BBQ at Showa Memorial Park

In order to reach the location of KCP’s school excursion for this semester, I had to ride the hour train to Shinjuku, then a full hour further west, past Mitaka (home of the Ghibli Musuem) and to Nishi-Tachikawa station. I arrived 15 minutes late, didn’t think to ask one of the teachers where the classes specifically were gathered, and proceeded to wander around the gigantic park blindly for about half an hour.

I finally arrived, forty-five minutes late, to the “BBQ Garden”, where all the classes were assembled around their respective grills. I found my class, explained why I was late to about everyone in my class individually, and proceeded to not take part in the cooking of food whatsoever.

I’m not afraid of cooking at all, but I’m way over my head when it comes to cooking Korean food. First off, I don’t know the first thing about it. The second thing is that the average Korean male seems to know a whole lot more about cooking than the average college student in America. In my dorm last year, you would be considered “the guy who knows how to cook” if you could scramble an egg without getting shell in it. During the discussions in class the previous few days, and during the actual cooking process, the Koreans were all passionately involved in the cooking process. Arguing about the heat of the grill, carefully choosing the right proportions of vegetables and meat, passionately debating the value of one mushroom over another. I decided to look busy by taking pictures, and nobody ever asked for my help. A win-win.

As for the food itself, it was great. When one of the cooks finished a batch, they would put it on the tarp and everyone would pick at it for about a minute before it was all gone.

It was also a chance to talk to a lot of my former classmates and teachers. It was a pretty fun time all in all, until I decided to take up one of the Koreans’ challenge to eat a very spicy pepper, which proceeded to wreak havoc on my insides for the rest of the day.

Being a park, there were lots of things to do. I found a basketball court and hung around it for a while, waited for the current game to get over, and then proceeded to play for about 2.3 minutes before we were called back to the grill. Here’s a picture of me watching the game, with my “someone set a screen” face.

After the food, we were split up by level and did some activities. Level 4 had a dodgeball tournament. It was different from American dodgeball, in that there were two squares next to each other, with the teams in the center. Five people from each team were lined up around the opposite team’s square. There was only one ball, but other than that it was like normal dodgeball. The first few games were not going to make it on ESPN Classic any time soon. No intensity whatsoever. It was almost frustrating. Then it was our team’s turn. Because the only penalty for getting out was that you had to go around the perimeter of the other team’s square, but could still play, I decided just to try and catch every ball. And because the ball that they used can best be described as “floppy”, it was pretty easy. With some minor strategizing, like standing on one side of the square with the ball so everyone hid in the corner and then tossing it to a teammate closer to the bunch, it was pretty easy. We wound up winning the tournament pretty easily.

Were I in America, I would probably be in the lower half of talent. But here, everyone kept going up to me and telling me how awesome I am at dodgeball, and that I must do a ton of sports. I wound up winning MVP of our team. The whole thing is actually really silly, but fun in an ego stroking way.

After the day was over, and most of my classmates went to do their favorite national pastime (drinking party), Encaron, Sehan, Li and myself (man their names look weird in roman letters) went to a Japanese garden that was inside the park. The park was so huge, I’m surprised there wasn’t a zeppelin parking lot tucked in somewhere.

It was magic hour (the time before sunset, when the direction of the light makes the colors look better) so I tried to get some photographs. There were a ton of things to take pictures of. I’m normally a person who tries to find the one, best angle and take the best possible picture, but I was torn between a ton of different places. I kept walking about 10 steps and thinking “whoa! that’s even better!” As a result, I got a few pictures that I’m pretty proud of. As always, check flickr for a larger batch of them.

Second half

I have no other interesting anecdotes about my last week in the dorm. I packed everything I brought and bought into two suitcases, a backpack and my laptop case, cleaned my dorm room, gave my key back to Mr. Sasaki and headed back down the road toward Nishi-Waseda station.

The combined weight of my backpack and the shoulder strap of my full laptop case made my arm go numb unless I stopped to reposition it every once and a while. Just as moving in America makes one painfully conscious of the amount of waste on accumulates over a lifetime, this move was also a reminder how quickly your possessions can weigh you down. I can’t imagine myself buying much more over here after this moving experience, with the exception of souvenirs/Christmas presents for my family.

The trip took about an hour, and I finally arrived at Minami Senju station a few minutes before the 5:30 pm meeting time. I dragged my stuff to the Risona Bank that I was told to wait by and soon found the van of my host family.

So, that happened on Friday, and now it’s Monday.

The whole family is great, if you were wondering. The wife, Rina, is from Kansai, which means she’s more no-nonsense than the typical Tokyo housewife (according to stereotypes that have yet to be disproved in my mind). She spent some time in America studying abroad, and is pretty good at English. Good enough that between the two of us we can usually get anything communicated, even if it takes a little effort. She’s currently on maternity leave because she had a baby in July. The baby is a pretty typical baby — it is impossible to predict whether doing something will trigger pleasant laughter or hysterical tears — but she’s already crawling everywhere, which strikes me as early for a three-four month old. Maybe. I couldn’t tell you within 12 months when babies are supposed to do things.

