iLuvMiMac's Journal

Somehow it went from May to July without me noticing. Whoops.

Anyway, I have some pictures from a trip to Tokyo Tower (on June 12) so I thought I'd post 'em.


Here's a picture of it from the base. It's a lot more impressive at night (see the picture at the bottom of this post) but we went during the day.

I went with the Amity club, and we climbed the stairs to the top, all 600 of them. Along the way, they had cute signs pointing out your progress, giving trivia about things that are as tall as you had currently climbed, how many calories you'd burned, and taunting you for being out of breath. I took a picture of one of them as we trudged past.

(It says, "Step 333!!")

At the "top" (which is really only midway up, but is still quite tall; about 150 meters) there's an observation deck. It was very crowded.


It had spots where the floor was made of glass so you could look down:

Here's a picture looking through that glass:


Looking around I happened to see what appeared to be a temple.

A quick check on Google Maps reveals this to be Zōjōji, apparently the main temple of the Pure Land sect.

Otherwise, we mostly just looked at the Tokyo skyline:


This can only go on for so long before you get sick of it, so we eventually went down (taking the elevator this time.)

On the way home, I ate a light lunch with a couple of friends (Chiharu and Reika) at a coffee shop.

Okashi (お菓子) is a Japanese word that's usually translated "candies" or "sweets." It also, however, includes things like this:

These look like little candies. They're actually chunks that seem to be made of dried, cured tuna. Perhaps "snacks" or "junk food" is a better translation for "okashi" since it can also includes things like potato chips.

I've got a series of midterms, presentations, and the like coming up, so I probably won't be posting much over the next week or two.

I went to see Sanja Matsuri (三社祭) at Asakusa (浅草) yesterday.

Although the Amity group is planning a trip to Asakusa next weekend, I was required to go and observe Sanja Matsuri for a Japanese religions class I'm taking at school. (Matsuri, 祭り, is usually translated festival, but the word is derived from a word that means "worship.")

Midway through the semester on Japanese religions, I'm by no means an expert, but let me explain a little bit about Japan's main religions and how they relate to Sanja Matsuri.

Japan's traditional indigenous religion is called Shinto (神道), which involves ritual worship of kami (神 - same as the first character in "神道"). "Kami" is usually translated "gods" but the Japanese idea of "kami" while somewhat similar to the idea of a god, is a bit different. First of all, kami are everywhere - in trees, rivers, oceans, etc. Some kami have a special relationship with humans, and for these kami (which are always thought to be human in form) shrines are often built. Traditionally, each region would have it's own shrine, and people from that region felt a special connection the kami enshrined there, who protected the land and the people living on it. Now, with urbanization, this kind of connection has more or less been completely forgotten.

Asakusa's famous Sensouji (浅草寺) is not a Shinto shrine, it is a Buddhist temple. However, in the same complex, there's also a Shinto shrine (Asakusa shrine; 浅草神社). This may seem strange. But it's quite normal here. It was this strange fusion of the two religions that seems to be very uniquely Japanese that we were supposed to see. Sanja Matsuri is, itself, a Shinto (not Buddhist) event.

I also got to take lots of pictures, so let's just get to the narrative. ^_^

When I arrived at Asakusa station, there was a rather significant crowd of people in the station - it reminded me of going through a station at rush hour on a normal day, even though it was 3 pm on a Saturday. Anyway, everybody was going the same direction, and since I hadn't looked at a map before coming, I decided to just follow them in hopes I'd make it to the grounds of the temple/shrine.

It didn't take long after exiting the station and following the crowd of people before I saw a cart with people playing music on it being pulled along


I also saw a man carrying a stick with paper tied to it. I have no idea what this is for, but you see paper folded in this distinctive shape a lot around shrines. (And, since Japanese themselves have difficulty keeping Buddhism and Shinto straight, it also occasionally shows up not just in Shinto events like this matsuri, but also in Buddhist events.)


"Omikoshi" (御神輿) is a kind of portable shrine that gets carried around in festivals. I also got to see one shortly after arriving getting carried through the street.


At this point, I still hadn't managed to find the main grounds of the temple (despite seeing large crowds and a number of omikoshi) so I went a bit away from the crowd and found a map (posted by a bus stop) that showed how to get to Kaminari Mon (雷門, "Thunder gate") a big gate at the entrance to the Sensouji complex. Following that, I managed to work my way through the crowd to the gate:


Looking the other direction is a street. It's fairly wide, but it's packed with people chasing omikoshi.


