Hi everybody! This is Eric reporting in for his first weekly blog post about his time in Japan. Thanks to the Light Fellowship I’m able to study Japanese in-depth in Tokyo! Currently right about now, I look a bit like this:
But before we get to why I look so cool right now, let’s start from the beginning.
Day 1 in Tokyo:
After a long, long flight lasting about 16 HOURS, I have finally arrived in Tokyo. The first friendly face I see here is a picture of Pikachu, who welcomes me to Tokyo (I’m glad to be back!). The next kind of friendly face I see is the face of my friend Ting-san, who will be attending the same Sun Academy language program for Japanese I am. We take the same limousine bus towards the Shinjuku Washington Hotel, and when we arrive we decide to first drop off our bags and explore the surrounding area. Luckily, we pass by a super-tall building that, according to our Lonely Planet Japan guide, allows for an excellent view of the city.
Lonely Planet is always right. After the small adventure, one more of our tomodachi has arrived: Akielly-san! We then take a longer walk into the Shinjuku district, the heart of Tokyo, eat some dinner, and return to the hotel. When we return, we’re greeted by the greatest of the greatest advances in Japanese air conditioning technology. This novel contraption serves to cool the surrounding area, soothing the hearts and souls of sweaty tourists. Behold: a big block of ice.
Yes, it is literally a block of ice. I then proceed to succumb to jet lag and fall asle
Day 2 in Tokyo:
A new day and the true start of the Japanese program! Bright and early at 8AM we meet our teachers and Japanese buddies in the hotel lobby, and begin the journey to the language school. After about an hour we finally arrive, and we all calmly sit down in order to listen intently to what the teacher is saying.
Anyways, we kind of listen to the schedule for the day, and proceed to do some meet-and-greet with our Japanese buddies, Japanese university students who are here to practice nihongo (Japanese) with us. Each person had 2–3 buddies assigned to them, so there were a lot of introductions, like a lot. Finally, we met our host families. It was super nerve-wracking, but eventually my name was called and I met and introduced myself to my okaasan (mom), Kazue! We took the subway home together, and at my new home I met my little bro Sho (9 years old), who I proceeded to do origami with. We made some dank planes, including Type-002: Flying Elephant.
Eventually jet lag proceeded to drag me down again, and I landed in my bed. Oyasumi (Good night)!
Day 3 in Tokyo:
I forgot what I did today!
tl;dr: i have no photos sry
Day 4 in Tokyo:
My second day of classes! School is quite fun, and we’re split into 2 classes: the umi (sea) class, and the sora (sky) class. Being the high-flyer that I am, of course I was destined to be in the sora class. This statement did not fly well with the people in the umi class.
Anyways, after class we went to the promised land of the otaku, Akihabara. This was not my first time here so I wasn’t bawling, but I shed a few tears. Anime, manga, games, everything is here. After exploring the shops, we decided to go to Taito Station, a famous tower here full of arcade games. Surprisingly, there were quite a few nascent gamers amongst us. Here is Nguyen-san destroying a rhythm game.
GG rekt m8.
Day 5 in Tokyo:
Almost a week in skyscraper-filled Tokyo, and so today after class we decided to make a trip to the famous garden in the middle of Shinjuku, the Shinjuku Gyoen Garden. Enjoying the natural beauty of this garden in the middle of the city provided a nice change of pace from the jam-packed trains and blaring lights outside. As to be expected, there were also many good pictures to be taken here.
After quite a while of walking around, we discovered a gigantic open space near the French garden area which served as the perfect place to get some rest. Us cool cats decided to sit in a circle on the grass, and Kevin-san provided us with some amazing Gatsby wipes (only in Japan!) to wipe the sweat of our brows.
It was the especially strong kind of wipe, and I unknowingly got some in my eyes, so I could not open my eyes for the next 5 minutes. Somehow I still managed to obtain many quality pictures.