They already have a six year old daughter, Serin, who is unbelievably cheerful. She is always challenging, but forgiving, to communicate with because although she doesn’t have a really highly developed vocabulary, she talks really fast and casually, which is hard to understand sometimes. Still, she’s easy-going and thinks just about anything I do is cool, so I don’t regret checking “I prefer a house with small children” on my homestay application.

The husband, Masaru, is not quite as developed in English, but still competent. He works during the day, comes home and often goes running in preparation for a marathon he’s doing in November. I recently found out that he’s a huge fan of Michael Jordan, although he doesn’t pay much attention to basketball currently.

I think it’s fair to say that they both expected me to be at a much lower level than I am. Like I said, I have yet to have a situation where some concept was too complicated to attempt to communicate, or I hear a sentence where I don’t know half the words. Certainly I hear words I don’t know all the time, but getting to the point where there are few enough words you don’t know that you can ask about them in normal conversation without being annoying is something I’ve been looking forward to.

The very first night, I found myself signing up for a half-marathon during the same event that Masaru is running the full marathon. The next morning, I went to the very close public library and got a card. That evening we went to a shopping mall. The next morning was an athletic festival at Serin’s elementary school. I met Masaru’s mother there, who I was also able to communicate with. Today, Monday, I went back to work in the morning, then to school, and came back to the house.

It’s not a house, it’s an apartment, but that doesn’t mean that it’s small. I was actually surprised how large it is. There are three bedrooms, all the necessary other rooms, a large dining/family room with a playroom off to the side. It all has a very classy feeling, especially in comparison to the dormitory, where dead cockroaches in the bathroom were common enough to not get worked up over.

There’s yet to be a dinner that featured something I didn’t like, and I even tried Kimchi and Natto, which were numbers one and two on the list of foods most people are expected to dislike. The dining situation is fairly casual, as any house with a six year old an a three month old will likely be, so it’s not the strict, formal feeling that you might be expecting.

Overall, there’s nothing about it that makes me regret the decision to go for homestay. I’m even happy that I wasn’t able to get in on the first semester, because I feel that if I instead was carting all my luggage from the homestay to arrive at the tiny dorm room, it would be a huge disappointment. They respect the sanctity of “I’m studying right now,” the curfew is essentially a non-factor for someone who hates nightlife like me, and it forces me to use language every day. On weekends in the dorm, I could go through the whole day without even opening my mouth if I wanted to. Here there’s much more of an opportunity to speak, and I can already tell that it’s helping out.

Classes start this Friday, which means a new batch of students will be arriving this week. For the new student orientation, the teachers requested that I attend so I could talk up the calligraphy special class, and also to give a sample level three conversation with one of the other students from my class. I met with that other student (“Jay” or “Jae” or “J” or whatever) at the school today and we wrote up the conversation and did some practicing. The actual entrance ceremony is on Wednesday, and I won’t act like I’m not a little bit nervous about it. Oh well, it’ll be fine.

I also got a chance to ask about my grades on the final exam. They were mostly good to okay. Kanji was an 88, grammar was in the high 70′s, reading comprehension in the low 80′s. The listening was actually in the high 60′s, which was a little bit alarming. I’ll be able to go onto level 4 no problem, but I don’t know about my A grade (an 80 or higher overall grade is an A). According to my calculations, I still have it, but I’ll have to wait to hear the final word.

Well, I’m going to enjoy the final three days before classes start up again that work and worrying about speaking in front of all the new students will allow. My daily expenses has gone down to just about nothing, and I get a paycheck next Monday. In other words, things are going good, thanks for asking.

Nara, Himeji

It was a given that I would have to take advantage of this summer vacation somehow. A total of 9 days free, 4 days left on my Seishun 18 ticket, and an entire country to carve my way through. It was a priority to carve a gash as far down the island as I could. In order to take advantage of the Seishun 18 ticket, which allows you to travel as much as you want in not-necessarily-consecutive days, you need to have designated travel days where you can really get your money’s worth. Ideally, the final destination would be about as far away from Tokyo as possible, while still being close enough to return in one day on the trains.

One thing about the Seishun 18 ticket: yes, you can use as many trains as you want in a day, but only the local trains that stop at every station and the next faster one that maybe shaves 5 minutes off an hour trip. So, while you could travel from Tokyo to the furthest tip in four hours by using Shinkansen or faster trains, it takes a lot longer to get anywhere the local train way…as you will see.

I found out that Trisna wanted to go on a similar trip, so we just decided to go over together and then separate on the trip back. The plan was this: leave really early on Sunday, head over to Nara. We would stay overnight at Nara and then leave in the early afternoon and head over to Hiroshima on Monday. We would stop off at Himeji castle on the way. We’d spend one full day in Hiroshima, and visit Miyajima island. I would head all the way back on Wednesday while Trisna stopped over in Kyoto. I made the hostel reservations and meticulously planned out the stations and transfers we would have to take, with a general estimation of how long it would take.

