２１歳の誕生日！ 21st Birthday!

 I'm officially 21! They grow up so fast.. crazy, isn't it? My birthday was a little weird this year since 21 seems like such a big deal in the United States (The drinking age in Japan is 20..) so for my birthday I decided to go to Japan's oldest theme park! Hanayashiki is in Asakusa, Tokyo. It originally opened in 1853 as a 'flower park' when Perry arrived at the end of the Edo era. and it's still in operation today! Here's a link to the website (in English!) if you care to read more about it. http://www.hanayashiki.net/e/index.html

There weren't too many rides or people, overall the parks atmosphere was very weird. We did go in the middle of the day on a Tuesday though. The rides were mostly rusty, unsafe looking, and very short. The whole place kind of felt like a ghost town but it was so much fun!

When we got back to the dorm I was presented with a birthday mikan (orange/clementine) and sung to. I also received a bundle of goodies! It had turned out to be such a great Birthday! Thank you everyone for the cards and goodies I received in the mail as well!!

Hakone Trip!

We had a school field trip to Hakone! It was amazing, except we had to wake up at the crack of dawn to meet our teachers at the station. My class went with another class so there were a total of about 9 of us plus two teachers. We met at Ookayama Station at 7am, because it takes a while to get to Hakone. We also had to keep switching trains, the longest we were on one train was for maybe 45 minutes or so, and everyone just fell right asleep. This field trip was very fun and it was a school field trip, so we get reimbursed for some of the travel expenses. It seemed more like gaijins day out though since the teachers were constantly rounding us up and counting us off, to make sure they hadn't lost anyone.

This is Owakudani, a volcanic valley and the steam is from sulfur vents. This spot was very touristy, they also have these eggs (normal chicken eggs) that they boil in the onsen(hot springs) for one hour and they are something special. Not really sure what they do exactly but eating them is supposed to add years to your life or something. I tried one and they really just taste like any old hard boiled egg. This place was overwhelming with the smell of eggs. 

Kuro Tamago (Black egg) a local specialty!

This is most of the students plus one teacher on our trip. We went to Hakone Park, it was a little too early for the fall leaves but there were some pretty colors starting to show!

We rode a cable car up the mountain to the volcanic area, you can see the steam from the onsen

This is a Sakura Tree! People were in awe standing around it since it shouldn't be starting to bloom yet..






just a typical day in Hakone

It was very cloudy that day but we got to see Fuji-san! 

Field Trip!

I'm taking a Japanese architecture class this semester, and we went on a field trip to Nihonbashi (Japan Bridge!) Nihonbashi is close to the Imperial Palace and Tokyo Station, today it's a business district but Nihonbashi originally marked the start of the major road connecting Edo to Kyoto. When we went on our field trip there were big crowds of people, vendors, tourists, old people, and tv crews because that particular day was the 100th anniversary of Nihonbashi.


You could hear drumming and singing and music but you couldn't get past the crowds to see what was going on..

Around the time of the Tokyo Olympics, an expressway was built over Nihonbashi. There have been protests and petitions trying to get the expressway taken down.

After seeing Nihonbashi, we walked towards the financial district. This is the oldest bank in Japan, it's very famous but I'm not sure what the name is. 

Outside of the building there was a car show!

My class, walking around Tokyo. My teacher is the woman in the grey boots.

Sideview of the oldest bank, the building to the left is an annex that was built in the 70s.

This is another old bridge, the stones used to make this bridge were taken from the Imperial wall.

In honor of the celebrations, the boat ride was free!

My teacher's on the left. This bridge is Nihonbashi, you can see the crowds on top and on the boats were people dancing and taiko drumming. 

This week was Shirokanesai! It coincided with November 3rd, which is a national holiday (Culture Day). Shirokanesai is our school festival, it takes place over three days and there are many culture events and other random things! Each vendor/stall is run by a club or circle and the money they make is used for fundraising. The festival is very overwhelming though because people just approach you and try their darndest to get you to buy things. It might have been because we're westerners, but it seemed like every person we passed by decided they were either going to practice their English or stare us down as they tried to get us to buy something from them.. very very overwhelming. 

Every poster, t-shirt, sign, banner, etc. said Shirokane Fes.. At first I thought they just forgot the t on fest but then I realized that's just how festival gets shortened in Japan.

This is a club that I want to join! I'm attending a meeting in the next week to see if I can join (Not sure if exchange students are allowed) It's a nonprofit organization that does fundraising events for orphanages and charities in Vietnam and Burma. 

Halloween!

Halloween is not really celebrated that much in Japan, but luckily our school rented out a space for us to have a costume party. We had to buy tickets to attend (the gaijins got a 500yen discount but ticket prices were 2,500yen) but it was at a nomihodai (all you can drink) in Shibuya. This party was open to anyone from Meiji Gakuin. There were 80 people in attendance, but it turned out to be something like 11 international students, 25 or so 'buddies' and the rest were just Japanese students. I felt a bit like a celebrity though, I was asked by so many strangers if they could take a picture with me.  There was a bar and finger foods to nibble on, and also a stage. It takes the Japanese people a while to warm up though (they're very shy) so mostly it was the gaijins making fools of themselves dancing.

 While the baka gaijins (stupid foreigners) danced on the stage the majority of the Japanese people just took pictures. There were so many pictures being taken...

Group shot! The most popular costume was wearing a high school uniform and going as a schoolgirl or schoolboy. Some of the other costumes were witches, devils, taxi driver, alice in wonderland, spiderman, bear, penguin, frog, britney spears, little red riding hood, panda, and snow white, I went as a hippy. The party only lasted from 7-9pm, so afterwards a bunch of us went to take purikura (the photobooth thing that's popular in Japan).



our original intentions were to catch the last train home (sometime around midnight) but we managed to miss it so we ended up going to Karaoke to wait for the trains to start running again. Karaoke is always a lot of fun, even if you don't have a great singing voice.

I'm eating ナタデココ(natadecoco) apple flavored jelly(jell-o). Still haven't quite figured out what exactly natadecoco is though, it has a chewy texture and tastes a bit like pineapple, but according to wikipedia it is:  jelly-like food product produced by the fermentation of coconut water, which gels through the production of microbial cellulose by Acetobacter xylinus. Yummy!

Walking home from the train station this morning it occurred to us that we've officially been in Japan for two months now. I feel like I've done so much in that time but there is still so much left to do! And the time is really, really flying by.

Tokyo Station

Most of the international students don't have classes on Wednesdays so instead we try to go exploring. This particular day we attempted to visit the Imperial Gardens. We strolled around the grounds, and explored Tokyo Station (there's not too much there, mostly office buildings).

Everyone had their camera's out, we definitely looked the part of tourists. Except we figured we slightly got away with it since most tourists visit during the Summer and not at noon on a Wednesday.

This is a guard tower near the entrance to the Imperial Palace

Doing the YMCA in front of the Emperor's house.

Tea Ceremony!

Our school provided a culture day type of event for all of the international students. It was held in the common room of our dorm from 11am to 12:45pm, so skipping wasn't exactly an option. It was really fun though, we got to try on kimonos, make green tea, eat traditional Japanese snacks, and learn traditional Japanese dance. 

Japanese people love Mochi  (rice cake) especially if it's packed with あんこ(anko). Red Bean Paste, it's in just about everything in Japan. It's tolerable but it's not my favorite.

To make traditional Japanese tea, you use a powder and bamboo brush. There are a whole bunch of other important steps involved, including certain ways to hold the bowl, certain ways to politely fold your napkin, etc. It's a very intricate process.