It's crazy to think that in one month I'll be heading back to America. I've settled in so much here I'm pretty nervous to go back. I also don't want to lose my Japanese while I'm back in America. It was really helpful, as anyone could imagine, to be in a country surrounded by the language for a whole entire year. Seeing menu's, train station times, advertisement boards, etc. in Japanese all around me just helped me progress through Japanese so much faster. It's going to be hard going back and having to study Japanese just in the classroom since there isn't a community of Japanese people in Monterey.
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Not only have I not experienced going to a different country, being in California my whole life I have certainly not experienced something such as a hot and humid rainy season. When it became June and suddenly started raining, going to class in the morning and not being sticky was impossible. I hated it, to be honest. It was such a gross feeling, you want to shower 3 times a day.
Before coming to Japan, I had absolutely no idea what Golden Week was. But, upon being here, I learned that it is a string of holidays in late April and early May that come together and form a full week of holidays. In this time, almost all of Japan goes on holiday at once. Yet, even though I knew tourist spots would be super crowded, I still chose to go to Tokyo for two days! I knew I wouldn't have had another chance to go, and I would have regretted it if I left Japan without going to Tokyo.
After buying some very expensive Shinkansen tickets, we headed on our way to Shinjuku. Unfortunately, we arrived at 6:35 in the morning and it was pouring rain. We had no choice but to take shelter in a local Starbucks until stores started opening. Once the sun came out, we headed on our way to do some shopping in the city. After that, we went to Shinjuku Gyoen, and we got in admission free because it was Kodomo No Hi. Whooo!! Though the park was crowded, it was a beautiful sunny day to go to, and all of the trees, grass and plants were so green and lush. There were families sitting for picnics and lots of people taking photos. After that we met a friend from Waseda and went to Tokyo Tower. Since we went at night, we got to see all of the city lights of Minato. The next day, we went to Harajuku and first went to Meiji Jingu. The first Tori was absolutely massive. And I didn't realize how large Meiji Jingu was until it took us 20 minutes to get to the inner shrine. I was glad to see that the city still preserved a large part of trees for this shrine. After this, we went to Harajuku, and to no surprise, the shopping street looked like a game of Frogger. It was person to person, shoulder to shoulder, and very uncomfortable. Needless to say, we didn't stay there long as all the clothing shops were too expensive and the hoards of people just made it too uncomfortable to stay there. Next we went to Akihabara and that wasn't bad at all. We checked out a lot of used card, game and book shops. We even got to try a virtual reality headset for free. After all of this, we were exhausted and hungry so we stopped at a local Seizeirya and got dinner before heading to the station to catch the Shinkansen. Overall, it was a really fun trip but I wish we had gone longer. I definitely overestimated how much we could do in only two days. But I'm satisfied with our trip. It was too expensive, but I'm glad I got the chance to go to Tokyo in the end. I finally got to experience something famous in Japan: Hanami! Flower viewing, usually relating to Sakura season, is a tradition that everyone in Japan, no matter how old, can enjoy. After waiting anxiously for the Sakura to start blooming, they finally did! Yay! To view them, I took my friend and I to Tsuyama Castle, which has hundreds of Sakura trees. Once we arrived and walked to the castle grounds, we were immediately surrounded by gorgeous blooming cherry blossoms.
Tsuyama Castle had a lot of stairs that led to all kinds of different locations all around the castle grounds. Everywhere, there were large blue tarps that everyone could sit on the have a picnic, though most of them were already full of families bbq'ing. So, we stopped to eat lunch near a balcony that overlooked a river of Sakura. As well as the warm weather, there were pretty petals that fluttered around in the wind. Everywhere you looked, looked like a picturesque scene from a movie. It was really nice how everyone flocked in crowds to enjoy something that lasted for only a couple of weeks. I went to Kurashiki a couple of days ago to see if there were any blossoms left, and they were all gone. It definitely made me glad I enjoyed them in Tsuyama while I could. I must say, March has been a pretty uneventful month. I've been working quite a lot at Earth 8, and also just enjoying my time off. I didn't travel anywhere big this month, but as Sakura season is starting, my friends and I have some Hanami plans! This past weekend, my friends and I decided to ride 15km through Kibiji, not far from Okayama city. We took the train to Bizen-Ichinomiya, and rented bikes to ride all the way to Soja station. Kibiji is a road that takes you through Kibi Planes, the countryside part of Okayama that passes by a lot of temples, shrines, and even burial mounds. Within five minutes of biking, my friends and I stopped by a temple that was an incredibly steep climb up a hill. There were also a couple of paths leading up through the forest, so we decided to climb one of them. At the end of our short but tiring hike, it let us to a monument (as it was all in calligraphy, we couldn't understand what it was) but it was quite beautiful. After this, we went on our way through the rest of Kibi planes.
