Can you believe the last time I wrote a blog post was almost a month ago!? This is crazy!
So much has happened since the last time I wrote. Classes started up again, so things got really busy all of a sudden as I ran around trying to figure out what classes to take. Niji and my host family have also been filling up all my extra time, so when I actually do I have free time I’ve just been vegging and decompressing from all the craziness.
I finally have my class schedule figured out. I’m taking 3 classes in linguistics and 4 Japanese classes. The Japanese classes this semester are actually pretty good compared to last semester, which is good because one of the classes is pretty hard and I need to stay motivated to study enough to get good grades. Of the linguistics classes, one is really good and the other two aren’t great, but I’m learning a thing or two. Also, right around the time of choosing Waseda classes was Earlham registration, so I threw together a mixed bag of classes for fall semester Senior year. Everything sounds good, so I guess in a way I’m looking forward to jumping back into Earlham life.
I only have THREE MONTHS LEFT IN JAPAN!
(whaaaaattttt???)
I didn’t realize the significance of that until I typed it just now. I mean, it feels like just yesterday I was saying I only have four months left. But three months left?? Three months is totally different from four months. I still haven’t bought my plane ticket back to America because I’m torn between staying in Japan a little longer after my program ends or going back to America. On the one hand, if I stay in Japan, because I don’t really have money to travel far or anything in particular I want to do, I might just get really home sick and regret not just going back. On the other hand, if I go back to America, I’ll have about 3 weeks of summer vacation, and that might be too long with nothing in particular to do, just sitting around and missing Japan. I’m just anxious to get back to Maggie and horseback riding…
Anyway I’ll try to update the blog more and keep writing in Japanese too :)
The sakura trees (flowers?) are blooming now in Tokyo! There’s a whole culture around the sakura, which is all very interesting to me, someone from a country where we don’t really make such a big deal about natural events like this. People start getting hyped up about the sakura pretty far in advance, and on TV along with the weather report they’ll have a little display of the “sakura line,” which shows the line of sakura bloomage moving up the country from the south. I heard from my friend (haven’t looked it up myself yet so feel free to fact check me on this if you’re concerned about it), apparently there’s a specific sakura tree in the Imperial Palace, and when that tree has precisely 5 sakura flowers bloomed, it’s the official start of the sakura season (?) in Tokyo. The ideal day for “flower viewing” will be announced. This year is May 31st.
Flower viewing (hanami) is the practice of going to a place with sakura trees and, well, looking at them. Usually it involves getting there super early to get a good spot, a picnic, and alcohol, no matter how early it is. I’ve never been to one yet, but I have at least two planned for this week, one with my host family and one with Niji. Leave it to the Japanese to make looking at flowers into a drinking event!
The special thing about the sakura is that you can only see them bloom for about two weeks. It’s the ephemeral nature of them that the Japanese claim to like, although if you go to any park with sakura trees you’ll see hordes of people crowding around the trees to try to get that perfect picture that will last forever (and will probably look exactly the same as another photo they took the year before, and the year before that…). I’m guilty of taking such pictures, but I’m not Japanese.
Putting aside the humorous image of lots of people drinking and talking incessantly about the flowers, I actually think it’s a really cool thing that people acknowledge and appreciate nature by making an event out of it. I think in a lot of ways the Japanese are closer to nature than most Americans. I’ve already been out with my friend to see the flowers when they just started blooming and take pictures of them, but I’m excited to go to real flower viewing events and see what the big deal’s about.
I went to Kichijoji today! Kichijoji is known as being ranked as the number 1 place people want to live in all of Japan. I’m going to write about some of the best parts of my day in Kichijoji!
This is a really small zoo connected to a park. The zoo is really small, but is unique in that it features species native to Japan. There were a lot of ducks and other breeds of birds, but also lots of small animals, even a Capybara!! They had lots of squirrels, which was really cool because squirrels are everywhere in America but you never see them in Tokyo (I don’t know about other parts about Japan). There’s also a guinea pig petting zoo, with tons of guinea pigs you can pet and hold! Also, there’s a very famous elephant, Hanako, who was born in 1947 and moved to Japan just after WWII. She’s apparently killed two people so far…
Next is the cat cafe! There are 2 cat cafes in Kichijoji apparently, and we chose the cheaper one, linked above. Idon’t really like cats, but they were really cute. Most of them were just sleeping or ignoring the people, so we bought some cat treats. They came for the treats but mostly didn’t like to be petted or anything. :( I still think it’s a nice relaxing place for people who enjoy cats.