Passing through Kaminari Mon and into the main complex, you're greeted by a long street filled with shops (and of course people) leading up to Sensouji.


While walking down this street, I got to see a bunch of little kids carrying what was apparently a kid-sized mikoshi, or something similar. ^_^


In addition to the shops, there are lots of little temporary shops (出店) that set up all around the complex. There are apparently always some of these at Sensouji, but I'm sure there were a lot more than usual this weekend. I bought some fried chicken from the man here:

It was very greasy and delicious.

Nearby was another temple building:


As I got closer to the center of the complex, there were actually fewer people. (I suppose this makes sense since there wasn't much in the way of any special events going on here.) There was a tiny island of nature here in the middle of Tokyo.


There were also some Buddhist images here:

The labels on the donation boxes tell you what it's for (successful career, raising children, etc.)

The tall spectacular-looking building in this picture is, if I remember correctly, housed the "temple affairs office" or something like that.


As always, there were lots of places where you could buy omikuji for ¥100.


Thus far, with the exception of the omikoshi, I'd only seen Buddhist structures - even mikuji, I think, are handled by the temple not the shrine. I had been wandering around looking for the shrine, but not finding it, I eventually found and consulted a map. It turned out to be to the right of the temple.

Here's the torii (鳥居, this shape of gate, usually in front of shrines) leading up to it. It also has the typical rope and paper attached to it, so I was pretty sure I found the right place.


Here's the main shrine:


There was also a small shrine to Inari (often pictured as a fox) nearby:


Near the shrine, there were three omikoshi sitting, along with piles of offerings to the kami (who supposedly dwell in the omikoshi for the duration of the festival.) It looks like the vast majority of this is sake (alcohol).


There was also an omikoshi just sitting out. Some man (who was probably associated with the shrine, not just a volunteer given the amount he knew) came out and explained some of the distinctive characteristics of this omikoshi.


Since it was just sitting there, I was able to get a very close picture of it:


Supposedly, every character on his handkerchief is the same one, 馬 ("uma" which means "horse")


He also said that this omikoshi was going to be going out at 4:45 and circle the city until 8:00. I decided to wait to see them take off, and managed to take a movie of the event when they went:


After seeing this, it was getting a bit late, so I decided I'd done enough observation and went home. I like the atmosphere of festivals, so it was a lot of fun, for homework ;-)

Hello all!

I'm still alive. Sorry I've been silent for so long. It seems I never can get into the mood to blog unless I have a bunch of pictures to post. I shall try to take more pictures. ^_^

Anyway, I went to Lake Kawaguchi (河口湖 - Kawaguchiko. The "ko" suffix means lake, and I'll probably end up calling it Kawaguchiko throughout this post) which is near the base of Mt. Fuji (富士山 - Fujisan - the "san" suffix means mountain) with the Amity group last weekend, on a "welcome trip" for all the new first-year students who entered. This was the weekend after Golden Week, so we'd just had Monday-Thursday off the prior week, but this was still just a weekend (Saturday and Sunday) trip.

A lot more people went on this trip than on the ski trip, so we had an entire bus to ourselves. Since this was a welcome trip, they had a mic on the bus which they passed around to everybody and had them introduce themselves. (Here's our bus:)

On the way there, we stopped at a parking area which is basically a stop designed for travelers in the middle of nowhere. There's a convenience store, and also a restaurant. We ate lunch (at a relatively early hour of 11:00) here. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu (which still wasn't very cheap): pancakes. They were decent pancakes. =)

After arriving at Kawaguchiko, we stopped at a the inn (旅館, a Japanese-style inn) and left our bags there. The three second-year students who were in charge of planning this trip stayed at the inn to take care of some preparations for activities later in the day, but the rest of us set out to Mt. Kachi Kachi to ride the ropeway up to a place with a good view of Mt. Fuji.

(The creature on the left of the sign is a Tanuki, a Japanese raccoon dog. They show up in all sorts of folk stories, and apparently the name "Mt. Kachi Kachi" comes from one of those stories - though I didn't get anybody to tell me the story.)

The ropeway first offered a good view of the lake:


And once at the top, there was a good view of the city as well.


But, of course, the reason we came here was to see this:


(And, of course, ring the "Heavenly Bell" stationed at the top. ~_^)


There were a couple of Japan's ubiquitous vending machines stationed on top of the mountain. It was a hot day, so the one selling ice cream was very tempting (I resisted.) More interesting, however, is the one on the left, which sells things like hot dogs, french fries, yakisoba, and takoyaki.