One of the most surprising things was to see that Okayama had burial mounds. I didn't know that this existed in Japan, so it was really interesting to read the signs that described them. Looking at things like this always makes me wonder what it was like in historical Japan. I'd love to be a fly on a wall for a day in that time. Aside from Kibi planes, as I mentioned, I've been working at a preschool a couple of days a week. Coming to Japan, I thought I'd just stay inside of school and learn a lot about student interaction, but having this job and working with 3-4 year olds has taught me so much. Being able to work full days interacting with them has taught me a lot in how to interact with kids, how to use my English in a manner they can learn, and unleash that childish spirit we're all taught to tuck away once we get into middle school. I never thought I'd want to work with kids, but having this job has proven to me the exact opposite: perhaps I'd love to be some kind of assistant or caretaker of kids. I'll definitely be thinking about this in the next year that I graduate! We ended school around the last week of January, and for a good chunk of it, my friends and I planned a trip to South Korea! All three of us really like Korean pop culture, and can't go when we're in our home countries because it's too expensive to fly there. So, we took advantage of being close, and went for a week to Seoul! This was only my second time traveling somewhere (Japan being the first), so I definitely had some traveling nerves, but once we got there, everything was fine. It was interesting because the whole time we were there, we didn't speak Japanese at all. We only spoke English, and it was actually extremely difficult because most of the cashiers/taxi drivers/workers only spoke Korean. We had to rely quite heavily on our friends' small knowledge of the language to help us survive.
One of the things that Japan has are dog cafe's, and we were actually able to find one in Seoul as well. This was one of the most fun things we did the whole trip, because we got to see such variety of dogs again. In Japan, there seems to be a liking for small to medium sized, tan dogs who are tamed quite well. I've only heard a dog bark here twice in my 4 month stay here. But, in the dog cafe in Seoul, there were about 15 different kinds of dogs ranging from the size of my hand, to the size of a full-sized man. There was no admission fee, but you would buy an 8,000W drink (so basically that was your admission fee), and got to stay there as long as you wanted. After that, we went to a Mustoy cafe and got to create our very own customized ceramic doll (you draw on it with markers) to make any person or character you'd like. It was really fun. After returning home, two weeks later was my boyfriend's marathon in Soja! There were a lot of people there that ran the half & full marathon, and seeing the effort these runners put into their work definitely made me want to run too (though some looked very tired, understandable). After a 1hr 40 minute finish, we drove back in the slow traffic to an Okonomiyaki restaurant and refilled our energy. It was really cool to see something like this in Japan, as we missed the Okayama marathon early Fall of last year. I think I'd like to run a half marathon someday.. (someday!). This was the most stressful month I have felt here so far. I must say, classes here have been pretty lax on homework, so I (and most other students) got used to not having to do so much Uni work. But, come time to end the class, every single one of them gave a final project and final presentation, due all within one week of each other. Cramming to finish my over 15 final assignments was definitely the worst part of the semester. I was a hermit for 2 weeks but finally emerged alive at the end of it all. But wow, it was stressful.
