Kappabashi or "kitchen town" is an area that specialises in kitchen goods and everything needed in restaurants. They also sell lots of the wax and plastic food that you see outside of so many restaurants. It's withing walking distance of the temples in Asakusa. Even if you're not buying anything it's fun to look at all the plastic food and some shops sell kits for you to make your own.
In the shops there are all sorts of plastic food models: Italian food, sushi, ramen, rice bowls, nabe, ice cream, drinks, key rings with food on, vegetables, pizza, burgers, sweets, cakes. If a shop or restaurant sells the food, you can probably find plastic models of it here.
Being within walking distance of the temples I went for a quick walk down Nakamise shopping street (that road always reminds me of the school trips I went on to Tokyo). In the afternoon I went shopping in the shopping centre around the base of SkyTree. I still haven't been up the tower, I will at some point.
The next day I met Kaori in Yokohama. We used to live next door at Global House in ICU during my year abroad. So we hadn't seen each other for a few years. It was nice to catch up after so long, and hopefully we will again soon whether it's in Japan, New York, England or somewhere else in Europe.
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:
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.
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.
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～
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.
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.......
On Sunday we had breakfast at Nanoka's, so I got to see what japanese breakfast is like. There was rice, salmon, soup with pickles in, scones, and a few other things but I wasn't sure what they were. It was all nice, except I'm not used to Japanese soup. It's served with nearly every meal I've had so far but I've been struggling to have more than a few sips. I need to start liking it... The four of us headed out to karaoke in Shibuya where we met Hiroaki. It was in a little room with a mix of english and japanese songs. We went to do purikura afterwards. In purikura you all go into a little photo booth and pose a bit, then you go to another booth and decorate the photos. It also changes your skin so it looks nicer and also changes your eyes. Although, it doesn't really pick up western eyes very well so mine are how they look in real life in the photo. (it probably didn't help that i forgot to look at the camera and looked at the screen instead lol) In Shibuya we went to see Hachiko by the train station. This is a statue of a dog that lots of people stand by to wait for their friends if they are meeting up. In 1924, a professor at the university of Tokyo took in a dog called Hachiko as a pet. Everyday after work Hachiko would greet him until May 1924. The professor didn't return that day because he had died, but the dog continued to wait at the station everyday for 9 years!
Tom wanted to see what a maid cafe looked like as well so Hiroaki took us to Akihabara. I was thinking that maybe girls don't really go in, but there were several other mixed tables in there. All the walls were pink with cute things everywhere and all the waitresses were dressed as maids. Whenever they brought out drinks to each table they would have everyone at the table "put a spell" on the drinks so they taste nicer. So in the cafe you kept hearing people saying "moi, moi, nyan, nyan, oishi ku nare!" That place was.. an experience... but I think it's something that tourists should do in Tokyo and this week I'm a tourist!
Nanoka had invited us back for tea so we went back and ate with her family. We had gyouza, fish, beef, and some other things (I'm not sure what they were but they were really nice and I will get better at remembering food names!) Her family are very friendly as well. We had to mainly speak in Japanese. I couldn't follow the whole conversation but I understood more than the day before :D