We rode the ropeway up, so we decided to hike back down. Halfway down I took this picture of Mt. Fuji, which I like:


After returning briefly to the inn, we went to a nearby park, and played for a while. Games included badminton, soccer, and a Japanese version of red light green light called "darumasan ga koronda." While playing, a 7 year old boy who happened to also be playing in the same park asked to join. (he's frozen halfway up the stairs in this photo)


We played until the boy left, at which point we were all exhausted. The inn served us dinner (salmon, and other things which I don't remember all of). Since there's only one dining room, and we were the only people in it, we seemed to be the only guests at the inn that night.

After dinner, we rested for a while, including taking time to take a bath. (This inn, like most inns, only has public bathing facilities; it's segregated into men and women, but otherwise everybody bathes together.)

The evenings festivities began with some team games. We played a telephone game, bingo, and another game which yielded some interesting pictures.

This is (supposed to be) a drawing of Winnie the Pooh.


It was no simple game of Pictionary that produced this. Each person on each team was only allowed to draw until lifting the chalk from the board, then the next person had to take over. You could only use each of your 4-member team at most twice, at which point you had to be done. Also, there was a time limit. Pooh was the example picture they used to show us how you were supposed to play. Surprisingly, the pictures from the real version were actually quite good:


I think the only one that didn't get guessed was a drawing that was supposed to be of "Sophia University" (the school I'm going to here.) This is rather difficult to draw, so they tried drawing the school's emblem instead.
. There's certainly a likeness (see top of this page) but it's a bit too vague to guess.

After all the games were finished, my team won! Our spoils: A giant umai bō!


An "umai bō (うまい棒)" is a stick (which is apparently some kind of corn-based crunchy thing) covered in salt and a variety of flavorings. "bō" means stick, and "umai" is a word that means "delicious" or "tasty," but it's an informal expression, so I like to translate it as "darn tasty stick."

The contents of the package actually had lots of little, normal-sized umai bōs in it.

The different wrappings indicate different flavors, including things like normal things like cheese, but I've also eaten "vegetable salad", "tonkatsu sauce", and "chicken curry." They're all surprisingly tasty.

After the games, the 2nd year students put on a couple of brief skits, and we all went back outside and down near the lake to play with fireworks:


There were lots of big sparklers, but also some little string-like ones called senkou hanabi (線香花火, apparently unique to Japan). Though small, I think I liked them better than the big sparklers.


The next day, after eating breakfast at the inn, we went on a short pleasure cruise on the lake and took more pictures of Mt. Fuji.


It was again hot, so we bought some ice cream from one of the many local shops. I bought Peach-Grape mixed flavor. We then spent some times in shops to get the requisite omiyage for the trip. We returned fairly early in the day, which was probably a good thing since I'd not gotten much sleep the night before.

A very fun trip - I'm glad I got to go!

The long semester break is over, and it's back to school for the new semester of classes on Monday. However, I went to school today and yesterday, to help out with Amity (the club at school I'm a part of) to try to recruit new freshman into the club.

April is when the new school year begins in Japan, so a new batch of students just came. All of the clubs gather on the streets of campus with posters and booths and try to convince new freshman to join their clubs.

There was three days of this, but I didn't go on Wednesday. Thursday and today were lacking one relatively important factor: namely, freshman. It seems most of them figured out what clubs they wanted to join on Wednesday and didn't bother coming back Thursday or Friday.

So, there was a lot of free time.

Here's a picture of the classroom we were waiting in (there was also a group from the club down on the street) for people to come by looking for an explanation.

Wednesday I met a friend at Shibuya station. She was planning on going to an informational session for a law school juku in the area, so we thought staying in the area would be good, but otherwise didn't have any plans.

We were going to find some restaurant to eat lunch at together, but she had without thinking bought lunch at a convenience store earlier during the day. So we found another convenience store (which is not difficult; there's about one a block in downtown Tokyo) and I picked up some salt-flavored yakisoba with chicken.

We planned to find a park to eat it in, but the only parks in Shibuya are a series of long narrow parks (seriously only about 20m/70' wide) above a parking garage. It wasn't quite the atmosphere we were looking for, so we decided to walk to Yoyogi park, a much larger park. The park was filled with blossoming cherry trees, and also filled with people coming to see them. We chose to eat in a area without cherry trees, where we could actually find an open bench.

All sorts of people were coming to see the flowers. There was an unusually high percentage of non-Japanese coming as well, so I think a lot of people had come to Japan specifically for the purpose of seeing the trees.

