9 posts tagged “shopping”
Friday, August 8th
We tried to wrap up as much as we could in Newspaper Club, but in the end, we didn’t manage to finish either my computer version or the accompanying hand-drawn poster/collage that were supposed to be done by the end of today. So, all of us with afternoon classes stayed after class to work on it some more. It was 7pm by the time I finally left.
I was hungry and, above all, tired. I’d still been half-debating going to Yana’s birthday shindig, but when I finally made it home, I realized that I just wasn’t up to it. If I’d had time to take a nap, it might’ve been a different story, but by the time I’d showered and eaten, it was almost 9pm, and they were meeting in Roppongi between 11pm and midnight. So, I decided to forego the party.
Instead, I’m heading to bed early, and I’ll probably go to Odaiba tomorrow, since I haven’t heard back from sensei and my Sunday plans are still up in the air.
Saturday, August 9th
The weather was fairly sunny and bright, so after having breakfast at the dorm, I decided to indeed head to Odaiba today. I left the dorm around 10am.
Odaiba is surprisingly easy for me to get to. You have to somehow get to the coast and then take a monorail from there. I’m lucky in that both the Fukutoshin and the Yurakucho lines stop at the subway station near the dorm, and the Yurakucho line goes all the way to the coast. So, I simply took that almost all the way to the end and then transferred to the monorail from there.
Odaiba is a very touristy place. Attractions range from a small water park to a giant ferris wheel from which you can see the Tokyo skyline pretty well, a scaled-down replica of the Statue of Liberty, a couple of small arcade-style amusement parks, and a lot of malls and shopping centers. I wasn’t there to do anything specific, so I just walked around a lot and took a lot of pictures. I walked around the shopping centers and went into various stores, but not much really caught my interest. I bought a shirt, and that was it. At the Decks shopping mall, they also had a Sony showroom, where you could see and try out all of Sony’s latest electronic gadgets for free. It was really cool, especially since I’m a total Sony whore.
For lunch, I ate takoyaki (fried octopus balls) for the first time. I’d been holding off on trying it because someone had told me that they taste slightly potato-ey, and I hate potatoes. But a stand by the Decks mall was selling them, and they looked too delicious to pass up. They were indeed delicious, and not at all potato-ey. I enjoyed them very much.
After leaving the Decks mall, I headed toward the ferris wheel side of Odaiba. I didn’t end up riding the ferris wheel because I figured it was probably expensive and wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without another person there. However, I did go into Venus Fort, another giant shopping mall. However, this one is special because the interior is modeled after that one street in Venice—I forget the name—where the ceiling is an artificial sky that changes colors to mimic the changes in the sky at various times of the day. It was incredibly beautiful and slightly disorienting, as well as amusing to me because I’ve actually been to the real thing in Venice. I didn’t end up going into many of the shops at this mall because they weren’t very interesting. I just walked around and took a lot of pictures of the mall itself.
Around 4:30~5pm, I was pretty much done doing everything I could think of to do, though. The only other thing I could’ve done was the big Toyota car showroom, which is free, but since I’m not at all interested in cars, it didn’t seem very interesting to me. I didn’t really want to head back to the dorm yet either, though, so I decided to walk around for a little while longer, just to see if I could find anything else to do.
It turned out to be very fortunate that I decided to do that instead of heading for home, because I ended up stumbling upon a tiny omatsuri that had been organized by one of the foreign exchange centers in Odaiba. It was designed as somewhat of a world cultural fair, with different booths representing different countries, as well as a celebration of the upcoming Obon holiday here in Japan. Most of the attractions and booths were being shut down by the time I got there, but they had been saving their main event for nighttime: Bon dancing. Obon is one of the holidays celebrated by going to festivals, usually clad in yukatas, and there are special dances that the festival attendees do together called Bon dances. I had heard of them but never seen them before. The dancing started at 6pm, so I decided to stick around and wait for it.
The omatsuri’s attendees were largely foreigners, so during the Bon dancing, the Japanese people who knew the dances took the time to teach the foreigners how to do it. There are many different dances, but they played every song twice to make sure everyone got to practice a dance enough before moving on to the next one. At first, I had planned to only take pictures, but then I realized—I have the opportunity to learn Bon dancing without being the only awkward foreigner in the crowd. What am I still standing around for? So I joined in, and had a lot of fun, even if the dances were more complicated than they seemed, and practicing each of them twice wasn’t enough time to really commit any of them to memory.
Though the dancing was supposed to go on for another hour or two, after learning 4 dances, I decided to head for home. I was hungry, and I didn’t want to spend money on dinner since there was dinner waiting for me at the dorm. I took the long way ‘round to go home, though, because I wanted to ride the stretch of the monorail that crosses the Rainbow Bridge, so that I could see the city and the bay at night. I got off at Shiodome and had to transfer subways twice, but the extra time out was worth it, because the view of the city at nighttime from the monorail was gorgeous.
Once home, I ate dinner, showered, and did homework. It’s still pretty early, but there’s not enough time to go anywhere or do anything else. I’m fine with that, though, because I want to save some energy for tomorrow. Sensei and I are doing *something*, though we’re still in the midst of working out the details. Should be fun, though.
I’m also happy that I managed to survive the day without getting too emotional about this being my final weekend. I think it helps that the past couple of days, instead of dwelling on the fact that I’m leaving very soon and thinking to myself, “This may be the last time I’m doing this,” I’ve been telling myself, “This is NOT the last time I’m doing this. I’ll definitely be back.” Soon. Hopefully next year. At any rate, I’ve basically decided not to say goodbye. I’m just saying, “See you later.”
Sunday, August 10th
I got up fairly early this morning, even though it’s Sunday, meaning there’s no breakfast. I got dressed and left by around 9, 9:30am. I headed to Ikebukuro for a little bit of shopping. Mom and Debby’s birthdays are this month, and though I’ve bought various souvenirs on many of my little trips, I didn’t have any real gifts yet. I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to buy them, but I had an idea of where I was going to succeed, and luckily all those stores happen to be in Ikebukuro, which is close and an area I know very well. I was right—shopping was a great success, and I was done by 11:30am. I grabbed a bite to eat and then headed back to the dorm to get ready to go out with Fujimura-sensei.
The way my plans with sensei had changed and evolved both amused and confused me. Recall that the original plan was just to go drinking—which probably involves eating, too, but that’s about it. When sensei hadn’t responded after asking me what my weekend looked like, I later sent him another text saying, “So, are we meeting on Sunday? If there are other things you’d like to do, I don’t want to intrude. In that case, have a good weekend!” He’d responded while I was in Odaiba yesterday, saying, “No, no, let’s meet on Sunday. I’m busy until 10, so let’s discuss the details after that. Is there anywhere you’d like to go?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that question because I wasn’t sure if I was just picking an area of town to meet to go drinking, or actually a place to go and visit. I still expected us to maybe meet for dinner and then have some drinks, and that’s all.
Anyway, I’d answered by listing all the places within Tokyo where I have been, and said, “If sensei knows any other interesting places, let’s go there!” I had a sneaking suspicion he was going to suggest Asakusa because he’s always talking about it, and he did. When he‘d asked what time, I told him that I had to do a little bit of shopping in the morning, but after that I was free all day. He’d said, “OK, since you have to go shopping for a bit, let’s meet after noon.” I was like—if I hadn’t said that I needed to go shopping, would we have met before noon? I was surprised, but amused.
So that’s how our planned and often-postponed drinking date had evolved into almost an entire day outing. We’d agreed to meet at Asakusa’s subway station at 2pm. Sensei was a little late—apparently he’d run all over town looking for a bank that would take his card. I’m glad I’m not the only one who that happens to.
The first thing we did was go to a big temple. I hadn’t heard of it, but it’s extremely famous—and quite deservedly so, because it’s both huge and gorgeous. The temple complex also includes a 5-story pagoda much bigger than the one at Ueno. We were also lucky because apparently the temple isn’t accessible to the public all the time, but today was one of the few days people were allowed to go inside. Sensei and I prayed at the shrine, and then we went to buy our fortunes. This temple is so touristy that the fortune papers actually included an English translation, so I could read it this time. Unfortunately, both sensei and I were extremely unlucky; today was supposedly one of the worst days of the year for both of us. All our hard work and plans are supposed to fail, etc. So, in order to try to prevent these bad fortunes from coming true, we folded them up and tied them to these special stands at the shrine. I pointed out to sensei how few other folded up fortunes there were. He was like, “Yeah, why the two of us have such bad luck today, I don’t understand either.”
I’m not sure what bad luck the fortune was talking about, though, because I had a really good day. After visiting the shrine, we looked around the souvenir shops in the area for a bit and then sat down to have tea. The weather was hot and muggy, as usual. Sensei asked me if there was anywhere else in particular I wanted to go. I told him I don’t know Asakusa at all, so he should lead the way.
We ended up going to this tiny little theme park called Hanayashiki. It looked more interesting from the outside than it actually was on the inside. Though there were teenagers and adults hanging around, it was clearly a theme park for little kids, and all the rides clearly reflected it. There were only a couple of thrill rides, and sensei quickly admitted that he’s not a fan of rides and scary things—which is fine by me, because I’m not, either, especially since my tendency toward motion sickness seems to have gotten worse over the last several years.
We started off doing this haunted house ride where you sit in a little car and it drives you around in the dark, and then an actual haunted house where you walk through it at your own pace. Neither were at all scary, and we were both pretty disappointed. After that, we walked around the park looking for another ride to go on. Our eyes finally fell on a ride that’s kind of a cross between a roller coaster and a swinging ship ride. You sat on a large spinning disk, and it basically went from side to side in a half-pipe motion. I felt that that ride was the only one I was pretty sure I could handle within my own limits (the only scarier ride was one of those big tower rides that drops you from really high, which I know I can’t handle) and that seemed at all exciting. So, when sensei asked if I wanted to ride it, I said yeah, let’s go! He seemed a little hesitant, but finally agreed. I asked him several times if it was really okay—I wasn’t going to make him ride it if he really didn’t want to—but he said he was pretty sure he could handle it. I was glad, because I figured that if we didn’t do something at least slightly thrilling that pushed both of us just a little bit out of our comfort zones, we weren’t really going to have a good time at this kiddy theme park. At least now there could be stories.
Sensei wibbled the entire way leading up to the ride and while we waited. When it was finally our turn to sit down, he said his heart was beating really fast and he was pretty nervous. He screamed the entire way through the ride, too, while I just sat there cracking up. I thought the ride really wasn’t that bad. The disk spun faster than I’d expected, and the ride lasted fairly long, but I wouldn’t call it scary. It wasn’t the ideal ride for someone with motion sickness, but since my stomach was basically empty, there wasn’t a big risk of me getting sick. I got vaguely nauseous, but that was it. It was fine.
Sensei had thought it was pretty scary, though, so we agreed that we were done with thrill rides and would just ride a couple more “easy” rides. We went on this ride called the Bee Tower, where you sat in a little house and it took you up really high and then spun you in a circle so that you could get a good view of the area. I got a couple of decent pictures of the Asakusa skyline this way. After that, we went on a fairly boring ride where you sat in a ship and it took you around the little theme park, monorail-style. In a bigger theme park, it would’ve been a fine ride, but the park is so small that the ride was extremely short and not at all entertaining.
We decided we’d had quite enough of kiddy rides after that, and left the park. I was quite relieved. I was worried that sensei felt bad about bringing me here when it didn’t turn out to be very exciting, even though I reassured him that I’d had fun just because it was a cute place. I’d also felt bad because even though I’d paid for the entrance fee on my own, sensei had bought all the ride tickets. They weren’t cheap, and as I mentioned, I *hate* people paying for me. Unfortunately, he’d gone ahead and bought the tickets before I’d even had any idea that they were necessary, and there wasn’t really much I could do about it after that.
Even though it was still pretty early (5pm or so), we decided to go and have dinner. The part of Asakusa we were in has a lot of these little restaurants where the tables extend out into the streets, and they serve various kinds of meat and fish dishes, most of which I wasn’t familiar with. We decided to sit down at a restaurant whose main dish was something called suji, which sensei wasn’t familiar with either, so we both wanted to try it. While we waited for the food, sensei told me that because his second job is in Asakusa, he often rides by these little restaurants on his bike, and every time, he’s jealous of the people sitting there, drinking beer and eating all the delicious food and enjoying leisurely conversations on warm summer evenings. However, he’s never had the free time to be one of those people, so he was doubly happy—both because today had been a rare opportunity for him to go out and sightsee and do fun things with a friend, and because by going to one of these restaurants, he got to do something he’d so often longed to do.
It gave me really warm fuzzy feelings. Recall that I mentioned in an earlier post that though overall I’ve loved every minute of my stay here in Japan, a part of me has felt unfulfilled—the part of me that centers my world around people I love and care for and strives to make them happy. There isn’t anybody I love here, and I haven’t felt like my presence has made anybody particularly happy. Not unhappy, but not happy either. Because I tend to be more quiet, even when I do find myself in a group of other people, I tend to feel auxiliary and unneeded. The group would have just as much fun without me there. Though I try not to dwell on these thoughts, occasionally it does gnaw away at me.
This time was different, though. For the first time since coming here, I had the opportunity to make someone happy just with my company. The language barrier did make conversation difficult at times, but my presence alone also made a difference. Sensei probably wouldn’t have done the things we did today on his own. He admits that on Sundays, his only day off in the week, he rarely leaves the house. He sleeps late, relaxes, cleans, plays keyboard, watches TV, and that’s about it. I really feel for him; I can sense that, beneath the friendly and occasionally strict teacher exterior, part of him is still a 27-year-old, only a few years out of college, living very far from his family in a very, very big city without any real friends. Just for a day, I’d had a chance to brighten this person’s world—and for the first time, that part of me felt fulfilled.
The entire situation was slightly aggravating too, though, because as we were talking about the things I’ve done and seen in Tokyo, and I mentioned that lately I’ve done most of these things on my own because my friends are always drinking and partying, we discovered that many of these things are ones sensei hasn’t done yet, either, and really wants to do. For example, he hasn’t been to Odaiba, or Kamakura, or the museums at Ueno. Had we discovered this earlier, we could’ve (should’ve?) gone together. Why did we have to find this out during my final weekend here? Now, there’s no time.
Anyway, since I’ve strayed from the original topic quite a bit—we had dinner, and tried suji as well as many of the restaurant’s other dishes, ranging from octopus sashimi to fried squid and cold tofu. Meanwhile, we drank beer—finally living up to our promise to go drinking together, though the drinking part was probably the least memorable out of all of today’s experiences.
We left the restaurant around 7pm. (To my aggravation, sensei once again paid the entire tab before I’d even known what he was doing or had the chance to insist that we split the check. Grr!) We briefly went back to the temple to see it lit up at night. The pagoda, especially, is really beautiful at nighttime. Then we headed back toward the subway station. I admit I was a little disappointed that our day was ending so early, but sensei seemed tired and there wasn’t really anything else for us to do around Asakusa, except maybe drink, but while we’d only had 2 drinks each at the restaurant, I get the impression sensei can’t drink very much.
So, around 7:30pm, I headed for home, having to make an effort to blink back a few tears. For the first time, I felt real regret. Up until now, I haven’t really regretted anything I’ve done or not done while here. There are things I haven’t done which I wish I had the time to do, but overall I’d say I’ve done the things I wanted to do most, and I’m content. But now I regret—really, really regret—not getting to know and spending time with this person sooner. The fact that today had been really fun made it even more bitter to discover that so many of the things I’d done alone are once we could’ve done together.
Back at the dorm, I lounged around my room for a while and then started packing. It’s not hard in the sense that at least this time, I’m not having to make difficult decisions about what I may or may not need. It’s simply a question of fitting everything into my two suitcases, which shouldn’t be too hard because one of them was mostly empty when I brought it for just this reason. Packing is hard, though, because it makes everything so final. I don’t want to be leaving, but I don’t have a choice.
Monday, August 11th
I continued packing for a little bit this morning, then left the dorm early to head back to Ikebukuro once again. There were a few more little things I needed to buy which I’d forgotten to get when I was here yesterday. Among other things, I finally got an obi to go along with the purple yukata. I also bought a couple more things at Mandarake. After I finally got that taken care of, I had lunch at McDonald’s. I’d decided that I didn’t want to leave Japan before enjoying the delicious shrimp burger one more time.
Class was fairly normal. We had a grammar test, which was easy, after which we just continued learning new material. Though the exam is on Wednesday (for the people staying here, it’s the midterm, while for those of us who are leaving, it’s the final), they’re not stopping to review or anything. We’re just continuing with the book, even though the exam only covers up to chapter 28.
It was also my last class with Fujimura-sensei. I’d been surprised when he told me this yesterday—I fully expected to still see him on Wednesday, but apparently they’re completely randomizing which teacher proctors which class’s exam. I’d already made up my mind, though, that today wasn’t going to be the last time I saw him. I’m not ready to say goodbye yet, and after class was over, I dashed out of the room as quickly as I could, just in case he’d decided that today was good-bye and tried to pull me aside, or something.
Aside from that, though, I was also in a hurry to get to Harajuku. There were a couple of things I needed to get there for a couple of friends, and I wasn’t sure what time those stores were closing. I succeeded and was headed back to the dorm by 7pm.
I stopped by Ikebukuro station on the way to buy my train ticket to the airport on Thursday. As I’d mentioned in my first post, Narita Airport is very far from the city, and even by public transportation, it’s not the easiest place to get to. There are several different buses and trains you can take, with travel times ranging from an hour and a half to two and a half hours, and fares ranging from about ¥1300 to ¥3200. I’d decided to take the most expensive train, just because it’s the most convenient—it leaves right from Ikebukuro station and then goes directly to the airport, so the only transfer I have to make is from the subway to the train at Ikebukuro. It’s also the fastest ride, and unlike on other trains, I have a reserved seat, so in my opinion, it’s well worth the money—especially since I’m not sending my luggage to the airport by courier, so transferring multiple trains would be a hassle.
Then I headed back to the dorm, where I studied for a little bit and continued packing. The vast majority of it is done now, and I only have little odds and ends left to take care of, which I’ll do tomorrow night. I really need to be done packing by Wednesday morning. I texted Fujimura-sensei earlier asking him if he’d like to have dinner before I leave. I told him that I want to celebrate his birthday, which is on Saturday, when I won’t be here, so I told him to choose between Tuesday or Wednesday night. He chose Wednesday because he wants me to spend Tuesday night studying for the final. I’m fine with that. This gives me something to look forward to right up until I leave.
Tuesday, August 12th
Only two days left…
There was no breakfast at the dorm this morning. It’s summer vacation in Japan this week, and nearly all the Japanese girls are gone. It’s just the 4 of us KCP students and 3 of the Japanese girls. We’re not getting any more meals between now and when I leave on Thursday.