Other than that, there was one seriously AWESOME thing that I got to do- don't laugh because it's actually been one of my dreams my whole life. I got to see a giant panda in person!! I couldn't believe it because there were no lines, it was during feeding time, and there was no heightened admission fee. But when my friends and I walked into the exhibit, I couldn't contain my excitement. I took so many videos and photos, and every little movement of the panda had me grinning even more. Honestly, it was a really great experience for me to be able to experience something that has been on my wish list forever. In America, we have Pandas, but they are few and far between, have crazy long lines, expensive admission fees, and have hard-to-view exhibits. Being able to see it so up close was really amazing, and it was a great way to end the month after successfully finishing all of my finals. On the same day, I got to experience a Japanese Chinatown! California's San Francisco has a Chinatown, but that's a Chinese American take on it. It was quite interesting to see how Japanese people view the Chinatown in Kobe. We went at nighttime around dinner, and it was extremely popular with people of every nationality. Many of the shop vendors were Chinese themselves, and had Chinese, Japanese, and ChineseJapanese fusion food. It seemed like a really lively place when we were there, so I can only imagine how popular it will be when the weather warms up. Next on the list, something I didn't even know existed until I heard it through the grapevine: Bunny Island! Otherwise known as Okunoshima or Usaginoshima, Bunny Island is an Island home to many rabbits who used to be used as test subjects for a poison gas production company. After the company got shut down, all of the rabbits got released and now inhabit the Island. Instead of just leaving it unknown, it's now become a tourist attraction, and you can even buy bunny food before you hop on the ferry to get there! Getting there was the hard part. We left at 8AM in the morning, and didn't arrive to the actual island until 1PM. But, once we got to the island, there was no where you looked that didn't have bunnies. They were everywhere! Everyone spent a good 2 hours roaming and feeding all the bunnies they could find. This was also a really fun way to end the month, and the semester. I'd definitely go again in spring if I get the chance. Today I visited Osaka for the first time and went to the Kyocera Dome for an EXO concert!! It's nearly impossible to see EXO in the U.S., so when my friend invited me to go, I was ecstatic. This was an opportunity I couldn't pass up! To get there, I took a Ryoubi bus, and the way there I got to see all of the nice scenery around the area. Watching Japan pass by in a bus is a lot different than watching California pass by in your car.
I was used to seeing videos online of EXO interacting with their fans in Korea, so watching them interact with a stadium full of Japanese fans was really awesome. They all had practiced their Japanese really really hard to do their introductions to the fans and to be able to interact with us. Though I believe I was one of the only 1 or 2 other Caucasian people there in the whole stadium, Lol! Though, that's not a bad thing at all. The concert itself was amazing, and I got the opportunity to interact with a lot of the Japanese fans that my friend knew. It was interesting seeing the difference between American Kpop fans and Japanese Kpop fans. Japanese fans spend a lot of time before the concert exchanging fan made goods with people they meet off of Twitter or Tumblr, and often interact with them a lot, whereas American fans usually just wait in line patiently before the concert starts. A lot of the Japanese fans were between the ages of 15-30 (though there were some young kids as well as older folks) and were almost all wearing concert gear, including wearing something that represented their favorite member in EXO. One thing that was nice is that the process to get into the stadium was really short and simple, whereas the ones in America take an incredibly long time because they have to check everyones belongings. They did that here too, but a lot more professionally and efficiently. Anyways, Exo's performance was spectacular, and seeing it in Osaka was really cool. I want to come back to Osaka during break to explore some new/tourist spots that are there as well. There have been a lot of things I've done since my last entry for October!