After lunch, we walked through the park, enjoying the trees. We also stopped for a while and watched some dogs playing in an inclosed area they have especially for letting dogs play.

Requisite picture of cherry trees:


When we eventually came to the exit again, we decided to move on, walking through a famous street in Harajuku, Takeshita street. It's mostly popular with teens, but there are also a bunch of small shops selling crepes filled with just about anything you can imagine. We stopped at one (that claimed to be the first one to have opened on the street) and ordered crepes.

I had one called アイス・ストロベリーチョコ生クリーム (ice cream with strawberries, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, wrapped up in a crepe) and she had one with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream. They were delicious. As we were eating them, she commented that the outside part (the actual crepe!) was also very good =)

From here, we walked a litttle bit of Omotesandou, a famous street in Tokyo. We also went into a recently-constructed shopping mall, but didn't go into any of the stores - they all seemed so expensive it was frightening to go in. But the architecture in the mall was cool.

From here we went got on a train to hurry back to Shibuya and look for Itoh Juku.

A juku is a an extra school students go to in addition to normal school, usually to help prepare for examinations. Most often you hear of high school students and middle school students (and even elementary school students) going to juku to help prepare for entrance examinations. College entrance exams in Japan are apparently hideously difficult (where as college itself isn't all that difficult) so it's often said that getting in to a Japanese college (passing the entrance exam) is more difficult than getting out (graduating.) High schools also have entrance exams, and depending on where you go, middle schools, elementary schools and sometimes even kindergartens have entrance exams.

My friend is a law student at Sophia, so while she's not preparing for college entrance exams, she's considering graduate school, and if she does go, there's of course an exam. (And ultimately if she wants to become a lawyer, there are more exams.)

Anyway, we had a map (well, we had a map she found using her cell phone) and knew it was close to Shibuya station but...it still took us a good half hour to find the place. (it seems we went out the wrong south exit of the station and wandered around on the wrong side of the tracks for quite a while.)

Ultimately we found the place, and the nice man at the desk told us that while reservations weren't required (which she thought they might be) that a lot of people would probably come, so come back at 6:30 (for the session beginning at 7:00) or even a little sooner might be a good idea.

We ran to a nearby restaurant and hurriedly ate a light supper (having had crepes not all that long ago) and returned just at 6:30 to find a mostly-empty room. I tagged along (despite having not the slightest interest in law) mostly for Japanese-listening practice, and I felt a little bit bad about doing so, but in the end the room only filled up about half way, so I didn't feel so terrible about occupying a seat.

The man who talked was the founder of the juku, Mr. Itoh himself. He was an excellent speaker, speaking clearly and explaining everything very well, so even though he was speaking decently fast and using a variety of (what I'm sure were) good words that I also didn't happen to understand, I still got the main points he was trying to get across. I'm glad I went, just to get a chance to hear him talk. ^_^

In the end, my friend was saying that she probably wouldn't end up going to graduate school. At one point, while he was explaining what it meant to be a "practitioner of law," he commented that part of the job was thinking very meticulously about the meaning of words (which you need to do to interpret and apply laws.) We exchanged looks at this point as this isn't really her personality at all. =)

For having no real plans at the start, it turned out to be a very fun, interesting day!

The neighbors across the street were nice enough to plant a cherry tree in their garden purely for my enjoyment. This is what I see looking out of my window:


Lots of power lines, sure, but also lots of flowers. This tree was a little bit later in blooming than most, and by the time school starts up again next week Monday, most of the flowers on the trees will have probably been replaced with boring ol' leaves. =)

I posted a little about hanami in my last post, but today my host mother took me and the other exchange student to go see the cherry blossoms. Everybody spreads out mats/sheets/tarps etc. under the cherry trees, eats, drinks, sings, and generally parties.


My host mother found a group of neighbors, and we joined in the party for a while. Rows of trees completely covered with flowers are really an incredible sight.

I went to Ghibli Museum and Inokashira park with a friend today!

Ghibli is the name of the movie studio that made Tonari no Totoro. There's a Ghibli museum in Mitaka (which is near Choufu, where I live.) I bike past a sign every day that says "Ghibli Museum, 300m →" everyday, so I knew it was here, but before seeing Tonari no Totoro, I didn't have that much interest in going. (And I'd also heard that getting tickets was next to impossible.)

