ただいま！

I'm home! and I know I didn't update this while I was in Japan, but I didn't really have time there. Now I'm back, I might sometimes write about my experiences in Japan (that is not a promise....) There's probably no one left who even reads this anymore, so now this blog is more for me to write in so that I can remember things that happened in Japan and so that I don't end up talking about it too much in real life, because nobody likes that year abroad student...

I flew home to Birmingham airport from Kansai International airport on the 10th July, with two very short stops on the way. I had been staying at my friend Amanda's flat in Kyoto for about a week (will write about that another time) and on the 9th July I took a couple of trains to a Best Western hotel close to the airport in Hineno. This journey was very difficult with two suitcases and handluggage, but luckily in Japan people didn't laugh at me if I started struggling or falling over them, like I think they might have in England. When I arrived at Hineno station, I found they didn't have any elevators so I had to take them all one by one up and down a couple of flights of stairs, before the very short walk to the hotel. The hotel was very nice, there was a public bath there so I used that and then had tea at the restaurant. For tea they served buffet style japanese food. So I took a lot as it would probably be my last proper meal in Japan. At 5:30 the next morning I caught a free shuttle bus to the airport and arrived about an hour before check in opened. When it did open and I got to the desk, they had some issues working out my passport or flight tickets or something. She took quite a while and eventually asked if I had a visa for Germany :S (But I'm from the EU??) I think she felt a bit bad for making me wait because she didn't care that my baggage was several kilograms overweight or that I had too many pieces of handluggage. In the departure lounge I had my actual last bit of food in Japan. I bought a small tray of prawn tempura sushi and then nearly missed the boarding time for my flight while eating it.
My first flight was to Beijing airport and took about 3 hours. The second flight was about 10 hours to Dusseldorf and I had a whole two seats to myself! Aisle and window seat! Unfortunately, this flight was delayed for about an hour. In Dusseldorf, because I was changing airlines, I had to collect my baggage, go to check in, and then go through security all over again. I was very worried about missing this next flight because I had a little bit less than an hour to get all of this done before the flight. I think the man at the check in counter just wanted to get me onto the flight, so he didn't seem to care about how overweight my baggage was. Anyway, I just about made it, and then landed in Birmingham at about 9pm. After landing in Beijing and it being 30degrees centigrade, the 12degrees that I was welcomed by in Birmingham wasn't so nice. My parents were already at the airport waiting for me. I was really happy to see them, especially as I had two really heavy suitcases to carry :P I was happy to see them, and happy to get home and be able to relax guilt free, with no feeling that I should really be studying.

I've been home for about two weeks now and I am really missing the life in Japan and the people I met and got to know this year. A few times I've realised that some things I can't do like I could in Japan. For example, I've noticed while cooking, some of the ingredients aren't available and I can't eat things I would have eaten often in restaurants in Japan. Or, when going places, I can't just hop on my bike in the evening to go somewhere, because I don't have a light on my bike. Really I need to go and buy a light, but my bike in Japan just came with a light. Also, it's probably not even safe to be out riding my bike in the dark here. If I can't get to places by bike and it's too far by foot, how do I get there, because the buses in Stourport stop at around 5pm :S ...rant over.. I miss my bike a lot, if I have chance, I could probably write a whole long blog post about it.
I do really miss people I met in Japan as well, especially the people I lived with in Global House. I made a few really good friends there that I want to stay in touch with forever. I'm so glad skype exists!
Although there are things I miss like that, and things that are a bit frustrating. It is nice to be home and to be able to see people that I haven't been able to see all year. ....and since being home, me and Emily found a sushi bar in Birmingham that has a £10 all you can eat sushi buffet conveyor belt. Woktastic in Birmingham! Although I miss 100yen Sushi Ro- in Japan, Woktastic will go a little way towards making up for the lack of Sushi Ro-.

More catch up

Namja Town
Before Christmas, I went with the I-Week japanese speaking group to Namja town. I had already been there before with high school but it was good to go again to see the Gyoza town this time.

Namja town is in Ikebukuro and has different things to do inside. There's Ice Cream City, a Gyoza town, little haunted houses, more dessert areas and a game that was running through the whole amusement park where children could use a device to find the ghosts and play mini games.
The Ice Cream City section had lots of fridges full of unusual flavours like wasabi, eel and garlic. We ate in the gyoza area, where it was just counter after counter selling different types of gyoza.