On the day of, I got up at 4:45 in order to catch the first subway train to hit Nishi-Waseda and aimed to arrive at Tokyo station around 5:30. I had to run to reach the closing doors at the subway station, but I made it. Things went smoothly all the way to Tokyo until I realized that I had remembered to bring socks, but forgotten to bring my Seishun 18 ticket. Doh. I reached Tokyo station anyway to consult with Trisna about the options, determined there really was only one, and I was on the next train back to my dorm. Train rides take longer when you’re hating yourself.

We finally left at 8:00. Tokyo station to Atami (1:40), Atami to Shizuoka (1:15). We ate lunch at Shizuoka. Shizuoka to Hamamatsu (1:15), Hamamatsu to Ogaki (1:50), Ogaki to Maibara (:35), Maibara to Kyoto (:55), and then Kyoto to Nara (:50).

We arrived at Nara around 6:00 and quickly found the hostel. It was called Nara Ugaya Guesthouse, and had a pretty nice atmosphere. The guy working there was pretty nice to us, was patient with the less-than-stealler language skills and recommended us to a good Ramen restaurant. There was a map on the wall with the hometowns of everyone who had stayed at that hostel. I put one very lonely pin in the area of Nampa, Idaho. After dropping off the bags we had been lugging around since the morning, we headed to the aforementioned Ramen restaurant.

We followed the instructions exactly, and it led us to a place like this. Some may look at this and think “dodgy,” but in my experience the best food to be found are in these creepily out-of-the-way places. A lot of bad food, too, but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The restaurant looked like a place that probably wouldn’t have passed health inspections in America, but there was a healthy crowd there despite the late time we arrived. I asked what the spiciest thing they had on the menu was, and they named two options, one of which was Kim Chi Ramen. I ordered the other one. While waiting for our food, we talked a bit to the waitress, who seemed surprised that I could speak and seemed to think that Trisna was Japanese. It was an ongoing theme through the trip. People would always address Trisna first and then be surprised when she responded with less than fluent Japanese. I personally like my own situation where if I can formulate a “sumimasen” they seem impressed.

When the food was delivered to us, I was a little unsettled that she gave me the Kim Chi Ramen. I didn’t care enough to have them change it because it took like 10 minutes to make and it looked good regardless. I guess all the talk about Kim Chi tasting like feet is just bad press, because it was really good. Of all the Ramen places I’ve been to here, it was the best I’d had so far.

A couple sitting next to us eventually started talking as well. They asked where we came from, where we were going. They recommended that if we went to Hiroshima, we should order the okonomiyaki. Oh great, just what I wanted to hear. But wait! Hiroshima okonomiyaki is different from normal okonomiyaki, and generally regarded as the best in Japan. So, okay, we would have to go at least once.

After dinner, we attempted to get as much sightseeing as we could during the night. We wanted to go to Miyajima island, which is about 40 minutes from Hiroshima, before dark the next day, so the less time we had to spend in Nara in the morning, the better.

We started going from place to place, based on a map that Trisna received from a travel information booth. It was very nice weather — none of the humidity of Tokyo and a very light breeze. There weren’t many tourists out, so it was nice. By the end of the night, we had actually seen about 70% of what we wanted to see total. I did some more long exposure photography with varying degrees of success. My favorite shot was this one of a gazebo on a pond that I didn’t digitally retouch at all.

We headed back at about 10:30, because we wanted to leave the hostel at 5:30 am the next morning. In our 5-bed shared room, there was only one guy asleep at the time. When I woke up at 5:10 the next morning, all the beds were filled. Trisna wanted to take a shower, so we didn’t end up leaving until closer to 6, but it gave me a chance to use the free computer in the lobby. It’s amazing how quick you start to miss that thing.

In the morning it was just about as desolate as it was in the night. We cut through the park that houses most of Nara’s attractions and went to the most remote area first. The shrine at the end was nice, but I liked the path that we had to walk to get there better. It was like what people dream of when they think of the world’s best place to take a morning run. I did not run though, which is why I managed to enjoy myself, but especially in the weather it afforded one of those rare “it’s good to be awake at 6 am” feelings. I did not feel that way even at 7:45 am walking across campus, past the dumpsters behind the dining hall, to my fitness class over at NNU.

At the shrine, we were the only people there except for a guy who had just finished raking the rocks in preparation for tourists. We were able to witness what happens to all the omikuji (pieces of paper with fortunes on them) that people tie up in the shrines. Deer eat them. This is probably just in Nara, which is famous for deer being everywhere. The deer are not afraid of people at all, and will often solicit food from them. I was told that the best time to visit Nara was in the late morning or early afternoon, after the first round of tourists had satisfied the deer’s hunger (take that sentence out of context). I found them to not be annoying at all. Maybe it was too early, but they never approached either of us, but they wouldn’t run away and allowed you to pet them if you felt so inclined.