It turns out getting tickets isn't so difficult, so (although we did have to buy them two weeks or so in advance) we bought several tickets. The tickets allow you to enter for a specific (rather narrow) time interval, but you can then stay until closing if you want. We bought tickets for the earliest entry period available, 10:00-10:30, so after meeting at Kichijouji station at precisely 9:36 AM JST, we walked to the museum and arrived just in time to leisurely make our way to the reception desk, manned of course, by Totoro:


(The little sign with the arrow says, "Real reception desk →")
You can also inexplicably see makkuro kurosuke through the window below the reception desk. ^_^


Photography wasn't allowed inside the museum, so I don't have any pictures of the inside, but it was very, very cool. The first room we visited was a kind of "history of animation/movies," room, which started off with zoetropes, and even had a 3D version of the same which functioned by flashing a lights on a spinning wheel with lots of little models on it.

Other rooms in the museum showed the animation process. There was also of course, the giant cat bus room, but neither of us could pass as 12 or under so we couldn't go in. It was a very fun museum, with a lot to see, and fascinating architecture.

We ate lunch at the museum's cafeteria. The restaurant was packed, so we opted for "take out", which, though the line was long and the options slim, we didn't have to wait very long. We both got, "春の彩りからあげごはん" (I can't remember how the museum translated this, but it comes out to mean something like, "Colors-of-spring rice and fried chicken.")

Our lunch, while served completely in disposable dishes, was free of plastic since they gave us cute little wooden spoons to eat with.


As a part of our museum entry fee, we got tickets to see a short film they were showing, めいとこねこバス (Mei and Kitten-bus). Kitten bus was too cute, so before leaving, we (yes, both of us) had to buy a little stuffed version of the fellow at the museum gift shop:


Also before leaving, we bought some ice cream from the cafeteria. (The girl I was with said her throat felt a bit scratchy, and we agreed ice cream would be good for it.) I had raspberry, she had chocolate. The raspberry flavor was very yummy, but it unfortunately wasn't very creamy ice cream. (the chocolate looked creamier, they also had a "white milk" flavor (as opposed, of course, to the brown milk they use to make the chocolate) that probably would have been creamier-tasting.)

---

Right next to the museum is Inokashira park, so since it still wasn't very late, we decided to go for a walk through the park.

The cherry blossoms (桜, sakura) were in full bloom, and people were gathering in beneath the trees for hanami (花見) Though "hanami" literally means "flower-viewing", my friend confided that this is really just a good excuse for everybody to have a party underneath the cherry trees.


Inokashira park has a long narrow lake that runs through it. The lake is also equipped with fountains.


There were a series of red gates (鳥居, torii) leading up to a small shrine along the lakeside. (There was also a temple that we didn't go to.)


One portion of the lake was crowded with rented boats. There were swan-shaped boats that you could pedal, and normal row boats, too.


We decided this looked like fun, so we rented a row boat, and went out onto the lake. Since the lake was really crowded (and since steering a boat is difficult if your not used to it) we kept running into other boats...


...we also ran into other, less mobile obstacles, like the cherry trees hanging low over the lake.


We paddled once out to see how far the lake went, then came back. It wasn't really that long of a lake, but seeing as we couldn't go in a straight line and kept running into things, our hour was up by that time.

By this time it was about 5:30 or so. The park is close to where I live, but about 2 hours away from where my friend lives, so after one more brief walk along the lake, we said farewell to the lake and headed back to the station (where she boarded a train for home and I had parked my bike earlier that morning.)


Should you ever be in this part of Tokyo, both Ghibli Museum and Inokashira park are good places to try and visit. ^_^

Completely off topic, but...those of you using Mac OS X 10.5, try typing "fbm" into the Dictionary application. There's a bunch of articles that you might typically find at the front of a traditional dead-tree dictionary.

A group of six children (including my host family's two grand children who live nearby and are in 1st and 3rd grade) visited today. The children are studying English together from their mother (who came along and speaks fairly well) and came for an experience with "real" English. After introductions, we went to a local zoo.

They haven't been studying English for very long, so they can't say much. The purpose of this trip, then, was mainly to practice pronunciation, while learning the names of various animals in English. (Perhaps not the most useful things to know, but seeing as they don't understand most English grammar yet...also, memorizing concrete nouns is relatively easy.)

It rained the whole time we were at the zoo, unfortunately, but everyone still seemed to have a good time.

After the zoo, we went to eat lunch at a restaurant called Sweets², which, as you might guess from the name, had a lot of sweets. It was a buffet-style all you can eat, so in addition to pizza, pasta, and an ever-changing fried item, there was an incredible variety of cakes, brownies, and other such things to choose from.