Kichijoji festivalIn September there was a small festival in Kichijoji, an area of Tokyo near ICU. I didn't manage to catch it all but I saw some performances there.

Midnight walkAt the end of September I went with 3 other global house friends to do the midnight walk with ICU. We started the walk next to Oshiage Station by the Sky Tree tower and walked back to ICU campus. It was a total of around 40km, which was a bit of a shock to be told at the start of the walk. We knew it would be a long way, but we had no idea it was that far. Some people started the walk a little bit late because of an event planned at ICU for the same time, but we wanted to start from the beginning. From the starting point we walked through Asakusa to Ueno, where we had a short break. Next we walked through Akihabara, Nihonbashi, Ginza and Shinbashi and stopped at Tokyo Tower for a short break and ice lollies- it might have been night but it was still humid. Next we passed through Roppongi and Shibuya and had a break in a small park before walking to Shinjuku. When we arrived at Shinjuku, the half way point, about half of the remaining people got the train home. The people that did carry on started breaking up into smaller groups and were following little arrows that had been drawn on the path for us. Some people who carried on started jogging the rest of the way back, even though most people were exhausted already at this point. There wasn't as much to see past Shinjuku because we were leaving the main area of Tokyo and heading towards ICU. Me and Hannah finished the walk at about 9am, so it took us around 12 hours to complete the whole thing. Once we reached ICU, we still had the long path to walk along from the entrance to the sports club house. The road seemed longer than normal because we were so tired, but when we got back they had some tonjiru (miso soup with pork and vegetables) waiting for us. The walk was a good way to see lots of Tokyo at night and I also found it a nice chance to speak Japanese as there weren't many exchange or foreign students on the walk. A couple of my friends from soul run were on the walk so I spent a lot of the first half of the walk walking with them and their friends.
After eating in the sports clubhouse me and Hannah hobbled back to global house (our legs were sore) where we slept until around 5pm.
Unfortunately my camera wasn't working very well in the dark so I couldn't get many pictures, but here are some of them, most of them are from Asakusa:

Jindaiji and Onsen

During the autumn holiday there weren't always many people around my dorm, so one day I decided I'd go for a little explore around the local area. I had a rough idea that there was a temple nearby after reading an article on cnntokyo, so I checked google maps and headed in that general direction. It didn't take long to get to at all from my dorm by bike. At the entrance they had a small market with a foresty kind of area behind it. Amongst the trees there was jindaiji the second oldest temple in Tokyo.

Close by to the temple there is an onsen (hot spring), so this year I went there with a few friends from global house. Being foreign, and not completely used to the whole being naked in public idea, it still felt awkward in the changing room first. It took me a few months to want to try using the shared bath we have at global house. Once you are in though, it's really nice and you just forget about how awkward you thought it would have been before going. They had different types of baths, both inside ones and outside (which you could still use even though it was freezing outside and January) Some of the baths were charcoal, so the water was black. This was a bit odd to start with: if your arm is underwater you can no longer see it, and yet the water still felt like normal water, it didn't feel thick or sticky or anything. It did leave my skin feeling really soft afterwards though :) The bath that I found strangest was an electric bath. I couldn't bring myself to go in this one, because electricity and water are two things that you are always told must be kept separate. One thing about using the bath at my dorm and going to onsen that I still find a little odd, is how you have normal conversations (making eye contact while talking etc) while sitting in a row showering. It feels normal because you forget that you're all just sat there having a shower with other people, but when I think about it, it still seems slightly odd. Either way, I like them, and find it funny that I was too embarrassed to try for so long at the start of term.

Ishinomaki

In the Autumn holiday Shibi and me went up to Ishinomaki, an area hit the eartquake and tsunami in March, to do some volunteering. We joined an organisation called It's Not Just Mud. http://itsnotjustmud.com/ Someone from this group met us as the station and drove us to where the group was staying. In the area around the station the only sign that something so bad had happened were lines on buildings left from the tsunami water. However, as we turned down another street to head towards where we were going to be staying more and more houses and shops were patched up with boards. About 2 minutes into the journey though, and we could really see the damage. There were areas where maybe only one house would be standing (or half standing) with all of its neighbours left in rubble or completely cleared away by volunteers. There must have been miles and miles of neighbourhoods like this one. All along the coast there were miles of piles of waste and rubble that had already been cleared. It was shocking to see just how big of an area had been affected and how seriously, and this was only one of the towns that had been hit.

