"Time of Your Life"

So it's once again time for my monthly update! November was a great month, I managed to complete all my presentations for my classes, fly through midterms, and still have a fantastic time with my friends! Apart from the usual escapades of going to karaoke and izakayas in Shinjuku and the like I'm again expecting to have some great new adventures in the coming month!

I've been busy planning for my class's trip to Nikko and Ashio which should include visits to Onsen, a national park, temples, and a museum! We're writing our own guidebooks for the event so it's personalized to what we'll see on the trip, which does mean a little more work but it's probably worth it. I'm really excited to see a new area of Japan and learn more about Japanese culture and religious practices. Plus, it gets fairly cold in the area so I might get to see some snow!

However, I'm also really looking forward to my upcoming vacation in December, which I plan to kick off with a visit to Tokyo Disney Sea http://www.tokyodisneyresort.co.jp/

It's New Post Time!

October was a great month filled with schoolwork, a 4 day weekend, discovering the wonder that is tomato cheese ramen, and lots of time spent wandering around Tokyo!

One of my more unique adventures was a visit to the Tokyo Food and Drink Expo with my host mother and another host family. It was huge and featured everything from Sake and Whiskey to ramen and maguro! They even had samples of desserts, one of which featured milk tea flavored gelato! Additionally, they had a demonstration of sushi chefs cutting up giant slabs of tuna and turning it into nigiri and rolls! I got some pictures and some amazing samples of fresh tuna that were fantastic! It was an awesome expo filled with tons of new things to see and try and I had a great time.

Halloween weekend was also great since we were given Monday and Tuesday off of school, so I had lots of time to relax and meet up with friends over the 4 day weekend. I had a great time at a couple izakayas and then almost died laughing when we followed up with karaoke and demonstrated our lackluster skills in vocal performance.


Of course I've also been rather busy with schoolwork since 3 of my 4 classes are requiring oral presentations. One of which involved a trip to Yasukuni Shrine as part of my research on the infamous sites' controversial status in international politics. I got some interesting pictures and was mostly struck by how normal it looks considering some of the major issues it's caused with Japan's relations with China and Korea.

In any case, it was a fun and full month and November is shaping up to be just as interesting! See you next month!

P.S. If any of ya'll visit me in Tokyo, I'll make sure to take you out for tomato cheese ramen! It really is some of the best ramen I've ever had...

Woah.

So, it's only been about a week and a half since my last post but I feel like I've done more in a week and a half then I ever have in New Orleans! (This is probably because of the fantastic rail line in Tokyo....)

To recap, I've taken a trip to Harajuku and Meiji Jingu (a huge shrine set in the middle of Tokyo), hung out in Shinjuku, wandered about Chinatown in Yokohama, took a weekend trip to my host family's second house about 3-4 hours outside of Tokyo, visited two Onsen, saw some DEER, went to a farm festival, opened a bank account at the post office, joined the Aikido club at my university, and started classes. Not to mention that I am currently experiencing my first Japanese "typhoon".

Firstly, I love Harajuku. There are so many people and so many clothing stores and not near enough time to see them all! I cannot wait to go back and do a little shopping...plus people wear some ridiculously bizarre outfits.

I also had a great time in Shinjuku, there are tons of really interesting people and we had a blast doing Karaoke. (The Final Countdown, of course, was a necessary decision).

However, one of the funniest places I've been to yet was in Yokohama. In accordance with the Japanese people's seeming ability to sleep anywhere, we went to a restaurant that featured an enormous bed that spanned the entire wall, complete with pillows and blankets for your napping needs. We hung out there for a couple hours reveling in the simple yet wonderful idea to lounge on a bed that fits all your friends while snacking. Honestly if they ever opened something like this in the states there would probably be more of them around than Starbucks...

In the meanwhile I started classes and so far they're all pretty interesting and all my classmates are uniquely fascinating. Just the fact that all of us seem to have our own reasons for traveling all the way to Japan and come from all over the world makes for some excellent conversations.

Not to mention all the Japanese students who to a fault are insanely welcoming! The first day was a little disorienting, since everywhere I looked on campus there were people with features that bore no resemblance whatsoever to mine, but I've adjusted pretty quickly and love, love, love just people watching here. Seriously, the clothes alone that the students wear here are impressively entertaining. Almost everyone looks like they walked out of a fashion magazine! In any case, I've already made a few Japanese friends and have also decided to join the Aikido club at my university after watching one of their practices which was rather impressive. I get the feeling that it will also really help me learn more Japanese since the members all seemed very friendly and seem to want to help me to learn more Japanese in addition to practicing Aikido.

I really got a chance to relax this past weekend when my family took me out to their second house which was in a more mountainous area and featured beautiful landscapes, deer sightings, a small festival, and trips to onsen! The onsen really were spectacularly relaxing, after you leave you feel like you could fall asleep within seconds.

However most currently I have the day off of school because of a typhoon that is causing insanely high winds to cripple the trains resulting in Sophia canceling classes today! Even on the other side of the world it seems like I can't escape weird weather...

The House and Bamboo

Neat Bamboo Grove by the path I take to the Train Station:

(I expect to glimpse a fox god any day now...)

The Ito Family's Front Gate:

Where I'm Living:

Where I'm Living 2:

The Front Door!

My Room and Stuff

The View From My Bedroom Window: It's our garden!

My Bed!

My Closet!

A View of My Room and the Other Window!

First Post!

This blog is specifically intended to let anyone who is interested follow my upcoming school year in Tokyo, Japan though anyone and everyone are welcome!

In starting this off, let me first give a few background details. I am living with a Japanese family in the suburbs of Tokyo, fairly close to my university, and they are awesome! I expect to have a great year with them and also learn a lot of Japanese! They have hosted foreign students for several years and are quite relaxed.

Now let's start with my first impressions of Tokyo! Firstly, I love the trains, they're easy, fast, and fairly entertaining to ride. Additionally, the ticket machines function in English as well as Japanese, which makes things much less stressful.

Secondly, there are tons of little green spaces throughout the suburbs and it's very entertaining to glimpse an orchard, garden, or park amidst the press of houses and roads.

Thirdly, I love seeing all the little references to mainstream Japanese pop culture that in the U.S. are considered part of a sub-culture. Posters displaying Japanese pop stars, anime, and manga are used in shops, on billboards, and in commercials. It's fun to see something that in the west is considered slightly unusual be totally mainstream. It's an obvious point but highly entertaining to see in action. (Just to name drop a little, ARASHI was one of the first examples I noticed, for those who don't know who they are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asgI9Yzc17U)

Lastly, CELLPHONES! Cellphones here are attractive and functional. They don't just come in black, silver, and red. They have phones in every color imaginable with interesting and creative designs that are also pretty cheap. Not to mention the amazing amount of functions that come STANDARD on most phones. Just to mention a couple out of many, mine not only has a pretty good dictionary but also automatically informs me of various holidays. If only it also worked in the U.S. where the idea of an "amazing" cellphone is the iphone which, while excellent, is foolishly expensive.

P.S. Did I mention I love the trains?

So in my first few days here, I have gotten a seemingly magical cellphone, tried numerous tasty Japanese foods, explored a little around my family's neighborhood, visited a Japanese department store, and also an outlet mall. The outlet mall btw, was really cool and is apparently very popular with most Japanese. Though my favorite part had to be all the people walking around with their dogs, I even saw a corgi!

Hope this was enough to intrigue everyone and see you next week!

P.S. Pictures are here!