We hit up Nara’s major tourist attraction, the great buddha before the crowds arrived. Two of my HDRs are from here. The exterior of the building is here, and the interior is here. A fun fact that I just learned while researching this post: this is the largest wooden building in the world. There were probably five people in the entire place when we arrived, so we had it almost to ourselves. No hustle and not even a little bit of bustle. Apparently this great buddha is even bigger than Kamakura’s buddha. (14.98 meters vs Kamakura’s 13.35) The main difference is that it’s indoors, and being much further away from Tokyo, has a much less touristy (though still touristy) vibe.

When we left, the tourists were coming out in droves, including several field trips for junior high students. On our way back to the hostel, things were noticeably busier and we decided it was time to start heading toward our next destination.

The good thing about the schedule was that the first leg was harder than the second. On Sunday we traveled about 10 hours with no interesting stops. Monday we had a 7 hour train ride scheduled with one place we could stop at for lunch that I really wanted to go to. So, it was Nara to Osaka (:55), and Osaka to Himeji (1:00), home to Himeji castle.

I wanted to go to Coco Ichiban, a chain of curry restaurants in Japan that lets you choose the spiciness level from one to ten. We found one and headed to it. Trisna had never been to one before, and I cautioned that three was as much as I could handle while still enjoying the meal, but she jumped to five. They actually won’t allow you to have anything higher than that until you can prove that you can handle level five. I sweated through my level three while she fully enjoyed her five without even touching her drink. I guess it’s par for the course when you grow up in Indonesia.

We had to keep our visit to Himeji castle shorter than I would have hoped, but we still spent a good amount of time there. Himeji castle is mostly famous because it’s the most complete of Japan’s feudal castles. For me, I wanted to see it because it was used as a filming location for my favorite movie of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.

As a castle in its own right, it looks very majestic. If it were possible, I would have tried to hit this up at either a very early or very late hour in order to avoid the huge crowd, but the weather was perfect so it wasn’t bad.

I don’t know how to make our trip from the entrance gate to the top of the castle and back to the gate sound terribly exciting, because it was mostly very cool visually. I can see why it’s the most visited castle in Japan, and I wish I could have spent some more time there. It deserves to be more than something you just check off a list.

An HDR I took from the top of the castle looking on the grounds and the surrounding town is here.

It was getting to be about 2:00, and we were in danger of not reaching Miyajima by sunset. In retrospect, I should have just decided that we wouldn’t be able to go there that night and stayed in Himeji for a few more hours, but we gave it a shot. Himeji to Okayama (1:30), Okayama to Hozaki (1:30), Hozaki to Hiroshima took about two hours. It was after 7 by the time we arrived, and the sun was long gone. Miyajima would have to wait for the next day.

We found our hostel, that was more like a cross between a hostel and a hotel. It was actually rated as the 8th best hostel in Japan by people who I would imagine are qualified to make that judgment. After dropping off stuff in our rooms, we asked where to get yakisoba (which is what I wanted). The receptionist said that most okonomiyaki restaurants also sell yakisoba, and said there were a ton of said restaurants in the second floor of Hiroshima station.

There were many restaurants in the second floor of the Hiroshima, and most of them specialized in okonomiyaki. We went to one that seemed busy, assuming that all the people there had a better idea of which one to pick than we did. I ordered yakisoba, and Trisna got a squid okonomiyaki. She said it was really good. My past experience with okonomiyaki coupled with the word “squid” made me doubtful. She said she wanted to go there one more time before we left.

I grabbed the top bunk in my hostel room and set my alarm so we could reach the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum as soon as it opened in the morning.

Enoshima & Kamakura trip pt. 2

Breakfast was scheduled for 8:00, but if we felt so inclined, we could meet at the entrance to the ryokan at 7:00 and go hang out at the beach for a while. I felt so inclined, because waking up after 6:30 would be way sleeping in for me. So a number of us walked back to the beach on Sunday morning. The weather showed no signs of deviating from the perfection that it was the day before, and the beach was relatively empty. Looking back, it was really empty. It didn’t really occur to me before I typed this up, but there must not be many people waking up early on a Sunday to go to the beach.

Compared to the awful beach in Odawara, this beach was quite nice in the daytime. While some collected shells or started wading, I took full advantage of the opportunity to do nothing. Having seen the itinerary for the day already, I knew that this day wouldn’t be any less tiring than the last.

At 8:00 we had breakfast. Again, it was unlike anything in America. There was a wide selection of fully-intact fish. Some dumpling-like things, some egg-ish things. I wish I knew the proper name, but I don’t. I snagged a great deal of rice, some salad, and the dumpling and egg-ish things. At 9:00 we left the ryokan, and headed out toward the station again.

