sayonara, tokyo

So today was my last day in Yokohama/Tokyo. We slept in, then got up and went to Kamakura with Megumi's mom. We spent some time walking down a little street of shops, looking for somewhere to eat lunch. We found a soba place and I ordered soba with duck (I think), which also came with 'soba tea jelly', which was interesting but pretty tasty. Apparently my lunch came from the 'good for your summer body menu', which I didn't realize until afterward but found amusing. It was my first time having soba, and it was very yummy. :)

Then we went and visited Hachimangu Temple, which apparently is very famous. It wasn't crowded at all, which was nice. We stopped to make wishes, and then Megumi's mom bought me a good-luck charm, which was really nice of her! It's in my purse right now, but I'm planning on putting it in my backpack so it can give me luck wherever I go. :)

After that we went to the Enoshima Aquarium! I haven't been to an aquarium in a couple years (either since our senior field trip or when I was taking my cousin around Atlanta; I can't remember), so it was fun. There were some really big sting rays and some really tiny jellyfish (not in the same tank, of course), plus lots and lots of creatures in between. I wanted to get a picture of the teeny jellyfish, but they were so tiny that my camera couldn't get a good picture. But I took lots and lots of pictures of the other things, like the giant crabs and penguins. We also missed the dolphin show, but saw the trainers giving them fish afterward, which was cool.

And then we went home and ate pizza and watched a segment about a transgendered celebrity who ran a 24-hour marathon, and so concludes my last day in Yokohama! It's been a really fun week, and I think also a good crash course/intro to Japan for me. I really hope I can come back to Tokyo for a few days after my finals end in December, because there's so much more to do and explore - I could probably live here for years and not get tired of it all. But tomorrow I head to Nagoya, where my study abroad will officially start! I'll meet my host family, go to orientation, and then start classes! I'm excited and nervous, because in Nagoya I won't have Megumi to rely on like I have been so much this past week, and I don't know how much English my host family speaks. Still, I guess it will be a chance for me to really test my Japanese skills - since everybody in Megumi's house speaks English, I haven't really had to speak much Japanese, but in Nagoya it may be my only avenue for communication. I am not looking forward to my placement test, since there is still a lot of kanji/grammar I haven't reviewed yet and should, but I'll be glad once it's over and classes start. I don't know yet what classes I'm taking or how hard they'll be, but it's been a long summer and I'm looking forward to school (yes, I'm a nerd).

Anyway, I still have lot to get ready before I leave tomorrow, so I'll stop here. I don't know when my next entry will be; I don't know yet if my host family has internet or not and orientation isn't until Thursday, so I'll just say bye-bye for now! :)

disneyland, fireworks, tokyo

Oof! Has it only been three days since I last posted? It feels like a lot longer, though I guess three days between posts is not very long. Although this is mostly because being in Tokyo with Megumi is like being on vacation and we go do fun things every day; once I get to Nagoya my posts may be less exciting and less frequent, especially as the semester goes on. :/

Anyway! Today's post will be very long, because there is three days worth of stuff to report on and I can't help but want to go into detail, if only so I can read back on it later and remember (my short-term memory sucks). So: on Friday we got up and headed out to go meet Megumi's friends! While we were waiting for them, I bought volumes 1 and 2 of 日本人の知らない日本語 ('Japanese that Japanese people don't know'). We had read a few pages of in Japanese class and it was really funny, so I wanted to get it while I was here in Japan and I did! So far I've only read a few pages of it (with the aid of my new electronic dictionary, which is awesome), but it's very amusing (and good practice, too). Then Megumi's friends showed up and we spent at least fifteen minutes and several escalator/elevator trips deciding where to eat; apparently this happens to them a lot. :D Eventually we settled on the place they had chosen in the first place and had lunch (although Megumi and I had kind of already eaten). I enjoyed what I ordered (daikon radish and potato croquettes, plus rice and then pudding for dessert) and Megumi's friends were quite friendly and seemed like really fun people (the conversation was mainly Japanese so I just listened for the most part), so it was a good time. Afterward we wandered around this huge building (the Marunoichi building, I think?) that was part business, part shopping center, and then Megumi and I left for Tokyo Disneyland!

Parade!