After lunch, the rain had let up, and we walked back to a bus stop. While waiting for the bus, the kids decided to do a relay race, and we (me and the other exchange student) joined in. However, because we weren't standing right by the bus stop when the bus came, it went right past. >_<

We walked a couple of bus stops closer to our destination (going back to my host parent's house) and waited for the bus. While waiting, we played a weird hybrid of a Japanese word game (shiritori) with English words.

4 of the kids went back home (they live in Chiba prefecture, which is east of Tokyo) but my host parents' grandkids stayed. They'll be here for the next week.

--

This evening I watched the first-grader practicing math problems. He is...well...very very good at arithmetic, it seems. Especially for a first grader. Tonight he was simplifying fractions at an astounding rate (basically without pausing to think before writing down the answer.) There were simple ones, of course, but there were also more difficult ones like 51/96.

My host parents got a bunch of free tickets to go to a baseball game for one of the local teams, the Yakult Sparrows. Since they weren't going to use all of them themselves, they gave some to me and the other exchange student who is staying here. So, I went to see a baseball game today with a friend!

We decided to go early - so we could see them warmup, and just in case it was crowded. After getting slightly lost, we found our way to the stadium and saw somebody collecting tickets. We went to go in, but he the man (apparently noticing we had no idea what we were doing) nicely pointed out that our tickets would let us sit in either infield or outfield seats, and that this was the outfield. Deciding we'd prefer to be closer to the action, we walked around and entered in a different place.

The stadium wasn't exactly crowded.


But, we got a good seat and we got to watch practice a little bit, so I'm glad we went early.

The game was, well, probably a lot like a baseball game in the US. ^_^ Whenever they changed teams a bunch of kids would run over towards the dugout for that team and shout "ボールください" ("please give us a ball!") and sometimes one of the players would throw a ball into the stands.

There was also always scrambling when foul balls landed in the (mostly empty) upper seats of the stadium.

Today was also the final day of the WBC which is hugely popular here in Japan. (Its television broadcast apparently had more than 40% viewer share) Since it was the final game, and Japan was competing for the champion title against what's probably its biggest rival, Korea, for the first half of the game or so a lot of people were watching the broadcast of the WBC on their cell phones. (Yes, you can watch TV on your cell phones over here. I don't since a shudder to think what my monthly cellphone bill would become.)

I felt a little bit bad for the players on the field because the WBC game was close (it wasn't decided until the 10th inning) so toward the end of the WBC game everybody in the stadium would start cheering really loudly with absolutely no relationship to what was happening in the game on the field. (Japan won the WBC by the way.)

The game we were watching was also close. We intentionally came on a day when the Sparrows were playing a relatively strong/famous team, the Yomiuri Giants. The Sparrows took an early lead, and kept it for most of the game, but the Giants managed to tie it in the 9th inning. However, the Sparrows also scored, and ended up winning 5-4.

After the game, rather than getting straight on the train and heading home, we walked from the station where we had gotten off (Shinanomachi) to Yotsuya, the station nearest school. We also stopped along the way at a Starbucks, where we bought a "secret" item (it's not on the menu) my friend knew about, called a "Chocolate Cream Chip Frappuccino." It tasted nothing like coffee and was thus delicious.

There's been construction going on nearby almost constantly since I got here. (I'm not completely sure why; I think this all initially started when they had to rip up the road to get at some pipes for some reason.)

Here's the view of the construction from my window:

It looks like they've resurfaced the entire road this time (rather than just patching it like they had been doing in the past) so I hope that means that they're done digging it up.

One of the interesting side effects of all this construction work is that while there are supposedly small earth quakes relatively frequently, I always blame any tremors on heavy machinery nearby (which is usually the real cause) and don't notice them.

I went to Odaiba with a friend yesterday! (I didn't take many pictures, but what I did take I'll post here)

The Odaiba area was originally a number of man-made islands in Tokyo bay built in the 1853 for the defense for Tokyo. All that's left of the gun batteries are these two on battery number 3, which is now a public park.


Only the islands for battery 3 and 6 remain. Modern Odaiba is an artificial island mostly filled with touristy places and shopping. It's connected to the main land by Rainbow Bridge. You can walk across this bridge (which is a little over 1km long) so we got off the Yurikamome train line right before it went across the bridge so we could walk across the bridge instead.

It was windy and noisy on the bridge (as should be expected of a bridge, I guess, since the walkway was right next to where cars were passing) but occasionally the walkway would jut out a little bit and you could look out over the bay at the cityscape.

