Kamakura

Today I got up bright and early to head to Ichigaya to meet the girls to go to Kamakura. Kamakura is south of Yokohama (which is south of Tokyo) and is a place with lots of temples and shrines and stuff. And it is a bit outside the city life so it is often a place to cool down after Tokyo bustling life.

We met two other people at Tokyo station to see whereabouts we needed to board to get to Kamakura. I hadn't been to Tokyo station before. I looked outside for a bit and the station looked a lot like Grand Central Station. Not instituionalized stations like the rest of them. We figured out how to get to Kamakura, bought the ticket and went on our way. It took about 50-60 minutes to get there. Not too bad since there was a nice view on the way there. It was kind of foggy today though, so we couldn't see mount Fuji. Apparently on the way to Kamakura is a good place to see Mount Fuji. Eventually I'll see him.

We got there and of course the women wanted to have a cup of coffee and look at a map and plan the day. Being a man and having no need for this thing they call "map", I walked around the area around the station while they discussed. Then we went off to see the "Big Buddha" 大仏 (daibutsu). We took this little train to the area around it and walked up the street to see it. Pictures:


This was a shrine of sorts outside the gate.


This is the pond right inside the gate as we entered.


This is the waterfall sort of thing they constructed for the pond.


They had lots of these little shrine things all around the pond. They are probably each for a different buddha I'm guessing.


This was the entrance to some cave they had. This is a traditional Shinto gate. Called "tori", not tories as in magaraet thatcher. Shinto and Buddhism are two very different religions but very much mixed in Japan. Always interesting to me.


This was inside the cave. There were a lot of different relief murals of buddhas and each one had a candle rack. Some had more candles than others, this one was pretty popular. I would have taken more pictures but I didn't want to use the flash since technically this is the equality of taking pictures during high mass.


After the wall reliefs we had to duck into this pretty small tunnel and go through to the exit. But on the side of the exit was a small side cave with this inside. I can't remember what it was. But I think it had something to do with writing a name of a loved one on the figurine. I can't remember. I did use the flash here since no one was there except white people.


More of the little figurines.


This was the buddha who protected the afterlives of aborted babies or infants who died before a certain age. It was kind of sad because each little statue is dedicated to a different baby and some were dressed up and had little outfits on.

And then my battery died. I was not very happy about that one. But it was my fault I guess since I hadn't charged the battery in a week. I still had my regular film camera so I didn't miss out too much. Until I ran out of film later in the day. Good times.

Anyway, this temple ended up being not the Daibutsu but the golden buddha. It was a giant buddha that was golden basically. It had all sorts of ornaments around him and such. Next to it was a lookout and you could see the whole bay. Once again I was made fun of because I was so amazed by the sea. You miss out on a lot living 15 hours away from any sort of ocean-like body.

After that temple we headed onto the Daibutsu. It was basically on the other side of this very long street. A very touristy street. We got to the Daibutsu Temple and apparently it was field trip day for these little japanese girls to practice english with tourists. So funny. And of course that meant that the girls I was with wanted to talk to them all and aww at their cuteness. The Daibutsu was actually really big. I didn't think he would be that big. I wish my camera had had batteries. But oh well. We also got to go inside of him. It was really hot and stuffy but sort of neat.

After that temple we decided to head to the beach that we saw from the first temple's lookout point. So we walked for a really long time and found it. But then we realised that we were pretty hungry. You would think they would put a lot of restaurants by the beach. But this is logical, and often times Japan is not. So we went searching for a convienice store and never found one. So we were desperate and went to a place which specialized in "California Food". I didn't know this cuisine existed but we decided to give it a try. The food was kind of expensive but it gave us a really good view of the beach so we thought it would be worth it. Not true. When they finally gave us our food I thought they were kidding. In america if you tried to pass that off as the main dish you would probably get shot. The pizza although very good was not even enough for one person. And the sandwiches although very good were about the size of tea time snack sandwiches. We left bitter and still hungry. But the beach erased all that. It was really pretty. The sun wasn't quite setting but was behind the hill so it made for good pictures.