We wound up at Kamakura station, and then took a bus to our first stop: Hokokuji temple. Although it contained a temple, the big draw was its large bamboo grove. I’ve actually got a large picture of a bamboo grove in my room back home, so I was excited to go to a real one. It didn’t disappoint, and I found it to be an awesome place to take pictures because of the compositional possibilities. I was able to latch onto some of the stalks with my tiny tripod and take some long exposure shots as well, which allows a very deep depth of field.

Our next stop was Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. This was a very large shinto shrine that featured a 1000 year old Ginkgo tree. There also happened to be a shinto wedding happening on a raised stage in the middle of the shrine grounds. While the music going with it felt like it were taken directly out of a Kenji Mizoguchi film, there wasn’t much going on. Especially from the distance that we were, it was nearly impossible to appreciate.

We also got a chance to draw lots (おみくじ), which are pieces of paper that have a fortune on them. We’re not talking about your wimpy fortune cookie fortunes. These ones will actually make a claim. Mine happened to make the bad luck claim. The paper itself breaks things down into eight catagories, including work, school, relationships, illness, etc. All of them were either bad or neutral. I believe there is something worse than the simple bad luck one that I got, and I want to see one, because it’s pretty funny.

Now, what you’re supposed to do if you get a bad luck fortune is to tie it to a tree or a apparatus in the shrine designed for that purpose like this. But I’m taking mine home. I wonder if the shrines put a disproportionate number of bad luck ones in there so that more people will “decorate” their shrine with tied pieces of paper.

Lunch came around eventually, and we had some options. Considering I wasn’t terribly hungry and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, the most appealing option for me was McDonalds. So, for the first time since coming here, I went there.

Although McDonalds has an awful reputation in the states, it seems to have a different atmosphere over in Japan. It seems to be a legitimate hanging-out place, the restaurants don’t feel dirty, and one doesn’t have to feel ashamed when entering it (as I do in America). I got a teriyaki burger. The entire meal was 650 yen, which is cheaper than MOS burger. It didn’t taste nearly as good as MOS burger, but it was good enough.

Stephen and I killed the remaining time given to us in the lunch hour by having what has become our trademark, highly-referential conversations that flows smoothly between philosophical musing and non-sequitur.

After lunch, we went to Hasedera temple. So, just to make sure things are clear, a shrine is a Shinto building, a temple is a Buddhist building. The main draw in this temple was a 30 foot tall carving of Buddha from a single tree. Unfortunately, I had already seen the world’s largest carving of Buddha from a single tree which happens to be in Beijing. Jaded!

The final stop was the famous Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. This is one of the more famous sights in Japan, and the biggest tourist attraction in Kamakura. It’s about 13 meters tall. You can actually go inside the daibutsu. I’m glad that I did because it was very cool and I got a good picture, but it was really, really hot. You could imagine how the inside of what is essentially a large copper box gets after being struck directly by the sun for several hours.

We got our group photos in, did some souvenir shopping (I bought… a coke), and walked around the temple that houses the daibutsu. As it was getting late in the day, the troops were getting a bit tired, so we soon packed up and got on the train to Shinjuku. All in all, a very nice trip, and what I would call “sightseeing done right.” We did a ton of touristy things, but it never felt touristy. There was a nice variety of sights, so despite the fact that we essentially just went to a bunch of temples and shrines, it didn’t feel like we just saw the same thing over and over. The teachers were great through the whole process, and I would love a chance to do another trip with them, but alas, the culture class is drawing to a close and I’m not allowed to take it again next semester.

Foreground (left to right): Jared, Trisna, Lori

Before we got on the train, we parted with Kato-sensei, who actually lives in Kamakura. It seemed like an awfully far away place to live for someone who worked in Tokyo, but then I remembered that it was only about an hour away from Shinjuku, which puts it about in the average commute time for Japanese who work in Tokyo.

On the train ride back, I had to stand the whole time and and attempted to read. It was nearly impossible. Maybe I’ll learn to read on a train someday, especially if I wind up in a homestay, but there were way too many things going on including a very confusing poster for me to concentrate much on the book.

I went directly back to the dorm after arriving in Shinjuku and started the work of sorting out all my pictures and preparing for the inevitable blog entry to recap the trip. That task is finally over, and I can put the trip behind me and look forward to summer vacation, which starts next week.

Enoshima & Kamakura trip pt. 1

On Thursday we were given a packet of papers that laid out the schedule of the upcoming Kamakura trip. We would arrive at the school by 8:30 am on Saturday, have a lecture in the morning and then head toward the train station at noon. Tanaka-san went over some guidelines and made some suggestions of what to bring. He also mentioned, in a tantalizingly hushed voice, that for the first night’s dinner we would be having steak. If I wasn’t excited about the trip already, I certainly was now.

