I have officially survived the first week of living in an apartment in the outskirts of Shinjuku! Although I am now bereft of my host family’s hand-cooked dinners and daily laundry (so amazing), I have nonetheless been able to pass a week without anything burning down.
Let’s get started!
Saturday
Having packed all of my belongings last night, today I moved out from my host family’s home bright and early and arrived with the other students to my new apartment. We’re split into two units, with 5 students living in one apartment and 3 students in the other.
After the teachers explained to us the basic rules of living in the apartments, I immediately dropped off my stuff in my new room and took a train back to my host family’s neighborhood. This was not because I tried to run away from the harsh reality of living alone, but because I promised my host family that I would be attending Sho’s elementary school’s yearly matsuri (festival) today.
At the elementary school matsuri there were a ton of fun games like Japanese yo-yo fishing and shooting, but I definitely found the student performances to be the most interesting. There were a lot of performances that stood out, but the gangsta-style street-dancing routines by tiny children caught my eye the most. Feast your eyes:
According to my host dad these were the “American dance” performances.
I definitely cannot do any of them.
After spending most of the afternoon partying with grade-schoolers, I headed back to Shinjuku to prepare for the greatest challenge yet: my first self-cooked meal. Collaborating with Kevin, who lives nearby, we decided to keep it simple and cook some Japanese curry. Extremely simple to make, you basically just cook some meat, cook some vegetables, put in the curry powder and water, and let it sit for a while. Usually this takes around 1 hour. But because Kevin and I were so prepared, it took us around 3 hours. At least I can say we put in the effort.
In the end, we created something that resembled curry quite a bit. In fact, I can probably say now that what we created was indeed curry. Take a look:
Great success!
Sunday
Since this weekend is a long vacation (Ocean day is Monday) we decided to escape from the city and take a trip to Mt. Mitake, a mountain to the west of Tokyo, well-known for being the inspiration for the setting of Hayao Miyazaki’s movie, My Neighbor Totoro! It was a 1 and a half hour train ride away, but by the 1 hour mark we could tell we were entering a place entirely different from Tokyo. Buildings became trees while highways became rivers, and by the time we realized it, we were in the mountains.
Reaching the Mt. Mitake station by noon, we decided to stop by a nearby restaurant for some lunch. It boasted a menu of all vegetables. Like ALL vegetables.
Yes, I am a carnivore. But this meal was absolutely delicious, and definitely helped me understand why pandas, even though they are carnivores, love eating vegetables. There is actually no relationship there whatsoever, but nonetheless I had a veggie revelation.
We took a cable car up to the mountain, and during the line for the cable car I got a picture of this little guy:
It was a misty day, and the mountains had a mysterious, spooky feel.
Nonetheless, we brave warriors set our sights on the main shrine of the mountain, and hiked through a forest and a little town in the mountain to reach the goal.
After reaching the shrine we paid our respects, and we even saw some cool auxiliary shrines.
Now descending the mountain, we decided to pay a visit to the “Rock Garden,” a well known spot 1.2 kilometers away from the shrine. It took us quite a bit of walking, but after asking a friendly hiker, we soon realized that it was actually 12 kilometers away. No turning back now!
We continued to push on, and eventually we did arrive at the “Rock Garden.”
A place where the river and rocks intermingled to form gorgeous formations, it was breath-taking. But daylight was running out, as we had just walked a bunch of kilometers, and we decided it was time to go back. We circled back around to the previous landmark, but even with the map we could not understand exactly how to get down this mountain. After orienting the map in every way possible, we gave up and just decided to take the path in the direction that seemed the most logical: down.
The trail got harder and harder and was slippery from recent rains, and it soon felt like we were completely off-trail. However, we continued in the only direction we knew how, down, and down we went. Eventually, and I mean eventually, we exited the mountain trail and hit a highway, but it was on the other side of the mountain compared to when we entered. It was pure countryside on this side, and there was no Seven-Eleven to be seen for miles.
Walking a bit further, we found a lone bus stop, with the last bus leaving the stop at 7:40 PM. At this point, it was around 7 PM. I actually have no idea what would have happened to us if we had missed the last bus. However, we didn’t entertain that possibility, so we rested at a local shrine to pass the time.
Eventually the bus came, but because we were so scared of missing the last bus, we decided to blockade the road so that it would have to stop for us.
We took the bus to the nearest train station, and from that train station we began the long journey back to Shinjuku. What an adventure!
Monday
Today was the day of the ocean so theoretically I was supposed to go the beach somewhere, but after being thoroughly exhausted from yesterday I decided to laze about and catch up on my homework. However, I felt guilty not doing anything ocean-related, so Kevin and I mustered up the energy to go eat some kaitensushi (conveyor-belt sushi). The taste was out of this world. Thank you ocean!
Tuesday
Today after school one of our buddies came to eat with us, and after eating some wholesome Mapo Tofu in Shinjuku, we headed over to Shibuya to do some shopping. I made a little side-trip to Dogenzaka, home of the “love hotel hill,” to get a quick glimpse at alleys and alleys of love hotels.
As expected of a night-life hotspot there was not much action during the day, so we took a quick stroll and rejoined our other friends at the Shibuya Women’s 109 store. We ate some ice cream together, and then headed back home.
Kevin and I found a curious sushi roll in the supermarket today, so we had it for dinner. Instead of a sushi roll, I think it should be re-named a sushi pillar.
Wednesday
Today we went to Yanaka! It’s a nice, old neighborhood to the north of Tokyo, a remnant of Tokyo’s shitamachi (old town). We first visited the Yanaka cemetery, one of the most well-known cemeteries in Tokyo, famous for its serene scenery.
We then made our way to the Yanaka-Ginza marketplace, but not before running into a garage sale on the way.
As we neared the market, we also couldn’t resist taking 100 photos of the shiba inu we spotted from pretty far away:
Finally, we found the legendary manju store that we read about on the internet. It took a couple of nice shopkeepers to guide us the right way, but we eventually reached the golden palace which sold manjus for a blessed 10 yen each.
Thursday
Right after class we decided to head over to a restaurant called Nakajima, which is pretty well-known in Tokyo, and boasts a single Michelin star. The main dish here, or actually the only dish, is sardines. Indeed, everything is some version of sardines. The most popular sardine dish was sold out, so I ordered something that looked like a pancake with soup.
It was delicious, but after we left the restaurant, I saw a wonderful sign that made my day. Even though separated by over 5000 miles, The Great Texas and Japan share a connection — a sign on a random pole in Shinjuku.
Since it was raining, we headed indoors for our next activity: feeling a little aesthetic today, we decided to check out 21_21 Design Sight, a design museum located in Roppongi. The current theme on display here was civil engineering, and among a lot of cool exhibits there was a replica of the layout of Shibuya station:
Friday
Karaoke with the buddies! Tonight we went out to do some singing, and we even attempted singing some Japanese songs!
Late at night, half of us felt like skipping the rush for the last train back home, and decided to leave it to our legs to take us back. We ended up stopping by a small shrine in between to rest a bit, but at some point it became 2 AM and instead of going home we decided to sweep the floor and practice karate (with lessons from the great Ana)?
So, now that you know what we were doing at 2 AM in the morning, you’re right in thinking that it’s pretty late right now. True, at this point maybe I could probably just write Saturday’s report too. However, since I am a believer in following a set routine, I will save that for next week.
Sorry, I just want to go to sleep.
Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next week!