Sayonara

In about seven hours I will be boarding the plane to fly home. I am kind of having a hard time believing that it's already July. The semester went by very quickly. Above is a picture of the Sayonara Party that we had on Friday.


Other than the party, Amelia's visit a week ago (pictured above), and our fourth of July celebration (pictured below), not much has been happening recently. The robot above is in Odaiba, a man made island fairly close to Shinagawa station (which is the southern end of Tokyo) . The have a lot of crazy stuff and interesting buildings there. Below is the fourth of July party we held in a park near Tokyo Disney. We rented a couple grills and made hamburgers and hotdogs and then set off some fireworks in the evening.
I had several papers and tests all stacked on top of one another, as per usual. I took my last exam and handed in my last paper on Thursday and I just finished packing last night. Now I just need to put my computer away and I will be finished with that, so I suppose I should go ahead and do that. I'm not sure I can emphasize how much of an excellent experience Japan was. That being said, all good things must come to an end. I suppose that's it for now. I'll write again when I'm back in the states. Goodbye for now.

Okinawa and afterward

Hello, again. When I thought it impossible, I found a way to have less time to spend on the internet. I spend most of my time in my room doing school work, which there will be more of in the coming weeks. I have three more weeks left in Tokyo. During these weeks, I have at least one final exam and three research papers averaging about thirteen pages each. However, on to more pleasant things.

I went to Okinawa a couple weeks ago. It was fairly amazing. Above is a picture of the sunset taken from the balcony of the place we stayed. Okinawa is to Japan as Hawaii is to the United States. I was there with the other IES students for four days, and they were a fantastic four days. Below, the top picture is one of the caves that are all over the island. Next is a whale shark at the aquarium we went to, apparently the largest in Japan. Second from the bottom is the castle which used to be the center of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which ruled the Ryukyu islands until the 1800's when Japan absorbed them. That was interesting because most of the castle used a lot of stone, which they were unable to do in mainland Japan due to earthquakes. The bottom picture is the peace memorial. The walls are covered with the names of those who died at the Battle of Okinawa, American soldiers, Japanese soldiers, and Okinawan citizens. The last category made up for half of the casualties at the battle. The museum there was well done and fairly depressing.

I unfortunately forgot my camera in my dorm room, so all the above pictures I took from others on my trip. We also got a chance to do some glassblowing, which is something that Okinawa has become famous for only in the past sixty years. I also do not have any pictures for when we got a chance to play the sanshin, an Okinawan instrument that was the precursor to the shamisen. All in all it was an excellent trip.

A week ago I went on a field trip to Yasukuni Shrine, pictured above. This was the national shrine until a constitution forbidding a state religion was adopted after the war. In it, all the soldiers who have "sacrificed for the Emperor" are enshrined and deified. There is a museum attached dedicated to remembering Japan's fallen soldiers, or more specifically everything that they did that was not a war crime. The place is pretty controversial because it enshrined something like seven class A war criminals. I had a more lighthearted field trip last Saturday to Kamakura, which is just southwest of Tokyo and was the capital a little less than a thousand years ago. We went to a Buddhist temple, the gate of which is pictured below Yasukuni. Below is a Shinto wedding taking place at the shrine we went to following the temple.

That is all the exciting news I have for the past few weeks. I hope to get out a little more in the coming weeks. I still have three or four places on my list of destinations in Tokyo that I hope to get to before I go, but I do have a good deal of work ahead of me. I think I should be able to find time to visit most of them. At any rate, until next time I leave you with the Kamakura Daibutsu (Kamakura Great Buddha). He was two or three stories tall, and apparently quite old.

Hisashiburi (It's been a while)

Hello all. I apologize for how long it has taken me to get around to writing again. Golden Week ended a week and a half ago. After returning to school I found the first wave of large tests and papers due. I noticed quite a few people commenting on graduation on facebook, which seems odd to me as I'm talking my midterms. Regardless, I suppose I should share what I've been up to.