A school, that although it was still standing, all the rooms were left in ruins

This giant red tin had apparently fallen off the top of a factory nearby and been carried to here by the tsunami

More catch up in Ryogoku and Ueno

In ICU they recommend that you take some cultural courses as well as Japanese, so I took the Ramune to Anime class because included in this course were some field trips around Tokyo. However, they recommended this class so about 100 people signed up for it and because of this they didn't organise many field trips. We did go to Ryogoku and Ueno though.

Ryogoku

Kyu Yasuda Teien Gardens




I've never seen a turtle outside of a zoo before and this pond had loads of them!


Sumo Arena, I didn't manage to get a good picture this year, so this is a picture I took a few years ago instead


Edo Tokyo museum


I tried some Takoyaki while I was in Ryogoku. Takoyaki is like a fried dumpling/pancake ball with bits of octopus inside.

Ueno
 

Catch up

I shouldn't even be allowed a blog, I'm so bad at writing this!
I'm going to try and do some catch up posts this week.

魂走 Soul Run and the ICU festival
Towards the end of summer, I joined the Soul run circle at ICU (or so-ran bushi). Soran Bushi is a traditional japanese folk song orignially sung by fishermen in Hokkaido. I really wanted to do something I couldn't do in England and I also heard there weren't many other exchange students joining the circle. There were only two other exchange students, one four-year foreign student and two half japanese students, so it was a very good chance to practice japanese. The dance itself was really fun to do and a very good workout for your legs. After most practices my legs were quite sore for the day. We practised about 3 times a week until our performance at the ICU festival in October. This is a video of our performance, I'm in a green top on the left hand side.

On the week of the festival we were rehearsing nearly every night while wearing the Happi coats.There were a lot of people sat on bakayama watching our performance and even a few small children in the front of the audience trying to copy the dance. Once our performance was over we had all had some pizza by the gym and then separated to go look around the festival.

In Japan, universities have their own festivals, where all the different groups or circles set up little stalls selling food or drinks and there's performances, martial arts demonstrations, and cafes. I went to watch the Taiko drumming, my friend's karate demonstration and smooth Steppers (a dancing group at ICU). All of the food stalls smelt so good as well; they had takoyaki (octopus doughy balls), yakisoba (noodles), yakitori (like a chicken kebab but nicer), yakiniku (meat), okonomiyaki (japanese savoury pancake, taiyaki (a fish shape sponge cake with bean paste in), chijimi (korean pancake), hotdogs and lots of other things. In the evening Soul run had an after party at an izakaya (pub like place).

Cat cafe
In december I went to a cat cafe, where you could sit and play with lots of cats while having tea. A lot of the cats would ignore you if you didn't buy any chicken to feed them with but luckily we went at feeding time so we could use that food to tempt the cats over with. The cats were all really cute, but most weren't interested in playing and only wanted food. Apparently they have bunny cafes too and even a snake one somewhere!

Ghibli Museum
In October I went to the Studio Ghibli museum with the I-Week group at ICU (a group for japanese speaking practice). Outside the museum they had a big Totoro, from the film my Neighbour Totoro, inside a ticket booth and then from there we weren't allowed to take any more photos inside the museum. In the main hall of the museum it looked like a little adventure room with bridges going across leading from one side of an upper floor to the other, little archways and viewing balconies. They had the cat bus for My Neighbour Totoro as well!! The cat bus is literally a cat that is also a bus, which picks Totoro up in the film.

You could walk in and sit inside the catbus, but only small children could play on the slightly smaller soft catbuses. Inside the museum they also had a small cinema where they show different exclusive Studio Ghibli films. The one we watched was about some children who made a boat in school and then the room turned into a sea and they met a whale while on their adventure on the boat. It was in Japanese but I think I managed to understand enough to know what was going on for most of it.

It's getting late, so I will try to update this again in the next few days!
おやすみ～