I got up early, packed a little more, and intended to be out of the door early so I could go to FedEx and figure out how to mail my rice cooker home. There is definitely not going to be room in my suitcase for that. However, I ended up leaving too late, so there was no time to both mail the rice cooker and go to the computer lab. Whatever. It’s not such a big deal. I still have time tomorrow.
Anyway, this’ll probably be my last post from Japan. However, considering I still have a couple of days left, there will be at least one more post after this. I just know that I’m not going to have time before I fly back, so my final post(s) will have to come from the States. It may also not be until the weekend, considering the fact that I’ll probably be fairly exhausted and jet-lagged.
So, this is not goodbye quite yet, but just a “see you later”. Pray for me that I have a safe flight!
Friday, July 25th
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 26th
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 27th
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 28th
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 3rd 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 29th
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.
So I learned from my mistake from last week and am posting an entry now, to avoid having to wait until Monday or Tuesday and potentially having another extremely long entry. Not too much has happened, but there’s nothing wrong with a short post, I guess.
Also, since I guess this is the announcement section of the post, since I realize not everyone may want to read the entire thing—as you may go on to read, I did end up getting a cell phone. The main benefit is that I can now send and receive e-mails all the time. My cell phone’s e-mail address is nara.chan@softbank.ne.jp so feel free to use that to pop me a note if you like.
Tuesday, July 22nd
The test didn’t end up being very hard, or very long. Aside from that, we spent class time learning some grammar and then working on the ouen for the speech contest. The fun thing about being chosen for the speech contest is that everyone else in my class has to do some sort of elaborate cheer, called an ouen, of about 1 minute in length, before I come on stage. I had already heard from Lane that these are usually highly choreographed affairs, because all the classes want to try to outdo each other with their crazy antics. For my cheer, the class decided that since my speech is about the Netherlands, it’d be good to use the ouen to introduce the students to a little bit of Dutch culture. One idea that they seem to be interested in pursuing is that all the guys in the class are going to be wearing blonde wigs and then dancing to Dutch techno music, which I’m supposed to bring in.
After class, I walked to the main building to look for Shaunte and Cat. They were both still there this time. Cat was talking to a couple of people but Shaunte didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. I waited for them to finish, but even when Cat was done talking to people, she didn’t seem to want to leave. Finally, Shaunte said, “Okay, we’ll just go.” We walked to the station and went home by ourselves.
When we got to the dorm, one of the first things we did was go to the dining room for dinner, as usual. Cat walked in just minutes after we got there and sat down. Now, let me explain a little bit about our dining room. There are two separate tables, with 3 stools on each side. However, the stools are very close together, so it’s customary not to sit on the stool directly next to someone unless there are no other places to sit, because you’d just be butting elbows with them the entire time. Also, since the beginning, we’ve made it a habit of always sitting at the same table at mealtimes. Sometimes one of the Japanese girls will come sit at our table, but it’s not common. Usually, we sit at one table and they sit at the other. Not that we dislike each other, and we’ll still talk to each other across the dining room. It’s just become our habit.
When we came in and sat down, Shaunte and I sat at our usual table, in the same spots where we often sit. (On my little diagram below, ‘s’ is Shaunte and ‘n’ is me.) There was also one Japanese girl sitting at the other table (marked ‘x’). Then Cat walked in. There was a spot open (marked ‘*’ on my diagram) on my side of the table, across from Shaunte, where Cat normally would’ve sat down. But this time, she very demonstratively sat down at the other table, next to the Japanese girl.
s o o
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|%%|
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* o n
o o o
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|%%|
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c o x
It was a very obvious way of saying that she was angry at Shaunte or I, and I’m not stupid—I realized that it was far more likely to be me. I thought about calling her out on it and forcing a confrontation, because I still don’t know exactly what her problem with me is, but her action was just such a totally middle school way of handling the situation, I couldn’t even find words to express my frustration and disappointment. I finished my food quickly and went back to my room. I just didn’t even know what to say anymore.
While I was working on my homework, I made the decision to buy a phone tomorrow. It’s becoming very clear that Cat wants nothing more to do with me, and I don’t know where Shaunte stands, since she ultimately generally winds up going along with whatever Cat does. I tried to get her to tell me what exactly Cat’s problem is, since I feel like she knows, but she couldn’t/wouldn’t say. On the other hand, Cat wanted to go party again tonight (even though we have school tomorrow) but Shaunte refused to go with her. I’m glad she stuck by her decision not to party anymore for a while. Cat ended up going alone.
Anyway, point being, I’m getting a phone. True, we’re down to less than three and a half weeks left, but if I spend another weekend like last weekend, feeling so incredibly lonely, I would die. I feel like my heart’s being torn in two. I want to be here, in Tokyo, and I can easily picture myself staying here forever, but I also long for the people back home. I’ve fallen in love with this city, but in the end, home is where the heart is, and my heart is always with my family and the people I love the most. Maybe that’s why I never feel at home anywhere—because the place where I want to be and the place where my family and people I love are never seem to coincide.
Wednesday, July 23rd
Shaunte and I went to school pretty early. I wanted to use the computer lab before the how-to-wear-a-yukata session, and Shaunte had to retake a test. When we left around 10am, Cat still wasn’t back.
We had already made it to Shinjuku station when I realized I’d forgotten my yukata at the dorm, even though I’d had it sitting in a plastic bag next to the messenger bag I use to carry my books in for school. I had a choice of either going back for the yukata or using the computer lab, and I ended up deciding to go with the latter. I was really determined to use the computer lab today, not to check e-mail and such like usual, but to research some of the places I still want to go and things I want to do before I leave.
One of the things I still want to do is go to a butler café, the girl-oriented version of a maid café. Maid cafés are coffee shops and little eateries found commonly in Akihabara (there are a few in Kabuki-cho as well) where the waitresses all dress up as maids, mainly geared toward guys and the otaku culture’s obsession with young girls in French maid outfits. There isn’t anything really sexual about these places though. You order coffee and maybe some food, and the maids will come and chat with you a little and maybe play a game of jan-ken-poi (rock-paper-scissors). At the one Alex and Robert went to several weeks ago, the maids drew little pictures with chocolate syrup on top of their coffee. At any rate, these are perfectly acceptable places for girls to go, but in the end, they are very clearly guy-oriented.
Because of this, a few years ago, a woman decided that it was about time that there were equivalent places for girls to go, to be waited on and get their share of eye candy. So, she opened the first butler café, where the waiters (all male) take on the roles of butlers, costumes and all. Because these are a lot less common and not often known about by Westerners, it took me quite a bit of research to find out where they were located. It turns out that there are only 2 legit ones, one in Ikebukuro and one in Akihabara.
The one in Ikebukuro, as it turns out, is pretty famous—so much so that they require reservations (which you can make at their website) and, except for a few random open time slots, are essentially booked full until the end of August. The random open time slots were mostly on weekdays, around 3~4pm, when we have class. But they just happened to have a time slot open tomorrow at 11:15am. Realizing that this might be the only chance I have, I decided to just go ahead and make the reservation, not even knowing for sure if Shaunte would be up for it (though I was fairly sure she would be). It took me ages to figure out the registration site because it was all in Japanese. It turns out that registrations need to be for groups of 3 or 4, and you need to come with as many people as you signed up for, or be charged ¥1000 for every extra/missing person. I signed up for 3. I figured I could get Shaunte to come, but I wasn’t sure if I could find a 3rd person. Still, I figured that I might not get another chance if I waited, so I just went ahead with it.
After my hour in the lab was up, I went to the how-to-wear-a-yukata session. They didn’t have any extra yukatas for you to try on, so, since I had left mine at home, all I could do was watch. I tried to etch the process into my memory as best I could, but tying the obi is going to be difficult.
Before heading to the other building for class, I went to look for Shaunte to tell her about it, and to ask her to ask around for a 3rd person as well. This was also partly my way of saying she could invite Cat, and then it’d be up to Cat to decide which she’d rather do—continue to be angry at and ignore me, or be waited on by cute Japanese guys in butler outfits. Her choice.
Class was not too eventful. Fujimura was fun, as always. Other than the class working a little more on the ouen and picking a song from among the music I brought in, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happened, so I’m not going to waste space talking about it. During the break, I asked the other girls if anyone was interested in going to the butler café. Robyn seemed very interested, but she has to come in early to practice her speech. (She’s also in the speech contest.) Bummer!
I had to stay after class for two things. First, I had to take an ondoku test, where they check your pronunciation and whether you put accents in the right places. Japanese is not a tonal language, but the placement of accents, I’ve learned, is very important. We didn’t spend any time on this at all at CMU, which is one of the many reasons why some days I feel like I don’t ever want to take Japanese at CMU again. Our program is so completely unbalanced, it’s not even funny.
Then, after that, I had to practice my speech for the speech contest. The good news was that practice was with Fujimura-sensei as well, so it wasn’t a huge punishment to stay after class so late. It turns out that he lived in Germany for a while, so in between practices, he told me stories about trips he took and things of that nature. It was fun.
It was 6pm by the time I got to leave, though, so I was hungry and tired and no longer so sure I still wanted to go and buy the cell phone. It’s a fairly long walk to Don Quixote, and it was hot and humid, so I was half-tempted to give up on the idea. However, remembering how miserable I’d been feeling and my resolve from last night, I decided that I needed to just do it.
There was a fair amount of paperwork involved, and to my chagrin the price had gone up since I was there with Cat and Shaunte (from ¥5900 to ¥8900), but in the end, I succeeded in getting the phone. I couldn’t wait to play with it and ended up testing it out on the subway, not even waiting until I got home. Cell phones here are just so crazy. They can do things cell phones in America can’t even dream of doing. And I just have a regular, cheap prepaid phone. I can’t even imagine what the top-of-the-line models can do.
I’ve ended up spending most of the night playing with my new phone. With Shaunte’s help, I managed to get e-mail set up, so now I can e-mail people at home. I sent out a few test e-mails but no one’s responded yet, so I don’t know if it’s working. Then again, it is very early morning there.
Addendum: I had just finished writing this entry and logged off and was lying on my bed playing with my phone some more, when everything started rumbling and shaking. It lasted long enough—maybe 45-60 seconds—that there was no doubt in my mind this time that I was experiencing another earthquake. It was by no means violent, but it lasted long enough that I wondered whether I needed to get under my desk just in case. Just as I was about to, the earthquake stopped. I doubt any damage was done.
Thursday, July 24th
When I went to have breakfast at 7:30am like usual, Cat walked in a few minutes after I got there. She sat across from me and started talking to me like normal. I have no idea what’s going on anymore. Girls are so fickle. Shaunte and I had to leave around 10:15am to get to Ikebukuro and look for the butler café. Shaunte had asked Cat if she wanted to come, but Cat said she wanted to sleep in. Her loss.
We didn’t end up having any trouble finding the place because it turned out to be very close to the Ikebukuro Mandarake, so we were in familiar territory. We were quite early and had to wait a while. At 11:15am, we went to the man waiting by the entrance and checked in. We had to wait a few minutes and were then ushered into a long hallway, where we were introduced to the steward and the butler who would be taking care of us. The butler insisted on taking our bags, after which we had to follow him to the tea room.
The room was decently large, with maybe 20-25 tables of various sizes, though none seating more than 4 people at a time. Everything was done in a Victorian style. All the furniture was (or at least looked) antique. There were mirrors along several of the walls, chandeliers, old clocks, and several of the booths were curtained. Everything, including the butlers themselves (who were dressed in full tuxedos), walked the fine line between tasteful elegance and gaudiness.
We were seated at a 4-person table (probably because they’d been expecting 3 of us). The butler pulled out our chairs for us and even placed the napkins on our laps. Then he gave a brief explanation of all the menu items, most of which was lost on us because it was all in Japanese. I doubt any of them speak English, but that didn’t surprise me, because I doubt Westerners know about this place. It made the experience even more unique and exciting; I’m fairly sure none of my friends at home, even though a fair number of them have been to Tokyo, have ever done the same thing.
It turns out that, unlike a maid café, where it’s perfectly acceptable just to get something to drink, they expect you to order a full meal. They don’t even sell drinks separately. The tea is included in your meal. The menu was rather expensive—I didn’t see any meals under ¥2500. Shaunte and I both ended up ordering afternoon tea sets, because those included a mix of different sandwiches, scones, and desserts and seemed like a lot of fun.
While we waited for our food, we checked out the butlers and observed what was happening around us, occasionally bursting into giggles. It was hard not to giggle in this environment. The guys were just so cute yet so formal, and the entire thing just felt like something straight out of a manga. Almost like Antique Bakery come to life. It’s also funny because they seem very determined to imitate European styles and manners, but the experience was still completely Japanese. I am fully convinced that you couldn’t experience this anywhere but in Japan.
When our butler brought out our tea sets, which came in a rack that could stack three plates one above the other, we couldn’t just take the plate we wanted—we had to indicate to him which one we wanted, and he would take it and set it in front of us. He also poured the tea for us. Before he walked away, he gave us a little golden bell that we were told to ring if we needed anything. Shaunte was tempted to a couple of times, just to try it, but I was more hesitant, not wanting to make him feel like he was doing something wrong by not waiting on us carefully enough.
Because we were sitting at a 4-person table, our butler had placed our bags on the other 2 chairs, but at some of the other tables, where all the seats were filled, the girls’ purses were placed in baskets on the floor. If a girl wanted her purse, she couldn’t just take it herself—she had to let her butler know, and he would get it for her. Neither Shaunte nor I needed the restroom, but the girls who did had to ask their butler to lead them there, and the butlers would discreetly ask whether the girls needed their purses before leading the way. Again, the butler, instead of the girl, would carry the bag.
The nice thing was that although they clearly have long list of reservations, nothing about it was rushed. Every reservation is entitled to an hour and twenty minutes, unless you choose to leave earlier. It turned out to be plenty of time to eat, drink our tea, watch the scenes around us, and just enjoy the experience. I don’t normally enjoy being waited on—it makes me extremely uncomfortable—but I had tons and tons of fun. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures at all. This was not a big surprise because it is the case at many maid cafés as well, but it’s still a pity. I do realize that lots of flashing cameras might distract from the elegant ambience a little, though.
After we finally left and were back out on the street, Shaunte and I could not stop laughing. It had all just been so bizarre but fun. We both agreed that despite how expensive it was, it was worth every penny we paid. We had to hurry to get to school, though. It was a long walk to Ikebukuro station, so it was 1:15pm by the time we got to Shinjuku. I had to leave Shaunte behind and power-walk because my building is further than hers. It was difficult, because it was extremely hot and humid, but I made it on time.
The only notable thing that happened in class was that we got our compositions from last week back. I’d gotten a 98/100. It was apparently one of the best in the class; Takahashi-sensei said that she wanted to read it to the class, but there wasn’t time. It made me happy, though, because there are days when I feel like I suck at everything, so it’s nice to be the best at something again. And it’s nice to find that regardless of which language I’m using, I can always write well.
I had to stay after again to practice my speech. I was there until almost 6:30pm this time. I ended up being so hungry that I couldn’t wait to go home and eat, and ended up grabbing a bite at the first fast-food place I could find. Then, since Shaunte had texted me that she and Cat were going out for the night and I didn’t have much homework, I headed to Shibuya to look for the souvenir shop with the purple yukata. Mom says she wants the blue one, so I can get the purple one. Unfortunately, the store was already closed when I got there. Most stores here are open until 8pm, sometimes 9pm, but for some reason, this one closes at 7pm. Kiddy Land was open, though, so for lack of anything better to do and not wanting to have completely wasted a subway ticket, I ended up walking around there for a while before heading back.
Friday, July 25th
Nothing much to say about today. As usual, I’m at school early to use the lab. I also have Newspaper Club after this. I’m going to ask Takahashi-sensei if she’ll let me write an article about the butler café. It is probably the most fun experience I’ve had in Tokyo, so I really want to share it with others and encourage them to go.
As for the weekend, I have no idea what my plans are. Evan said that hiking is probably not happening, so maybe this weekend I can head to Odaiba. I also really want to go to a couple of museums before I leave here, so maybe I’ll do that. And I still haven’t been to Harajuku on a Sunday, because it always either rained or we were passed out from partying all night the night before. Hopefully I can go this week. That should be fun.
My apologies in advance for the lengthiness of this post. I had briefly debated posting before class last Friday, but not too much had happened between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning, so it didn’t seem worth the effort. But then the weekend turned out a little crazy, and suddenly this post is ridiculously long. Not much I can do about it now, though.
Tuesday, July 15th
After I posted my last entry from the computer lab, I studied for the kanji test and then went to class as usual. The kanji test was easier than I’d expected. Also, our Tuesday teacher, Saitou-sensei, turned out to be a very fun teacher as well. This was the first time I’d had her, but it seems that some of the Koreans have had her as a teacher before. Something about her attitude and the way she conducted the class seemed to get everyone to loosen up a little, and people began to talk to each other more. It’s like the class bonded a little. It was a good feeling.
I left straight for the subway station after class with Sean and Shaunte and the rest of the people going to see Wicked. I had thought that the show was fairly close by, but it wasn’t. It was in Shiodome, which is pretty close to the bay. We had to transfer trains three times to get there. The show started at 6:30pm, and we got there around 6. I was about to die of hunger, so I ran over to McDonalds to grab a bite to eat before the show. I tried the shrimp burger, and it was delicious. Much better than I had expected.
As for the show, it was all kinds of amazing. I’ve seen many musicals live, but this wasn’t one of them. I was familiar with most of the music and had a vague notion of the story, but that was about it. I was really impressed. The singers were top-class, the acting was good, and the technical production of the show was just hands-down amazing. The costumes, the make-up, the lighting, the sets… all of them were SO good. It was interesting seeing a musical in Japanese. Aside from the fact that of course there were a lot of words I didn’t know, the actors’ speech and singing was very clear, so the stuff that I did know was easy to understand. It also helped that it was all in formal Japanese, which I’m more used to hearing because that’s what you use in the classroom. I find listening to and processing informal Japanese a lot more difficult, so I was glad they used formal in the show. I managed to grasp the general gist of what was happening, and luckily Sean has seen the show 6 times (in English), so his explanation of the story helped fill in some of the gaps.
Afterwards, we tried to find out if they were selling CDs of the Japanese version of the musical, but it turns out those aren’t going on sale until next week, for some reason. Sean said he’ll probably go back just to buy the CD because he really wants one.
We got back on the subway and headed home. Luckily, this time, Shaunte and I only had to change trains twice. Still, we got back very close to curfew. We pulled into our stop at 10:40pm, and then we still had to walk from the station to the dorm. It made me a little jittery. Yeah, if we showed up 5-10 minutes late, I’m fairly sure the dorm mother would still let us in, but I don’t want to test that theory and find out that I’m wrong.