Tokyo Disneyland was as magical as Disneyworld in Orlando, even though it only has two parks and is smaller (plus a lot of the rides were exactly the same). Megumi and I both got excited as we walked across the bridge to the ticket window; Disney just has the same great atmosphere wherever it happens to be. We came just in time for the after-six passport, which is basically reduced admission for coming after 6PM, which left us four hours until the park closed. So first we rode Pirates of the Caribbean, which I think is slightly scarier ride in Japan than in Orlando - plus there was Barbossa and Davy Jones and Jack Sparrow, which was cool. I thought it was funny because they all still spoke in English, even though I bet 90% of Tokyo Disneyland's visitor's don't speak it. Next we stood in line for Big Thunder Mountain, which took a reaally long time but was awesome, and when we got out we got caught behind a parade, which was actually pretty cool to watch, with huge lighted floats and famous Disney characters. Once we got through, we only walked a little bit before getting caught behind the parade again, so instead of waiting we decided to ride It's A Small World, because it only had a 5-minute wait. It was actually pretty enjoyable, even though we both agreed beforehand that it's one of Disney's dinkiest rides (but classic). After that we rode Space Mountain (awesome) and saw Captain EO, a revival of an 80s short with Michael Jackson, in 3D, which was also pretty cool. And then we were exhausted and went home.

I want a yukata!

On Saturday, we had a lazy morning (though I did study some kanji; can't forget the placement test!) and then got ready to go see fireworks! The custom is to wear yukata when you go see fireworks, but even though Megumi/her mom have several yukata, there was only one obi, so Megumi let me wear it. It was complicated to put on (I'm not sure how you would do it by yourself), but it was really fun to wear and not as hot as I thought it would be. Shortly thereafter, I found myself having what I thought was a very Japanese experience, as I was eating a convenience-store onigiri, dressed in a yukata, sitting on the train to go see fireworks. :) Then we got to the fireworks place and settled on the sand (it was by a lake and very pretty with the sunset) with yakisoba to wait for the show. It was very breezy and cool; I also really enjoyed seeing everybody else's yukata, especially the little kids' because they were so cute! Then the show started and it was probably the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen - we were really close, so they were huge, and it was a pretty long show that included fireworks shaped like Doraemon and what I'm pretty sure were Goombas from Super Mario. It definitely made up for not having seen fireworks on the 4th of July this summer. :D

It makes your eyes bigger/look weird.

This morning, we got up early to go see Shougo-kun, an elementary school kid who Megumi tutors in English every week. He was really adorable and energetic, even though I think I might have made him a little nervous. We played 20 Questions with a Fruit By the Foot as the object; it was actually pretty unfair of us to make him try to guess it, considering they don't exist in Japan and neither does anything like them. But we gave him one and a Fruit Roll-Up at the end, so I suppose that makes up for it. :) After that we headed to Asakusa, which Megumi had never been to, either. We walked along a lot of shops and visited the temple, where we made wishes, stood in lucky smoke, and drew fortunes. Mine was 小吉, or 'better fortune' according to the English translation, so that was nice (usually I have bad luck with this sort of thing). Next was Shibuya, where we took pictures in a photo booth (or print club/purikura, as they say), which was fun. I'd done it before in China, but we could only pick the backgrounds for that one and the ones in Japan have about a million more options (or so it seemed). I was really bad at deciding how to decorate the pictures, but Megumi is a pro so they turned out quite nice. :) Then we walked to Harajuku and spent some time in a store called Kiddy's, where I bought a little Totoro towel (I really can't resist Totoro stuff; it's awful), which comes in quite handy since Japanese bathrooms don't have paper towels and not all of them have hand dryers. We didn't have time to do much more in Harajuku since we had to meet Megumi's dad at 6, as he was taking us out for sushi! It was my first time at a conveyor-belt sushi place, and I tried two new kinds of sushi (flounder and octopus), which I am proud of, because I am rather picky for a Chinese person and raw seafood is not really my thing. I'm sure I'll go out for sushi a few more times while I'm in Japan, so I will slowly work my way up to rawer and squishier things like sea urchin and salmon roe. :)

Tomorrow Megumi, her mother, and I are going to Kamakura, which should be fun, and then the day after I leave for Nagoya! I considered waiting to post this entry until after Kamakura, but that would have made it even more of a gargantuan post, so I will leave it for another day (possibly/probably tomorrow). Sorry that this one is so long; I probably could have posted earlier when there was less stuff to talk about but I've been pretty tired when we get back at night (maybe I'm still a little jet-lagged). Anyway, bye-bye for now; stay tuned for the end of Yokohama/Tokyo and the beginning of Nagoya! :D

konnichiwa, japan!

