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:

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～

Bakayama

In the first week of lessons at ICU all of the new dorm students have to do initiation. This means that all of the dorms pick a theme each and then the new students have to wear that costume everyday to all their lessons. Our theme was Ganguro for the girls and all the guys had to be Charai. For the girls this meant wearing dark face make up and lots of white eye make and lipstick. Here's a few pictures of our costumes:

At the end of the first week of lessons, all of the dorms had to do dances that they prepared on Bakayama, the hill in front of the university. Bakayama literally means stupid mountain. In the end our dorm decided on having the guys dance to Choo Choo Train by Exile (a Japanese group), then having the girls dance to Womanizer by Britney Spears and then at the end having the whole dorm dance to the Macarena. We had chosen a couple of other songs but then found out that other dorms were doing them. Here the dance that we did:

Some of the other themes were: geeks, star wars, fruit, wearing kilts and japanese school uniform. So all of our first impressions with people in our classes were made wearing costumes, or in my dorm's case, wearing a scary amount of makeup , so there was a chance that people thought we were just always a bit odd..... At the beginning of the week i wore a pikachu kigurumi (like a pikachu costume) because in some pictures i've seen ganguro wear them. The first several weeks of being in Japan the weather was really hot and most of the time unbearably humid, so i had to change and start wearing something else other than the pikachu.

Global House

Turns out I'm not very good at updating this....
About 3 weeks ago now, I met 2 french people going to ICU in my hotel, so I spent the day with one of them, Lou, in Asagaya and then in Shibuya. We went to Shibuya 109 the big clothes shop in the cylinder building in Shibuya. The clothes in there were really nice (some were a bit strange) but I didn't buy anything because I'm trying to save money a little bit at the moment. Later on the 3 of us planned to meet in the lobby of the hotel at 8 so we could go to ICU together, but my phone alarm clock ran out of batteries during the night and I was late :( Anyway, we made with plenty of time but the journey was so difficult. We had all our suitcases again and we had to catch the train, then a bus and walk through campus to our dorms.

Global House

We left our luggage there and then went for foreign registration. When we got to the office at ICU that we had to meet at I saw Rina who did a study abroad in Leeds last year, so that was nice. She showed us to the city office to do foreign registration and to apply for health insurance. This didn't take long, we had to show our passports and hand over a couple of photos, then we were done.

Once back at the dorm I met lots of the people living in Global House. It's a mix of four year regular students and one year exchange students. There's also a mix Japanese, American, and a few other nationalities living here. I live with 3 other people; two are Japanese the other is Chinese but she has lived in America for a long time.

My room (before I'd unpacked properly....)

In the evening we had to go to a dorm meeting with all the other new students from the other dorms. We expected it to just be about the rules but actually we all had to do a short self introduction at the front of the busy lecture room. It took quite a while though because there were so many of us. Since this meeting I've learnt that they seem to like doing self introductions here because we seem to be doing them nearly every day.

We've had lots of little welcome parties with other dorms to get to know people around ICU, where we all eat food and do the awkward self introductions one by one. Then play games that sometimes turn violent (in a good kind of way)

The next few posts won't be in order and will probably just be as i remember them- and then maybe I'll start writing this properly.......

The day after tomorrow!

The summer holiday has gone so quickly! Can't believe I'm actually flying out the day after tomorrow! Since my last post I've nearly got everything sorted to go. I've already had to say bye to a few people :( I said goodbye to Helen on Sunday and had a last few drinks for the year with a few friends last night. Going to miss everyone so much!

A few weeks ago I went to London to get my visa. It was surprisingly quick and easy to get but it did cost £43. To get this I had to take my passport, certificate of eligibility, a passport photo, the visa form and money. It's arrived now, it's pink with little sakura flowers on it and prettier than English passport pages (apart from the photo which is black and white and 10x worse than any passport photo.) I've also bought and half packed a giant suitcase that I can fit in (Yes, I tried) and have tried several times to get the last jab I need for Japan. They won't let me have it because I have a slight cold :S I'm going again for the sixth time to try and get it again tomorrow. This is the first time I've ever wanted a jab!

I've booked a hotel for the first week of being in Japan now. It's at Asagaya station which is about half way between my university and Shinjuku. It's close enough to where other people are staying too so it shouldn't be hard to meet up in that first week- I hope. This is the hotel I'm going to stay in. I found the first picture on google maps. I think it's the hotel anyway- but it says karaoke on a sign outside so I'll have a better look for it when I get there. The second photo kinda looks more like a car park as well, but it looks alright- better than a capsule hotel!

The flight is on Thursday at about 2pm (will have to check the time) from Gatwick. We have an 8 hour flight to Dubai then another 8 hour flight to Narita airport. We only get to wait at Dubai for about an hour in the middle of the night though.

My next post on here will probably be from Japan, so will hopefully be with pictures of Japan and more interesting. I will keep in contact with you through skype and facebook.

Going to Japan in 3 weeks!!!

This blog is so people at home can find out what's happening on my year in Japan, maybe future year abroad students want to see what happens on a year abroad in Japan, and also so I can look at it later and remember the year abroad (or cringe at what I've written- the reason I deleted my bebo after revisiting it years later :s ).
I haven't had a blog since high school when really there wasn't much to talk about, but now I have something to talk about! I'm going to Japan! At Leeds I'm studying Japanese and French, with that I get a year in Japan. At the start of the year I found out I'm going to ICU in Tokyo with James, Charlie and Sally. So now I've got my visa, booked my flight and found out where I'm going to live. I think all I have to do is pack and go get my last jab :'( before going. Maybe in the last week I'll find a load more things that need to be done before I go, but I hope not!
I'm going to stay in Global House on campus at ICU, which although it was my first choice I was very worried about applying for dorms. The on campus dorms at ICU all tend to have rules that would seem very odd if we had them in uni halls in england. Most of them have a curfew, you're not allowed visitors at any time of day, you must attend monthly meetings about the dorm and share a bedroom. At one of the dorms the only showers they have are communal showers, but according to the leaflet you get used to that....maybe... but at the minute I'd rather not. Luckily, Global house is a dorm with no curfew! and you share each flat unit with two japanese students and one other exchange student, so hopefully it should be helpful to get better at Japanese. The only proper rule it has is that you can't have visitors over night, which I guess is better than a curfew...
Flying over on the 25th (in about 3 weeks! eeee how did it get so soon?! really looking forward to it!!) with Shivvie and Amanda to explore Tokyo a bit and maybe visit Yokohama before starting uni on the 1st of September. So when I get there I will have more to write on here, but for now I need to go to sleep (when did half one in the morning happen?)