Wednesday, July 16th
Today, starting at 11:30am, they were selling yukatas (summer kimonos, made of thinner and cheaper fabric) at school for cheaper than you’ll find them pretty much anywhere else—¥4000 for women and ¥6000 for men. That price includes the obi, obi ties, wooden geta sandals, and a purse for women, so it’s a very, very good deal. I figured I should take advantage of it, so I got there right at 11:30 to make sure I got first choice. The good news was that unlike many stores, which carry only one size, they also had longer yukatas for taller women. The bad news was that tall women only had 4 different designs to choose from, while they had many, many designs and colors for the regular size yukatas. I’d really been hoping for a green or purple one, but I could only choose from red, pink, dark blue, and black. I ended up going with the dark blue one because I figured it was the one that would look best on me. I was a little bummed out about not being able to get the kind of design and color I’d been wanting, but I did realize that it’s great to actually find a yukata long enough for me. I don’t know how to wear it yet (because I don’t know how to tie the obi), but there’s a special session for that next Wednesday before school which I plan to attend.
Other than that, there’s not too much to say about today. Having Fujimura for class was fun, as usual. There was a funny moment when Evan complimented his new shoes and he did a slightly girlish pose for the class to show them off. He also admitted to always being very nervous before class starts. I’m guessing he hasn’t been teaching for all that long. He is only 25, after all. I think it’s adorable, though.
After class, I walked back to the main building to go home with Shaunte and Cat like I always do, but they weren’t there. When I asked Lane, he said they’d already taken off. He said they were planning to go to some indie concert with him later that night, and he invited me to come as well. However, I hate both indie rock and Japanese bands, so the combination of the two was entirely unappealing to me. I stopped by Tokyu Hands to buy more flashcards and then headed straight home. It’s been a disappointingly boring night because I don’t really have anything to do but homework and studying.
Thursday, July 17th
I had no reason to be at school early today, so I wasn’t planning to leave until around noon, but Cat and Shaunte came to get me around 11:30am. Lucky that they did, because it turned out that the subway line we usually take to school had broken down. We had to take the Yurakucho line to Ikebukuro and then transfer to the Fukutoshin (the line we usually take), which was running fine between Ikebukuro and Shibuya. It didn’t end up costing us that much extra time, but we ended up picking up chien mei shou, which are little forms to turn into your boss/teacher that legitimize the delay and say how late you’re allowed to be. In our case, we could’ve been 60 minutes late, according to the forms. It seems it was no minor problem.
We had Takahashi for class again. We did the usual kanji and grammar and such, and then we had to write another in-class composition. This time she assigned us the topic (something about our childhood, a memory or something like that) so I found it a little bit easier to do, I guess because I’m more used to working within constraints and restrictions.
After class, Evan and I were invited by several of the Koreans to a nomikai, which is basically Japanese for “to meet for drinks”. At first, they wanted us to meet them in Shibuya at 7pm, but when Evan and I explained that we’d like to have dinner first and that there wasn’t enough time for us to go back home, eat, and then make it to Shibuya by 7, we decided to all go to dinner as a group.
Evan said that he really wanted to eat some good Korean food, so Sang Mook (who was the main organizer of the entire shindig) took us to a Korean barbeque place in Shibuya. He also did all the ordering for us. I’ve gotten used to not knowing what I’m eating and being fine with that, but when the waiters brought out plates of decidedly-not-meat-looking red spirally things and said it was pork, Evan couldn’t resist the urge to ask Un Young what part of the pig it was. When she rubbed her belly and I realized we were looking at pig intestines, I got a little queasy. When they later followed up the pork with a plate of chicken, I told Evan, “Please don’t ask them what part of the chicken this is.”
The food was really good though, aside from the pig intestines, which weren’t really disgusting, but they didn’t really have much flavor and were very chewy. Putting sauce on it helped a little, but the chewiness just wasn’t my thing, so I didn’t end up eating a lot of them. The chicken and beef were delicious, however. Truly some of the best meat I’ve had.
After dinner, we headed to a bar Evan likes to call “his” bar because it’s where he likes to take people anytime they’re going for a drink. It’s a kind of hole-in-the-wall place whose main attraction is the fact that during happy hour (6-9pm every day), all drinks are ¥500. Beer, cocktails, shots… everything is ¥500. That also includes these half-liter glasses of real Paulaner (German) beer. Evan highly recommended the latter, so for the first round, everybody got one of those.
Both at dinner and at the bar, I spent a lot of time talking to the Koreans, especially Ji Young, who sits next to me in class and seems to find me very interesting. It was good practice because they speak very little English, so we have to speak Japanese to communicate. Also, unlike with the Japanese girls at the dorm, we use mostly formal Japanese, which, again, I tend to find much easier to understand. When they brought us the Paulaner at the bar, I also discovered that Un Young studied German in high school and has been to Munich (where I lived in Germany) and the Netherlands before. It’s moments like this—when you find yourself sharing broken German with a Korean in the middle of Tokyo—that you fully realize that you can never predict where life will take you.
We also spent quite a bit of time playing the “game” of guess-each-other’s-ages. This can be tricky when you’re dealing with Asians, but I guess I’ve learned to notice the little clues. I managed to correctly guess that Mi Hee is 22 and Un Young and He Jin are both 24. I guessed that Ji Young is 35, and it turns out she’s 38, so I was close. I already knew that Sang Mook is 30. The only one I was totally off on was Hee Jeon. I guessed that she was 25 and it turns out she’s actually 30 as well. Most of them knew I’m 20, but Ji Young said that when she first met me, she’d thought I’m about 32. Seriously?! Do I look that old?! It’s a bit disconcerting.
I left the bar a little before everyone else did because I still had curfew to worry about. I headed for the subway station as quickly as possible. When I got to my track, I had a choice between a local train that was about to depart and an express train. I figured that the express train would be the best choice because it would allow me to skip 7 stops. However, I didn’t realize that the express train was going to sit in Shibuya station for another 15 minutes before departing. When we didn’t roll into Ikebukuro until 10:45pm, I got really jittery. We made it to my stop at 10:48, after which I jogged back to the dorm. I made it in the door at 10:55. Close, but safe.
Friday, July 18th
I went to school early today to join the school newspaper club. The school offers a few co-curricular classes having to do with various aspects of Japanese culture. Many of them sound interesting, but I can’t join most of the classes I wanted to because they’re for Level 3 students and above. I ended up deciding to go to the newspaper co-curricular “class” because Takahashi-sensei and Fujimura-sensei are the two teachers who run it, and Takahashi-sensei encouraged me to join because they need a design person.
We didn’t do a whole lot today. Co-curricular classes are always from 12:30-1:15pm, and in 45 minutes you can’t really get that much done. We mostly did introductions, where we said what we were interested in doing. The newspaper articles consist mostly of reports about school events and interviews with the teachers. However, they also encourage us to go beyond the school and write articles about things we see, do, or eat. Towards the end, they split us up into groups of 3, and every group is supposed to come up with some event to go to together and write an article about. I was put in a group with two Korean students I hadn’t met before. The girl and I really want to go to an omatsuri (a traditional festival) but the boy complained that they’re usually far and that there’s too many people. We didn’t manage to decide on something, but that turned out to be okay. Most of the groups couldn’t decide, so we’re supposed to research things we want to do and then get back with the same group next Friday and decide.
After that, I had my regular Friday class with our horrible Friday teacher. Everyone hates Imi-sensei, and yesterday at the nomikai it had been suggested a couple of times that we all call in sick today, but everyone still showed up to class.
Only one notable thing happened. During the 15-minute break at 3pm, I was called down to meet with Takahashi-sensei. It turns out that one of the Chinese boys and I were chosen to represent our class in the school speech contest on July 31st. We’d had to read the speeches that we wrote in class last Thursday to the class on Monday and Tuesday, and everybody had rated each other’s speeches. I’m fairly sure that that was mostly bullshit, though, and that the teachers decided on their own who they wanted to have represent our class. Takahashi-sensei explained quite bluntly that one of the reasons the Chinese kid and I were chosen was because we’re not Korean. It’s true that the Korean students’ speeches earlier this week were boring and all sounded the same. Takahashi-sensei told me, “You’re from the Netherlands. Most of us have never met a Dutch person before. You should give a speech about that. I’m sure everyone would love to know more about the Netherlands.” The same thing had happened to Yana (who is from Bulgaria) earlier this week, which was why I wasn’t really all that surprised that I was chosen. I had kind of been expecting it. That doesn’t mean I actually want to do it, though. Public speaking is one of my worst nightmares. I can’t even give speeches in English, let alone in a language I still only barely have a grasp of. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a way to say no. I thought about arguing that every other class has only one representative, so she should just have the Chinese kid represent our class by himself, but on the other hand, I honestly think that he’s one of the dumbest kids in our class, and I’d feel guilty and angry if he represented us alone. That doesn’t mean that I’m happy to give this speech, though. Aside from my stage fright, the fact that I have to memorize it and can’t use note cards at all is going to be a problem. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
After class, I went back to the main building to look for Shaunte and Cat, but just like on Wednesday, they’d taken off without waiting for me or saying a word at all. It honestly kind of upset me. At least when I went to the nomikai yesterday, I had Sean give them the message since he passes by the main building on the way to the train station. Is it weird that I expect my friends to tell me when they’re not going to stick around and go home with me like usual? Am I expecting too much? Sometimes I just don’t know anymore.
I ended up walking to the station with Evan, Tyler, Robyn, Brad & co. Robyn, Brad, and Miguel wanted to go bar-hopping in Shibuya and invited me along, but my top priority was to go home and take a shower. Since I didn’t get back until 10:55pm last night and we can only shower before 11, I hadn’t gotten to shower at all, and since it’s been an average of 34°C and humid every day this week, I felt positively disgusting. So, instead, I got on the subway with Evan, who rides the same line as I do, only his stop is further. We talked about various things. He says he might go hiking next weekend with the Koreans, and he invited me to join them. That would be really exciting. I love hiking.
Once home, I had a pretty lamesauce night of reading, making kanji flashcards, playing PSP, and feeling bored. Shaunte and Cat were there when I walked into the dining room for dinner, but they left shortly after we all took showers. I guess they’re out for the whole night again.
Saturday, July 19th & Sunday, July 20th
I woke up in time for breakfast and then went back to bed for a little while. When I got up again around 9am, Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back. Rather than sitting around and waiting for them and feeling lamesauce again, I figured I should go do something by myself. I ended up going to Shibuya, to walk around a little and take a few pictures. There weren’t really that many people around, which is pretty unusual for Shibuya. But then, stores in Japan often tend to open later than we’re used to in the West. It seems that many of the stores there don’t open until 11am or noon, and I was there at 10:30. When it opened at 12pm, I headed into the Mandarake there again. Since I didn’t have to worry about making Shaunte and Cat wait on me again, I took my time to explore the store, to try to find the things some of my friends back home want me to bring back for them. I didn’t really have any luck, but I do feel like I understand the set-up and layout of the store better.
I was back at the dorm by 2:30pm. Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back. I was surprised, because Evan was having a shindig at his house at 6pm and I’d told them yesterday they were invited. In order to get there by 6, we needed to leave here by 5:30pm at the very latest. I’d told them that. And yet the hours passed and they still didn’t return. I’m not upset that I wasn’t invited. We don’t have to do everything together, and I knew they were meeting up with a college friend. But I’m still a little bit upset that they didn’t really mention much about it to me—what they were doing, how long they’d be out… I was honestly kind of worried that something had happened to them, but I had no way of contacting them.
I ended up running into them just as I was walking to the station at 5:20pm. They said they still planned to go to Evan’s shindig, but they wanted to go and shower and change first. So, I ended up heading for Evan’s place by myself. He was going to be waiting at his station at 6pm, but he said that he wasn’t sticking around for too long to wait for people. I didn’t remember the way to his house and I didn’t have his cell phone number, so I didn’t want to risk being late and getting to the station and not finding him there.
I’d timed it perfectly, though, and made it to his stop at 5:57pm, a couple of minutes before he got there himself. Unfortunately, my timeliness ended up being rather unnecessary. Part of the reason Evan had had this shindig at his house was because he wanted the Koreans from our class to come so he could cook for them. 4 of the girls had promised to come. However, he hadn’t thought to get any of their cell phone numbers, so when they didn’t show up around 6pm, we waited. And waited. And waited. At 7, he finally decided to call Sang Mook, who then called the girls and told them to call Evan. They said they were on their way. They had thought that Evan had said 7 instead of 6. Still, by the time they showed up, it was almost 8. We had waited at the station for 2 hours. It was a little frustrating, because I hadn’t eaten lunch and was starving. It also just generally always pisses me off when people don’t have the decency to show up to someone’s place on time, without letting the other person know they’ll be late.
Evan had made us Mexican haystacks, which are basically taco fillings on top of steamed rice. Delicious. Since there were considerably fewer people than he’d been expecting, Evan invited some of his old high school friends. (He went to an international high school here, and it seems that many of his former classmates are here for the summer. They all seem to still live in the same neighborhood, too.) I felt vaguely awkward, between Evan’s old friends and the Koreans who were there because they love Evan. I was a little reliever when Cat and Shaunte showed up around 9:30~10pm, and Tyler showed up a little afterwards. Brad and Miguel had planned to come but ended up not being able to make it after all. No one knew what had happened to Kevin. We’d all thought he was coming, but he doesn’t have a phone, so we couldn’t call him.
Around 11:30pm, we headed to Shibuya to go clubbing. The Korean girls really wanted to go dancing with Evan, and the rest of us were up for it as well. Evan’s high school friends didn’t go, so it was me, Evan, Shaunte, Cat, Tyler, and the Korean girls: Gyeon Mi, He Jin, Hee Jeon, and Mi Hee. Hee Jeon had suggested that we go to Club Atom, which is the club we’d tried to go to for my birthday last weekend, where they have different music in different floors, including a techno floor. The techno floor was half the reason why I agreed to go. I love dancing in general, and yes, I can dance to hip hop, but I’m just sick of hip hop clubs and grinding and the overall sleaziness of it all. Besides, if I wanted to go to a hip hop club, I’d just go in the U.S. To me, the whole appeal of clubbing in Tokyo is the fact that they actually have big clubs that don’t just play hip hop. You won’t find those in Houston or Pittsburgh.
I didn’t remember how to find my way to or around the club district of Shibuya, but Cat said she knew where Club Atom was, so she led us there. When we got there, there wasn’t a sign that said “Club Atom” anywhere, so I was a bit alarmed, but Cat seemed sure this was the place. Hee Jeon had told us that cover would be ¥1000 if we got there before midnight but ¥2000 after. Since it was around 12:30pm, we all expected to pay ¥2000, which was what they charged us, so the price seemed right. However, when we went inside, we were met with blaring loud hip hop music, when the hip hop floor at Club Atom is supposed to be the top floor. We started looking for the stairs, but found none. Evan asked a guy at the bar how to get to the other floors. He laughed at us and said that this was all there was. I realized then that I had been right to be alarmed earlier—we were at the wrong club, and all they had here was hip hop.
I was angry, frustrated, and upset. I had had my heart so set on dancing to techno tonight that I had a hard time accepting that I would have to put up with hip hop. The worst part was that there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I left and tried to find Club Atom, I didn’t have the money to pay for cover again, and clubs are not the kind of place where you can ask for a refund. I was pissed off that I’d paid the equivalent of $20 for a place that I didn’t want to be at, especially when I can get into most hip hop clubs in the States for free. But I was stuck. It was after 12:30am, so the subway was no longer running, and even if I’d managed to find the money to pay for a cab (which could’ve easily cost me $100), I’d still be locked out of the dorm until 6am. It was the first time since I got here that I was genuinely unhappy to be here and wished myself away—and it didn’t really have anything to do with Tokyo itself, but it was the frustration of the trains not running and the fucking ridiculous curfew rules of my dorm, which was quickly followed by a wave of homesickness. The prospect of having to spend 5 whole hours at a place I vehemently didn’t want to be at just killed me. I love Tokyo otherwise, but at least this sort of shitty situation would never happen to me in the States.
The other reason I got really upset was because it was soon clear that although this hadn’t been anyone’s first choice club, ultimately, all the others were still fine with this. Even if we’d gone to Club Atom, chances were, most of them would’ve ended up spending most of their time on the hip hop floor, so they didn’t have much trouble accepting this other environment. When it sank in that I was the only one feeling miserable, I felt lonelier than I’ve felt since I got here. I also admit to being genuinely pissed at Cat for leading us to the wrong place, much moreso than she deserved. Yeah, it was stupid to lead us into a club without paying attention to the signs, but everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, I still had enough alcohol in my system at that point (I’d had 5 or 6 beers at Evan’s place earlier) that the rage built up quickly and made me feel like she had lied to us, especially when I noticed that she was just fine with this club, too. There were also small seeds of jealousy, because she and Shaunte have been to The Womb, an all-techno club, twice. When I’m the one whose musical passion in life is electronica, why was I the only one who hadn’t been to a techno club?!
When I realized that my emotions were quickly spinning out of control, I ran outside for a breather. They had a locker area with a bench near the entrance where I ended up sitting for probably a good half hour trying to gain control of myself again. I did my best to shake the vague sense of homesickness but ended up crying a little bit. When I finally felt like the wave of emotions had mostly passed, I went to the bathroom to freshen up a bit. I told myself I’d be fine. The crying had killed my buzz, so I told myself that I just needed a drink. As long as I wasn’t sober, I could try to forget that I was someplace I didn’t want to be, dance, and make the best of it.
I went to the bar to cash in my drink voucher for a Tequila Sunrise. The cover charge had included a coupon for one free drink. Some clubs really water down their drinks, but this one was pretty well-made, and I could feel the alcohol start to take effect almost right away. I went and found my friends, who were dancing in a circle near the side. I sat down to finish my drink, just observing the club and watching people dance.
To be fair, it wasn’t a terrible club. It was a definite improvement over Gas Panic. They actually had space for a dance floor as well as a stage and a visible DJ booth where you could make requests. More of the people, guys included, seemed to be here to dance/party and not just to hook up. On the bad side, the fact that they had a stage meant that they had go-go dancers, in stripper outfits, doing sleazy things like pretending to whip each other and whatnot. It was one of the most tasteless things I’ve seen. The music also wasn’t spectacular. They played quite a few older hip hop songs that kind of stopped being cool a couple of years ago.
At any rate, point being, I was just watching people dance in front of me, not really consciously thinking too hard about anything in particular, when all of a sudden, I started crying again. It didn’t take long for one of the Korean girls to notice and to bring it to everyone else’s attention, and before I knew it, I was causing a scene. This was not at all my intention, but for some reason, I just could not stop crying. I’m aware that alcohol sometimes has that effect, but it had never happened to me before personally, so it was a pretty bizarre experience.
A short while after I finished my drink, I managed to calm down. I tried to dance a bit with the others and make sure that I wasn’t spoiling anyone’s night. I honestly didn’t mean to be a brat, but I guess a lot of frustrations were coming to the surface—not just from the club and not being able to go home, but from this entire past week… being forced into the speech contest, getting ditched/left behind by Cat and Shaunte several times, somehow never being able to hold onto money for very long here despite my best efforts to budget all my expenditures carefully, and just generally enjoying myself less than I have been. I don’t know. I’ve just been less happy than I usually am.
