I left the U.S. on Tuesday March 25 at 1:45 pm and my flight landed in Tokyo, Japan around local time 4:00 pm March 26. By the way, the time difference in Japan is 13 hours, so 7:00 pm in the US is 8:00 am in Japan. I was on the same flight as my good friend and we talked and watched movies to pass time on the 14 hour flight but it was not a lot of fun I'll admit. When we arrived in Japan, we were greeted by our CIEE program coordinators who helped us check in and sent our bags to the hotel we stayed at for the night. After a quick ride to the hotel, we checked in and met the rest of the program staff and everyone else in our CIEE Sophia University program. Afterwards, we went to a nearby mall to eat and explore the outskirts of Tokyo. I went with two of my friends from USC and we got dinner at a fast food Japanese restaurant. We could not read the name of the place because there were a few characters we did not know, but the food was delicious. I'm not sure exactly what I ate (because we could not really read the menu either), but I think it was like a bowl of rice topped with egg, fried chicken, and a really good sauce. After some more exploration and a quick purchase of slippers (more on that in a later post), we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
On Thursday March 27, we started with a quick trip to a nearby Buddhist temple called Narita-San. It was truly amazing. We walked around and saw all the different shrines and towers and I even purchased a special charm for my birth year on the Japanese calendar, the year of the Cock/Rooster. This works on another level too because I go to the University of South Carolina whose mascot is the Gamecock! Before you go in the Temple, you cleanse yourself by washing your hands in a special pool and then you walk through the temple. It was massive and everything was beautiful. I really enjoyed the experience and I even rang the bell at the shrine for the God of Learning, so that probably means I'm guaranteed good grades this semester! There were a few stray cats hanging around the temple but they ran away when we tried to get close. After the temple, we had lunch and our first orientation. Then we drove for over an hour to our dorm. It is called DK House Matsudo and it is really great. It houses 130+ people ranging from 18 years old to 60. I will have a dorm-specific blog post in the future to explain all about it but the main thing you need to know for now is that my room is really really small. It is 7.6 meters squared but that is to be expected because space is so limited in Japan! That night we took a tour of the area surrounding our dorm and went out to a Ramen Shop for dinner with a bunch of new friends. It was delicious noodles with pork and egg inside.
The next day on Friday, we started out getting in a large group to practice getting to campus by the train. My commute to campus every day is about an hour by train and I switch trains a few times. It is kind of complicated but you get used to it. The trains are really packed during rush hour so it gets uncomfortable and hot which will take some getting used to. Most people sleep or read newspapers or manga books (Japanese cartoons). When we got to campus we had another orientation and then a campus tour and lunch with a senpai. A senpai is an older student. After that we had another dorm orientation and were free for the rest of the day. We took the train back to the dorm and got some dinner and I crashed really early. Due to jet lag, I have been getting very little sleep so I fell asleep at 8 pm friday night and I was not the only one by any means that crashed early.
Saturday was the coolest day by far that I've had. We got up and got breakfast at a local place called Sukiya where I had chicken and rice mixed with raw egg. It was delicious. Then we took the train to campus and got there at 10 am where we had another orientation about dealing with cultural differences. Then came the fun part. We have been split in to small groups for most of the orientation process and I am the leader of my group (Group 3 Represent!). Saturday's activity was a 4 hour scavenger hunt throughout Tokyo with our small group. We had a list of things to get pictures of, questions to answer, and items to obtain. It was so fun going all over Tokyo searching for the stuff on the list. We had an amazing time and one of our group members has lived in Tokyo before so he gave us a huge advantage. We took a break to get lunch at this amazing sushi place where you order food on a tablet device and then the kitchen makes it and uses this conveyer system to shoot your plate right to your seat. You then pick up your food and the tray shoots back to the kitchen. It was so cool and the food was amazing. I ate shrimp tempura rolls, inarizushi, and tuna sushi. My group did really well on the scavenger hunt but we won't know the winners for awhile. That finished at 4 pm and then we headed back to the dorm. That night we had a huge party with lots of residents of our dorm where we talked and hung out with a bunch of older Japanese people. I had a great time practicing my Japanese and learning how to say new things. We made a ton of new friends and then we got a huge group and went to a karaoke bar. Karaoke is huge in Japan and it is so much fun! You rent a room for an hour and they give you tamborines and maracas and two microphones. We probably crammed 15 people in this small room and we sang our hearts out and had a killer time. I personally sang some Journey, Blink 182, Kanye, and Backstreet boys! Really everyone in the room was yelling every song though so it did not matter all that much who had the mics. After that we hung out in the dorm and stuff until we all crashed around 3 am.
Today is Sunday, March 30, and I mostly have been using it to catch up on stuff like unpacking, studying, and writing this blog! Apparently there was a small earthquake close to here as well but I was asleep and didn't notice. Earthquakes are very common here and no cause for concern unless they are big earthquakes so don't worry!
Here are some pics from my first week!
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Flight to Tokyo: 14 hours
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My friend Corey and I on the plane
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First night's dinner!
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Sushi Bar
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Temple Entrance
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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You must purify yourself here before entering the Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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Buddhist Temple
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God of Learning had a shrine here
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I rang the bell at the God of Learning's shrine so hopefully I get A's this semester!
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Buddhist Temple
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You can purchase wishes and put them here and they're supposed to come true
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Buddhist Temple
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My Dorm!
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Ramen!
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My dorm room with and without me (Very Small)
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Tokyo
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The national flower of Japan is currently blooming! It's called Sakura or cherry blossom
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Train Station
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Spicy Tuna Roll
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Shrimp Tempura Roll and Inarizushi
I also have an instagram where I will be posting a lot of pics so feel free to follow that also @AJtheBurner
Sayoonara for now!
-A.J.
AH miss you already!!! That food place where they shoot the trays sound pretty sweet! So jealous of all this cool stuff!
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