Right after crossing the bridge, we walked out to the #3 battery island (picture above) which is a nice little park where you can see the bay. There were also surprisingly few people there. We sat under a tree and ate some cookies I had brought along. It was a pleasant, warm spring day; almost hot when in the sun.

From this island, we wanted to go see a planetarium that's supposedly really cool...but it was closed for renovations. So we instead went to see the Fuji TV headquarters instead. The building is known for its rather unusual architecture.


You can go up into the sphere and look around, for a fee, but we didn't do that. There was also a place where you could walk around and see all sorts of things from popular television shows, and peer into some of their studios (through dark glass, and there was often a curtain pulled so you couldn't see anything at all.) They had some questions from a quiz show that we tried to do, but neither of us did very well.

For lunch, we went to a place called Cafe gigi which had seats where you could look out over the bay as you ate.

Next, we walked to New York.

Umm...well, not really New York, but there's a (relatively small) replica of the statue of the liberty here. I'm not completely sure why.

After spending a little bit more time in shops, it was already dark (we ate lunch late) so after one more walk along the beach and out toward battery #3, we boarded the Yurikamome again and headed back. I took this picture of the bridge as it was getting dark before we left:


Fun day!

I was talking to a friend the other day about movies, and the movie Tonari no Totoro came up. She said she watched it about 100 times as kid, and since I'd never seen it, we decided to rent it and watch it. (She translated the hard-to-understand bits into simple Japanese for me, but if you want to watch it, there's also an English version.) It was a good movie - I'd probably have watched it many times as a kid too if I knew about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to school to help her study for an English test she's taking on the 15th.

I managed to catch some kind of a stomach flu-ish cold. After a failed attempt to eat breakfast Wednesday morning, I ended up sleeping through most of Wednesday.

My host mother made me some okayu to eat later that day. Okayu is made of rice and is similar to oatmeal in consistency. It's soft and easy to digest, so it's often fed to sick people in Japan. It's pretty plain, except for being topped with umeboshi, a pickled plum. (wikipedia says they're actually more similar to apricots...they're pretty sour, and don't taste like either, really) Umeboshi are believed to be good for you. At any rate, all attempts at eating okayu ended successfully, so it served its purpose quite well.

I seem to be mostly recovered by now.

Friday, I met a friend and we ate at a Ramen shop, Ippudo. (Link is to the site for their New York store, which is in English.)

Ramen is very popular in Japan, and their are small little ramen shops on just about every street. However, most of the ramen I've eaten here has been pretty...normal. It's not bad, but nothing superb either. But this place's ramen was actually very good.

I have no idea how the one in New York compares to the Kichijouji store we ate at, but if you're in New York looking for a Ramen restaurant it's probably a decent choice. ^_^

I've fallen behind on blogging again. Sorry! I don't have a good excuse.

This last Wednesday I went to Tokyo station with a friend. She's a fan of spaghetti, and according to some ranking site I found online, one of the best places to eat spaghetti in Tokyo is in a small shop (called "CHAYA") in an underground shopping mall near Tokyo station. (The spaghetti, by the way, was in fact delicious.) Not knowing how the weather would be, we decided to decide what to do after that based on whether or not it was nice. As it turned out, it was a pretty nice day, so we saw some of the famous things around Tokyo.

This included the imperial residence, which I'd seen before, but she'd never been there before.


We also went to the gardens, where the plum trees were blossoming:


From there, we went to see the main branch of the Bank of Japan, an old yet strong-looking building.


We also walked by the first department store to open in Japan, Mitsukoshi. (I didn't take any pictures, but there's a good one on the Wikipedia page)

We finally ended up on the 35th floor of "Maru Building", a tall building near Tokyo station which my friend had heard had an excellent view, and, occasionally live piano concerts on the 35th floor. While there was unfortunately nobody there playing the piano when we arrived, we did get a good view of the city as night fell. Here's a picture of Tokyo Tower taken through the window:


All in all, it was a fun, and relaxing day!

I'm back from a skiing trip to Madarao (located in Nagano prefecture)! The trip was organized by the Amity group I'm a part of at school. All in all, 9 people went; 3 of whom were exchange students.

To get there, we took a bus which left Tokyo late Wednesday night and arrived early Thursday morning. This is probably the cheapest way to travel, and is popular among college students. (It's not so popular with people who have money to spare, since it's darn well near impossible to sleep on the bus.) Along the way, we made frequent stops. Here's a picture I took at one such stop - there were several lines of busses like this one stopped here.