Sometime later, I had another drink, this time without the negative side effects. I got into the dancing a little more. Ironically, while I was starting to feel better and better, it seemed as though the others were enjoying themselves less and less. There was something weird about this club. People just weren’t really mingling very much. They were dancing in their own little groups or just standing by the side watching and drinking. The guys seemed to be more into the go-go dancers than anyone else. Many of the girls looked bored, but when Tyler (who was making quite an effort to pick up Japanese girls) offered to buy them drinks (which often girls will accept, because hey, it’s a free drink), none of them wanted anything. It was weird. It was like the party never really got started.
Around 3am, Evan suggested that we all go to karaoke for an hour. Everyone agreed that we were much more likely to have a good time there, so we all left the club. Many karaoke places charge extra between 2 and 5am, but Evan knew of a place that’s ¥1000 an hour regardless of the time of day, drinks included, so we went there. It was actually a pretty cool place. They had a good selection of English, Japanese, and Korean songs, so everyone was happy. I tried singing a couple of Japanese songs. It didn’t work as well in practice as it did in my head, but then, I was perhaps a little less sober than is optimal for karaoke. Evan and I also sang Incubus’ “Drive” together, which is probably one of my all-time favorite karaoke songs.
By the time we left the karaoke place, it was around 4:30am. There was brief talk of going to Gas Panic, since there was no cover, but everyone was getting tired. The Korean girls ended up going home together because one of them has an apartment nearby. The rest of us went to First Kitchen, a McDonald’s-esque place whose main appeal was that they were serving breakfast burgers (though they charged a whopping 15% extra between 2 and 5am—pretty scandalous, but no one was in the mood to argue). We all got food and sat down and talked.
I remembered from the first time we’d gone clubbing that the first Fukutoshin leaves Shibuya at exactly 5:20am, so around 5, we headed for the station. We timed it really well, because by the time everyone had used the restrooms there and walked down to the track, the first train rolled in. It was a local train, so it was a 20~25-minute ride to our stop (an express does it in 15 minutes) during which I almost fell asleep a couple of times. The walk from the station to the dorm was tough, too. Luckily, our dorm mother’s mother-in-law happened to be outside taking a stroll when we got there, so she let us into the building. Once in my room, I barely had the energy to change into my pajamas before collapsing in bed.
I didn’t bother setting an alarm clock because normally I can’t sleep for very long after drinking alcohol. 4, 5 hours at most and I’m wide awake. To my surprise, I slept until 2pm. Cat sleeps for a long time, while Shaunte is the same as me, so the first thing I did was check whether Shaunte was up yet. She didn’t seem to be, though. I ate lunch, washed my face, and then went back to my room to play PSP for a while, expecting Shaunte to come knocking on my door when she was up like she usually does.
Before I knew it, it was around 6pm or so, and Shaunte had never come knocking. I went out into the hall and noticed that Cat’s slippers were no longer outside her door. When I went downstairs to check the name sign board, I saw that not only were Shaunte and Cat gone, but they had put up the forms that we have to fill out when we want to stay out all night.
So once again, they had left me without saying a word about where they were going, my one pet peeve. I don’t care if you don’t want me along, but at least freaking tell me that you’re leaving so that I know I should make my own plans or something. Not that I have that many options, given that I have no phone and no one else’s numbers… I once again wondered if it was a mistake not to get a cell phone. I hadn’t thought it would matter because the first couple of weeks, it seemed like Shaunte and Cat and I were going to do most things together. But if they’re going to continue leaving me behind, I’m going to need a phone so I can try to make some of my own plans with other people. Is it still worth it, though? We’re now down to less than four weeks.
At any rate, given that it was already after 6pm, it wasn’t really worth it to go out anymore. I was pissed, because it’s a three-day weekend, so the last thing I wanted was to be hanging around the dorm feeling lamesauce again. What else was there to do, though?
It seems that some of the emotions of last night carried over into today. I feel moody, lonely, and a tad bit homesick. I still don’t want to leave Tokyo, but I miss people. I miss the people I know care about me. I miss knowing who I can turn to when I’ve had a bad day and need to talk to someone about it—and, hell, having the means to talk to them. This isolation is driving me nuts. I half debated walking to a pay phone and trying to call somebody, but it’s so expensive, you can barely have a conversation. Maybe I should get a cell phone, so I can at least e-mail people.
This is not turning out to be a very good weekend.
Monday, July 21st
As I mentioned, it’s a three-day weekend. July 20th is called 「海の日」 (Ocean Day) and is, for some reason, considered a national holiday. Since the 20th was a Sunday, everyone gets the following Monday (i.e. today) off. No class, and most people have off work.
I woke up at 7:30am, only to discover that holidays are apparently like Sundays, and the dorm mother doesn’t cook for us. This was slightly inconvenient because I was starving, and the suupaa doesn’t open until 9am. The Japanese really aren’t morning people, I guess. Everything opens so late.
Today was also the last day of the International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival—the one we’d tried to see a movie at two Fridays ago, but it was sold out. Shaunte had asked me to go see one of the movies with her before it ended, so I’d flipped through the booklet and decided that the showing I was most interested in was a selection of 6 different Asian short films about homosexuality that were being screened at 11:30am in a theater in Aoyama (near Shibuya). Given the fact that I wanted to make sure I had enough time to find the cinema and that I still needed to buy tickets, that meant leaving the dorm between 9:30 and 10am. I had put a note outside Shaunte’s door to that effect last night. Cat’s slippers were already outside her door at 7:30, so I guessed they had gotten back around 6am. Still, I knew that the chances of Shaunte being energetic enough to go with me, after three nights of staying out all night, were slim, but I had still wanted to give her the option. I waited until 9:50am and then headed out on my own. Being alone has never stopped me from doing anything, it just sucks when you’ve gotten used to having company.
The theater turned out to be really easy to find because it was right on Aoyama-dori near the Omotesando intersection, so I’d been to the area before. There was already a long line when I got there, but I didn’t have any trouble buying tickets at the door. A couple of months ago, mom and I had talked about the sharp rise in the price of movie tickets in the U.S. since we’d first moved there. We complained about having to pay $8, $9 for a regular evening ticket these days. Well, I’m never going to complain about the price of movie tickets in the U.S. again. Movie tickets in Japan cost an average of ¥1500. I was there for the first showing of the day, and I still paid ¥1550.
I ran into Brad and Miguel in the lobby, although that was not a huge surprise. I’d known that they wanted to catch several of the movies. I just hadn’t known they were planning to go to this particular one. We all sat together and made friends with this Australian kid called Daniel who was there by himself.
The films were very, very good. I thought it was definitely worth going, and even worth the expensive movie ticket. I had picked this showing because A) it seemed like something unusual that I probably wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to see anywhere else, and B) from the pictures and the descriptions in the booklet, the short films all seemed very artsy. They really were very artsy, and they were all very good. At least, none of them were 100% outright bad. Even if the story or the acting weren’t always superb, the cinematography usually made up for it.
There was one that I really didn’t like. It was about a guy who goes to these (implied) orgy parties and gets high and sleeps around. It was just awkward and not very compelling, even though the cinematography and music were good. It was the only one that didn’t have English subtitles or wasn’t in English, but I don’t know that understanding what was being said would’ve made me enjoy it more. Then there was one about two guys who have a one-night stand that I didn’t enjoy too much, mostly because the younger guy’s acting wasn’t 100% convincing, and the older guy’s acting was fine, but his character just gave me the creeps. The ones I did really enjoy were a very intense one about a mother slowly admitting to herself that her son is gay (though very cryptically and poetically, with some great one-liners); a cute Spanish one that was included because it was written & directed by a Singaporean, about a boy catching his parents having a threesome with his uncle and how he relives that experience when his little sister asks him what sex is; and a very poetic Taiwanese film about a boy knowing most of his life that something’s wrong with him and then, when a new guy joins his class at school, slowly beginning to realize that he might be gay. That last one was actually 38 minutes, but the others were all less than 15 minutes long. It’s amazing how much more some directors can say with a 15-minute film than others do in an entire feature-length movie.
Brad and Miguel were also going to the movie after this showing, so we parted ways. Rather than heading straight home, I decided to walk around the area for a bit. In particular, I wanted to look for a specific souvenir shop. My cousin Annemarieke was here for 6 months doing an architecture exchange program several years ago, so I’d asked her for tips on places to go, and among a host of things, she had mentioned that one of the best and cheapest souvenir shops is located on the Omotesando. Since I was there anyway, I figured I should try to look for it.
I think I managed to find the store she was talking about. It wasn’t cheap cheap. You might be able to find cheaper things at Don Quixote or a ¥100 shop. However, the stuff they sell truly looks like good quality, so given the fact that you are actually buying something genuinely nice, it’s not expensive. I didn’t end up buying anything yet, but I made a mental inventory of the place, so I can come back later. To my aggravation, among other things, they sell yukatas and kimonos—with yukatas for tall people, too. They even have them in a size taller than at school, as well. And what’s worse? They have them in the shade of purple that I’d been wanting, and their designs in general are a lot nicer than the ones I’d had to choose from last week. And the yukatas themselves are only ¥3700. It’s true that yes, the school did have a slightly better deal because the ¥4000 I paid included the obi, obi ties, geta sandals (which don’t fit me), and a purse. But had I known that for a little more, I could get the color and design I wanted, I would’ve held off. I really regretted settling for something I’d known I wasn’t 100% happy with, and I seriously debated buying the purple yukata and giving the dark blue one I’d bought to my sister. In the end, I decided not to do it… yet. I’ll go to the yukata-wearing class on Wednesday and see how the blue one looks on me, and if I decide that I don’t like it, I can always go back and buy the purple one.
After I finished browsing the store, I headed back toward the Shibuya subway station. I had almost made it to the Omotesando and Aoyama-dori intersection when an Asian girl coming the other way suddenly stopped in the middle of the pavement and pointed and gaped at me. I couldn’t really see her face because it was hidden behind a pair of big sunglasses, so confused as to why this Asian girl was pointing at me, I slowed my walk as I approached her. Only when I came closer did I recognize her: it was So Hyung, a girl who’s in my Communication Design class at CMU. We’re not really friends, but she’s the same year as me, so we’ve had most classes together since Freshman year and I guess we know each other pretty well. It was the most random encounter of my life. It was one of those things where, if I’d left the souvenir shop 5 minutes later, or if she’d been looking the other way, we’d probably never have seen each other and never been aware of the fact that we’re both in Tokyo. Turns out she’s just here traveling and being a tourist. She’s leaving in 2 days. Still, talk about really strange coincidences.
I took the subway and made it back to the dorm around 2:30pm. I did homework, took a nap for about an hour, went to the suupaa to buy food for dinner (and more green tea ice cream—yummy!), and hung out with Shaunte in her room for a while. Cat had disappeared again, this time without even telling Shaunte where she was going. Shaunte said that Cat could very well be out all night again, but she herself was tired of partying. She’s done with that for a while. We talked about both making lists of the things we still want to do in Tokyo before we leave sometime within the next few days. Touristy things. If Shaunte’s game, then maybe I don’t need a phone after all.
I also rewrote my speech for the speech contest. I was lying on my bed writing when everything shook for maybe 10, 15 seconds. Distracted by the epic sentence I was composing in my head, I simply attributed it to a large passing truck or something of that nature. It was only later, when I stopped by Shaunte’s room again for a little while and she asked, “Did you feel the earthquake?” that I put 2 and 2 together. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d never experienced an earthquake before, so I’d secretly been hoping that I’d get to while I’m here, and I was a little disappointed that it was so short and anti-climactic. I suppose I should be glad no damage was done, though.
I have a test tomorrow, so I studied a little, though less than I probably should. I just don’t feel motivated. I’m pretty exhausted from my crazy and emotional weekend. I guess I’ll just try to cram in some studying in the morning.
Tuesday, July 22nd
Today, things are pretty much back to normal. Class as usual, though I don’t know how much time the test is going to take up. They didn’t give us any hints as to what the format is going to be like, so I’m not sure what to expect.
I’m at school early to use the computer lab again. I just skimmed over this entry again before posting, and I realized it’s sure been an interesting week. Between eating pig intestines, having my first bout of homesickness, and my first earthquake, I guess a lot’s happened. Let’s hope this coming week is just as eventful.
A couple of people e-mailed me to let me know that there was something wrong with my post last time. The text was getting cut off in weird ways. I’m not sure what happened. The Internet café I went to didn’t have Word, so when I tried to copy-paste my entry from their imitation Word program, things went haywire. I was able to fix it the next day, though, by re-c&ping the post from the school computer lab. Hopefully everyone’s been able to read it just fine since then.
Wednesday, July 9th
As I mentioned in my last post, today was the first day of the official school term. After I left the computer lab, I had to go to the school office to find out my classroom. The school has grown so much over the past couple of years that they haven’t been able to find a new facility that’s big enough for all their classes yet, and as a result, they are now spread out over three buildings. Two of them belong entirely to KCP, and the third is a single floor above a Chinese restaurant near the second building that they bought. Up until now, all the group sessions had been held in the main building. We weren’t even aware of the existence of the other buildings until we walked past them on our way to the entrance ceremony on Monday. They’re less than a 5-minute walk away.
Unfortunately, we all ended up being spread out all over the place. Evan, Caslyn and I are in the same class, in the Chinese restaurant building. The rest of my former groupmates—Kevin, Tyler, Yana, Kelcy, Robyn, etc.—are in the second building, while Shaunte and Cat are in the main building. I can’t remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Shaunte and Cat were placed into Level 1.5. They had tried to test into Level 2, but apparently they didn’t make the cut. I thought it must be frustrating for them because they’ve been studying Japanese for 2 years, and now they’re being forced to do a lot of beginner stuff again, but they don’t seem to care too much.
My class seems pretty cool, even if I’m still frustrated and worried that I’m not going to learn enough. I really like our teacher, Fujimura-sensei. He’s gentle, slightly soft-spoken, and very young—according to Evan, he’s only 25. When we went around to do self-introductions and I said that I like video games, he asked me what kind of games I like, so I told him RPG games. Then, during the break, he came up to me and asked me if I’d played the DragonQuest games, because those are his favorites. You can’t go wrong with a teacher who plays video games. <3 We have him twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays. On all the other days, we have different teachers. KCP’s philosophy is that it’s good to have several different teachers so that you can get used to hearing different people’s Japanese. I can understand that, but I still miss having one teacher whom you get to know really well. I wouldn’t mind having Fujimura-sensei all the time.
As for the rest of the class, with the exception of Evan and Caslyn and I, and 3 Chinese and Malaysian students, they’re all Korean. They’re all fairly old, too. It seems that most of them are already done with college, and Koreans don’t even start college until they’re 20, so that means that many of them are 24, 25 at the youngest. Aside from that, they’re just kind of your typical Koreans. They’re very cliqueish, sticking closely together and only speaking Korean. Honestly, it’s like CMU all over again.
The actual class passed by pretty quickly. We did more housekeeping stuff than actually learning much, but we did go over enough grammar to be assigned homework and everything. After class, I went and met up with Shaunte and Cat, and we ended up going straight home, where we ate dinner, showered, and did homework.
Thursday, July 10th
We ended up coming to school early again to use the lab, which was finally open today. Today was the first time when I finally felt like I was able to get caught up on all my e-mails and such. One of the frustrations of being able to access the Internet so infrequently…
Takahashi-sensei was our teacher today. We only have her once a week, but she is considered the teacher in charge of our class. I guess that’s nice, considering Evan and I have had her off and on since the first day of group sessions, so we know her and she knows us pretty well. She is pretty strict, but she’s funny and nice. I don’t dislike her by any means, but I still wish we could have Fujimura all the time. I like him!
We did quite a lot in class today—dictation, grammar, conversation practice, and an in-class composition. The school speech contest (one of the school’s biggest traditions) is on July 31st, and apparently we were expected to write pretty much the entire speech in class today. We did quite a lot of essays and compositions at CMU, but that was almost always on your own time, when you could use a dictionary and work at your own pace. Having to come up with a composition during class, without being able to use any reference materials, and with a fixed time limit, was pretty tough. I didn’t feel all that great about my speech—but then, I suppose that might be a good thing, since I don’t want to be chosen for the speech contest.
After class, Shaunte, Cat and I went with another group of kids to Freshness Burger, a Japanese hamburger franchise. I wasn’t hungry, so I just had an iced green tea latte while the others all ate burgers. Several of them were still hungry after that, so we walked to a taco place. While we were waiting for the others to eat their tacos, Shaunte and I walked to a place called BookMart, which sells used books, CDs, DVDs, and video games for very cheap. Books, especially, were very cheap; only ¥100-¥200 for most of them. I bought one manga.
Then we finally went home, where it was dinnertime—yes, Shaunte and Cat still had dinner, even after their burgers and tacos. Ironically, today’s dinner consisted of hamburger and fries. Ha!
Friday, July 11th
Maybe I’m just being fussy because it’s Friday and I didn’t want to be in class, but today’s teacher almost drove me up the wall. Our Friday teacher, Iki-sensei, is so boring and slow that it just gets annoying after a while. We were given a seating chart today, and Evan and I spent much of the class making eye-gouging faces and such across the room at each other. What a frustratingly boring teacher.
I was also impatient because today’s the third day we’ve spent on freaking noun modification, which was like beginning-second-semester stuff, so I was hoping we’d move on to the next chapter, but apparently we still needed to beat this topic to death. *insert eye-gouging face*
When class was finally over, I met up with the rest of my former groupmates. Brad wanted to go see a movie. This weekend & next weekend, Tokyo is hosting the International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and one of the participating theaters is in Shinjuku, pretty close to our school. Tonight was the first night, and Brad wanted to go right after class to see if there were still tickets for the first movie. Unfortunately, they were already sold out. The only movie in the film festival that sounded interesting to me was playing at 8:45pm tonight (which would be a problem with curfew), and was only being shown in Korean with Japanese subtitles. Hopefully it’ll be released on DVD in the US with English subtitles or something…
Cat and Shaunte and a new kid, Pat, joined us, and we ended up going to happy hour at Shakey’s Pizza. ¥300 each for beer and cocktails is a pretty good deal. We didn’t order any actual food, so afterwards, we had dinner at the Japanese version of a food court, which consisted mostly of noodle and curry places. Shaunte, Cat, Tyler, Kelcy, Caslyn and I ate at a delicious udon place. It was cheap food but I really enjoyed it.
After that, our group split up. Shaunte and Cat returned to the dorm to get changed because they’re going clubbing again tonight. The rest of us walked around nighttime Shinjuku for a while, taking pictures and enjoying a two-person band that was giving a performance in the street. Then Tyler and Robyn went home. The rest of us—Brad, Miguel, Kelcy, Caslyn, Yana and I—ended up going to a bar called Hub, The English Pub, where we just hung out and talked for a while. Around 9:30pm, the girls headed for the subway, and I returned to the dorm on my own.