It really was a beautiful park, and we had to end the day with a group photo. I couldn’t really see the camera and I haven’t looked closely at the picture, but I’m sure it turned out great!
Day 6 in Tokyo:
Today we went to an Japanese elementary school! I love kids, so I was super pumped about today. Each person came prepared with a lesson to teach the students, and my topic of choice was Texas. I figured that teaching about the best state in the world and how cool cowboys are would pique the children's’ interest. As expected of a class about Texas, the students got super interested, and asked me all kinds of wonderful questions such as: “Why is Texas so big?” and “Why do cowboys wear so much clothes if it is so hot?”. Because I knew the answer to these questions, I told them to stay tuned for the next lesson. I also had everybody draw pictures of what they imagined cowboys to be. Mixed results were obtained. On one hand there was some future mangaka (manga artists) :
There were also people who evidently read a lot of manga but were not as good as drawing (notice classic “I’m so cool anime pose”):
There were also a few people who decided to take the concept of cowboys and abstract it into something more interesting:
The spiraly part of the above picture is captioned “Hamburger-man” and the bottom part that looks like clouds is aptly captioned “Cloud-man.” Very interesting stuff! For reference, here’s the one I drew:
At any rate, it was by far the most fun I’ve had so far, and the students were extremely nice to us. They treated us like movie stars, made us star in their school assembly, and welcomed us with a marching band, so it was quite the experience. Their school-food was also insanely good. I wish I could go back again!
After the lessons were over, the gang decided to check out Sensouji Temple in Asakusa. A huge temple in one of the busiest districts of Tokyo, the path to the temple is lined with souvenir shops. Katanas, trinkets, fat sumo clay dolls, anything you can imagine that could become a gift is probably here.
And the above-mentioned fat sumo clay doll (my favorite item)!
Everybody also got their fortune told and made some prayers at the shrine. Each person drew an omikuji, a small piece of paper that tells you your luck. The results range from “bad luck” to “super luck,” and if you draw a “bad luck” you tie it to a nearby tree/stand in order to “dispel” the bad luck. If you draw any of the good lucks, you bring it home with you. I’m going to keep my result a secret!
Finally, we wrapped up this busy day with a visit to the ol’ Ueno Park. A huge park with a zoo right next to it, it’s an amazing place to visit to calm the nerves and to become one with nature. It also has a beautiful pond with a ton of lotuses(?) floating inside it.
What a day!
Day 7 in Tokyo:
Finally, today. Listing out every single day is really an effort; I’m not sure if I’ll do it again. Still, it’s really cool to summarize everything that happened in a week like this, and I think it’s worth it. But if you made it this far, congratulations, you get this:
Yeah, that’s right — today I went to a Neko (cat) Cafe. For some reason I always had the impression that Neko Cafes were like maid cafes but instead of maids the people wore cat-ears, but I feel somewhat relieved that there are actually just cats in Neko Cafes. Anyways, essentially you pay some money (200 yen) for every 10 minutes you spend with the cats. Slightly expensive, but as a first-time experience it’s worth every yen. Unfortunately, the cats leap on the people with food, so if you don’t have food they won’t come to you. However, Akielly-san bought some food for us, so we were able to successfully lure and pet several kitties. The buddies came along too! Here’s our buddy Ebu feeding a kitty:
Yeah, there are a lot of cats. But still, they only activate when you have food. I was trying to work my way into the heart of one of them with a toy, but he completely ignored my advances 🙁
But it was super fun, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget either the experience or the kitten I was trying to play with’s glare. Cats are cute, but their unwillingness to play with me re-affirmed my desire to have a pig for a pet.
Present:
So here I am, finishing my post after a nap using my Gintama sleep mask. It’s been a wild couple of days, but I’m glad I got the chance to record my memories in this blog post. I try to make things picture heavy, but please appreciate my few pathetic attempts at jokes scattered around the text! If you laughed, thanks, if you didn’t, please redirect your attention to the cat picture directly above. But hopefully you found it interesting enough, and I hope you decide to read the next post!