Finally is Harmonica Alley! I was hoping to be able to take a walk through since I learned about this place in my class about Tokyo modern history. It’s completely hidden away in the middle of the more modern Kichijoji. Harmonica Alley is a small, narrow street of tiny bars, shops, and restaurants left from the black markets from after WWII. Many of the buildings still exist from that time. The street is a totally different feeling from the rest of Kichijoji. We had a drink and bite to eat at Harmonica Kitchen, one of the most popular bars there. The atmosphere was totally cool. Everything’s made of wood, thin walls, crowded, everything packed right next to each other. It’s hard to explain. I didn’t even know a place like this still existed. Totally cool!
I have some pictures I’ve taken of stuff I’ve been up to recently, but for whatever reason I didn’t feel like they were each worth their own blog post, so I thought I’d go through and say a few words about a few of them.
This is a squid! My host dad’s friend taught me how to prepare the squid for eating raw. I got to take out the bone and remove the skin, and learn how to cut it (although I didn’t actually cut it myself). I do like the taste of the squid but the raw fishy texture still freaks me out too much to eat. Still, everyone in my host family was super excited about the squid, which made me happy.
So I went to Kawaguchi in Saitama prefecture, where my friend lives! We just hung out and walked around. We came across this thing they were doing in front of the station, some kind of festival, and these three guys were singing. I felt bad for them because no one was watching them, so for the last song I stood in the back and jumped around excitedly waving my hands. They thought it was really funny, and we took a picture together after they finished singing. It was really random, lol.
I also went to this cultural festival in Tokyo Dome! People from all the Japanese prefectures come and sell their prefectures’ special food and goods. There are also performances of various festivals specific to each prefecture. In the picture below is a festival where a bunch of people push a giant model boat. It was really cool.
Well that’s it for this post! Just what I’ve been up to lately~
I’m wrapping up my first semester at Waseda and I thought I’d take some time to reflect on how things have been going so far. I finished all my classes and just have one final exam left next Wednesday, which is for my hardest class but I feel like the difficulty is manageable and I’ve given myself enough time to study.
There are so many things I’ve accomplished this semester that I never would have imagined myself doing before I came to Japan. There’s something about being here that makes me feel completely like I’m not myself, and yet the person I am is more like the person I want to be than the person I was before, if that makes sense. The way I feel here is the way I want to continue to feel, and maybe it’s impossible to put into words. I don’t think it’s so much the place, the fact that it’s Japan and not America, but rather the fact that I’ve faced challenges here and learned things about myself that I might have not learned otherwise.
Yesterday, I ran out of contact solution. Literally used the last drop. So I stopped by my local drugstore and found an entire wall of contact solutions and cleansers. I hadn’t looked up any contacts-related words before coming because I kept forgetting, and I didn’t even know how to begin to ask the pharmacist for help. I don’t actually know if he even is a pharmacist, because I picked a box that looked like contact solution if I could leave my contacts in it overnight, and he examined the directions on the box for a while before giving me an ambiguous answer with a “don’t trust me on this” expression on his face… anyway somehow with both of us trying to find words we could mutually understand and an array of hand gestures, we managed to determine that the solution I had selected was for washing the contacts, and I needed different stuff for leaving the contacts in over night. So I walked out of the store with the correct product. And yeah, I can’t read Japanese enough to figure things out myself, and I felt lucky I understood him, but I can survive. And I felt really accomplished from simply completing a necessary task.
I just started reading my third book in Japanese. It’s a translation of Lord of the Flies, which I loved reading in school and is already fun in Japanese. I already posted about reading books in Japanese earlier this year. There’s just something about reading and not understanding, but catching bits and pieces here and there, that’s just fun. It’s also fun to talk about the books with people, ask questions, learn new things. I never made time for reading in the US. I don’t know why, I just never prioritized it. I used to love to read as a kid. I’m so happy I’ve gotten back in touch with that part of myself, the part that really loves reading, and it’s not taking away from my new love for Japanese. It’s like the best of both worlds.