After walking the beach we decided to go to one last shrine before heading home. This shrine was pretty much on the other side of town, so it was a good trek through town. In the middle of the main street they had this "tori" (the shinto gate) that marked the beginning of a sort of green parkway through the town. Very picturesque. Quite a day for my battery to die. We decided to stop off for ice cream before the shrine. They had a flavour I hadn't seen before, sweet potato. Being as I have never had a bad ice cream (besides the one time we made homemade ice cream and I think either dad or mom microwaved the eggs because of the e coli scare. causing the ice cream to have little bits of platic like eggs in them) I decided to give it a try. These Japanese are quite clever at times. I would have never thought to make sweet potato an ice cream. But it was really good. Sort of like a sweet potato, but not really. Hard to describe. It is a like the green tea ice cream, good but you don't know why.

We saw the last shrine and they were having a wedding ceremony. Bring a book. I thought catholic weddings were boring. Shinto weddings definately have the upper hand. They always talk about the high rate of single women in Japan. And I think I figured it out today, they don't want to go through one of these. Although they are beautiful and whatnot, I can't imagine staying awake for the entirety of it. This shrine was on a hill and you could look out and see the road we had just walked all the way down and also see the beach. Very neat. After that we decided to make it a day and head back. It started raining as we were walking home. But since it was supposed to rain all day in the forecast but instead was a gorgeous day, a little rain was fine.

Go figure, I go to pretty much the most gorgeous place I have been while in Japan, and my battery dies. It may have been because of that flash shot in the cave when no one was looking. Oh, karma.

Friday

Today after class I went with Rachel to look around Shinjuku. We just decided to walk up and down the streets to see what would happen. First funny story of the day was we have been been seeing these signs for "Yen Shop" and have always been curious what it really is. We thought it might have been some sort of discount store. We found one of these Yen Shops in Shinjuku so we went over to find it. When we went down the stairs we found out the "Yen Shop" is just a real estate company. Typical Japan. Naming the company something that has nothing to do with the actual purpose.

After some more walking around we saw a this ku klux klan looking thing walking around with what looked like an imperial general from star wars. So of course we went looking around for a closer view. Then we saw that there were a line of about 8 stormtroopers with Darth Vader in the middle and people taking pictures of them. And since they were obviously Japanese people inside the suits, they were kind of short. I took some pictures and then some guy asked me if I could take a picture of him with Darth Vader. What he actually said was, "Excuse me, if I stand next to the Bat Knight will you use my camera?". When he stood next to Darth Vader he got this really serious look on his face. Good times.

We found this one huge store called "Tokyo Hands:Creative Life Store". And that is was. It had pretty much everything in that store. The first floor was halloween decorations and magic tricks and then the next floor was luggage and camping suplies, and it went on from there. One floor had "Crime Prevention Supplies" which we found out was just locks. Oh, on the halloween floor there was a costume of the swan princess and a white boy was posing on the front of it in this incredibly ridiculous look on his face. I wish we would have got a picture of it. I'm guessing his agent told him it would "only be in Japan".

After walking endlessly we parted ways and I went back to the dorm. I saw some of the guys at dinner and they said they wanted to go out but not go to the tokyo downtown. So I thought I would join because this we live in the equivalent of the Japanese suburbs. Not a lot of going out oppurtunities available. We took the train two stops away and walked around for a while until we figured out nothing was really happening in this part of town, obviously. So we got off at Sengawa and looked around for a bit but then decided to give up and walk back home. As we walked home we saw this sign for a cafe called "Tiny Cafe" and decided to drop in. Good idea. It looked exactly like a coffee house direct from westport in kansas city. The waitress/owner was pretty surprised that we were there but was really nice. So we ordered some drinks and sat around for a while enjoying it all. Than this reall outgoing japanese guy came in and started talking to us all and kept on saying we were "super cool". And than another guy came in and sat down with us and they started buying us all drinks. It was really funny. We ended up just hanging out with the locals until 12 or so. They told us to come back next friday, so we'll be back. And they invited us to one of the guys' band concert in Harajuku on christmas day. I won't be missing that.

No day but today

Today after class I went with some people to eat lunch at Yasukuni Shrine. It is right behind Hosei, about a 5 minute walk. I definately will have to do that more often. There are lots of pretty little areas to bring your lunch and relax. Especially nice after Tokyo days of massive urbanization. I took lots of pictures of course.

After that I went back to the dorm. But instead of going back directly I decided to stop at a few of the stations I always pass. Since it is free for me to get on and off the train in between stops I thought I might as well take advantage of that. I stopped at 明大前　Meidaimae, where Meiji University is. But there was lots of construction going on, so many things were closed. Than I stopped at 千歳烏山 chitosekarasuyama, quite a mouthful. This place was surprisingly pretty good. Lots of little shops and stuff. I found one store that is a discount store which means they get leftover goods from department stores and sell them at reduced price. I also found a pretty hip clothing store that was very reasonably priced.

