Picnic in the Park!

All of our Meiji Gakuin buddies hosted a welcome party picnic. It was at Yoyogi Park, near Harajuku. It was such a nice day for a picnic! It was on a Sunday so the park was crowded with families, students, and performers. When we walked into the gates of the park there was a 'grease-off' going on.


Not sure if you can tell from these pictures but these dancers were no spring chickens.

Yoyogi Park


Picnic with all the buddies!

 

Drum circle? These guys had a beat going the entire time we were there (which was at least 4 hours)

Skateboarding dog.

After the picnic, I met up with my UVM friends! Molly is going to Toyo University in a different part of Tokyo for the year. (She's the gaijin with the peace sign)

My friend Patrick and one of my buddies, Miki.

groceries

One of these days I need to take a Japanese friend to the grocery store with me. There are so many things that I want to try but I have no idea what they are. I also haven't mastered the art of Japanese cooking so I've been sticking to the basics (rice, noodles, curry). Maybe it's because I'm still a poor college student, but I find myself buying fruits at one store, bread at another store, juice from the store across the street, etc. Going to the grocery is definitely not as quick and easy as it was back home.


I was tempted to buy these just cause they looked so pretty! I also feel like I've been told they are a good source of vitamin C.. don't quote me on that one.

Squid

 

The fish that aren't wrapped are significantly cheaper.. 

Fish heads! I think the eyeballs are good for you but I might be making that one up, too.

The juice and milk cartons drive me nuts. I've always hated paper cartons, I can never open them cleanly and the paper gets kind of soggy after a couple days.. 

It's pomegranate juice and the bottles are the same, but  in America it's pomwonderful and in Japan it's zakwonderful

Meiji Gakuin

Riding the subway to school every day is definitely something that is taking a little while to get used to. Luckily, we only have our Japanese language class two days a week (it starts at 9am - means we have to be out the door by 8:20). The rest of the days most classes start around noon.  

 

The entrance gate to our school. There is a little guard house, with some uniformed men who always wish us a good morning.

Meiji Gakuin is a christian university, here is our little on campus church!

This is a courtyard area, the glass building has the cafeteria and a convenience store/bookstore inside.

Plastic food is everywhere in Japan, makes it slightly easier to make a decision about what to eat. Less of a surprise.

After you pick out what you decide to eat you come over to these machines and put your money in. The one on the right is for noodles and the one on the left is for everything else. It gives you a little ticket with a number on it.

After you get your meal ticket, you bring it over here to the designated area and hand it to the people behind the counter, who then prepare your meal.

End of vacation..

School technically starts tomorrow (9/23). We have a placement test that actually counts this time and then on Monday we get to sit in on elective classes, get a feel for it, see if we like it, etc. The only deadline that we've been given is that we have to pick our classes and hand in our schedules by October 3rd.  All of our classes, except for the language class, will be taught in English. So I've been told. It will be nice to get into a routine of some sort, though once classes start and homework's been given out I'm sure I'll change my mind. Because of the typhoon we haven't gone out too much, so I'll take this time to put up baby pictures! how cute. 

Here's me reading about weekend adventures outside of Tokyo when I was too young to know how to read.

Brendan on his first day of Japanese Kindergarten, papa-san and a hungry hungry hippo.

Not really sure who this lady is

Alex and me

The family! My dad, brothers, mom, great grandma, great grandpa, great aunt, and great uncle. Not sure if I did that right. The slightly more Japanese looking people in this photo are my mom's grandparents and aunt and uncle. Regardless, my whole family is pretty great.. ha.. (just had to stick that lame joke in there)

台風 たいふう typhoon!

Poor little Japan just keeps getting hit with natural disasters! This is our third typhoon to strike since I've been here, I think the 15th this month (I could be wrong, I got that info off the TV but it was in Japanese..) and we've also had 4 earthquakes since I've been here. For some odd reason though I have yet to actually feel one of these earthquakes.. 

Not a good day to forget your umbrella

 

居酒屋 いざかや Izakaya

Izakaya dining is very popular in Japan, and so far one of the best (and cheapest) that we've found is the 270Yen place. I'm sure there is an official name for this restaurant chain but we just know it as the 270Yen place. Basically everything on the menu is 270Yen, except for certain items. Izakaya's are known in Japan for being popular drinking establishments that also serve food. There's a variety of food choices that can be ordered and are meant to be shared with the table.   

You order from a electronic menu that talks to you, and then a waiter brings you what you order

Thought we'd be safe and order something fried... turns out we ordered some sort of chewy, nasty, fried substance. We later found out that it was gristle.

カルピスとマンゴ　サワー
Calpis and mango sour

Some sort of fried ice cream type of dessert

After the Izakaya my friend Sophie and I went wandering into town, we wanted to check out the night life. We went into a building we assumed was a bar called ダッグ (daggu) It was the smallest bar I've ever been in. There were 3 older men and a few women, barely enough room for all of us. (It was about the size of a walk-in closet in America) Sophie and I were trying to figure out a polite way to back out of the room when suddenly the music became so incredibly loud. Turns out the man next to me was singing, we found ourselves a couple of locals at a karaoke bar. Also it took us a hot minute but guessing from the bar decorations (random baseball memorabilia) that the place was called the Dug Out. Clever.

The bartender was very nice, she informed us that we were not the first gaijin to enter her establishment. Then she wanted us to duet My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. She was so nice and laughing definitely would have been rude but it was hard keeping a straight face during her performance. She also took a picture of us with her camera, don't know where that picture's going to turn up.

Zoo!

We have so much free time since our orientation class ended and school doesn't start until Friday (9/23)! Trying to make the most of all this free time, today we went to the Ueno Park Zoo with some of the Japanese buddies. The entrance fee is surprisingly cheap for a zoo, 600Yen which is about $7 or $8. 

The elephants were so sweet! All I could think about was the book Water For Elephants

One of the zoo keepers was using the broom to brush off the dirt and dust, and the elephant just kept rolling over for a belly rub.

 さるの山 (saru no yama) Monkey Mountain!

poor little guy had no privacy

The longest line in the zoo was for the giant panda exhibit. You kind of get shuffled into two lines that snake around the building, one line was for families and the other was for foreigners and people without children. 

There were two giant pandas from China, named Riri and Shinshin, can't remember which one this is. 

Lots of cafes in the zoo featured panda shaped items.. panda cake, panda burgers, panda pancakes, etc.