My relationship has basically been transformed into Japanese. I don’t write on here about my relationship a lot because (1) no one cares and (2) I don’t want to invade my boyfriend’s privacy, but this is something I feel really good about so I thought I’d include it in this reflection post. It’s just, before I came to Japan I was so scared of actually talking that much in Japanese, after my relationship had been entirely in English. I mean, before I came to Japan, speaking Japanese was something I did in class. It was the exception to my daily life. And I guess realizing that language doesn’t really change a relationship, and that I can do the things I normally do while using Japanese, was a really big deal for me. I mean the fact that it wasn’t a big deal is a big deal, right? Because I had no reason to be scared in the first place, I was only scared of not knowing what would happen.
Part of being here is survival. A big part of being here is getting used to NOT being used to things. Getting used to failure, to simply not having the ability to say or read what you want, getting used to not knowing what’s going on around you. I still can’t pick up on all my family’s subtle hints, I still say things at inappropriate times… but you just kind of go with it. I guess my biggest accomplishment this year is not completely freaking out, as a person who likes life to be relatively under control…
Next we went to Sapporo! In Sapporo, we went to the Shiroikoibito Factory and the Sapporo Beer Museum.
白い恋人というのは、北海道の有名なクッキーです。札幌で作られています。白い恋人工場は札幌のcenterからちょっと遠かったですけど、行ってよかったです。工場でチョコレートや白い恋人の歴史についての博物館と工場を見学することができます。クッキーを作ってる人と場所を見るのはおもしろかったです。作り方についてたくさん習いました。それから、自分で白い恋人クッキーを作れます。楽しかったです！！工場にカフェもあります。カフェはちょっと高いですけど、特別なデザートを食べれます。おいしかったです！
Shiroikoibito is a famous kind of cookie in Hokkaido, made right there in Sapporo. It’s a little far from the center of the city but definitely worth going. You can tour the factory where the cookies are made and walk through a small museum to learn about the history of chocolate, this particular cookie, and the way it’s made. It was really cool to learn how the cookies are made and then actually be able to watch the people working in the factory. We also got to design our own Shiroikoibito cookies! There’s also a cafe in the factory. It’s kind of expensive but it has a great view and you can enjoy special desserts you can only get there.
Next is the beer museum! Actually I’m not super interested in beer, but since it’s famous in Sapporo I decided to go, and I’m really glad I went! We took a tour, and luckily the tour guide’s Japanese was pretty easy to understand so I learned a lot. Learning about the history of the famous Sapporo beer was really interesting. Especially interesting was the demonstration of the proper way to pour the beer from the can to the glass for optimal taste. At the end of the tour, for $5 you can get three glasses of different kinds of Sapporo beer for comparison. For people planning to visit the museum who don’t understand Japanese, I would recommend taking a tour in English because basically all the written stuff on the exhibits is in Japanese.
Finally for dinner we ate delicious soup curry, which is famous in Hokkaido! I definitely recommend this restaurant for anyone visiting Hokkaido/Sapporo. I’ll put the name below:
The next several blog posts will be about my recent trip with my boyfriend to Hokkaido, the most northern island of Japan. I spent 7 days in Hokkaido and visited Hakodate, Sapporo, Asahikawa, and Otaru, and I have way too much to write about every detail, but I want to write about some of the most interesting parts. This post will be about Hakodate.
Hokkaido is really an amazing place. Everyone I met there was so friendly and welcoming. The culture is kind of different from Tokyo—I never saw a rush hour train packed with men in suits going to work, even in Sapporo. Fishing is a really big industry, so everyone gets super excited about that. There’s a fair number of good sight seeing places, but also some really great local shops and small museums that you won’t necessarily find in a guidebook. Anyway, without further ado, let’s start with Hakodate!
Hakodate・函館
Hakodate is at the very bottom of Hokkaido, so it’s the warmest of all the places we visited. Despite where the dot is on the map, actually we spent most of our time in the skinny part of the peninsula. At the end of the peninsula is Hakodate Mountain. Hakodate is famous for seafood, as it is a port city.