The lecture in the morning was taught by Kato-sensei. Of the English speaking staff members at KCP, I have the most experience with Tanaka-san and Michiko-san, who work in the offices on the first floor and talk to the American students whenever there’s something important. Kato-sensei teaches the English support sessions, which I should really consider attending some time. I’ve heard from a number of Americans that it’s an invaluable resource for getting questions answered and clarifying things heard in class. Still, I hadn’t dealt with her much before this trip.

She went over the key places we would be visiting, explained some history that explained the significance of Kamakura, and at one point showed us an English video that appeared to be made in 1991 showing some of the places that she talked about.

After my lunch, which consisted of several breads, we headed to Shinjuku-gyoenmae, the typical jumping-off station for the various culture class excursions. We then took that to Shinjuku station and got on the Odakyu line. We spent about an hour on the train, which was moderately crowded. Around the half-way point, I was able to get a seat and started doing homework. Before I was able to accomplish anything significant, the train stopped at Enoshima.

As you could tell from the name (shima meaning “island”), Enoshima is an island south of Tokyo. It’s about 4 km in circumference, and is particularly packed with the sort of things that tourists love (without seeming too touristy). On this particular day, it was rather packed. Tanaka-san mentioned that it was the most crowded he’s seen. It didn’t really affect how much we enjoyed it, and it certainly didn’t hurt that the weather was about the opposite of my last ill-fated trip. We walked about a kilometer from the station, across a bridge, and onto the island. Everything was lush and green, and the interesting sights were close together in the way that you imagine famous cities to be.

We went to a number of shrines, passed many souvenir shops, and took many pictures. I think I actually took more picture on the island than I had taken combined in the previous month. Amazing what good weather can do. I dumped all my pictures onto my Flickr site if those that I’ve included in this post aren’t enough.

Speaking of pictures, a significant amount of time during the trip was spent getting group pictures. And whenever there was one group picture, every other student would hand the teachers their cameras and a nine-picture smile-endurance challenge would commence. Because my camera is complicated, I didn’t force anybody to take a picture with it except for one time. But I’ve already talked to some in the group and they will be sharing some of the pictures from the trip in the future, so they might resurface at some time.

Although there was no way to disguise that this was one of my least favorite ways to travel — being led around — it somehow didn’t feel constricting and frustrating. The teachers gave information that we would never have figured out on our own, gave us the freedom befitting 20-somethings, and never made us stay anywhere too long or made us leave before people were ready.

Tanaka-san explains something. Brian listens passively.

The island had a number of gardens, and as we got further away from the shore and the souvenirs (and higher in altitude) the views got much better. Depending on how much we wanted to climb stairs, we were able to go to the highest part of the island that you could walk to and it was a quite nice place.

There was also an observation tower in the middle of the island that we were able to scale via an elevator. At the base, there was a plaza with a stage that seemed to be devoted toward practicing musicians. While we were walking to the tower, there was an a cappella group practicing, which was entertaining, if surreal.

At the top of the tower, you could really appreciate the good weather. Although it’s theoretically possible to see Mount Fuji from the island, it must have been just hazy enough that it wasn’t visible. If you squinted in the direction that it allegedly was and used some imagination, then we might have been able to see a trace of it. Fuji or no Fuji, it was a great view and everybody got their group pictures in.

On the way back, I got a kakigori (shaved ice), which is about the perfect summer food ever. I don’t know why I don’t take advantage of shaved ice during the summer in the states (besides that it’s not nearly as convenient), but you should go have shaved ice right now. We crossed the bridge back toward the station and got on the Enoden line to Kamakura station.

(left to right): Trisna, Kato-sensei, Tanaka-san, Joyce, Me

At Kamakura station, we changed to the Yokosuka line and went to Zushi. There, we followed the teachers through the least easy to navigate series of roads ever. One of the Americans noted that if we didn’t have teachers leading us, there was no way we would ever find where we were headed, and I would agree. After turning down several roads that looked like every other road, we arrived at our destination: a Ryokan.

To put it simply, a Ryokan is a traditional Japanese “hotel.” All the staff wear kimonos and the doors have those sliding paper doors that are so “Japanese.” It also had a large backyard by American standards, and a huge backyard by Japanese standards. After walking around for a good portion of the day, everyone embraced a few minutes of chilling in the individual rooms. But at the same time, we were eager to get onto dinner.

I don’t know what you visualized when I mentioned in the first paragraph that we would be having steak, but what we were given was a little surprising. Yes, there was a steak. It was perhaps 5 ounces, pre-sliced, and looked delicious on its own merits. But surrounding it was the sort of traditional Japanese food that made the overall dish look much different than steak at Outback in America. A shrimp with its head and tail still very much attached to the body stared blankly off into the distance.

Despite my hesitation on the shrimp, sashimi, and sushi, I’m happy to say that I ate it all. I wouldn’t say that it was delicious — it’s not the sort of thing I would seek out in a menu or have a craving for — but it wasn’t bad. The steak was great, and there was plenty of rice. Definitely the best meal I’ve had so far over here.

