jobs around there, so we agreed to meet there so that they could join us after they got off work.

 

After class, Soo Young, the boy who sits next to me, talked to Fujimura-sensei, I’m not sure what about, but Fujimura-sensei ended up writing his cell phone number and e-mail address on the whiteboard. I asked Soo Young if he’d invited sensei to the nomikai, so Soo Young went back and asked. He sounded like he really wanted to go, but since he has to teach a morning class tomorrow, he decided it was not a good idea.

 

I once again had speech practice. Takahashi-sensei was busy again, so Fujimura-sensei took over the job of practicing with us, which was just fine with me. While we were in the elevator going up to the 3^rd floor to find an empty classroom to practice in, he asked me if I was going to the nomikai with everyone else. When I said that I was, he said, “Dangit! I really want to go!” and he did this thing he sometimes does where he stamps his foot and looks like a little kid about to throw a temper tantrum. I told him we were going to dinner before we were going drinking, and that he could always just join us for dinner, but he said that it still wasn’t a good idea. He sounded genuinely upset that he couldn’t go, though, and said that if only we’d gone tomorrow, when he doesn’t have a morning class the next day, he definitely would’ve gone with us.

 

We finished around 6pm, but I ended up sticking around until 6:30pm because I was having so much fun talking to him. I love hearing his stories about his time in Europe, and I really want to hear him speak German. He’s too embarrassed, though. I wonder if I can get him to speak German if he goes drinking with us.

 

Speaking of which, at one point, Kuma, the Chinese kid, asked him if he likes to drink, and he said he does. He said that if we invited him out on a weekend sometime, he’d definitely come. Then Kuma asked him, “How about after the speech contest?” To which Fujimura-sensei actually said, 「ああ、スピーチコンテストの後で、みんなでお酒を飲まなければなりません。」 Translation: “Ah, after the speech contest, we have to go drinking with everyone.” Yes, he actually used the phrase “have to”. I asked him if that’s a promise, and he said yes. I’m pretty damn excited. This actually makes me want to do well in the speech contest. It’d be awesome if we actually have something to celebrate.

 

I had to leave for the train station at 6:30pm. Shin-Okubo is only one stop away, and I timed it perfectly, arriving at exactly 7pm. Mi Hee came a few minutes later, and together we waited for Evan, who had brought along Brad, Miguel, and Yosh, his high school friend. Then we walked to the Korean restaurant where the others were waiting for us. They had already started eating, and the table was too small for all of us, so we had to sit at another table. This meant that we basically got split into the American table and the Korean table, until several people moved around and Ji Young invited me to come sit at the Korean table. It ended up being just me at a table full of Korean women. It was interesting.

 

The Koreans took care of ordering all the food again, and just like last time, it was delicious. The others seemed surprised at how much I liked it, especially kimchi. They told me that I’m a Korean at heart and that I need to come visit them in Korea as soon as possible. They promised to show me around and take me to all the best restaurants to try all the food. I’m totally game. Korea is definitely on my list of places I want to visit, though I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to make it out there.

 

Along with the food, everyone was drinking soju. Though at one point I really did like it, and can recall on one occasion doing 15 shots of it, for some reason, it didn’t sit right with me today, even after I ate. I was afraid I might get sick, so I didn’t end up drinking a lot. The original plan, at least, was to go to a bar after dinner, so I decided I’d much rather wait for that and drink something else.

 

Soo Young joined us around 9:15pm, after he got off work, and seemed especially delighted that I was there. He encouraged the others to speak less Korean and more Japanese, and we had a good time talking. Soo Young is particularly upset that I’m leaving in August and says that he wants to go clubbing together before we leave. I do still want to go to a techno club, so maybe I’ll go. I don’t know. We’ll see.

 

Because we were still waiting for Sang Mook to get off work, we were still at the restaurant at 10pm, at which point I unfortunately had to part with the others. I knew it’d only take me 30 minutes at the very most to get back, including walking, but I wanted to make sure I had time to take a shower tonight. I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t been able to drink much, since it was supposed to be a nomikai, but I’m also not sure if the others still planned to go to a bar afterwards. A few of them, Hee Jeon especially, seemed to be pretty gone after the soju alone. Soo Young was disappointed that I had to go so soon after he got there, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it.

 

 

Tuesday, July 29^th

So once again I’m at school early to use the lab. I’m trying to fall into a Tuesday-Friday posting pattern, I guess, to try to keep my entries from getting too long. This one still ended up being fairly long, though. My apologies, and thanks to everyone who stuck it out this far.

 

As far as class today goes, I don’t think we have anything too special planned. I do need to recite my speech in front of the class to practice with a larger audience, so hopefully that will go all right. I’m guessing I’ll be heading straight home after speech practice so I can get in some decent studying, but you never know what will happen.