As I mentioned, about a week ago I returned to school from Golden week , a week-long holiday in Japan. I spent the first couple days in Tokyo with my friends and then went to Nagoya to see Amelia. The next day, we went to Kyoto and saw the sights that night and following day. We spent that night in Nagoya and then both came to Tokyo by the Shinkansen, the bullet train. As you can see in the first picture, it rained all day in honor of Amelia's visit. She had not been to Tokyo yet, so I showed her around for a couple of days and then she went back to Nagoya. Below and to the left is a picture of Kyoto from Kiyomizudera, a temple on the hillside east of Kyoto. To the right is Amelia striking a heroic pose in front of a building where we believe the Shinsengumi got their start. (The Shinsengumi were a police force in Kyoto during the 1860's that I wrote a paper on once).

Below those two pictures are two of Heian Jingu, a large shrine in Kyoto. (Another historical side note, Kyoto was originally called Heian). The one on the right is the entrance to the actual shrine. The one on the left is a gate about 100 meters from the entrance. For an idea of scale, the top of gray portion of the pillar was out of my reach. Below is Nijo-jo castle. After becoming Shogun, Tokugawa had this castle built as his Kyoto residence for whenever he wanted to visit the Emperor. One really neat feature was the "Nightingale Floor." They built the floor in this castle to squeak underfoot so it was impossible to have someone sneak up on you.

On the first day in Tokyo, I showed Amelia around my school and Makuhari, the city my school is in. The next day we went to Shinjuku, Harajuku, Yoyogi and Shibuya. That may sound like a lot, but they're all right next to one another, so there wasn't as much walking as you would think. Below, from left to right, are Meiji Jingu, the main street in Harajuku, and Shibuya crossing.




In Yoyogi we saw Meiji Jingu, the Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji. The shrine pictured at the very top of the page is also Meiji Jingu. I have forgotten the name of this street in Harajuku. Shibuya crossing is the busiest intersection in the world. The picture was taken at a relatively slow time of day from the second floor of the Starbucks across from the station.

That is about all I have pictures of and time for. I still have some work for my Japanese class tomorrow. Until next time.

Week 3

Hello again. Classes have gotten well under way, which has made for even less time in my dorm room. This was a good week. As planned, I went to the taiko festival in Narita. We ate eel for lunch (pictured right) as soon as we got there and then walked around the temple at which the festival was centered around. We also attended a Buddhist ceremony, in which the monks lit a fire, chanted, and then collected people's bags to be held near the fire for good luck. Pictures were not allowed, so I don't have anything to show in that area. After a tour of the temple and some more free time, they had a performance in front of the temple. I recorded a couple songs. Sorry about the one I uploaded, I was at the back of the crowd and there was a lot of movement behind me. I had a hard time keeping it steady.

I was also planning on going to view the cherry blossoms in the park on Sunday, but they were all gone by Saturday evening. Instead, we just hung out in the park for a few hours and were bitten by many mosquitoes.

Then, I had my second full week of classes. I'm taking History of Tokyo, Pop Culture of Japan, History of Japanese International Relations, and of course Japanese Language. I have two or three research papers and about the same number of presentations. With the exception of Japanese, the classes only meet once a week for two hours and forty minutes. This usually makes for a large reading that I forget until the night before, which works when the classes and readings are shorter. Here, however, it's been costing me in sleep. But, I am adjusting to the schedule, slowly but surely.

Last night, I went to a costume party in Harajuku (a ward in Tokyo). It was pretty much everything you'd expect from a costume party in Japan. It made for a highly entertaining evening. For those who have seen the Calamari Wrestler, the man with the bottle on his head below may look familiar. The man who stuck a can to his head was at this party, sticking a can to his head. After the can, he upgraded to a bottle, the contents of which he poured into a cup provided by one of the other people he was up there with. Whipeout was playing in the background the entire time they were on stage. It was quite an experience.