I've been looking online and at university for oppurtunities to work as an english tutor. Since that is pretty much the only part time I could actually do here. And today I found a post online and replied to it. Hopefully this can work out so I could cushion Tokyo prices a bit with a paycheck.

Pictures


This is the main shrine. The white curtain was held back because there was a service of some sort going on. You can see the Hosei building on the right side of the picture, just to give you a picture of how close this is.


This is the koi pond behind the shrine above. Koi is a japanese fish. Apparently all koi in Japan are considered property of the imperial family and it is a huge crime to kill or eat one without permission. Much like the swans in the UK.



These were some of the koi in the pond. The fish food machine was out of order otherwise I would have got more pictures of them all together.



More pictures around the pond area.



This is how the Hosei building looks like from Yasukuni shrine.



This is a traffic sign on the street in front of Yasukuni shrine. This road actually has a name "Yasukuni Road", but since most roads don't have names the signs look like this.



This is the Ichigaya station entrance I use everyday. Notice the upside down blue and white cone thing. I have seen this a few times around stations. It spins around like a barber shop pole.



These are the lines that are available from this station. I use the Toei Shinjuku line. (Then after shinjuku it turns into the Keio line) Fun side fact: The toei lines are the only lines left that are still government ran.



This is the platform I wait for the train to go back to the dorm. On the other side is the platform I exit when I arrive every morning.


This is a map of the Keio line. Keio is a line that mostly serves the western part of the Tokyo area. If you can see in a green oval in the centre of the map pretty much つつじヶ丘, that is my station I normally use, tsutsujigaoka. On the far right in a big red oval is the 新宿, shinjuku, station. And the Ichigaya stop is two stops after Shinjuku.



This is a timetable of train depatures for the weekday. Basically you have to find the hour of the day, and then to the right is the minutes that a train leaves. Black means it is a local train, stopping at every stop. Blue means rapid, it stops at fewer stops. And green means express, meaning the train stops at only a few stops. The minutes with red clouds around them means that a "women only" train car is available. Since they have a problem with women getting groped on trains here, they offer trains where only women are allowed in. I accidently got on this train car once, good times.



This was at Shibuya last night. I've heard this is the busiest intersection in the world. I'm not sure if it is true but I believe it. Everytime the lights say "walk" it is this busy. It's a blurry picture but it's really hard to get a photo at twilight.

Bimbo

Today I got to sleep in until 11:30. Which was great, becuase it was a Wednesday. And sleeping in in the middle of the week is always good. I only have one class on Wednesdays and it is at 3.

Yesterday I thought that maybe if I started bringing my lunch to school it might save me some money. So I planned to today go to the local grocery store and see about getting lunch meat, peanut butter bread and whatever else you make for sack lunches. Well as I found out today, lunch meat is pretty much non existant in Japan. I looked all over the store today and finally found it with the meat section of the grocery store. I mean like the ground beef, sausege, chicken breasts etc. The only type of lunch meat available was ham. I guess it's popular. And deathly expensive. For 198 yen you got a package of four slices. Not such a good deal, at all. So I thought, maybe peanut butter sandwhiches will have to do. So after some more searching I find peanut butter. They had pretty much one option of a tiny jar of skippy for 358 yen. But I found something next to it called "Peanut Whip" and it was cheaper and bigger so I thought that could work. (I tried it later and it's pretty much pretty butter whipped up) So I bought the peanut butter and went back to see about the ham. I found some "value packs" with larger packages for "cheaper". I put cheaper in quotes because it is all relative. I ended up finding some decently priced ham after looking further on the shelf. Then randomly I found cans of chicken breast for 67 yen. They are the cans you would pay about $1.50 for in the US, so I was pretty excited. Also excited because I could actually read the package. (none of it was in english) So I think that between chicken breast, peanut butter and redunk ham I should be able to save some money during the week. Maybe about 1000yen to 1500yen per week? If it doesn't work, I'll be starting the ally mcbeal lunch of anorexia nervousa.

Then today after class I hung out with the girls and some people that I think were friends of a brother of one of the girls. Not entirely sure. We just went to this dingey little bar/restaurant for a bit. I left early to make sure I could catch dinner time here at the dorm.