After dinner, it had gotten dark. To finish up the day, we were going to the beach. The first thing we did was play a watermelon smashing game. There are two teams and they take turns blindfolding one of their members and trying to use their voices to help their representative smash a watermelon with a bat, while the other team tries to give purposefully wrong directions.

Our watermelon was very difficult to smash, and despite a direct hit from Stephen M, it stood firm. Finally it yielded from a hit from the other team, but by that time I had started trying to take long exposure photographs. Using my tiny little tripod, I was able to have some pretty good results, including this picture of Stephen M, which I absolutely love. There’s really no good way to get a picture as dark as it was without doing long exposure, so I was happy that I had some experience doing it and was able to get pretty decent results.

The entire night was very fun. Tall Stephen and Jared kept us laughing, and the fireworks were a nice way to finish it up.

Back in the Ryokan, it was about 9:30. Many of us went to the bath. You wash yourself around the edges of the bathroom with these shower-ish things, and then just relax in the bath. The water was way hotter than I’ve ever experienced, and I’m used to hot baths, but it was relaxing in its own way. Tall Stephen got in between Stephen M and I and said “chotto atsui desu ne” which made both of us crack up. Whenever Tall Stephen says “chotto [adjective] desu ne” it’s something like a catchphrase. You just have to be there.

Though we slept on the floor on a futon, it was much more comfortable than my bed in the dorm. I tried to get to bed as soon as possible because I knew the next day wouldn’t be any easier on my legs. I’ll post about that tomorrow.

I want to give a shout out to my friend in Nampa, Jordan Freiburghaus, who just got engaged. I’d hug ya if I could, Jordy. Congrats!

Midterms!

Although it’s not exactly the 1/4th mark of my 6 months here, today we had our midterms for Summer semester. This also marks the end of the Summer short-term program which the majority of Americans are taking. From my perspective, it feels as if classes are finally getting into a groove and the second half of the semester would be a lot more learning and a lot less adjusting, so I would feel pretty torn being ripped away from the program at this point in the game. Though I have a feeling that I’d feel that way even after the end of my second semester. Of the Americans doing short term, I think Donnie is the only one I know well who is leaving. Most of the Americans are in the Afternoon classes, so I’ve only been able to talk to a few outside the context of the culture class. I’m pretty sure that all those in the culture class are doing the full semester, but I could be wrong.

In order to prepare for the midterm test, the teachers were nice enough to post the material that the test would cover, although it might as well have said “everything.” All the kanji, all 10 chapters of Minna no Nihongo that we covered, a 400 word written composition, listening comprehension, and particles. The test took up the entire class time plus it went 15 minutes later than usual. First off was the written composition, which went well. I may have made it too simplistic in order that I didn’t attempt any tricky grammar that might just wind up getting points deducted. For the previous written compositions, I had gone all out and tried to use difficult sentence patterns only to get a tidal wave of red ink returned to me. Next was listening. The first half had problems that showed pictures and had a speaker on a tape describing one of the pictures. There were also ones that would ask a question and then hold a conversation, but I would always forget the question by the time the conversation got over.

The second half of the class contained reading comprehension, which was over passages that we had read over the course of the first half of the semester. The most difficult part was when there were words missing from the passage and we had to choose which word would fit best there. Next was a comprehensive grammar portion, that was similar to all the tests we had taken up to that point. The last 30 minutes was the kanji section. I’m happy to say that I felt really good about that portion, and only missed about 3 out of 20-25 questions asked. The other sections of the exam were somewhere between “eeeh” and “good”.

After the exam, a group of some of the Korean students invited me to go to a Okonomiyaki restaurant. By the time we were all sitting, Jeff was invited as well. The restaurant was playing American hip-hop and R&B, which Jeff and I both “appreciated.” One of the Korean girls thinks that the Black Eyed Peas sounds “Indian.” It was a pretty nice lunch. We also had Yakisoba, which everybody likes. As for Okonomiyaki… I had kind of a difficult time with it. There are a ton of flavors wrapped up in there, and I’m not crazy about the texture.

After lunch, I bought some shampoo, briefly went to Shibuya (way busier than the first time), and then took a pretty huge, sleep-cycle-damaging nap. So, it’s past midnight here and I’m feeling rather awake. Oh well. Only two more days of classes this week (which should be gentle if the teachers have any humanity to them) and then it’s the Kamakura trip.

Approaching the 1/4 mark

Let’s get right to it.

There were about 35 people in the cooking class. There were only five males. There was only one American. In the beginning it was a little confusing because people kept speaking in Korean and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do at the beginning (my group got split in two and then the other two people got put on a special “vegetable-cutting team” which left me as the lone American with a stupid look on his face). After a while, when I got stuff to do and some of the Koreans actually spoke Japanese for a bit, it was a bit more fun. I talked to a few people I wouldn’t have met outside the class, including a Korean from another level 3 class who said my pronunciation was a lot better than the other Americans in his class (so many compliments on pronunciation! how much of it is just because they expect any American who opens their mouth to have a terrible accent?). There were also some level 1 Koreans and one Chinese kid who struck up a conversation. Talking to level 1 people is a huge confidence booster. It really makes it feel like you’ve learned something. The opposite is true when you talk to a ward worker and attempt to register for health insurance.