Week 2ish

Sorry about the radio silence, I haven't spent much time in my room in which I was not doing homework or sleeping. Much like the other IES kids, I spend most of my time in a building on my campus in which Japanese students will come and hang out with foreigners in order to practice their English. Last Saturday, we went to Chiba Park and saw some of the Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) which are in bloom for about two weeks. Last Sunday was right in the middle of this for the Sakura around here. Recently they have started to fall off the trees, which kind of looks like snow if you get enough together. On this coming Sunday, I'm going to hanami, literally "flower watching" but it's what watching the cherry blossoms is called. I hope to get many more pictures there.

Last Wednesday, a friend of mine heard that some J-pop star was going to be at some sort of signing in Shibuya. We decided it would be an interesting experience to go. As soon as I got off the train, I discovered that my camera was dead, so I have no evidence that this occur ed. However, I did see the world's busiest intersection. It seemed like a slow time of day, and there was still a sea of people every time the pedestrians got the green light. I plan to go back with a working camera sometime.

Today we are going to a Taiko Drum festival in Narita (where the international airport is located). I will probably have plenty of pictures from that as well. I also had a request for a picture of someone in a kimono, so I hope to find someone today who won't mind being photographed. That's all for now.

Week One

After a week of PowerPoints and tours, orientation is finally over. The campus is good and the students seem to be very friendly. My first class is a history class this Friday. Really nothing much more to report on the academic front.

A friend of mine from Denison is studying at Waseda University, also in Tokyo. We met up yesterday and walked around a sort of marketplace in Asakusa, also in Tokyo. Her host mother is an English teacher and was taking some of her students there and asked if we would like to tag along. Afterwards we went to Shinjuku, one of the larger stations. We went up to the observation deck, for lack of a better term, and looked out at the city. It's pretty ridiculous just how big Tokyo is. The visibility was good, and I could not see the end of it in any direction. Upon looking at these pictures again, I'm surprised that I have managed to not get lost yet. I'm sure my day is coming soon, though.













I plan to start taking my camera out with me more. I'm sure if I had been doing this, I would have posted more frequently already. Sumimasen.

I guess that is all for now. I will just leave you with one last video which was taken in front of a ramen shop. I thought it was neat.

Doomii Higashi Funabashi

Well, my flight ended with an eight hour delay. I eventually got to Tokyo around 10:40 local time. I called the director of my program when I got through customs only to be told that the instructions I recieved were useless by that time of night. With the help of a friendly, English speaking Japanese couple, I caught the last train out of the Airport and took a taxi from there to the place where my orientation was held. I finally got to the place where I was staying by about 12:30 and passed out almost immidiately.

The next couple of days were spent almost entirely in orientation. We sat through long hours of powerpoints and "useful information." Some of this was actually very helpful and some of this was completely useless. However, I endured the first two days and only have one more left.

Today, we moved into our permanent housing. Although I applied for a homestay, I was sent to a dorm, Higashi Funabashi. It is located in Funabahsi city, a suburb of Tokyo wich is actually a legitimate city. The room is larger than I expected and has about 9 other people from my program, 4 of which are on the year long program and have been here since August. At least one other person in this dorm also applied for a homestay, so I wasn't alone in my disappointment. I am putting up some pictures of my room with this post. I will post again when I have more to say than the food here is excellent, which subsequently it it.

Airport Travel

Despite the fact that this blog is for my stay in Japan, I am writing this first post in the Denver Airport, which was not initially part of my travel plans.

Apparently there was some sort of medical emergency up in first class. After asking if there was a doctor aboard a few times in both Japanese and English, the Captain announced that we were landing in Denver in 20 minutes. After about an hour on the ground, they informed us that our current flight crew could not complete the trip at this point because the extra couple of hours would put them over the legal maximum. We are now waiting for a new crew which will be able to fly to Tokyo and the new scheduled departure time is now 6:50 local time. We arrived something like noon local time, so this does add about 6-7 hours to a 13 hour flight.

It could have been worse, however, because at first they were threatening not to let us deplane before the new flight crew arrived. However, we didn't spend more than 2 hours total on the ground before they let us off. I suppose it wouldn't be fitting to travel by air without massive delays. That's all the news that's fit to print at the moment.