So now I've officially spent one day in Japan, and I can already tell that I am going to love it here. Granted, my experiences this week in Yokohama/Tokyo are probably going to be very different from how I'll spend the rest of the term in Nagoya, but I have high hopes nonetheless. :) But I'll start from the beginning (be warned; this will probably be a long post).

Walking through this was really cool!

At the end of my last post, I was about to leave for the airport; I made it there with all my bags and said good-bye to my dad, only to discover that the Air Canada counter doesn't open until 4:30AM, which meant waiting there for about fifteen minutes with nothing to do. But it did open, so I checked my bag and was happy to discover that it only weighed 43 pounds - whenever I fly to/from school it's usually over the weight limit of 50 pounds, so this was a big deal. Plus that means that I can start filling it up with stuff I buy here in Japan (which is already starting to accumulate...but more on that later). So then I got on the plane and had a layover in the airport in Toronto, which was a really nice airport. There was free Wi-Fi, for one, and also this huge black sculpture that I couldn't help but walk through twice even though I didn't really need to, plus some bronze cougars (or some sort of big cat). And then I had lunch and people-watched and tried to guess how many of the people around me were Japanese (most of them, I think).

View from my window seat!

The flight to Japan was around 13 hours, and it was pretty uneventful. I took a lot of pictures from the plane because the sky was so pretty, slept a lot, studied kanji, watched Finding Neverland for the second time (good movie), and felt bad for bothering the girl in the aisle seat every time I had to go use the bathroom. I was watching Up in the Air as we landed, but my timing was off so I still have 20 minutes left that I plan to finish on the way back home. But I didn't really care, because I was finally in Japan! As predicted, I did freak out a little bit, but it was mostly internal, so all anybody else saw was a big smile. :) Then I waited in line for immigrations while guessing the nationalities of the people around me in the foreign passport line (mostly Chinese, surprisingly, with some Americans and a few British and I think French mixed in), got my bag from baggage claim, and went through customs, where I had to explain what Advil/ibuprofen was, though he figured it out when he looked at the bottle. And then I went out and saw Megumi! Or rather, she saw me as I was looking confused and called out to me. :) Then we went to buy bus tickets to go to Yokohama, where she lives, and then promptly missed the bus we just bought tickets for. -.-' Luckily we could just switch them to the next bus, which was arriving a minute later, and we got on the bus and ended up at Yokohama Station, which seemed pretty big to me, so I spent the whole time just following Megumi and staring at all the people/signs everywhere. Then we took a taxi to Megumi's house and watched Japanese game shows and a special about a girl in Britain who was only 13 but looked 50 because of a rare disease. It was a good intro to Japan. :)

Too bad you can't see the whole uniform.

Then we got up this morning and went to an exhibition for Mr. Donut's 40th anniversary (if you can't tell, Mr. Donut is a big donut franchise). It was pretty cool, even though we had to wait in line for a long time. But we each got a free donut (chocolate/coconut - delicious!) and took a picture with Mr. Donut cutouts. Unfortunately the guy took a horizontal picture instead of a vertical one, so it's hard to appreciate how great it really was. :/ We wanted to take picture with Mr. Donut uniforms and the mascot, Pon de Lion (I'm not sure if I spelled that right), but then we decided we didn't want to wait in line anymore, so we just left.