Tonight at dinner they ran out of rice right before I got my food. And one of the ladies in charge told me (in really polite japanese) "please honourably wait, I am so sorry for being rude but the rice is not ready yet. It will be ready soon. Excuse my rudeness". I told her it was ok and got my food and ate. Apparently the rice machine was having problems or something becuase there never was any more rice. Not a big problem for me since my white body doesn't require rice. So I finished eating and I was putting away the dished, told the lady cleaning up thank you for the meal it was very good. And she asked me if I had eaten any rice. And I told her that I hadn't. To which she apologized profusely. I told her it was ok and I didn't need rice but she kept on apologizing. Just shows you the importance of rice in this country.

Not much else to say besides I got my bank card in the mail. So I have my first Japanese plastic. And it even has my name in Japanese. How chic.

Another Day(s)

Monday morning when I got up it was raining. Of course. This is Tokyo. It's to be expected. But what is not to be expected is a leak of some sort in my shoe. So the entirety of the day was spent with a wet foot. And it was just one foot. Kind of irritating to say the least. Then today I thought I would just avoid the whole shoe thing all together and wear flip flops. And of course it didn't rain. And I got asked about 20 times why I was wearing flip flops in cold weather. Flip flops aren't the year round fashion necessity that they are in Baylor. Then again, it never drops below 60 there.

Yesterday was some sort of national holiday in Japan. I think "Sport's Day" or something. So all the banks were closed, etc. and the dorm didn't make us meals. But we still had school. Much like how Baylor ignores half of the holidays during the year.

So yesterday morning I had my russian class. Once again I came out of the class feeling like my head was about to explode. During the middle of the class a student came in (in university students are never on time) and he was actually really good at russian. He then asked me some questions in russian and I sort of froze. The japanese to russian to english translating was getting all mixed up. Good times. Usually japanese students have a really hard time pronouncing russian but he was actually pretty good. Still kind of hard for me to understand at first but I'll get there.

After that class I just had two other japanese language classes and then went back to the dorm.

This morning I had a class at 9:30 so that meant I had to get up at 7. Not very fun. But I suppose that is the normal time normal people wake up so I should not complain. After the class I ate some lunch and sat around until the next class. While I was sitting, my good friend mr. diamond encrusted razorblade (Hi-C party a couple weeks ago) called out "Scott, Dance Party?". I had no idea what he was talking about and then he told me that he wanted us to go to a club with them. (He said "Dance Party" then "Disco" then "Club", not knowing which one I would understand I guess. even though it was all in english..) So I was thinking this weekend or next weekend so I ask when and he said "December 13th". These people like to plan out in advance.

Also during lunch Rachel and I signed up with Mika (Mika was an exchange student at Baylor last year, she is in a couple of the english language classes at Hosei) to go to a baseball game. We signed up with her club so we could go for free. Then afterwards the lady in the club office gave us maps and informational sheets. Rachel and I thought this was a bit much for a simple college game. But Mika told us that she forgot to tell us we were signing up for a tour of the field and meeting the team. So that should be pretty cool. As much as I don't like sports, the Japanese way of sports is so different that it is interesting. That is on October 22nd. Some future planning but not like December 13th.

Some Pictures:


This is the sign I look for everymorning to go to school. 10:24 is the time the train is leaving. The next two charachters in green "Kyuukou" means express. Which means the train won't stop at all the stops making it a much faster trip. The next 3 charachters in yellow "Motoyawata" is the final stop of the line, which tells you which direction the train is going. And the last little ditty says that at Sasazuka (a station) the train will turn into the Toei Shinjuku Line. Now that I look at it, I wonder how I got so lost when I first got here. I'm becoming a pro.


This is a picture of the area around Tsutsujiaoka Station.(The pretty much closest station to the dorm) There are a bunch of little shops all around that area. I always mean to look more around, but usually I just go for 5 minutes and get on the train. Someday.



This is a shot from the 12th floor of Hosei. If you can make out the bridge. On the left side of the bridge is Ichigaya Station. It is the closest station to Hosei, so I use it quite a lot. Also, the left side of the river is Chiyoda Ward and the right side of the river is Shinjuku ward. They are two of the biggest wards in Tokyo, I think.


This is also from the 12th floor of Hosei. Only this is taken from the washroom window. Luckily no one was in there so I didn't have to look like a weirdo. If you can see the bottom half how there are a lot of trees and a couple more traditional buildings in there, that is Yasukuni Shrine. I went there a couple weeks ago. I just thought this picture was really interesting how much of a contrast the shrine really is to Tokyo metropolis.