Saturday, July 12th & Sunday, July 13th
Like most weekend, I woke up around 7am, had breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning hanging out in my room by myself, since Cat and Shaunte were passed out after partying all night. Shaunte was up fairly early, though, so we ended up going to Ikebukuro, where we spent a couple of hours exploring Kinokuniya, a massive bookstore. I bought another manga and a dictionary. We were never required to have a dictionary for class at CMU, and it was never really necessary. On the few occasions when I needed one, I just used the Internet. Unfortunately, since that resource isn’t available to me here, and since the teachers love giving us homework with words we haven’t seen before, I realized I could no longer go without one. It’s a good purchase, though.
Back at the dorm again, we showered, ate dinner, and got ready to go out for my big birthday shindig, which always takes us girls a couple of hours. As most of you hopefully already know, I was turning 20 on the 13th. 20 happens to be a special age in Japan. They even have a special name for it: 「はたち」 (hatachi). It’s considered the coming-of-age as well as being the official legal drinking age. So, we planned to party it up in style. We were meeting the others in Shibuya at 9pm, which really meant that everyone was expected to be there at 9:30.
The group ended up consisting of me, Cat, Shaunte, Yana, Kelcy, Caslyn, Robyn, and Kevin. Evan met us in Shibuya but left, since he couldn’t stay out all night with us. After he left, the search began for a nomihodai place. Nomihodai is Japanese for “all-you-can-drink”, where you pay 1-2 thousand yen per hour—usually 2 hours max—during which time you can order whatever drinks you want. It’s generally a better deal than going to a bar and paying for individual drinks, especially in a part of town like Shibuya, where bars are extremely pricey. In our case, the nomihodai also ended up including some pretty good food. It’s always nice to have something to snack on while you’re drinking. At midnight, when I officially turned 20, they brought out a plate of cakes and such, courtesy of the place we were at. (I can’t really call it a bar, but I’m not sure what else to call it.)
Afterwards, the plan was to go to Club Atom, a club with different music on each floor, including a techno/trance floor, which is where I really wanted to go. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, some of us got sick, and the bouncers at the door wouldn’t let drunk people in. In the end, we ended up crashing at a love hotel. (These are hotels where, instead of paying a fixed rate for one night, you only pay for the amount of time that you spent there. They’re very common here.) A few people ended up going to Gas Panic (the club we went to last weekend that I really didn’t enjoy) while the rest of us basically just passed out in various parts of the hotel room. It’s unfortunate that the night didn’t go as planned, and that I never got to dance, but everyone did end up with interesting stories to tell. I suppose that’s something.
In the morning, we took the subway home and then passed out again as soon as we got to the dorm. I slept on and off until around 5pm. I had one of the worse hangovers I’ve ever had, characterized mainly by this vague layer of nausea that was intense enough to make doing anything uncomfortable, but not intense enough to force me to throw up, which also meant that the nausea wouldn’t go away, either. It was frustrating to spend my actual birthday debilitated in this way. When I finally managed to throw up, I felt like a whole new person. The nausea was gone and my energy returned. I showered and got ready to go out again.
Today’s party was a lot more tame. Along with the Japanese girls from our dorm, we had okonomiyaki for dinner at a small restaurant in Kaname-cho. Okonomiyaki are Japanese egg pancakes which you cook yourself on a hot plate in front of you, similar to teppanyaki. Okonomiyaki doesn’t really exist commonly in the States, though, and this was my first time being able to enjoy it. It was actually funny because when the girls had first proposed going out for dinner for my birthday, since it’s a Sunday and our meal plan doesn’t include food on Sunday, I had thought about suggesting okonomiyaki, but I had no idea if it’s expensive, so I didn’t end up saying anything. Then Mariya and Ayako actually ended up proposing it. Unfortunately, I don’t know Japanese for, “You read my mind.”
The okonomiyaki place we went to was all-you-can-eat, in the sense that you pay for a set amount of time (in our case, I think it was 1.5-2 hours), and during that time you can order as much as you like. You had to fill out these little order forms with the ingredients you wanted for your pancake, and then they’d bring it to you in a bowl, and it was up to you to cook the pancake. Mariya and Ayako ended up doing most of the cooking for the group. It worked more efficiently that way, and Shaunte and Cat and I had no clue what to do, anyway. It’s more complicated than it might seem because the egg batter is a lot more runny than flour-based pancake batter, so you actually have to first arrange the ingredients (minus the egg) in a circle and then pour the egg in the middle so it doesn’t run all over the plate.
As for the taste, it’s hard to describe. The pancakes themselves are hearty, with vegetables, meat, tofu, and/or fish, but they coat them with this syrup that tastes fairly sweet and tangy. The combination of sweet and hearty is not something I’m really used to, so I can’t say it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. I think it’s something you grow to enjoy once you’ve had it a few times and you’re kind of used to it. This time, everything was still too new, and my taste buds weren’t sure how to react. I tried as many different pancakes as I could, but I didn’t end up eating a whole lot because I was still a little afraid to upset my stomach.
After our time at the restaurant was up, we returned to the dorm, where the girls unveiled the cake they’d gotten me. Actually, I think they just bought the basic cake, and then a couple of the girls made the icing and then put cherries and other decorations on top. It was really sweet. <3 They lit up 20 candles and sang Happy Birthday (in English). I blew out all 20 candles in one go, and then we ate the cake. I guess some birthday traditions don’t change, no matter where you go.
I’d luckily had the foresight to do my homework Saturday morning, so I had a free night tonight. I went back to my room and just lay on my bed and reflected for a while. Turning 20 is a little scary. I’ve spent most of my conscious life writing a 1 in front of my age, and now there’s going to be a 2 there. I’m running out of excuses to act like a child. Soon I’ll have to go out into the real world and deal with jobs and such. They say the best years are yet to come, but I don’t know. It’s scary.
I guess I’m also feeling a little melancholy because I’m nearing the halfway mark of my stay here in Tokyo, and I’m scared that from now on, things are going to go by pretty fast. I’ve gotten very used to life here, to the extent that it’s often hard to imagine that there was any other kind of life before this, and that it will have to end at some point in the not-so-distant future. It’s already easy to forget that things weren’t always this way. Is that what it means to feel like you’re at home in a place? I don’t really know, because I’ve spent most of my life not knowing what to consider home. At any rate, I’m happy here, and I don’t want to leave.
But, I digress. Birthdays are not the time to feel blue. I think I’m going to read for a while and then hit the sack.
Monday, July 14th
Monday meant another Fujimura day. Hooray! I also enjoyed class more today because we started a new chapter. The material isn’t really new to me, but at least we’ve moved on from noun modification, and I enjoyed the examples we used. We were going over constructing sentences with 「＿＿＿とき、＿＿＿。」 and we ended up using 「お酒を飲みます。」 (“I drink liquor”) for the second part of almost all our example sentences. 「学校が休みのとき、お酒を飲みます。」 (“On school holidays, I drink liquor.”) 「雨が降っているとき、お酒を飲みます。」 (“When it’s raining, I drink liquor.”) Fujimura-sensei was like, “Wow, you guys love to drink, don’t you?” Hee hee.
Other than that, nothing too exciting happened. After class, Shaunte and I walked to Citi Bank so she could use the ATM, and then we went straight home. I need to study for a bit longer than usual tonight because I have a kanji test tomorrow. We have to know the ~25 characters we learned this past week, as well as all of the ones they cover in Level 1. You’d think that, since I already know about 300 kanji, it’d be a breeze, but our kanji textbook is retarded in the order that it has you learn the kanji. They covered some characters in Level 1 that I would never expect beginners to need to know, so there’s actually some new characters that I need to learn, too. I suppose it’s good that I’m still learning new characters, but on the other hand, I feel sorry for the students who are forced to learn how to write 「飛行機」 (airplane) before they learn how to write 「男」 (man) and 「女」 (woman).
Tuesday, July 15th
I came to school early again to use the lab. After this, I’m either going to an extra conversation practice session, or studying for the kanji test.
Today should be a little more exciting than usual, though, because after school I’m going with Shaunte, Sean, Alex, and two other people I don’t know to see the musical Wicked. Yes, it’s going to be all in Japanese, but it should be fun nonetheless, and it’ll be a good test of our understanding. It’s also one of the few musicals I haven’t seen live, although I’m familiar with the music. I’m really excited!
Saturday, July 5th~Sunday, July 6th
Shortly after my last post, which I’d made from an Internet café in Ikebukuro, Shaunte and I returned to the dorm, where Cat was finally up. We ate dinner and planned our night out. We were meeting up with Alex, Robert, and Tim at a hip hop club in Shibuya called Gas Panic. Girls being girls, we took a while to get ready. I think we left the dorm around 9:30pm. Once we got to Shibuya, though, we had to wait a good hour or so for Alex & co. to get there. Luckily the club was easy enough to find. We got there around 11:30pm.
The club was extremely small. There wasn’t even a real dance floor because all the space was taken up by the bar and a couple of separate tables with bar stools. As usual, foreigners didn’t get carded, and there wasn’t a cover charge because they expected you to be buying their expensive drinks all night. Basically, every time one of the bartenders saw you empty-handed, they would come up to you and force you to buy another drink, or else they said you had to leave. The trick was to buy a beer and hold on to the bottle long after it was empty.
The music was surprisingly good. It was mostly R&B and hip hop, with reggae and other random stuff like Daft Punk mixed in. I enjoyed it more than I usually enjoy the music at hip hop clubs back home. As a whole, though, I don’t like hip hop clubs, mainly because the guys are sleazy (and often not even all that attractive) and are just there to try to get into girls’ pants. It seemed to be even worse at this club because there wasn’t really much room to dance, so the majority of the people there weren’t actually dancing at all. It frustrated me because if I go to a club, I go there to dance. Not to hook up, and not to make conversation, either. It’s not like you can actually hear anything anybody says in there because the music is so loud.
Still, because of our curfew, once we stayed out past 11pm, we had to stay out until at least 6am, and dancing for that long is beyond my ability, so I still ended up having to spend a fair amount of time making conversation. I got to practice my Japanese but only a little, because almost everyone in the club spoke English. (It was a very multiracial club—Africans/African Americans, Westerners, and Asians.) The only halfway decent guy in the entire place was a Spanish exchange student at Sophia University. He was amiable and funny and a good dancer, but I only got to hang out with him for a little while before he said he should go back to his friends. The other guys just seemed to grow sleazier as the night wore on. We ended up escaping the club earlier than we’d planned—around 4:45am—because things were getting too crazy in there.
Because the sun rises so early here, it was bright as day when we came outside. We ended up having to wait until 5:20am to catch the first subway back. (The trains and subways here don’t run between ~1am and 5:30am.) Then we had to camp out in front of the dorm for about a half hour waiting for Utsugi-san to open it back up. Cat said she’d had a blast and Shaunte seemed to have enjoyed herself a lot as well, but I’m not sure if I would’ve called this night fun. If I do go clubbing again, I’d much rather go to a techno club, where you can be as crazy as you want to be and not every guy is trying to get into your pants. Once we were allowed back inside, everyone went straight to bed.
I woke up around 11am but spent most of the day lounging around my room. Shaunte came and hung out for a while. We went to OK!, the big supermarket that’s right by our dorm. I bought myself some snacks and spent a good amount of time investigating prices, since my mom is curious whether everything really is so much more expensive here.
The answer is yes and no. Overall, things are expensive, and sizes/portions/quantities are smaller than in America. In many ways, it’s comparable to Europe. I think it’d be possible to survive even on a slightly meager budget, though, if you know where/how to find good bargains, budget your spending carefully, and maybe change your diet a little. I already mentioned how nearly all fruits are expensive here. So, if I were to live here, I’d probably end up having to eat less fruit and more vegetables. Meat is expensive but fish is quite cheap, so I’d probably end up eating more fish than meat (which I don’t really have a problem with anyway, since I’m not a big meat-eater anymore).
As another example, a typical breakfast for me at home is bread with some sort of condiment like jam, peanut butter, or Nutella. Bread, to my surprise, isn’t all that expensive (it doesn’t seem to be all that popular here, so I had thought it might be pricey), but condiments are. They were charging ¥330 for a small thing of peanut butter or Nutella (about half the size of the regular size of these in the States). So, if I were to live here, I would maybe only do bread and condiments on weekends, and just do breakfast bentos on weekdays.
Aside from that, the general rule seems to be that American/Western brands are extremely expensive. I needed to buy laundry detergent, and I discovered an incredible gap in prices between the American brands (eg. Downy), which cost about ¥980 for the smallest-size bottle, and the Japanese brands, which cost about ¥230 for the smallest-size bottle. Tea, too, was cheap overall, except for Western brands like Pickwick, so no Earl Grey tea for me. Snacks and candy are slightly expensive overall in the sense that you don’t get a lot (size-wise) for what you pay, but again, it’s more affordable to buy domestic brands. They had a lot of different kinds of Kit Kat with coatings and flavors, including a green tea kind that looked extremely tasty, but for ¥320 for a small box, it wasn’t worth it to me.
After our trip to the suupaa, we went back to the dorm and chilled some more. No one had the energy to do anything after our long night out. I think we all ended up crashing pretty early.
Monday, July 7th
It’s Tanabata in Japan today, which is essentially a cultural holiday, though not generally an official one. They have a lot of omatsuri (festivals) in the very suburbs and smaller towns, though nothing special seems to be going on in the city. The main Tanabata tradition is that you write a wish in a small strip of paper and tie it to a stick of bamboo. They told us that we’ll get to do so in class on Wednesday. I’m actually glad for the delay because I don’t know what to wish for yet.
We didn’t have any sort of class today, but we did have to come to school for an official entrance ceremony. The group sessions we had up until now were to prepare us for the official school term, which starts on Wednesday. Today, we walked to a big building and were ushered into a large auditorium for a welcoming ceremony both for us and for the Asian students who have been arriving in the past week and who will be starting school with us on Wednesday.
It was a very long ceremony because everything that was first said in Japanese was then translated into Korean, Chinese, and English, making everything last 3 times as long as it needed to. The only interesting/cool part of the ceremony was that they had some former students come up and give speeches demonstrating how much they learned in one term. It was pretty impressive.
Afterwards, we were free to go for the day. Cat, Shaunte, Lane and I decided to go to Ikebukuro for some shopping because Cat wanted to buy sandals. We ended up walking around the street-side shops and most of the Sunshine City mall as well. Most of the stores in Sunshine City were having massive sales. I ended up buying a colorful shirt on sale at a massive girls’ fashion store called Alta. Clothing is fairly expensive, but bargain hunting is definitely possible. The shirts on sale that I looked at were ¥500-¥1000 each, and the shoes that Cat bought cost her ¥1050, which is comparable to what I pay for such things back in the States.
We had lunch at McDonald’s, which is more expensive than in the States but also tastes better. It’s hard to explain, but McDonald’s here is actually good, and eating there isn’t something that’s looked down on in the way it kind of is looked down on back home. They also have a lot of burgers that don’t exist in the States. This wasn’t my first time encountering such a thing, because in the Netherlands they have/had the McKroket and McRib, but it was still interesting. The most notable difference is the existence of the MegaMac, which is basically a BigMac with 4 hamburger patties instead of 2. Since it’s only ¥50 more for a MegaMac and since I figured that that’s something I needed to experience while I’m here, that’s what I got. It was pretty good, although they didn’t put enough sauce on it to match the amount of meat you get. If I do go to McDonald’s again before I leave, I think I’ll try the ebi (shrimp) burger.
Back at the dorm, Shaunte and I spent most of the night hanging out while Cat spent most of it texting and calling people. She’s become a lot more withdrawn since she got a phone. I still can’t decide if I should get one or not. If I do get one, I should do it soon, or it won’t be worth it anymore. ¥5900 isn’t very much, and for ¥300 off your prepaid time, you get unlimited texts and e-mails for a month. It’d be nice to be able to e-mail my friends and family more frequently. I miss feeling connected to the people I care about back home. Aside from that, though, I don’t really miss the Internet and cell phones all that much. I never liked phones to begin with, which is part of the reason why I feel like it might not be worth it.
Tuesday, July 8th
We had to be at school at 9am today for orientation, which ended up being a lot of Tanaka-san repeating things he’d already told us before (attendance rules, etc.) but that he now needed to reiterate because of the new students. It was one of the most boring 3-hour sits of my life. Afterwards, they had lunch for us, which was nice, and we got to socialize and meet the new kids, but it was also kind of awkward because all the teachers came around to talk to us (in Japanese), which always makes me a little uncomfortable because I can’t help feeling like they’re judging us even outside the classroom like this.
After that, we finally got to hear which level we’ll be placed in. I ended up being placed in level 2 with all of my other groupmates. Seeing who got placed in level 3, though, I knew that I don’t really belong with them either. We got our textbooks, and going through the lessons, I figured out that I should essentially be in Level 2.5—which doesn’t exist. Level 2 is covering lessons 22 through 29, which all cover things we already did last semester at CMU. However, Level 3 starts at lesson 38. The lessons I actually need are lessons 30 through 37. But there’s no class for that.
I really don’t know what to do. I can’t really ask them to create a class just for me, but at the same time, I don’t want to not learn anything new, at least as far as grammar goes. I know I’ll learn a lot regardless in terms of vocabulary and conversational ability (and confidence in general), and I want to. But I don’t want to not learn any new grammar because then I’m worried that I’m not even going to place out of a single semester back home, and then this will all have kind of been a waste. I mean, it’s a great experience and all, but if I don’t get out of at least 1 semester, I’ll never have enough time to finish my minor. For the umpteenth time, I’m extremely frustrated that CMU’s Japanese program is so grammar- and writing-focused.
Anyway, after we got our books and such, we were free to go. Shaunte and Sean and I ended up going to the post office and then to Tokyu Hands, one of the biggest department stores. We bought note cards and other school supplies, and I also bought a few more gifts for people back home, as well as postcards. If you want one, be sure to e-mail me your address. I can always go back for more when I run out.
Wednesday, July 9th
Today being the first official day of class, I don’t have to be at school until 1pm. From now on, class starts at 1:30pm and lasts until 4:45pm. The morning classes (9:00am-12:15pm) are only for the advanced levels, which is kind of a bummer because I feel morning classes would be more convenient. You go to class and then have the rest of the day to do what you want to do. We don’t have a choice, though.
I came to school early to try to use the computer lab. Unfortunately, it wasn't open today, so I'm at an Internet café again. I have a couple of important e-mails to send out. Up until now, the computer lab hasn’t been open every day, but starting tomorrow, it should be open 10am-4pm every day. I’ll probably end up coming to school early every few days from now on to use the lab, so I don’t spend all my money by going to Internet cafés.