Then we went to Akihabara! Apparently Megumi and her mom predicted that I would want to go there, since it's basically the place for anime goods (and electronics) - even though I'm not as big a fan as I used to be, I still wanted to see it, because I've heard so much about it. Also we wanted to get me a prepaid cell phone, but as it turns out they were sold out at the store we went to and I would need my alien registration card anyway, so I guess I'll get a phone once I get to Nagoya. We also looked at electronic dictionaries, because I wanted one, but they were all pretty expensive. Then we just wandered a little, looking a maid cafe, because we'd both never been to one and wanted to (actually we wanted to go a butler cafe, but we had no idea where to find one). On the way I saw a store full of anime stuff and wanted to go in, so we did; it was 7 floors and full of stuff! I hardly recognized anything, because I'm so out of the loop, but even Megumi was impressed by all the manga and merchandise - we both bought something, too. I was on a quest to find a Haruhi body pillow for Phil, but no luck. :( I did buy a couple of things from the little dispenser-things (I can't remember what they're called at the moment, but the ones where you put in coins and turn a dial to get a random toy - they look like bigger versions of the candy things in the US), plus a little Totoro tin. Then we saw a cat cafe and I wanted to go, but before that we decided we should get something to eat, because at that point all we'd had to eat besides breakfast was a donut each, and it was almost 6.

So many cats!

True to our original intent, we went to a maid cafe, which was actually really easy to find because they have people dressed up in maid outfits on the street recruiting customers. Unfortunately, they don't allow cameras, so I have no photographic evidence of our adventure, but it was highly amusing (though a bit expensive - it was 500 yen each just to sit at the bar). It was a cute little place, and as expected, all the waitresses were in maid outfits and talked in really cutesy voices (except for the bartender, who was also a girl and quite pretty, but with very short hair and dressed in a black button-up). When we sat down, one of the maids brought a (fake) candle and told us that when she lit it, we would be like princesses (or something like that; this was all in Japanese so I only caught some of it). The menu was also pretty cute; all the dishes had faces drawn on them in ketchup and cutesy names. When we (or anybody else) got our drinks and our food, the maids had us say a charm and make gestures (i.e. hand in the shape of a heart or a 'beam' with our fingers) to make them taste better. Megumi and I were highly amused. The maids also sang once while giving some guy his drink, which was entertaining. The food was pretty good, too. Then we left and went to the cat cafe, which was exactly what I'd heard it would be. Basically you just pay to spend time in a room full of cats, which we did, even though Megumi is allergic. It was a pretty small place, but there were lots of cats sleeping everywhere, and we just petted them and took pictures for half an hour. It was great. :)

After that we did some more wandering into anime shops and one more electronics shop, where I found an electronic dictionary for 3800 yen! Most of the other ones we had seen were 20000-30000 yen, and nothing lower than 10000, so this was really cheap - it was the last one they had and a model that wasn't made anymore, which I think is why it was discounted so much. Also it had no box and no stylus (which I only discovered after getting back to Megumi's), but it was so cheap and actually pretty nice - it's in color and has a lot of (confusing) functions, including an IQ test. O_o  And then we came back to Megumi's house, where I am now, contented after a successful first day in Japan!

So far Japan has been very much what I expected, from the sleeping people on the train (who I tried to take pictures of, though I suppose that might be rude) to the vending machines everywhere and all the people/shops in Akihabara. Like Liz mentioned before I left, Japan feels very safe, even at night in the midst of lots of people; it probably helps that it's also very clean. I don't understand everything, of course, but I've been able to read a good amount of kanji on signs and things and I can get the (rather basic) gist of what people are saying, which is exciting. I feel like I could definitely get used to living here, which is good considering I plan on coming back after college. :) I think it's interesting because I don't stand out as a foreigner (and foreigners definitely stand out! Even I took special notice of them, just because they look so different from everybody else) - I wondered if people could tell. I think maybe if they looked closely, they could figure it out, but enough salespeople talked to me in Japanese that I don't think it's obvious. So this could have both its advantages and disadvantages; we'll find out if one outweighs the other, I guess. :) Anyway, this has been a very long post and I'm also feeling pretty tired, so I will end here with another list!

Japan expenses, day 1:
- 2000 yen, Suica card for the train; 500 yen deposit for the card and 1500 for fares
- 300 yen, 2 capsules from the dispenser-things whose names I can't remember
- 525 yen, Totoro tin and keychain
- 2000 yen, dinner at a maid cafe
- 800 yen, half an hour at a cat cafe
- 3800 yen, electronic dictionary

(I probably spent more money than I really should have, considering I have four more months in Japan to go, but I also think it was well worth the experience; plus the dictionary will come in very handy, I'm sure.)

good-bye, usa!

