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