Monday, June 30th
After my last post, we had our afternoon class with Takahashi-sensei. The fun thing was that we got to do calligraphy for the second half of the class. We had to pick a word with at least one kanji character and draw it, using real calligraphy brushes and ink and everything. I decided to write「静か」which is the Japanese adjective for “quiet”. Aside from feeling like it describes my personality, I really like the kanji character because it includes「青」which is the kanji for “blue”. It’s one of those times when I feel like the Chinese were brilliant when they came up with some of these characters. How shall we depict “quiet”? We use the image of “blue”.
After class, Shaunte and Cat wanted to go to a store in Kabuki-cho called Don Quixote because they’d heard that they sell prepaid phones there. I’d been to the store with Susan on Friday, so I went with them to show them the way. Anyway, it’s not like I really had anything else to do. It turns out that they do sell prepaid phones, and for much cheaper than at the actual retail stores. It cost ¥5900 total—¥2000 for the phone and ¥2900 for a prepaid time card. It’s fairly cheap, but I still held off on getting one because I don’t really see the benefits of having one. It’s free to receive calls in Japan, even international calls, but mom can’t really call me for cheap, and I don’t really have anyone to call within Japan. Shaunte and Cat and I are pretty much always together anyway.
After that, we just went straight home, had dinner, showered, and tried to motivate ourselves to do homework but failed. Everyone’s pretty tired, and anyway, with the trip coming up, no one really wants to do work right now.
Tuesday, July 1st
We had to be at school at 8:30am today, and we got on the bus around 9am. Since we had about 50 students and teacher chaperones, the bus was completely full. I was lucky enough to nab a window seat, so I spent most of the drives throughout the entire day looking outside and occasionally snapping some shots of the landscapes we drove through.
It was about an hour-and-a-half drive until our first stop, 小田原城 (Odawara castle). It’s actually a replica because most of the original castle got dismantled in the Meiji era, and then the remains got destroyed by the big earthquake in 1923. The life-size replica buildings looked extremely real, though, and were very cool to see. Inside the castle was a museum which actually wasn’t as interesting as it could’ve been because they didn’t actually have that many artifacts, but they’d spread them out over 4 floors to make the museum seem bigger than it really was. The top floor served as an observatory from where you can see the surrounding area all the way to Sagami Bay, and on a clear day we would’ve been able to see Mt. Fuji. But it was very cloudy, so it was hard to see the mountains, though we did see the ocean. The weather didn’t make for pretty pictures, though.
Back down on the castle grounds, one of the shops sold green tea soft-serve ice cream, so of course I had to have some. It was quite possibly the best soft-serve ice cream I’ve ever had.
From there, it was a little less than an hour drive to 大涌谷 (Owakudani), an old crater from a volcanic eruption. There’s not that much volcanic rock, but there’s a lot of steam and natural hot springs. The entire area smells fairly strongly like sulfur. Aside from seeing the springs, this area’s main attraction is a local delicacy called「黒たまご」or “black egg” (or, as Tanaka-san puts it, “brack egg”). Basically, while these eggs are being hard-boiled in the hot springs, the sulfur and iron reacts with the egg shells and turns them black. Aside from the shells, though, they really are just normal hard-boiled eggs. The myth says that eating one of those eggs will extend your life for 7 years. You had to buy them in bags of 6 (for a reasonable ¥500 each), so even after I shared them with Shaunte, Robyn, Kevin and Evan, who each chipped in, I was left with 2 for myself. Supposedly that means I extended my life for 14 years.
After eating the eggs, we went back down to the gift shop area and had lunch, which we’d brought with us because the food at the restaurant was extremely expensive. We walked around the gift shops, but they didn’t sell anything particularly interesting.
After a fairly extensive break, we got back on the bus and headed for 河口湖 (Lake Kawaguchi), one of the 5 lakes surrounding Mt. Fuji. It was another fairly long drive, during which most people slept, but I used the time to take a lot of pictures from my window seat on the left side of the bus. The sun was finally coming out so I managed to get in a few good shots, including one pretty good one of Mt. Fuji. It was my first time to see the mountain and there’s a slightly interesting story attached to it. We were driving along and all of a sudden I noticed we passed a sign that said “Mt. Fuji Visitor Center” or something to that effect. I hadn’t even realized that we were close to the mountain, so I immediately looked out the bus’ front window and to the right to try to find the mountain. Turns out that at that very moment, the mountain was immediately to my left, framed perfectly in the window next to me—a golden picture opportunity. I even had the good luck that there were very few clouds, and that the top was actually visible. This was, of course, followed by an epic scramble for my camera, but I managed to get in one good shot of the full view of the mountain before the bus turned to the right.
The place where we stopped, by the lakeside, wasn’t particularly interesting, other than just having a good view of Mt. Fuji. It was cloudy again, though, so the top of the mountain wasn’t visible and it was hard to take good pictures. Aside from that, there were a couple of gift shops, which weren’t too exciting.
The interesting thing about the gift shops at Japanese tourist attractions, at least out here in rural Japan, is that the vast majority of what they sell consists of food. Usually there’s some fruit or other ingredient that the area specializes in, so much of the souvenir stocks consist of snacks and cakes made from that ingredient. This area, for some reason, seemed to specialize in blueberries, so instead of capitalizing on their great view of Mt. Fuji, they had all sorts of blueberry pies and candy and whatnot. I didn’t get anything because food souvenirs are pretty impractical things to try to bring back home. I did have blueberry soft-serve ice cream, though, and it was delicious, if not quite as good as the green tea one earlier.
After our lakeside stop, it was only about a 10-minute drive to our hotel. We were spending the night at a traditional Japanese hotel, with real tatami rooms and futons and several onsen (natural hot springs). The dinner buffet was a mix of Japanese and American food and wasn’t too exciting, but bathing in the onsen was nice. We had a choice of either going to the bigger, communal bath or taking short turns in the smaller, private one. Since communal baths here involve getting naked in front of strangers, which I’m not too keen on, I opted for the private bath. I had 15 minutes, but it was more than enough time because the water in the onsen was extremely hot, and even though it was very relaxing, I couldn’t stay in it for very long.
Aside from that, our rooms were equipped with TV, so we enjoyed our first opportunity to actually watch Japanese TV, which at this hour consisted mainly of a lot of strange game shows. We were so tired from the long day, though, that most of us passed out around 10pm. The futons we slept on were extremely comfortable.
Wednesday, July 2nd
After pigging out on the breakfast buffet, we left the hotel around 9am and headed for 西湖いやしの里 (Saiko Iyashi no Sato), a nearby small replica village where the buildings are built in the traditional style with “Kayabuki” (straw and reed) roofs. This was the stop on the trip I had assumed would be the least exciting, but it actually wasn’t that bad, especially because in one of the buildings we could try on Japanese armor or kimonos. Shaunte and several of the girls and I all tried on kimonos, which, of course, was followed by a lot of picture sessions. It was also a fairly clear day so we got to enjoy Mt. Fuji as a backdrop.
After that, it was another hour-and-a-half drive to 武田神社 (Takeda Jinja), a shrine to Shingen Takeda, the famous guardian feudal lord of Yamanashi. It was one of the more interesting stops on our trip. We had to wash our hands before approaching the shrine. They were having some sort of ritual dance/performance outside. Several people prayed at the shrine. I myself bought a fortune, which I had to ask Suzuki-sensei to translate for me. They also had a lot of interesting souvenirs, so I bought a couple of things for my mom and my sister.
Following the shrine visit, we went into the nearby city of Koufu for lunch. We split up into groups depending on what/where everyone wanted to eat. My group went to a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. It was my first time going to one of these, so it was a very fun and exciting experience. I especially enjoyed how, whenever you special-ordered something, it was brought to you on a shinkansen. I also, of course, loved how cheap everything was. It was only ¥94 a plate, though a few items were more expensive. I had 6 plates and dessert and paid only about ¥790 total. You could never eat that much sushi for that cheap in the States. I love Japan!
We got back on the bus and drove about 20 minutes to 恵林寺 (Erinji Temple), which was possibly my favorite stop on the trip. We didn’t do anything but walk around the temple, but it was just so damn pretty. The traditional architecture was amazing, and the temple contained a gorgeous garden. It’s one of those things that’s hard to describe in words. You just have to go there and enjoy it for yourself. I only wish that we could’ve spent more time there, slowly enjoying the surroundings and soaking up the zen.
Our last stop, Chateau 勝沼 (Katsunuma), on the other hand, was quite possibly the most disappointing stop of the trip. As the name might suggest, it’s a winery. I wouldn’t have thought that the climate here is good for cultivating grapes, but apparently it is. Anyway, they gave us a tour of their factory, and then we were allowed to go in and taste five of their wines. Officially, you’re not supposed to drink in Japan until you’re 20, but none of their personnel were carding, and none of the teachers said anything to me, perhaps because I’m turning 20 next week. (Evan, who isn’t 20 for another couple of months, did get pulled out of the line by Utami-san.) So, I got to try the wines. I wasn’t impressed with any of them, though. They had three wet wines (white, rosé, and red) and two dry (white and red), and with the exception of the dry white, which just tasted watery with a strong alcoholic aftertaste, they were all extremely sweet. They also had a plum wine and some sort of liquor, again, both of which were too sweet. Their regular grape juice was actually the best-tasting drink they had. I was disappointed because I figured a bottle of wine would’ve been an excellent souvenir for my parents, but I knew neither of them would enjoy this wine, so even for the (I thought) reasonable price of ¥1200 a bottle, it wasn’t worth it, and I didn’t buy anything.
After that, it was another 2-hour drive back to Tokyo. They decided to show a movie on the bus but I didn’t watch it. I just listened to music and took some more pictures from the window. As we entered the city, I also managed to (finally) get a few good shots of Shinjuku, since this was my first time in the city while the sky wasn’t overcast. We didn’t linger after getting off the bus, though, and headed straight home. Again, everyone was exhausted.
Thursday, July 3rd
We only had a half-day of class, so after we were done, around 1pm, Shaunte and Cat and I decided to go to Akihabara. Its nickname is the “electric town” because it’s the place to buy electronics as well as video games and animanga merchandise. Electronics are extremely cheap here, especially because most stores are duty-free. We saw 2G microSD cards for ¥790 and 8G flash drives for ¥2940, so I might just have to go back and capitalize on that. Merchandise isn’t necessarily cheap here (I was surprised to find that there are actually many things I’ve seen for less at cons in the States), but they do have a lot… if I were looking for anything rare, I’d probably find it here. We didn’t end up going into too many of those stores because Cat isn’t interested in them, but I’ll probably be going back at some point to buy stuff for friends back home. Aside from one PC game for myself, I didn’t buy anything here yet.
We had lunch at this amazing crepe place where you could get basically anything sweet mixed into a crepe. I had one with tiramisu, whipped cream, chocolate, and caramel sauce. It was pretty damn awesome.
We got back to the dorm fairly early—around 5pm or so—so I decided to try installing my game (which took a few tries) and then played it for a little while before doing homework and studying for the test. If we want to try to get into level 2 (which I do), we have to take a test tomorrow. They haven’t told us at all what to expect to see on it, so I probably do need to study up a bit, even if I’m fairly sure that I should be in level 2.
Friday, July 4th
So we had another half-day of class, the first half of which was a final review of random grammar things, and the second half of which was the test. The test wasn’t too bad, but it was more difficult than I was expecting. I didn’t expect them to expect us to know as much vocabulary as they did, especially since a lot of the words we’d never really used in class, and I was lucky that I knew most of the words we needed to use. (For example, we’d never really used or gone over the verb 「のぼる」which means “to climb” as in climbing a mountain, which we needed to use and I luckily remembered, but many of the others in my class later complained that they didn’t remember the word because we’d never really used it in class before.) Aside from the grammar section (which was where they also pounded us with vocab), there were questions we needed to respond to in Japanese, and then there was a short essay which wasn’t too bad.
Konno-sensei had told us prior to starting the test that there would also be interviews with her at the end. But, when our time was up, it was already 12:40pm and the school day officially ended at 12:45pm, so she said she was only interviewing part of the class. Kevin, Evan, Brad, Jana and I were the only ones called today. I was up first, and, to my surprise, the interview wasn’t even really an interview. By this point, Konno-sensei had already graded the grammar section of the test. I’d made a 90/100, which I later heard was the highest score in the class. She asked me some questions about how important my grade for the program is to me, and she said something vague about moving up and how it will be difficult but how she’s confident I can handle it because I’m me. Since long tests completely wear me out mentally, I just smiled and nodded and said 「はい。」(yes) a lot. I later heard from Jana that her interview had basically been the same, but she had understood that Konno-sensei was talking about moving up beyond level 2—as in, level 3. That made me wonder if Konno-sensei was talking about the same thing with me, and since I just nodded and said yes, I’m not sure what I agreed to. Level 2? Level 3? I guess I’ll find out on Monday or Tuesday…
Shaunte and Cat’s class had been told that there’s going to be a level 1.5, so they had to take a test to get into that class during regular class time, and then if they wanted to take the level 2 test, they needed to stay after class. I waited for them, after which we met up with Evan and the other people in my class. Evan was holding a 4th of July party at his apartment, and we’d all been invited. We took the subway and the train to get to his neighborhood, where we first stopped by the supermarket. He’d taken care of the meat (he was barbequing) so we needed to provide snacks and beer. Since Shaunte and Cat and I agree that tequila is our poison of choice, we chipped in on a bottle (after an epic hunt to find tequila, which ended when we took the liquor store’s one and only bottle of Cuervo Gold). The tequila was actually a reasonable ¥2000, but the limes we bought were horridly expensive—most fruits in Japan are, because they have to import pretty much everything.
Then we went to Evan’s apartment, where he fired up the grill and the rest of us sat around and chatted and later played a couple of drinking games. Everyone got a little tipsy, though I don’t think anyone got full-out drunk. The food was delicious. I’m not a big meat-eater, but after so many dinners of rice and vegetables and a little bit of fish, the steaks and burgers did taste damn good. I was also happy that I got to know the people in my class better because they hang out together a lot, but because I’m always with Shaunte and Cat, I’ve kind of missed out on that. They’re good people, though. I like them. I hope most of us will end up in level 2 together.
When we left, it was not even 9pm yet, so there was talk of going out and maybe going clubbing in Roppongi. We decided to stop by the dorm first, though, to freshen up. When we finally made it back (we took the wrong train and ended up having to backtrack from Ikebukuro), we decided to just stay in. Everyone’s tired and Shaunte says she’d rather go out tomorrow night. I guess we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Saturday, July 5th
I was up around 7am like usual, so I had breakfast have been hanging out in my room ever since. It’s been unbearably hot and humid since Wednesday. I read in the newspaper that it’s supposed to be 31°C today. I have the a/c on and I’m still sweating just sitting here.
I think Cat’s a little hungover; she hasn’t left her room except for breakfast. Shaunte’s been in and out of my room, as we’re trying to figure out what to do today. I’m hoping we can head to somewhere with an Internet café so I can upload my pictures and post this. (If you’re reading this, I guess that means I’ve succeeded.) I’m not much in the mood for exploring, anyway, and I should probably stay away from shops to try to conserve my money. I have no idea if we’re going clubbing tonight. I don’t think we’re going unless other people are going with us, so we’ll have to see if anyone else is up for it.
Still not really any pictures worth sharing. I’m having trouble motivating myself to take lots of pictures because we’re here for so much longer that there’s really no reason to hurry. The weather’s also continued to be pretty craptastic, and for outdoor pictures at least, it’s worth waiting for a sunny day.
Thursday, June 26th
After I posted during my lunch break, we went back to class and had another 3-hour afternoon session. Takahashi was back. Among other things, she explained that if we want to get into the second-level class, we have to know and fully understand 6 of the ~12 verb forms (conjugations). That excited me, because it sounded like we might eventually learn something new, but when I later checked my grammar book, I realized that I probably already know all 6. There’s dictionary form, ます form, my grammar book even considers pre-ます form a separate form, ない form, and て form, which we went over in class today. I didn’t expect た form to be considered a separate form because it’s just て form with one letter difference, but apparently it is. And then there’s the potential form. The only form we might need to know that I never officially learned but do know is ければ form, because in class we only covered -たら for “if”. Still, I’m fairly certain that I’m in good shape, and once again I’m annoyed that they couldn’t simply put me in level 2 but that I need to “prove” it to them.
After class, we decided to head to the Internet café in a slightly more touristy section of Shinjuku. We spent an hour there, in separate booths, with bean bags and leather seats. It was super nice. You could even order food and drinks. It cost us ¥600 for an hour, which isn’t really much, either. I checked e-mail and things and then looked up directions to a few places I want to go.
We went back to the dorm after that, and had to do our own dishes because we didn’t get done eating dinner before 7pm, but that was fine. We did homework while watching My Sassy Girl on Cat’s laptop. Such a cute movie!
Friday, June 27th
Today, we had another full 6-hour day of class, but we also had a traditional tea ceremony during the afternoon session, so we had to be at school at 9am instead of 9:30 for an explanation. Our lunch break was also shortened to a half hour so the afternoon session could resume at 1:15pm instead of 1:30. The tea ceremony was lots of fun, although it was clear that it was a very shortened version of the real thing. They basically gave us a taste of what it’s like and the customs that are observed, while picking up the speed a lot to make sure all the classes got a chance to go. They didn’t let us take pictures inside, unfortunately, because they didn’t want us to distract the ceremony, but if we ever do anything like this again, I’ll be sure to try to sneak in at least a couple of shots.
As far as class goes, nothing much happened. In the morning, we had a different teacher again, this time a man. He warned us that he normally teaches advanced classes, so he might speak too fast, but he was back. Konno-sensei was back for the afternoon session and went to the tea ceremony with us, but we did still have more than 2 hours of regular class with her. I finally sort-of learned something new; we made sentences with [verb]-なければなりません, which is another one of those never-formally-learned-it-but-could-understand-it things.
After class, we had an information session about the Yamanashi field trip next Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m actually pretty excited, although the info session was unnecessarily long and everyone got pretty annoyed with Tanaka-san. It was a Friday afternoon, after all.
I had planned to meet up with Susan, my longtime LJ friend who’s here on vacation until Sunday, at her hotel in Kabuki-cho at 6:30pm. Shaunte and Cat wanted to walk with me because they wanted to see Kabuki-cho, so I had to wait for them while they planned out going clubbing with a group of other students. We were joined by a guy in their class who claimed to know where Kabuki-cho is, but it turned out that he didn’t really have a clue. We had to stop at several konbini along the way to ask for directions. Eventually, I just told the others I would find it on my own because they were walking very slowly and I didn’t want to be late. I managed to find the hotel just fine after that.