One that was particularly nice was a trip where almost all of the exchange students went on a trip to Yakage and Yakage Era! First we all went to see the Daimyo Gyoretsu Festival & Procession. There were a lot of food venders up and down the streets, and all of the food that they had looked really good. We even stopped off to get some kitsune udon for ourselves! Once it was time for the procession, all of the visitors there gathered together and scrunched up to try to see the procession. The one thing that sucked was that it was actually really difficult to see. By the time my friends and I got to a place where the people were, there was already a large crowd of visitors in front of us, making it really hard to see over them. But what little we did see was really nice. The armor that the men were wearing was spectacular. And the way they threw their weapon-like items into the air to one another was nice as well. Unfortunately, our group had to leave pretty soon afterwards because we had another destination to go to, and that was a place called Yakage Era! This was a beautiful place, and well all gathered on the top of a steep hill while the residents of Yakage cheered us on and welcomed us with open arms. It was lovely to see their valiant hospitality- though they didn't know us, they opened their arms and hearts and woke up very early in the morning to make us all of the food they had prepared- yakitori, mochi, imo tempura, kabocha tempura, and cotton candy. They also gave us an opportunity to do Mochitsuki, so that was fun to watch those who did it. We spent a good 2 hours there talking with the residents, exploring the area, and taking photos of the beautiful scenery. It also started sprinkling while we were there, so a lot of us got out our umbrellas while chatting amongst each other. It was really nice how inviting the Yakage residents were. Unlike most other students studying abroad, I got to Japan pretty late. I had an extended summer, and after my first experience flying, arrived in Japan on September 28th. My classmate Taylor Ann was so kind in setting me up with her friend Sola so that I could stay there for 2 days until I moved in for orientation at Kuwanoki Dormitory. I'm so thankful for her help and generosity T-T. I remember the first place I went to was a grocery store called Marunaka, and I spent a good hour in there looking at everything- noticing how there weren't as many fruit varieties and there are in America. All of the staff there said いらしゃいませ, even the ones that were just restocking the shelves. I wasn't sure whether or not I reply to them, so I nodded and said おはようございますback, and some of them looked shocked and looked back at me and said Good Morning back to me. I can only assume that most people don't really acknowledge them back, so maybe that's why they looked kind of shocked.
I moved in on the first of October and rode in a Taxi for the first time in my life. I felt kind of bad for the driver cuz he looked kind of old and my luggage was SUUPER heavy and when he tried to pick it up, he said "おもい!!" LOL. So I helped him lift it up and shove it into the trunk and it barely fit.. LOL. Anyways for my first Taxi ride, it wasn't as expensive as I thought it was gonna be which is good. From 大元駅to 桑の木寮, it was about 1,860円. Orientation was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be, and stressing out about where to get shampoo and conditioner was futile because there was actually a mini "flea market" downstairs- full of all the things past students could not take with them. All electronics were 500 円 and everything else was 10円!! I seriously bought about 40 things and luckily, it was/is all enough to tie me over until I found out where I could otherwise buy these items. All of the 留学生got their tutors and we had orientation with a bunch of paperwork, and my tutor was suuuuper nice in spending all day with me hanging me out and showing me around town. I like the fact that Okayama is kind of a small area, but still has a lot in it to offer. And for the past week I've been ridiculously busy doing paperwork, hanging out with new friends, and doing some shopping and exploring the area. This is the first time I've actually not had anywhere to be or anything to do, so I thought I'd finally write something before I get busy again. I actually haven't even really had classes yet. I have one today and all of the Japanese language classes start next week. In my exploring the area and going to restaurants, I've kind of noticed some differences between America and here. It certainly feels like there's more of an heir of seriousness here. When you go to a convenience store or restaurant, there's always a string of words that the workers have to say, to every customer. You never really see them joking around or laughing with each other, as you would at most jobs in America. For example, if you go to a bank in America, it's a serious environment. But you can still joke around with them and sometimes see them having conversations within their workplace- but it really does no harm as long as it's not busy. But here I've really only seen serious, almost robotic responses from the workers and it's very intriguing to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Japanese people are robotic, but there's certainly a different atmosphere here in the workplace. The other thing I've noticed and been amazed with the most is how eco-friendly Japan is. Everywhere you go, there's at least 5 different types of trash cans, all in an effort to separate plastic bottles, glass, aluminum cans, paper, wrappers, etc. It's crazy. I've been here for a week and I still have no idea where anything goes. All of the cars here are super tiny and get at least 40+mpg, and a lot of the buses turn off their engines if they sit at a traffic light for a long time. And the toilets here all have a "light" or "heavy" flush option, which controls how much water it will use. Most of the sink and water faucets are connected and either side controls both options, so it saves on water piping. And most people that live in Okayama use bicycles to get around, effectively eliminating any pollution from cars. I'm sure there are more examples, but I'll think of those later haha. I'm excited to see what will come in the next week of beginning my Japanese level 3 language courses and EPOK classes. Wish me luck! |
AuthorMarissa Armstrong Archives
June 2016
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