函館は北海道の一番下にありますので、観光した場所の中で一番暖かいです。函館でシーフードが有名です。
The first night in Hakodate, we stayed at a traditional Japanese inn in Yunokawa. We had a delicious dinner served for us right in our room. It was the perfect way to spend a relaxing evening our first day in Hokkaido, after what I can say was a terrifying flight in, due to weather circumstances. The next morning we were served another delicious meal for breakfast, and then headed it out into the snowy world of Hakodate…
First we went to the Hakodate Tropical Botanical Garden, famous for the monkeys that love hot springs. It was really cool! The monkeys really do act like people, carefully getting in the bath back end first, hanging out and eating. It was an interesting start to our trip.
After seeing the monkeys, we headed to the Goryokaku, a well-known tourist spot. This is a very old fort in Hokkaido with a lot of history that I’m not going to explain in detail. It was used for protecting the region from invasion. First, we went up in the Goryokaku Tower to look down on the Goryokaku and Hakodate. The view was really spectacular. Luckily, it wasn’t snowing much when we were up in the tower, but when we went to enter the Goryokaku it really started coming down. Still, it was cool to walk around and explore the fort.
After checking into the next hotel to drop off our luggage, we went to explore Hakodate’s brick warehouses. These warehouses, which used to be used for importing and exporting goods, have been transformed into various shopping and dining places. it’s a really scenic place to walk around. We enjoyed famous Hakodate ice cream (made from famous Hokkaido milk) and delicious ramen.
To conclude our first full day in Hokkaido, we took the ropeway up to the top of Hakodate Mountain. It was very crowded, but the view was pretty great. They did fireworks, but they were so far away down on the land you could barely see them, and they only lasted about 1-2 minutes.
This market is so famous in Hakodate! Because fishing is so big here, every morning they run a market from about 5am to about 12pm (some stores stay open until about 2pm) and they sell lots of seafood in every kind of form. The atmosphere is really cool. You can just wander around and look at all the shops, and although the vendors do try to pull you in and sell you their seafood, it’s very tourist friendly and people don’t mind if you take pictures and just look without buying anything. We especially wanted to do the ika (squid) fishing, but it was closed that day. I took lots of pictures of the various interesting foods sold, but I’ll just post a few highlights below. I’ll also include a short video so you can get an idea of the atmosphere!
I also ate this delicious treat called ikasumi-man. The inside is squid and the outside is a dough made from the ink that comes from squid. So good!!
これがイカスミまんという食べ物です。イカが入っています！周りはイカの墨です。美味しかった！！！
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Making Glass・ガラス
After the Morning Market, we set out to wander around some more sightseeing areas of Hakodate and came across this cute little glass shop where you can make your own glass. We actually ended up going to two different places—one where you design the glass and one where you can actually make the glass yourself. Super fun, inexpensive, and I got two cool souvenirs to bring home.
函館でガラスを作ってみました！
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Churches and Sakamoto Ryoma Museum・協会、坂本龍馬博物館
In between making glass, we took some time to walk around Hakodate and see some old churches from the time when Westerners were first coming to Hokkaido. Walking around the churches led to some interesting conversations about differences in thinking about religion between Japan and America. A little later we visited a museum about Sakamoto Ryoma, a really famous Japanese guy. I definitely need to read more about this guy because the museum was really interesting, but I couldn’t understand everything because there were no English translations with the exhibits.
「イカはいかがですか？」
二週間前くらいに有名な東京ドームでふるさと祭りをやっていました！日本の全部の都道府県から来た人はその都道府県の特別な食事や物を売っていました。それから、都道府県の特別な祭りを紹介していました。私は平日に行ったので、２時間だけいました。でも、祭りを二つを見ることができました。下の写真は東北の祭りだと思います。たくさんの人が大きい船を押しました。それから、いっぱい美味しい食べ物を食べました。
After seeing the monkeys, we headed to the Goryokaku, a well-known tourist spot. This is a very old fort in Hokkaido with a lot of history that I’m not going to explain in detail. It was used for protecting the region from invasion. First, we went up in the Goryokaku Tower to look down on the Goryokaku and Hakodate. The view was really spectacular. Luckily, it wasn’t snowing much when we were up in the tower, but when we went to enter the Goryokaku it really started coming down. Still, it was cool to walk around and explore the fort.
Abby in Japan 