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...