Pictures

It's getting chilly outside. Probably still warm to some, but the south has thinned my blood. Time for some pictures.


Here is the package for the Pee Pole. That is right, a pee pole. It was for urine collection for our heath check-up at the Uni gym. but of course everything in Japan has a cartoon charachter on it and is cute. Bodily fluid collections are no exception. Even stranger is that the two blob things are themselves peeing on the pee pole and vaguely anatomically correct.. Oh Japan.



This is a street on Roppongi. Roppongi is the party district for foreigners in Tokyo. Pretty much dirty and skeazy. Well not really dirty for skeazy, just for Japan it's dirty and skeazy.



Here are some elementary school kids in the train station from the other day. They all had on matching yellow hats. They may have been hard hats. I've seen quite a lot of kids wearing hard-hats here. This wasn't the elementary school thing I went to yesterday, none of those photos showed up. Just some rando kids at the station.



This is the american pool table at the billards place we went to friday. This is in tokyo, I promise I didn't have leftover pictures from waco.



This was at the Pool hall. This is Aki and Miho, respectively from the left. Aki is an exchange student here from Leeds. And Miho is a student from Hosei, the one that showed us around friday.



This, again at the pool hall, is Attila and Quentin. Atilla being the one shooting at the time. Shortly thereafter he got too into the game and broke a glass. It was his glass of redeye (beer and tomato juice), that he had ordered thinking it was red bull (an energy drink). So it didn't smell too well...




This was the big sign in the restaurant we went to friday. It said "I love New Yorl" on this sign but I think it said "I love New York" everywhere else.



Miho and I at the Shirokiya.



Quentin (left) and Daniel (right) at the Shirokiya. In Japan when you take a picture everyone does the peace sign. I have no idea why. And after a while, even the westerners will do it.




Here is a street on Shibuya. The pool hall and the Shirokiya were at Shibuya. It's another party sort of town, but much less trashy. And less creepy foreigners.



This was out in front of our dorm friday night when we got back. One of those "you had to be there" situations. Quentin had put a bag on his head instead of getting an umbrella in the pouring rain.



This is a sign in Shinjuku that says not to smoke and walk. Most of the ku's (the wards of Tokyo) have laws aimed at stopping people smoking and walking. I've seen plenty of people break this rule, but there are signs all over nonetheless.



This was a small amusement park in Ueno yesterday.



This was the first temple we went to yesterday. No one could read the kanji for the name, so we never figured out the name.



This was the main part of that temple. There is a white sheet in between the coutyard and the inner temple. I'm not sure what exactly this is for. But it is somewhat like a protecterate for the sacredness of the inner from the outer.



This was a statue dedicated to peace I think. All those colourful bands of paper are 1000 little origami cranes. When you make 1000 origami cranes and make a wish it comes true. I think that is the legend. And often the wish is for peace. Obviously whatever deity told us that has lied, because I'm pretty sure there were more than 1000 cranes there and I have yet to hear about peace.



This is a place at that temple where you buy a piece of wood for 500 yen and write your prayer/wishes on it. It can be things like good health, money, good grades etc. It was neat becuase there were people from all over the world that had written up something.



This was in between a temple and a shrine. It was a little alcove probably dedicated to an ancestor of someone. You see these a lot in the countryside of Japan. Not so much in Tokyo.



This was the entrance to a shrine. When there is a gate like this, be it orange or not, you can immediately tell it is a shinto shrine. I thought this one was very pretty. It was in stark contrast to the green mossy nature around it.



This was at that shrine. It was a place where you could cleanse yourself before entering the inner shrine and praying. I think this is a shinto thing only, but I remember seeing cleansing stations like this at temples. Not sure. Basically you take the cup and wash your hands and gargle the water to show that you cleanse yourself of all you have done today and all you have said.



This was a huge field of some type of greenery and at the end of that was big city life.



This was some type of statue on the side of the road. Not sure what it was, but it had insense burning and was pretty.




This was at a temple. Inside the stand thing was a bunch of insensce burning. You are supposed to wave the inscense over the part of your body that is hurt or you would like to improve. So if you have a sore back you wave the inscense over your back and if you would like to preform well at yoru next test you wave the inscense over your head. This is kind of like the cleansing thing at shinto shrines.

The pictures didn't do the shrines and temples justice. That or I just can't take pictures. I'm off to prepare for another monday of doom. The hardest classes of the week, bring them on.