We made two dishes: Cheesecake and Shabu-shabu. The work was spread out over so many people that I couldn’t really take what I learned and make these dishes myself without a recipe, but at the same time it didn’t feel like what I was doing was irrelevant. I crushed some cookies in order to make the crust at one point, I pulled the root of some vegetables off at another point, and boiled slices of meat near the end. While we were doing this, one of the teachers was making the rounds with a video camera, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was paying an awful lot of attention to me. The other problem with being the only American is that I was the most “exotic looking” person in the classroom. Sort of how if you’re one of the few ethnic minorities attending NNU, you’re guaranteed to wind up on the webpage at some point.

All the food was really good. We ate at tables of about 8 each, and I met yet another teacher that I want to have next semester. The Shabu Shabu was especially good when we added some spicy sauce that a Malaysian kid brought. Everyone was amazed that I knew how to use chopsticks and that I was using them right. Thanks, Mr. Eyer!

I went to bed pretty early on Friday because I didn’t want to take any chances of being too tired to enjoy the Ghibli museum the next morning.

In order to reach the Ghibli museum, you need to go about 20 minutes West on the JR Chuo line and get off at the Kichijoji station. From there, you have to (get to) walk through Inokashira park, which is the the most idyllic park I’ve seen in Tokyo yet.

My tickets were for 10:00 am, and I got there around 9:15, so I had some time to kill. I decided to get a rare breakfast at a nearby Lawsons. I got some grapes that only cost 120 yen, but it turns out that you have to pay more than that if you don’t want spiders in your grapes. People began lining up at about 9:30, and I soon got in the pack.

As expected from something that Hayao Miyazaki himself helped design, the museum had a ton of detail everywhere you looked. The building itself had an air of nostalgia to it that felt completely like all of the Ghibli film’s atmosphere. There were stained glass windows with scenes from the movies. Everything was perfectly clean. Rooms were painstakingly decorated to look like they were part of some old house. I was really impressed by a room that seemed to be a recreation of Miyazaki’s drawing room. There were books and pictures all over the walls with images from all over the world; all the influences for the images and stories from the films. There was a drawing table that had paper all over it, some character sketches taped above it, and a box filled with all sorts of different pencils on the floor beside it. It felt as if Miyazaki had just stepped out of the room for a moment.

There was a significant section of the museum dedicated to the birth of animation as a whole. I think my friend Ray back home would have started freaking out with joy if he would have seen it. One of my favorite exhibits showed a shelf with models of characters from the film. The same character was put in a row, each model a little different — the equivalent of frames of an animation. Next to the shelf, there was a glass box with all the models attached to rods spinning in a circle. At first it was just a blur, but then the light inside the box started strobing and it created the perfect illusion of motion. Each model looked as if it were moving as fluidly as the animation from the films.

There was also a movie theater that showed short films made by Studio Ghibli, which rotate every month. This month was コロの大散歩 (Koro’s Big Walk), a story about a dog who gets lost. After the movie, I headed over to the gift shop. Although I didn’t buy anything, I was darn tempted. There was also a cafe that would be fun to go sometime, but I had already ate breakfast.

I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the museum, but I will next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time.

After the museum, I decided to finally watch Harry Potter at the theater. Yes, it cost 1500 yen, but the theater was really nice. It was in English with Japanese subtitles, so understanding was no problem. Interestingly, they have assigned seats in the theaters. When you buy your tickets, they ask what section you want to sit in and then they give you an assigned seat number.

During the movie, I was struck by how quite Japanese filmgoers are. I hate going to the theater in America because, well, theatergoers are only slightly less obnoxious than dachshunds in heat. In Japan, you could easily forget that you were in a room with hundreds of other people. So it may have cost 1500 yen, but I felt like it was worth it. Oh yeah, the movie was good as well.

Nothing really special happened the rest of the weekend. Next week is Midterms, so I’ve been doing some studying and generally relaxing today. While I was sketching tonight, there was an earthquake! The room was visibly shaking and it lasted about a minute. It was never really bad enough to worry, but still a little disconcerting. Don’t worry too much about any catastrophic earthquakes happening while I’m over here. The bad ones happen on a pretty consistent about-every-70-years schedule, the most recent one being the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Based on that, it won’t be until about 2060 until we need to start worrying again.

EDIT: Okay, it turns out that earthquake was bigger than I thought. It was actually a 7.1 quake (the Kobe one was a 7.2), but it struck in the middle of the ocean about 200 miles away from Toyko (despite what the alarmist Fox News says about “Strong 7.1-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Tokyo Area”). No Tsunami warning issued.