So after my last post left off, I had a pretty normal week of school. Get up each day at 8:45 am and leave my dorm at 9:30. Take three separate trains to get to Yotsuya city around 10:30 and get to campus at 10:40. Go to Japanese class at 11:00 for an hour and a half and take a quiz or test every day. If it is Monday or Thursday then that is followed by lunch and 4 and a half more hours of class. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I often go to the gym on the Sophia Campus or eat lunch with friends then head back for another hour long commute home. Get home and do homework, study, hang out with friends, watch some tv, eat dinner, read, sleep, repeat. I am basically in my groove here now and I have a nice routine. I love routines and the comfort factor that comes with them so this is good. During that school week, I did not do a whole lot outside my routine and it was a good week filled with the average stresses of college. That weekend though was the start of the Japanese Golden Week. It is a National Holiday that lasts four days where people get off work and school. Unfortunately, two of those days were on the weekend so I only got two days off of school, but I did not waste them!
A few of my friends decided to travel to other countries for our time off, but my close friends and I decided to just stay in Tokyo and explore it. Tokyo and the surrounding area is so big that it is impossible to see it all with the time we have here. We went to a bunch of different cities and explored around. I kind of forget the order of what I did so I will just kind of list everything!
I saw the new Captain America movie at a really cool Japanese theatre in Ikebukuro. It was in English but with Japanese subtitles so it was really fun to try to read along. Movies in Japan are more expensive than in America but they are great. The theaters are really clean and they sell alcohol. Japanese people really love caramel popcorn so they sell that at theaters alongside regular popcorn, candy, and coke. Here's a picture of the movie with a Japanese Subtitle. The subtitle says "Strike Team!"
One day we went to Shinjuku and went to a world famous "Cat Cafe". Japan has special cafes where you can pay money to go in and there are a bunch of cats to hang out with. You can get food and drinks and you can buy cat treats to get the cats to interact with you more. It was so much fun! My friends and I just played with cats for an hour and had a blast. Japan also apparently has squirrel cafes and owl cafes but I haven't been yet.
One of the Golden Week days, we met up with my Japanese friend Yuta and we went to this small town called Kashiwa (I think). We were going to this park where they have lots of beautiful sights and also lots of athletic courses to do. Unfortunately it was raining some, so the adult courses were closed. But we did the kid courses anyways! We were by far the oldest people there other than parents but we didn't care. There was a maze made of water where you navigate through and try to avoid getting wet. Yuta tried to push me in the water but I overpowered him and threw him in first hahaha. There was also a really complex maze mountain where you get a time card at the beginning and they time how fast you can complete the course. To complete the course you have to collect four stamps from different areas of the maze before you leave. It was really intense even though it was meant for younger customers. My friends and I ran the course twice and made bets for the second run. Last place had to dunk his head in the water! I got first place (of course) but my friend Sam had a nice dunk since he got really lost in the maze. We were the only people in the course that were competing so we were sprinting the whole time trying to avoid knocking over little kids. My time would have been even better, but this one kid took forever to get his stamp. It took all my self control not to yell at him to hurry up! This is serious business!
The Gang for the day
Water Maze and the yellow place is the start of the next event- maze mountain
The finish line of the maze mountain
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Sam lost hahaha
After we did the athletic stuff, we walked all around the beautiful park and the town. We only got lost a couple of times but we ended up finding a small festival! I saw a small shrine and I ate some grilled octopus on a stick for fun!
Octopus anyone?
