So I'll cram 2 posts in one.
DAY 7
Today is Tanabata in Japan!
Make a wish!
It's also the only Saturday in the month where we have class. But that's ok cuz we also have a day trip to Asakusa today.
We had a class today, like I said. It was a nice variation because the professor described the different building types in Tokyo. Afterwards we were split up into groups and we were assigned different building types. The assignment was to find a building around the city that was an example of what we were assigned.
Like I said, it was a nice take on a lecture, rather than just spend the 4 hours inside all day talking about theory.
After class most of us stopped by that one ramen place under the train station (the one where Demetri took one bite of mine and ordered his own). This time I ordered one with karai miso.
Today was also the day that we would have our day trip to Asakusa.
After class, we met up at the station, and like I said before, some of the other Japanese students came along with us.
Two of which were Kotarou and Ikki.
Ikki was wearing this flashy green and pink striped tank. I told him it was kakkoii. He busted out his guns with a smile.
Other people came too, but I forgot their names (whoops).
The train to Asakusa took a while, but we finally got there.
Visually, it wasn't any different from the other cities we've been to.
Although it was really cloudy/foggy that day with a constant drizzle, which made it hard to take pictures kind of.
Near the inner part of the city was this sort of shopping arcade. Nothing too special.
At the end of this long hallway of stores was a gigantic shrine.
If it wasn't bigger, it was more grand-looking.
Near the entrance was this sort of incense pot to cleanse yourself. Smelled like shit.
The route we took would go inside and off to the side, so off we went.
And off to the side....
which took us to this garden-y area.
We ended up walking a long time, I think almost 40 minutes.
Through streets and more shopping areas.
And after a shitload of walking, where did this lead us?
To a small shrine.
It was actually really sad, in retrospect.
With nothing else on the list, we just went back.
Demetri wanted to go take a river tour, but only like 5 of us wanted to go, and the rest wanted to go back to Nishi-Kasai.
It was....me, Demetri, Kevin, Lalli, and Nathan, and Eric. Oh, I guess it was 6.
It was more like a river bus, but the end destination would land us near the Tokyo Tower.
We went up to the top deck and the ceilings were super low.
It was funny because Lalli didn't have to duck LOL.
Like I said, it was like a mode of transportation rather than an actual tour. So with nothing else do to, the 6 of us talked. It was a nice time and we got to talk about a lot of things and bond further.
The river tour dropped us off at our stop and it would take us a while to walk to Tokyo Tower.
We found it, and the only thing in our way was yet another shrine.
We hung around the shrine for a little bit before going to the tower.
A bunch of tanabata trees were up still for the holiday.
This is where things became problematic.
Demetri, Kevin, Lalli, and I had never been to the Tokyo Tower. Eric and Nathan had, though (on the day that I felt sick).
Even so, Demetri and I were the only ones who wanted to go. The rest wanted to go back to Nishi-kasai.
So the two of us went up to go see it.
It was a different perspective to be at the base of it.
The line to go to the top was freaken long. Demetri still wanted to go up but I wasn't down, for several reasons:
- The line was incredibly long. Almost as long as the line for the hentai exhibition at AX last year. It would be at least a 40 min wait.
- There was a wait on top of the line to actually go up.
- The price to go up was over 1000 yen.
- It was a cloudy day, so I didn't think we would get much a view.
Demetri finally agreed after much pestering that it wasn't gonna be down to go. I felt bad cuz it seemed like he really wanted to go up, but the circumstances didn't make it worth it for me.
It was, again, just us two, so we miserably wandered around the city trying to find the train station and asking for directions. We finally found it and made the long ride home to Nishi-kasai.
On the way back, we decided to stop by Mos Burger again. Demetri's logic was, "If we're gonna shut ourselves in the room for the rest of the day, we might as well go eat out." (As opposed to going to the convenience store).
I got something different this time. Small again, but also very good.
The sauce was teriyaki sauce.
We went back and I proceeded to study my hiragana and Demetri did whatever he was doing.
We got a knock on our door shortly afterwards.
It was Kevin and Eric.
They just got back from eating dinner out and they wanted to do something.
Demetri went out with them and I committed to my hiragana studying.
For a short while.
They came back with beers.
Tall ones.
I had one.
They left.
They came back.
With soju.
I had more.