Susan and her boyfriend and I went to dinner at a little place in Kabuki-cho and then walked around the area and went into a lot of the arcades. I was busy being dazzled by all the lights and sounds—you have to realize that I still hadn’t seen Tokyo at night, much less touristy Tokyo at night. The touristy part of Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho are where they filmed much of the movie Lost in Translation. I didn’t realize this before, but even the Park Hyatt Tokyo is in Shinjuku. Anyway, most people seem to have seen that movie, so that should give you some idea of my surroundings—and the face of Tokyo that I hadn’t gotten to see until now. This was much more like what I’d been expecting to find. This is what I meant when I wrote that my experiences thus far have been far too normal.
Anyway, like I said, we mostly walked around the arcades. Susan’s boyfriend won us both big cat plushies, and I tried the game with the taiko drums, which is more complicated than it might look. (Of course, I’ve never been particularly talented at these Guitar Hero-style games.) They also had one that looked like the turntable/synthesizer version of Guitar Hero that looked pretty awesome, though complicated. Maybe I’ll come back and try it. I’ll probably be back, anyway, to try to win my sister a duck.
We also did picture/print club to commemorate this possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet, and it really was probably the most fun you’ll ever have for ¥200. Print club is where you take silly fobby pictures with crazy backgrounds, and then afterwards you decorate them with sparkles and text and hearts and all kinds of silly stuff. The pictures were pretty hysterical.
Around 10pm, they walked me back to the subway side of Shinjuku Station. I believe Shinjuku Station is one of the biggest and busiest stations in the world. They say that if you come during the afternoon rush, you’ll see more people in one place than you’ll ever see at any other time or place in your life. The station itself is spread out and often very confusing. It was a good 15-minute walk to my subway line.
I got back around 10:30pm. Shaunte and Cathy had indeed gone clubbing and decided to stay out all night. Although we have keys to the front door, the gate closes at 11pm and doesn’t reopen until around 5:30~6am, so they needed to either stay out until 5ish or find somewhere to crash. I have no idea what they decided to do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re partying all night.
Saturday, June 28th
Shaunte and Cathy did indeed party all night. I think it was the combination of them coming home at 6 AM and our dorm mother and her husband making breakfast that woke me pretty early. Knowing my friends would be sleeping until pretty late, I just spent the morning reading.
I had just been debating heading to Ikebukuro on my own to explore and to try to find Mandarake (a doujinshi store), when Shaunte came into my room at around 1pm or so asking me if I wanted to go somewhere or do something. She was thinking of going to look for a movie store to buy some DVDs. We got to talking about entertainment things, and we discovered that among other things, we’re into the same kind of manga. I asked her if she was interested in doujinshi at all and she said she’d never heard of it, but it definitely sounded interesting to her. Then I told her about Mandarake, and she got so excited, she said she wanted to go today.
We asked Cat if she wanted to go with us, so after she got dressed, we got on the subway and headed for Ikebukuro. I knew that Mandarake was somewhere near the Sunshine City mall, which wasn’t too hard to find, although it was a fair walk from the station. It was extremely crowded in Ikebukuro. Apparently all the shops were having big sales, so everyone had decided to go to shopping today.
Sunshine City is one of the most ridiculous places I have ever seen. Not only is it a shopping mall, but it also has a movie theater, a museum, an aquarium, a planetarium, and a mini-amusement park all in one. We spent some time walking around and just marveling about all the different things collected in this one place. We then left the mall, had lunch at a ramen shop, and found Mandarake.
If I died and went to Heaven, I wonder if this is what it would look like. I had to suppress squeals of delight and resist the urge to spend way, way, way too much money. Not that anything at Mandarake is particularly expensive, but that’s actually kind of a bad thing because it makes it hard for me to stop myself from buying too many things. I ended up buying 11 doujinshi. I didn’t even have time to check out all the sections I wanted to because poor Cat was getting impatient waiting for us to finish.
Neither of the others really wanted to do anything else in Ikebukuro, although we decided we’ll definitely be back to check out what exactly the deal with the amusement park is.
When we got back to the dorm, we had dinner. Just as we were finishing up our food, sirens sounded outside, and in a matter of minutes, 4 firetrucks drove past the building. It turns out that a fire broke out in the next block, and they posted a firetruck on every street corner surrounding the block containing the fire. Everyone went out into the street to look, but we couldn’t really see anything. It was kind of crazy though. I’ve never had a fire happen so close to me before.
After that, we went to the nearby supermarket to buy some snacks and ice cream. It turns out that they sell green tea ice cream (my favorite flavor, which is really hard to find in the US) in 1-person bowels for ¥68 apiece. That’s 68 dollar-cents. Reason #73478 why I could live here forever.
We ate our ice cream, and Shaunte and I had a reading party and watched Sweeney Todd. Cathy went to bed early because she was still tired and hungover.
Sunday, June 29th
We had been planning to go to Harajuku today, but I had heard from Susan on Friday that there’s no point in going if it’s raining because the crazy people don’t come out. When I woke up around 8am, it was pouring, and it was clear that it wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. So, no Harajuku.
We ended up going to Shibuya again. Cat wanted to buy a phone and Shaunte, having totally caught onto the doujinshi craze, wanted to check out the Mandarake there with me. We didn’t have any luck with the phone. Prepaid phones are in short supply, for some reason. We tried 4 different stores, but none of them had any in stock. One said we’d probably have to wait another 2 weeks at least.
We did manage to find the Mandarake store, which is even bigger than in Ikebukuro. Shaunte and I once again went crazy. I didn’t spend as much money though. 3 mangas and 2 doujinshi. Really cheap.
We headed back to the dorm, ate dinner, showered, had another reading party, and did homework. No fires or other crazy happenings tonight.
Monday, June 30th
Today is our last full 6-hour day of class. Tomorrow and Wednesday we’ll be gone on the field trip, and Thursday and Friday are only half-days. I’m really happy, because 6-hour days are positively exhausting when you’ve spent most of the summer doing a lot of nothing.
I’m really excited about the field trip. Yamanashi sounds like it should be pretty. The historical sites should be interesting, and I’m glad that we’re getting to see a bit of Japan outside of Tokyo. Not that there’s anything wrong with Tokyo, but I feel like we’re not getting the full picture here. I really wish we could go to Kyoto (and Nara, for obvious reasons, hehehe). It’s only 2 hours by shinkansen, but tickets are $180 or somesuch ridiculous amount, and anyway, we’re not supposed to leave the city on our own. But if I had the money, I would totally do it.
My apologies in advance for the extreme long length of this post. No, I don’t expect that my entries will usually be nearly this long. However, there are a lot of little adventures and initial impressions to describe, so I guess that’s why this ended up this lengthy. Future posts will probably contain fair fewer words and more pictures. I haven’t really bothered much with taking photographs yet, because I’m too busy taking in all the sights and sounds to reach for my camera. Pictures will hopefully start coming soon, though.
In Transit (Friday, June 20th~Saturday, June 21st)
Mom and I left for the airport at 5:30am on Friday morning. My plane left at 7:30am, and by the time we figured how to check in (I was flying Korean Air but leaving from the Continental terminal because the first flight was a Continental code-share, which was a little confusing), it was already pretty late. Still, when I got to the gate, the plane wasn’t even there yet. The previous flight had a slight delay, and we ended up leaving with an even longer delay because they were waiting on people from other flights and for everyone’s luggage to get there. They managed to make up most of the delay in the air, though.
The flight was fairly uneventful. It was just about three hours long, so we actually got breakfast and an in-flight movie (Fool’s Gold). However, the audio for the movie didn’t work, so aside from occasional glimpses at the screen, I didn’t watch it. I sat in a row of three seats with a man; he had the window and I the aisle, and the seat in between us was empty, which was nice.
We got to LA around 9 local time, where I had to deal with the frustration of navigating LAX on my own, never having been there before. They had said that there would be a Continental agent outside to give information about connecting flights, but I couldn’t find anyone. My boarding pass which I’d printed in Houston said that neither the gate nor the terminal had been announced yet, so I completely had no clue where to go. After finding a restroom, I went back to the desk by the gate and asked the lady there for directions. She was not particularly friendly and just said, “Go straight and then turn left.”
So I tried that, and all I found were more gates, belonging mostly to domestic airlines like Delta and United. All the flight information monitors were United, and when I finally found a Continental one, it was only showing domestic flights. Clearly, I was in the wrong terminal, but I didn’t know how to figure out which terminal I should be at. Besides, I was in terminal 6, and the only connection to another terminal that I could find was to terminal 5, but the sign that that was only for flights to Jamaica and somewhere else southbound. When I looked at the United monitor again, it did show a flight to Tokyo, though not mine. There was no gate given, and for the terminal it just said “TBIT”, which I assumed was some kind of version of “TBA” that I couldn’t decipher. In frustration, I sat down and powered up my laptop, and luckily the LAX information page had flight schedules with gate information. Still, my flight had no gate, and for terminal, it said “TBIT” on one screen and “B” on another. I didn’t understand how it could be terminal B when the terminals here seemed to be numbered, not lettered.
Not knowing what else to do, I continued down the terminal toward the baggage claim, where I finally found a map of the entire airport. At that point it finally became clear that all the terminals were numbered except the Tom Bradley International Terminal… TBIT (and possibly occasionally abbreviated just B). However, the map still didn’t make it clear how to get there. The only connection I’d found was to Terminal 5, and the only other exit was toward the baggage claim and street level. Call me spoiled, but I was expecting a big, busy airport like LAX to have an inter-terminal train. When I asked one of the security guards, he said that I indeed wanted to head out to the street and then head left, so I did. Once there, I had to have another guy explain to me that I needed to be heading along the street and walk to TBIT, where I needed to enter through the main entrance and go through security again.
Once I’d made it to TBIT, things went pretty well, although there was some confusion just where exactly to line up for security. Overall, the entire experience was frustrating and upsetting, especially because I’d been looking forward to flying through LAX for the first time, since it’s one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US. Part of it is Continental’s fault for not having a gate agent with connecting flight information, but LAX loses major points for lacking clear information and signage and generally being one of the most confusing airports I have ever been to. And I’ve been to a lot of airports, so I think I have some expertise when I say that.
When I finally made it to the gate, I didn’t have to wait very long before my flight started boarding. I had been lucky enough to get assigned a seat pretty far in the back, so I was in the first group called on to board. However, when I got to the front of the line, they took me out of the line because they were checking passports as people were boarding. Apparently, because I have an EU passport, they wanted to verify that I had my green card and could get back into the US. Despite the annoyance of being picked out of the line, Korean Air does win points, because if United had only done this, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble last Christmas.
I was lucky enough to get a window seat. I sit next to an older Japanese lady who seems intent on not conversing, but that’s just fine with me. The plane is a Boeing 777. While the 747 will always be my first love as far as airplanes go, I have to commend the 777 for having possibly the smoothest take-off I have ever experienced. Take-off usually gives me the jitters, but this time, I didn’t have any reason to.
The entire flight crew is Asian, a mix of Korean and Japanese women, though they all speak both Korean and Japanese fluently. Their English is acceptable too. I’m pretty impressed to have a flight crew versed in 3 languages. You never get that on Continental. Aside from the crew, one of the first things I noticed is that we don’t have individual TV screens. I always thought this is the standard on long international flights (this one is 11 hours long), so I was surprised.
To make up for the lack of individual screens, perhaps, the food is simply amazing. We had an extensive lunch about an hour after take-off. We had a choice between seafood curry or Korean food. I went for the curry. The seafood consisted of squid and scallops. It was accompanied by salad with two slices of smoked salmon. We also got a dessert cake that looked like it came from an expensive French cake shop. I was thoroughly impressed. It also made me happy because I remember that as a kid I used to get really excited about airplane food. Of course, lately, airplane food has been nothing to get excited about anymore. This was pretty exciting though.
The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that they don’t charge for alcohol—not beer, not wine, not liquor, not cocktails. I don’t get the impression they’re carding, either, though I wasn’t brave enough to try. (Anyway, I realized I wasn’t appearing very grown-up, with my penguin blanket and all.) During dinner, they even came down the aisles advertising certain wines. It was pretty unusual.
They did show two in-flight movies. They started off with Fool’s Gold, which, from the glimpses I’d seen on the other flight, didn’t interest me, even though I could watch it with audio this time. It was followed up by a Japanese movie about lawyers, which actually seemed very interesting. However, when it started off, I thought it was a TV show and not a movie, because it had an intro like one, so I decided not to watch it, though I did basically follow the action without audio, while listening to my own music. When I later realized my mistake, I regretted it, but by that point it was far enough into the movie that I just decided to watch the rest of it without audio. Still, what a bummer.
Aside from listening to music, I haven’t done much. I studied for our placement test on Monday for a bit. I think I slept for a total of one hour, while they were showing Fool’s Gold, but I’m too awake and uncomfortable to sleep any more. We’re in the very last leg of the flight, anyway. I had to power up my laptop to charge my mp3 player (I bought a little Samsung before I left… 15 minutes hooked into a USB port and it was charged; pretty impressive) so I decided to start this journal. I’m guessing we’re going to begin the initial descent soon, so I’d better stop here. When I next write, I’ll be on the ground in Japan! Amazing.
Arrival (Saturday, June 21st)
My first impressions of Japan are hard to describe. During the entire descent and landing, it was so cloudy that it was impossible to see anything except the airport. Aside from the many kanji signs and the predominance of Asian people at the airport, it wasn’t really … Japan yet. Airports are this weird no-man’s-land that aren’t truly representative of the country or culture they’re in, so it didn’t really feel like I’d arrived anywhere out of the ordinary. This wasn’t the country I’d been waiting so long to visit, not yet.
Unfortunately I ended up having to spend a lot of time at the airport before I even began to get a glimpse of that country. They’d told us to be there by 4pm, and my plane landed shortly after 3, but several others had delayed flights or just weren’t able to make it here that early. The rest of us had to wait on them so we could all go into the city together. Some people immediately started meeting and socializing, but I honestly wasn’t in the mood. I actually dozed off a couple of times.
When everyone had finally arrived—between 20 to 25 or so of us—we dropped off our luggage to be taken by truck into the city (not by courier as they’d originally said; they’d rented a truck instead) and boarded the train ourselves. The first part of the ride was underground, so there was still a lot of anticipation.
When the train finally left the tunnel, we found ourselves driving through the Japanese countryside. It was hilly and very, very green. Not nearly as hilly as Pennsylvania, but infinitely more green. I don’t think I’ve ever seen grass such a vivid green color—and yet there’s nothing unnatural about it. It was still light outside, but completely overcast, yet it seemed almost appropriate, because if we’d have been greeted by clear blue skies, I think it would have seemed artificial. The grey skies also helped emphasize the green. Here and there, the landscape was dotted with houses and elements of Japanese architecture. I don’t think I’ll ever forget one of my very first sights: rolling hills, and in the foggy distance, the vague silhouette of a pagoda. I think most are familiar with my sentimental nature, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when I say that it brought tears to my eyes. It’ll be etched forever in my memory.
They’d warned us that the train ride was long, and they weren’t joking. It took about an hour and a half in all, partly because Narita Airport is very far from the city, but also partly because the train wasn’t particularly high-speed and made a lot of stops. When we finally approached the city, most of the train ride was underground, so I didn’t really get a chance to see metropolitan Tokyo at night. Once we disembarked, we walked a short distance and then split up into groups according to which dorm everyone was going to.
Our dorm is in Itabashi-ku, a very residential area near Ikebukuro. Although in the initial e-mails they had emphasized that we all have a long commute every day, it seems that our dorm is fairly close to the school. Only 4 of us were lucky enough to be placed there; everyone else seems to have a commute of an hour or more. The other lucky 3 are Cathy, Shaunte, and Michelle. Cathy and Shaunte are from Dallas and go to UNT together. They took Japanese together and signed up for this program together. I guess they also requested to be placed in the same dorm. Michelle is from Hong Kong but goes to college at UMich. A couple of her Hong Kong friends are also in the program, though they’re in a different dorm because they’re guys.
The dorm is small, but not really smaller than I expected. Fewer residents, maybe, but the size of the rooms and such was about on par with my expectations. We have singles that contain only a bed, bookshelf, desk, and a wardrobe. There is one communal kitchen-slash-dining-room. There is one shared bathroom (for bathing) on the top floor, although there are powder rooms on each floor. The dorm is run by a middle-aged couple. The dorm mother cooks our meals (if we signed up for the meal plan, which I did). Also, mom, it turns out that we didn’t need indoor slippers; despite the instructions to bring our own, our dorm mother had provided them for us. They had asked us for our shoe size on the application, so they actually fit well and everything.
We were given a bit of time to unpack before the dorm mother gave around to let us know about the general rules and the way things are run. She herself doesn’t speak any English, but one of the other residents, Shiori, does, so she helped translate. We had heard about many of the rules already, and were actually surprised to find that they were slightly less strict than they had seemed in the e-mails. For example, we do have an 11pm curfew every night, but you can actually stay out as long as you can provide the name and contact information of the person you’re with. Breakfast is served from 7-8am and dinner is served from 6-7pm, but while the e-mails had made it sound like if you didn’t show up to the dining room during those exact timeframes, you wouldn’t get food, the rule is actually that you can still get food afterwards, but you just have to do your own dishes. I also could swear that the e-mails had said that meals are only on weekdays, but it turns out we get meals on Saturdays too. Sundays are the only day we have to take care of our own food. The only rule that’s as strict as in the e-mails is that the bathroom is only available from 5:30-11pm, which is going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, since I’m used to showering in the mornings.
Aside from that, no Internet, no phone, and no TV. Internet we could theoretically get by signing up for a contract with a company that has dial-up service, but since we’re only here for 2 months, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it. On the one hand, I realize that it’ll be good for us to have fewer distractions so we can focus on our studies and interact with the Japanese girls in the dorm, but I still don’t like this sensation of being cut off from the rest of the world.
After that, they gave us an option of eating dinner or taking a shower first. I think all of us were more in the mood for a shower than dinner, but we ended up having dinner first because all the girls were in the dining room at this point and it seemed kind of like they were expecting it. So we ate, even though Michelle was the only one who was actually hungry and managed to clean her plate. We had curry, which was good, but just too much. I ended up being the first to leave, because I was simply dying for a shower.
Now that I’m squeaky clean and unpacked, I have a feeling I’m going to pass out very soon. I haven’t been this exhausted in a very long time.
Sunday, June 22nd
I managed to make it until around 9:30~10pm last night, which I thought was impressive given how little sleep I’d gotten on the plane and how utterly exhausted I was. The bad news about going to bed that early is that I was wide awake around 4:30~5 am. I trained myself earlier this summer so that, despite not having to be up at any particular time, I’m not used to much more than 6 hours of sleep, 8 hours at the very most, so that I don’t have as much trouble adjusting when I go back to school in the fall. The combination of that with jet-lag told my body that at 5 AM I had had enough sleep, despite how tired I had been.
I honestly didn’t do very much today. I didn’t have the energy to walk around and explore the town. On Sundays we have to take care of our own food, so I ate the snacks I had brought and the leftover food I had refrigerated from the day before. I wasn’t very hungry anyway.