During Golden Week, we spent a lot of time just exploring around and having fun. We decided one of the days to try out Pachinko. It is basically Japanese slots mixed with pinball. Gambling is illegal in Japan, but the closest thing they have is Pachinko. You pay money to play and you get these little silver balls. You then shoot them into a machine and if one of them lands in the right hole, it starts a slot machine. If the slot machine gives three of a kind, then you win a lot more little silver balls. When you are done playing, you trade your silver balls in for prizes at the counter. It is commonly known that if you trade for a special prize listed then you can take that special prize (which is usually some form gold or silver item in plastic) and trade it for real money at a sort of secret location next to the Pachinko parlor. It's supposed to be a secret way to "cheat the system" so you can gamble in Japan, but everyone knows about it. There are Pachinko parlors everywhere in Japan so finding one was not difficult. We went in and had to sign up for a card to play. After struggling to figure out how to sign up, we got our cards and sat down to play. We decided to only spend 1000 yen each (About 10 American dollars) and we started to play. The machines are extremely loud and they make a lot of noises that made us think we were winning, but none of us won anything. We burned through our 1000 yen in minutes with nothing to show for it but partial deafness from the machines. It was fun but really confusing. Lots of people in Japan spend all day at these places but it was just a one-time thing for me to try it out!
Tons of Pachinko Parlors in Japan
Pachinko: Pinball on Steroids
Pretty much every night of Golden Week, I went to some city and had adventures with friends. We tried some really cool restaurants and had a really great week getting to know Tokyo a little bit better. All good things must come to an end, however. Classes started back on Wednesday and I had a big oral presentation due with two partners. We had to have an 8 minute conversation in Japanese in front of our Professor. We had practiced well though, so we crushed it. I also had a huge test on Thursday and I did well on that too. Friday came pretty fast since it was a short week of school and I went out with some friends that night.
Saturday I had a big event with my international student group, SISEC (Sophia International Student Exchange Council). The group met at a park about 45 minutes from my dorm and we had a massive barbecue! There were nearly 200 students there, so we were randomly split into different groups. I was put in to number 13 and I immediately became friends with all of them. I was one of two foreigners and the rest were Japanese students. We all joked and laughed and had a lot of fun talking in Japanese and English and getting to know each other. Then all the groups played a trivia game to see who got extra food. We lost, but I maintain we were the best team anyways. Each group had their own table and bbq grill. We had a fire and a metal grate where we piled on beef strips and vegetables. I was grill master in charge of the meat and I did my group proud. We cooked up all the meat and put it on plates as it was ready and everyone shared it. It was incredibly tasty.
This is a picture of me with another group. I unfortunately don't have access to pics of my group right now!
At one point, while I was doing some grilling, I was approached by a group of little Japanese girls. We were at a public park so there were people other than students there. A group of Japanese girls, probably aged 7-8 were playing near my group's bbq and they had been staring at me because I am such an obvious foreigner. Finally, one of them approached me and said hello and asked me to follow them. I looked at one of my new Japanese friends in my group to make sure it was ok and she told me I should go for it. So, the little girls ran off and beckoned me to follow, so I did. They led me to their family's camp and I met their parents. We talked and introduced ourselves and they gave me food and drinks and we all laughed together for a few minutes. I then told them I had to leave and they were sad but understood. It was a weird experience where I was like a celebrity because I was an American.
After the meat, we grilled noodles on our bbq. This is called yakisoba and it is also super delicious. For dessert, we grilled apples in tin foil covered in butter and sugar and it was so good too. I had a great time with my group and made a bunch of new friends for sure.
Yakisoba
After the bbq, I went with some of my foreign friends (2 people from Spain, 1 from Japan, and 3 Americans) and explored this port near the park. We hung out there and saw some huge yachts and enjoyed the scenery. When we went up to the water though, we spotted a bunch of jellyfish and one of them was massive. It was cool to see but I was not finna swim with it.
Hangin' out by the water
We all decided to go home and shower and change and meet up to explore Shibuya and get dinner that night. We all got pretty dressed up and had a really fun night on the town.
Train is always so packed
Well that about covers my last two weeks! Golden Week was a blast but it's the last break I will have while in Japan. For now I'm concentrating on School and my clubs and meeting people and trying new things. I think I'm climbing a mountain next week so look forward to that! Talk you soon folks!
Sayoonara for now!
-A.J.
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