When we arrived, the bus circulated around town dropping people off at various places. We happened to be the last stop.

The most shocking thing about arriving? Suddenly there was lots of snow everywhere! It supposedly usually snows at least a couple of times in Tokyo during the winter, but it hasn't snowed once since I've arrived.


We had to walk a bit from where the bus dropped us to the inn where we were staying. This was a small inn (I think it had about 5 rooms) and it seemed to be run exclusively by a man and his wife. They also fed us breakfast and supper.


When we arrived Thursday morning, we couldn't actually go into our rooms yet, of course, but they let us drop our bags off in the lobby. We were renting ski gear from the inn, so the owner gave us that, helped us get into the gear, and wished us on our way.

(I actually took the above photo on the second day since I didn't take my camera with me on the first.)

I'd never been skiing before, so one of the girls who had been skiing taught me (and a group of 3 other newbies) the basics (eg, stopping and turning). After a little bit of practice on the beginner course, I got the hang of it pretty well (for a first time skiier.)

The first day was sunny, and you could see very well. The second day, it snowed all day. Comparing the two, I think it was easier to ski in the snow - on the first day the snow was well packed down and more like ice so it was harder to stop. Also, falling in fresh-fallen snow doesn't hurt at all. ^_^ It was harder to see, though, on the second day, especially higher up on the mountain. We stopped half-way down the hill and took some pictures. Higher up there's nothing but cloud.


Both days we skied until about 4, then headed back to the inn. We had three rooms, sorta. One of the rooms was used by the four girls who had come, the other two rooms were actually one room with two doors.



Notably lacking from this room, of course, are beds. ^_^ We slept on futons on the floor. (The girls' room, despite being smaller and lacking a bathroom, did have bunks.)

On the second night, we all gathered in this room, talked, ate snacks, and drank (in my case, orange-flavored juice and Oolong tea) It was a lot of fun!

The third day we didn't ski, so it was a slow and relaxing day. We ate lunch at a small shop we found in town (that was actually open at 11:45 - a lot of the places didn't keep very long hours so the first several restaurants we tried were closed) visited some shops and went to a hot spring located in this hotel.

I couldn't take any pictures of the hot spring itself, but there's one on this page. (I think this is actually of the girl's side since everything is backwards of how I remember it)

There was both an inside and outside part. If you went outside, since the water was hot and the air was cold, it was constantly foggy. Any part of you that had been in the water also steamed when removed.

Around 4 on the third day, we again boarded a bus and headed back to Tokyo, arriving just after 8 (it took way less time to get back than it did to get there for some reason.)

Fun trip! I discovered that I like skiing! I think I shall have to go again sometime. ^_^

I met a friend for lunch yesterday. We went to a ramen restaurant specializing in tsukemen (つけ麺). She had learned of this restaurant from a professor who for whatever reason had told everybody about it in his class, and even gone so far as to draw a map. The map, however, was slightly...insufficient, so after wandering around in what appeared to be a completely residential district where it was supposed to be for a while, we ended up searching for it (using the ever-handy cell phone.) It was a small restaurant in a very non-obvious place. (The store's name was "buchiuma" ぶちうま. You can see the entrance to it here. There's a little banner on the left, which was very easy to miss.)

When we arrived, there was actually a line of people waiting to go in, but a worker from the restaurant took our orders immediately. You could choose the amount of noodles you wanted (from a half serving to a triple serving) and the degree of spiciness (on a scale from 1 to 40.) The waiter recommended not going over 10, so we decided to go with 5.

The restaurant itself was small, long and narrow. There are a lot of little Japanese restaurants like this - there's just one long counter - the workers are behind this counter, and customers sit in front of it.

Tsukemen is a dish of cold noodles (this place also served it with some lettuce, cucumber, onion, and a half a hard-boiled egg.) In addition to the noodles, you get a dish of sauce to dip the noodles in.

The sauce was a bright red color, so just looking at it seemed spicy. 5 was indeed spicy. Really, really spicy. I can't quite imagine what pain the people who came in after us, who ordered 20 and 30, must have endured. It was indeed tasty, but if I ever go to a tsukemen shop again, I'm going to order 1-level spiciness.

Tonight, I'm leaving for a trip to Nagano. (Which I think I've mentioned before.) This was organized by the Amity group at school. It's mainly a skiing trip, but I'll be sure to take some pictures and post 'em here when I get back.