I spent most of the day reviewing for the placement test, especially kanji, because I feel that that’s what I’m most likely to have begun forgetting since class ended in early May. I also read a bit, listened to music, and lounged around my room. Although the Japanese girls in the dorm seem to be very social, it seems that everyone uses Sunday as a rest day. Nobody was hanging out in the dining room and there wasn’t much noise, nor a lot of traffic in the halls.
It rained almost all day. It stopped for periods at a time, but it never seemed to take long before the rain resumed. Tokyo is in a rainy season right now where it’s expected that it will rain pretty much every day until mid-July. I think I heard something about a festival when the rains stop.
Everything still feels very surreal. I think it might be because we haven’t really gone sightseeing yet, or anything like that, where we can touch and really experience what I’ve always mentally associated with Tokyo and Japan. Even though there are certainly things in the dorm and the neighborhood that are very different from the West, it’s still another dorm, still another residential neighborhood. It’s too… normal. Right now I feel like I’m in this limbo place where I’m half-expecting to wake up one day to find everyone speaking English, to go along with the overall normalcy of everything else. It’s almost like I need to see some crazy things that are completely different from the West in order to believe that I’m actually here, in Japan.
Maybe I just need more sleep.
Monday, June 23rd
We had to be at the school today by 9 AM for orientation and the placement test. They had warned us on Saturday that we would have to deal with rush hour traffic and that it was better to leave early while we are not completely used to the transportation system yet.
I was awake around 4:30 AM again, and dressed by 6. I spent the morning continuing to study for the test. At 7, I went to have breakfast. Before leaving, mom had asked me if I had any idea what breakfast in Japan was going to be like. I told her, “Well, I’m not sure, but the traditional breakfast in Japan consists of rice and miso soup.” It turns out I was right. She had made us breakfast bentos (rice, some kind of deep-fried fish wrapped in eggplant, an egg, tomato, and a piece of broccoli) and we could help ourselves to miso soup. Although very different from what I usually have for breakfast, it was delicious.
All 4 of us seemed to have wordlessly agreed to leave right after breakfast, an hour earlier than we probably actually needed to leave. It’s a short walk to the subway and then only about a 10-minute ride, followed by a slightly longer walk from the station to the school. Once we get completely used to everything, we can probably do it in 20 minutes. As it was, today, we took our time, which was good because we had a lot of trouble finding the right exit to street-level at Shinjuku San-chome station. Still, we arrived at the school about 45 minutes early. Shaunte took the time to call home, and the rest of us walked to 7-11 to buy juice and coffee.
One interesting thing to note: before leaving for Japan, when I was talking to my mom and sister and mom wondered how much I’d get to speak Japanese with random people in the city, my sister said, “It’ll probably be like when I was in France; everyone will just speak English to you.” This is actually not the case at all. Of course, it might be different in a very touristy area like Shibuya, but overall, people here (such as the cashiers at 7-11 and the guides at the subway stations, for example) just speak Japanese to us, though they often use a lot of exaggerated hand gestures to try to help us catch their meaning. At first I wondered whether they assume we speak Japanese, but I don’t think that’s quite it. The cashiers must definitely have realized we’re foreigners by how much time we spent selecting what we want and then trying to figure out which coins to use. It’s also true that not that many people seem to speak English, but no one seems to be embarrassed about that. It seems to be more of a general “we’re not going to cater to you Americans and will continue to speak our own language, thankyouverymuch” kind of attitude, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. At any rate, it gives us more of an opportunity to test our understanding and really learn the language.
The orientation wasn’t too extensive. They mostly talked about the placement test and what would happen afterwards. We had already received a schedule of the program from now until the end, but I think it had confused a lot of us. In its description, the program had boasted “over 200 hours of class time”, but according to the schedule, official classes do not start until July 9th. All it said about the period until then is that it consists of “orientation and group sessions”, with no real description of what that involves, and an overnight trip to Yamanashi.
It turns out that these group sessions are actually classes—but twice as long and more intensive than the normal ones. The other (mostly Asian) students we are going to be in classes with starting July 9th are ones who are here for multiple terms, and they are on term break right now. The purpose of these group sessions is to basically make sure we are up to their level when we start. Of course, there are still different levels of classes (1 to 6, to be precise), but the program directors believe that we Westerners are highly disadvantaged when it comes to learning Japanese. They said that American students who have been taking Japanese for less than 2 years should expect to be placed in level 1. The good news about the group sessions is that even if you fuck up the placement test and get placed in a lower level than you possibly should, you can use the group sessions to prove you are ready for the next level. This was of some comfort to me, because I did not at all feel ready for the test and I have only taken Japanese for one year (even though I know for sure I am at least on the same level as, if not higher than, Shaunte and Cathy, who have taken it for 2).
I wasn’t wrong in my apprehensions about the test. It was pretty bad. It consisted of three portions: a listening comprehension test, a writing test, and an interview, in that order. The listening test started off okay, but it progressively got faster. The last section was a complete disaster; it was just way too fast. The writing test was only a little better, because there was a lot of grammar we’d never learned. I did answer everything, trying to use educated guesses whenever I could. The interview was probably the worst part. By the time it was my turn, I was feeling stupid and dejected, having lost whatever confidence in my Japanese ability I’d had remaining. It also didn’t help that I got assigned to the one interviewer I’d been hoping not to get, because he seemed kind of condescending from what I could see of his interviews with other students. He was not particularly nice, and it didn’t help how dreadful I was feeling about everything. I stumbled my way through my answers, had to ask for clarification several times, and probably didn’t help my already what I assume to be poor performance. When he finally asked what level I thought I should be in and I told him level 2, he didn’t seem convinced, although he said he would think about it.
We were free to go home once we were done with the interview, and since Shaunte and Cathy had been done with their interviews for probably over an hour, I figured they were already gone. Michelle was outside talking to her Hong Kong friends, so I didn’t feel like it was my place to interrupt them and ask her if I could go home with her. She probably wasn’t even going straight home. So that left me to find my way back to the dorm by myself.
Finding the subway station wasn’t too difficult. The problem was remembering which train to go on. I had two choices, but it wasn’t clear which one I should be taking because both were headed toward Ikebukuro. However, for one of them that is the final stop, while the other goes beyond Ikebukuro, and the latter was the one that I needed. I had a 50/50 chance and guessed wrong. Not only did my train stop at Ikebukuro, but it took the long way round, taking more than twice as much time to get there.
However, maybe halfway along the subway ride, a (Japanese) girl came up to me and asked if I speak Japanese. When I told her I did, a little, she began talking to me, asking if I was a student here and so on. She ended up asking me about some of my hobbies and things, and told me a little bit about herself as well; she’s 22 and a university student, and in her spare time she likes to play volleyball and hang out with her friends. She said she has several American friends, which is probably why she’d approached me and why she seemed used to speaking slowly and rephrasing her questions when needed. She was very sweet. I never got her name, but then I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Even another chance encounter on the subway seems unlikely, what with there being 12 million people in this city and all.
At any rate, that encounter made screwing up and taking the wrong subway totally worth it, in my opinion. I got off at Ikebukuro, bought another ticket to transfer trains, and managed to make my way to the right line. I got lucky this time, though, because it turned out that the subway I boarded was an express train which didn’t stop at every stop, but it did stop at the stop I needed, so I was okay. The next challenge was figuring out which exit to take to get to the street-level. I had four choices, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me which one it was. Once again, I guessed wrong, picking instead the exit furthest from the dorm, and found myself in a completely different part of town, although it did give me a chance to look around the neighborhood a bit while I used my map to make my way back to the dorm. When I finally did make it back, it had taken me almost an hour and a half to get home.
Still, it was only about 3 PM, and I really had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I ended up settling in to read for a while and was just considering taking a nap when Shaunte and Cathy knocked on my door. “We looked for you after the test,” they said, “but Michelle told us you’d already gone home.” I felt really bad, then, because I had just assumed they weren’t going to wait for me. Even though I know that nothing good ever comes of making assumptions, I’d done so anyway.
They invited me to go and explore the town with them. They’d actually made the same mistake I did when getting off the subway and taking the wrong exit, so they, too, had noticed that there was a little more to the town than we’d initially thought. We agreed to check it out and in the process hopefully find a wi-fi hotspot or an Internet café. We ended up walking all the way to Senkawa (the next stop on the subway), which has more shops than our area does, but it’s still very residential, meaning that the stores are mostly konbini (convenience stores), suupaa (supermarkets), bookshops, hair salons, and the occasional depaato (department store). We saw one hotel, and Cathy wondered if it’s a “love hotel”. We weren’t sure how to figure that out, but the sign outside did say that you could pay for a 3-hour “rest” as well as an overnight stay, so we figured it might be.
At any rate, no Internet cafés, and nothing advertising any wi-fi hotspots, either. We made our way back to the dorm and arrived there about 5:30. Dinner was at 6, and it was quite delicious: meat and tofu and vegetables that you dipped in raw egg (like sukiyaki), some kind of tuna and noodle salad with Japanese mayonnaise, miso soup, rice, and a milk caramel pudding for dessert. I’m so glad I signed up for the meal plan. The food is really exciting.
After dinner, I once again had nothing to do and ended up reading again… which was a bad idea, because soon I found myself nodding off. I ended up taking that nap I’d postponed from earlier. Bad idea. I’d set an alarm for 10 pm, intending to stay up until midnight or 1 AM after that and then sleep until maybe 6 am, but when I did wake up at 10, all I could think about was how I wanted to sleep for the rest of the night. Is it weird that I can’t wait until we have homework so I have a reason to stay up later at night?
Tuesday, June 24th
Nope. No luck. Still wide awake at 4:30 AM. I knew that nap was a bad idea. It also doesn’t help that it’s already completely light outside at this time. I’m not one of those people who staunchly believes everything is better in the West, but I’ll never understand why they refuse to switch to Daylight Savings Time here. It would make a lot more sense.
Aside from that, the vague unreality of being here is beginning to wear off. I suppose that establishing and growing used to a sense of daily routine helps with that. It still bothers me that I feel so cut off from the rest of the world. I really wish I could get in touch with my family and friends. I’m not homesick, but I wish I could tell people back home about my experiences… share it with somebody. I know there’s this journal, but it’s not the same as a conversation. It’s also frustrating that there’s no TV anywhere in the dorm. Even just being able to see glimpses of world news would help remind me that I’m just in a foreign country and not isolated on some alien planet.
Since we left for school way too early again, I used the extra time to call home from the pay phone near the school. It’s not super expensive, but not cheap either. It felt good, though, even if it was for only a couple of minutes, just to hear my mom’s voice and once again establish a connection with someone elsewhere in the world.
At any rate, when we got to school we found a sign announcing who was assigned to which group. They’d split us into 6 groups, A through F, in (as we later found out) roughly increasing order of ability. Shaunte and I were assigned to group D, which was quite an achievement because groups E and F consisted mainly of close-to-native speakers and people (such as Michelle) who have been studying Japanese for many years or who have the advantage of being Chinese and already knowing all the kanji. They are the people who are expected to be placed in levels 3 or above. My group was told that we are very close to qualifying for level 2, but that we need to prove ourselves during this group session period, or we will get placed in level 1. The group consists of a guy who lived in Japan off and on for a total of 6 years over the course of his life, a couple of students of Japanese descent who grew up with a bit of the language but never learned it formally until they recently began taking classes, one guy who’s been studying it for 5 years but never excelled at it, and everyone else except myself and one other girl has been taking it for at least two years. The other girl is clearly in the wrong place; she couldn’t write her own name in katakana, can’t answer simple questions, and can’t formulate a sentence on her own to save her life. Despite everyone else’s superior experience, I seem to be in just the right place, though. My pronunciation is better than most, and I probably know more kanji than everyone there except maybe the guy who’s a Chinese major. If I’m lacking in anything, it’s probably vocabulary (especially names of things and places, like ‘grapes’ or ‘embassy’), and that’s easy enough to pick up. At any rate, I’m glad, because I’m definitely determined to get into level 2.
We had class from 9:30am to 12:45pm and then from 1:30pm until 4:45pm, with different teachers for each period. Our morning teacher, Konno-sensei, is young, energetic, and extremely funny. Everyone quickly fell in love with her, and we were all pretty bummed out when we discovered we had a different teacher in the afternoon. Takahashi-sensei is quite funny too, but she is a little less easy-going. Overall, both classes were a lot of fun, especially because my groupmates are fun people. I consider myself very lucky for being placed with them.
The content of the classes was at times frustratingly easy though, and I can’t say I really learned any new material other than a couple of random vocabulary words. Today’s classes were mainly a review of fairly basic Japanese. There was a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and some basic conversation practice. They barely touched kanji, which was frustrating because I’m just not used to writing things in hiragana anymore when I know the kanji for them. However, some of the students in the class (like the 6-years-off-and-on guy) don’t really know many kanji at all, or they are familiar with the characters but don’t know exactly when and how to use them. I hope this won’t slow us down too much, because that would be frustrating. In general, I hope classes don’t continue to be this slow because I really do want to make sure I get to learn everything I need to qualify for level 2. I won’t be stuck in a class with complete beginners. I’ll never learn enough.
Overall, I’d say it was a good day. During our lunch break, Shaunte and I met up with Cathy (who’d been assigned to group C) and bought ready-made lunchboxes and snacks from a konbini. After class was done for the way, we went to the computer lab, which was open from 5 until 5:30pm. It ended up not nearly being enough time to check and do everything we wanted to do on the Internet, but at least it felt good to get in touch with the “outside world” again.
After that, we went home, having to deal with rush hour at subway station, though thankfully our train wasn’t very full. We got home just after 6, so we went straight to the dining room and had dinner. Afterwards, we took turns taking showers and then went to Cathy’s room to do homework, study, and watch a bit of the weird and grotesque movie The Suicide Club. The Japanese have very, ah, interesting imaginations.
Wednesday, June 25th
The day started off about the same as usual. We got up and had breakfast. We decided that, since we’re usually there way too early, we would leave at 8 am today instead of 7:30 like we’ve been doing. Everything was going well. When we got to the station, rush hour was in full force, so we had to pack into an extremely crowded subway car. Still, everything seemed to be fine… until we found ourselves passing through an unfamiliar station. There are two different subway lines that pass through the station by our dorm, and apparently they both depart from the same platform. We didn’t know this because we’d always gotten lucky and boarded the right train before. It’s not really obvious from the outside that it’s a different train. Anyway, we realized our mistake two stops too late, so we had to backtrack to Ikebukuro and then transfer to the other line. It ended up being okay and we still made it to school by 9 AM when class started at 9:30, but for a second there, it was kind of scary.
Yesterday, I’d really made an effort to speak up in class whenever I knew the answer and prove to the teachers that I am definitely no longer a beginner. This turned out to be a good thing, because several people had requested to change groups, so they had shuffled around the group assignments again. About half our class, including Shaunte and the completely clueless girl, got “demoted” to group C, while 3 group C students got moved up to our group. We were also joined by two students who had been (we assume) accidentally placed in group E when they were definitely not 3rd-year level. Luckily, I was kept in the same place. Our new group is okay, and I am happy the clueless girl (who was incredibly annoying and nerdy) is gone, but overall, the group isn’t nearly as fun. Several of the new additions to the group are the kind of noisy, giggly, vain primadonnas who are the reason why I tend to hate my sex. Lucky me, I got to sit beside them, too.
Unfortunately, the class shuffling also meant that the teachers got switched around. Our new teacher is somewhere in between Konno-sensei and Takahashi-sensei in terms of both age and energy. She doesn’t really make jokes as much as either of them, which is why there was a lot less laughter and the class overall seemed a lot less fun. We only had class in the morning and not in the afternoon today, so we didn’t get to find out if we have a different afternoon teacher too.
On the bright side, even though we’re still reviewing stuff I already know, I felt like we covered a lot of material today, some of which was in the last chapter we covered before the end of the semester this past school year, so maybe that means that we’ll move on to new stuff soon. Although, we don’t seem to be covering every topic as in-depth as we could. For example, we were going over describing what’s in a room, but we just used「がある」instead of using placement words like「が置いてある」which is frustrating when you know the more proper way of doing it. We also went over「あげる」and「もらう」(giving and receiving), but she didn’t at all mention「くれる」and then when we went over「がほしい」and the -たい form of verbs, she didn’t go over how you have to use「ほしがっている」and「たがっている」when describing the third person, which was again quite frustrating. I don’t get why these group sessions are supposedly more intense than regular classes, because so far I’m not very impressed. You could argue that we do still have a week and a half of these group sessions to go, but next week we don’t have class for two days because of the trip to Yamanashi, and we have half-days again that Thursday and Friday, so I’m not sure how much they’re expecting to cover when they’re not even going nearly as in-depth as they could.
Having a half-day was nice, though, because it gave us the afternoon to explore. We decided to head to Shibuya, which is one of the most touristy areas of Tokyo. Lots of shops and things. We ended up walking around the Shibuya~Harajuku~Aoyama area, which includes the Tokyo version of New York’s 5th Avenue. We didn’t go into too many shops, but we did go into Kiddy Land, a famous Harajuku store which contains five floors of the ridiculously cute merchandise Japan is famous for. What a crazy awesome place. I bought a penguin umbrella for myself (only about $6, not bad at all!) and a couple of things for friends, but I’ll probably be back. (Mom, remember the penguin rolly carry-on suitcase I saw at Schiphol over Christmas Break? They had them here. If I need an extra suitcase, I totally know where I’m getting it.)
Aside from that, we also spent a good amount of time at a bookstore. Cathy wanted to buy a sightseeing guide, and I ended up buying a Japanese grammar reference guide because we never used a textbook in class, so I have no easy way of looking things up when I don’t remember something. It also contains quite a lot of material we never covered in class, so I guess if we don’t start covering new material in these group sessions, I can try to use this book to teach myself some new things.
We managed to make it back to the station just before rush hour started, and got back to the dorm around 5pm. We relaxed a bit, took turns showering, and had dinner. Today’s menu included breaded chicken with this mayo-and-egg “sauce”. Super delicious! I love the food so much.
But now, I guess I’d better go do homework.
Thursday, June 26th
I ended up making it until after midnight yesterday, for the first time since I got here. I slept until around 6am, which is much better than 4:30, at any rate.
Today hasn't been filled with too much excitement. We made it on the right train and managed to make it to school just fine this morning. Class has been okay. More fun than yesterday. We played some games with colors, and we did a skit where we pretended to be at a restaurant and one person in our group played the waiter and we had to order food. Other than a few useful phrases to use while at a restaurant, I still haven't learned anything new, though. I wish they'd get on with it!
I'm on lunch break now. Hopefully I will still have time to get food before class resumes at 1:30pm...
My Groups
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Tokyo Gourmet Updated: Oct 30, 2009
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Japanese Fashion Updated: Oct 23, 2009
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俳景 Photo&Haiku Updated: Sep 27, 2009