It was honestly a pretty fun time. Me, Eric, Kevin, Demetri, and Jamar were sitting there just talking shit and being buzzed.
AND THAT WAS THE REASON WHY DAY 7 IS LATE, SORRY EVERYONE.
Drinking that made me feel really tired and I just knocked out.
And now begins...
DAY 8
It was Sunday. It didn't really feel like it because we had class the day before. All my sense of time here has been fucked. So I could really care less about what day it was.
It was pretty much our free day before another week of class so we wanted to go out.
Demetri was telling me, even a week before, how he wanted to go to Harajuku on a Sunday, because, supposedly, that was when all the coplayers and goth girls came out.
So when plans were made (with short notice) to go to the park in Harajuku, Demetri and I jumped on.
Other stops we were supposed to make on the trip were a Square Enix studio and a Sony building.
We took the lines to get to Harajuku, passed the Meiji Shrine that we went to that one day, and ended up in Yoyogi Park.
Cosplayers were nowhere to be seen.
But we did find a cool-lookin park.
We found a man on stilts and a water sprayer making art wherever he walked.
We also found some dude in a speedo that represented a tengu mask with the nose being the penis.
It was kind of disappointing to not see one cosplay, after Demetri told me that hundreds of these people would come out every Sunday.
Maaike had a friend that she was supposed to meet at 1 so we went with her.
On the way, I found a cool escalator entrance.
We found her friend (I think his name was Alex). He came here to visit his girlfriend (who I think was actually a Japanese person living here). Both of them were there and we went into the city to go find some lunch.
They led us into this unpopulated area (almost empty) with a small shop that sold dumplings and rice. Not too many things crazy goin on there.
I ordered 2 orders of fried dumplings, and later on I ordered some rice with soup.
Wasn't bad, but wasn't super great.
We kind of walked around with them a little more after eating, and honestly, it was kind of boring. Not a whole lot to do. Some of them stopped by a crepe shop and got some.
We asked Alex's girlfriend how to get to our next destination and then we split ways.
Next stop, Shinjuku.
I had no idea what this Square Enix place was, but Josh wanted to go see it so we tagged along.
It ended up being somewhere far away.
When we FINALLY got there, I was gravely mistaken on what I thought it was.
My understanding was that it was a studio in which the main process of making their games and things went on.
It ended up being a small gift shop for fans.
There were some character goods and figurines here and there. Most of which I couldn't really identify with since I didn't play much FF.
They had a darker room upstairs where there were even more figurines and jewelry.
There was even a Sephiroth on the floor in some kind of display.
Some of the signs in there were kind of...uh...
It was a cool shop, but again, another disappointment.
One last place, and it was the Sony area.
It took a long time to walk there, too, and behold, SONY!
What it boiled down to was a giant Best Buy type store, but a little cooler and more hands-on with demonstrations of their products.
They advertized with a lot of Spider-Man stuff.
There were tons of displays of their products, like I said before.
Eric trying on some headphones:
A camera lens that puts my life to shame:
There was also a train set display around an array of cameras so you could take a picture and see how your picture turns out on an Ipad, or something like that.
There was a similar display with letter blocks and different cameras.
I used this display to test out my own camera.
I also got to see the first 3D camera I've ever seen in real life.
With nothing else really to do, we headed back.
I was the only one that actually went back.
The others broke off at Nishi-Kasai station to find something to eat.
I went to the convenience store to buy some food and a new notebook (one that I would be practicing hiragana and stuff with).
So overall...this weekend kind of sucked.
I mean, yeah we got to go to some places, but it felt like so much potential had been lost.
Most of us even agreed that this weekend failed hard.
On Saturday, one of the staff kept getting us lost, it was really rainy, and it didn't seem like they took us to super interesting places. On top of that, it seemed like even though we could go off to do our own thing, it was kind of like a group mentality to stick with the main group, which kind of ticked off some people in the end. And Tokyo Tower was way crowded to actually go up, which sucked.
And on Sunday, Harajuku was just bad luck. It turned out that cosplayers did come out on Sundays normally, but for some reason we couldn't find any. And the "studios" we went to ended up just being shops.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't super bad, but it wasn't as good as the previous days that I've been here.
Now I gotta do some readings, and study mah hiragana and katakana and stuff.
I AM DETERMINED TO SPEAK JAPANESE.
Sorry again for the missed day.
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