Whew! With roughly 90 minutes to go before leaving the house, and approximately 4.5 hours before leaving the country, I'm done packing! Yes, it was probably a bad idea not to start packing before 1:00AM when I have to leave at 3:30AM, but truth be told, the actual packing process didn't take too long. I'd already gathered most of the stuff in my room, so it was really just a matter of checking them off my checklist and putting them in my bags - which were surprisingly roomy (aka not bursting at the seams) when I was done, and according to my parent's scale, below weight limits! This is a good sign for future gifts/souvenirs.

Anyway, I can't believe I'm finally going to Japan! I keep feeling like I'm forgetting something important, even though I've gone through my checklist multiple times, mentally and physically. Maybe it's the fact that I really haven't studied Japanese as much as I should, considering I have placement tests on my first day of orientation, but I'm planning to study some on the plane (assuming I'm not zonked out the whole time) and I still have a week of possible study time before I even get to Nagoya. [Side note: I'm currently feeling very very silly because I spent a large portion of the last week taking notes from my textbooks on index cards so I could bring those instead of the books if I needed a reference, but after Jon offered to email me his PDF versions of the books, I realized that I could have just downloaded those in the first place to bring on my laptop instead of spending hours writing things down. -.-' This is particularly silly because that's exactly what I already did with the kanji books; I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me I could do the same with these. At least it was good review!]

So anyway, I guess it's just nerves. This term will be the longest I've ever been out of the country, and the first time so far away from the support of all my friends/family. But I won't be completely alone - there's Megumi (!) when I first get to Japan, Stephen with me at Nanzan, and all the other Carls studying in Japan this term, who'll at least be in the same country and give me a reason to do some traveling and visit! I'm really curious to see how Japan matches up with my perceptions of it; I've been building a mental image in my head for years now, and I guess I'll find out how much of that is real. I'm also looking forward to meeting my host family and riding the shinkansen, not to mention eating authentic Japanese ramen and raiding 100-yen shops! There's so much I want to see and do; four months hardly seems long enough.

I feel like I'm starting to sound cliché and over-optimistic; I blame the lack of sleep and the fact that I'm not used to expecting people to actually read what I write. So I think I'll wrap it up for now (my dad will probably be getting up to take me to the airport pretty soon anyway) with a little list (I'm a big fan of lists).

Things to look forward to in the next 24 hours:
- Airports and plane rides! Some of my favorite parts of traveling.
- A layover in Toronto - I've never been to this airport, and Canada is a nice place - they have parades on my birthday! :)
- Landing in Japan! The actual landing part probably won't be too exciting (especially with customs to go through), but it's still something I've wanted to do for years, and I'll probably freak out a little.
- Seeing Megumi for the first time in 2+ years! I'm so ridiculously excited, I can't even say. It's going to be a great week. :D

introductions and salutations

Oh boy. So, in roughly 30 hours, my plane is scheduled to finally whisk me away to Japan, a place I've been dreaming of since middle school. Naturally, instead of starting to pack, I've created this blog, so that I can document my semester abroad at the Center for Japanese Studies at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan! I'm anticipating/hoping for a slightly larger audience for this than my other, now concluded blog, if only so that when I address my dear readers, the message reaches more than Chinese spambots. :P

Anyway, I don't have any specifics planned for this project; I just want to periodically let friends/family know what I'm up to and also give myself something to reminisce over once it's all over. Hopefully I'll actually write and post entries instead of telling myself I'll do it later (which is usually what happens when I feel like I have something to blog about), and hopefully it'll be on a relatively regular basis.

So, greetings, dear readers (even if you're only Chinese spambots), and I hope you stick around for what I'm hoping will be one of the best episodes of my life! :)

P.S. - For those who are curious: the title of the blog reads 'nippon nikki,' (or 'nihon nikki' if you want - it just so happens that that reading was already claimed as a domain on Blogger; plus I think it sounds better the first way) which basically means 'Japan diary.' We'll ignore the fact that this is technically a blog and even more technically a journal; I just can't stay away from alliteration in titles! I think it's catchy, anyway, and I suppose if I like it that's all that really matters in the end. :)