Sunday Funday

This past Sunday was awesome.

The End....

Okay, I'm not really done, but "awesome" pretty much sums up everything that happened without using a bunch of curse words.

There is an organization at Sophia University known as SISEC (Sophia International Student Exchange Council.) To be honest, I hate the abbreviation, because every time I say SISEC it reminds me of the word "seasick." Anyway to get back on topic, SISEC is a mixture of native Japanese people and foreign exchange students, that get together to engage in a variety of events. I was hesitant at first to join such a group, fearing that I would be spending all day with foreign exchange students. To my surprise, there are actually more Japanese members.

Sunday's event was called "Tokyo Tour!!!" There were roughly 60 people in all that attended. Since it would be very difficult for 60 people to travel around the city together, we were split up into about 10 groups. There is pretty much an infinite number of things that one could do in Tokyo, so each group was responsible deciding their itinerary. At 5:30 PM, all of the groups would meet at the base of the Tokyo Tower.

My group decided to go to the Meiji Shrine, Yoyogi Park, and then to a district called Odaiba.

In my last post, I described a shrine that I visited in the middle of the night. The Meiji Shrine was a completely different experience. The previous shrine was nowhere close in scale to the size and importance of the Meiji Shrine. Secondly, it was during the day, so I was able to get a better look how a Shinto shrine is structured.

This gate is the entrance to the Meiji Shrine. It is known in Japanese as a Torii, which symbolizes the transition from the regular world, to sacred ground. After the torii, there was roughly a quarter mile path until the main part of the shrine. Along the way there were stacks of barrels of sake on the side of the road.

Below is a picture of me standing in front of those barrels

When we arrived into the main part of the shrine, we came across an ongoing Shinto-styled wedding. The way that these weddings are carried out are very different than how I imagine weddings. Of course, nowadays in Japan the majority of people have a Western-styled weddings, but there is still a significant amount of people that opt for a more traditional Japanese wedding.

The shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who was the emperor during the time that Japan transitioned from a feudal society, to a modern, technologically, and politically advanced nation. There is way to much to say about this era in this post, but if you are interested in learning more the period is known as the Meiji Restoration.

At the shrine, I was taught by my fellow group mates, how to appropriately pray at a Shinto shrine. It was really interesting. I am not bound to any specific religion, so I had no problem carrying out the ritual. In fact, Shinto is a religion that does not require you to commit to a single God, or even to a specific "holy" text. It is a religion based on spirits and deities that typically are known to reside in specific parts of Japan. People look to these deities for guidance or protection in times of need.

Well, I could go on and on about Shinto, Japanese History, or even other stuff relating to this specific shrine, but I'll save that for another day.

After the shrine we proceeded on to Yoyogi Park. I forgot to take pictures, but I got the feeling that this was Tokyo's equivalent to New York's Central Park. People were outside playing Frisbee, having pick-nicks, and just walking around. It is a nice area, and I plan to return some day because there are public basketball courts and I saw people playing pick up games.

After Yoyogi Park, we went and bought tickets for a monorail line that would take us to Odaiba. The monorail was a unexpected treat. I am beginning to become accustomed to riding trains on a daily basis, but this was completely different. It had wide windows that enabled the riders to get a good glimpse of the city. It was also high off the ground. Some parts of the ride, the train was nearly 10 stories from ground level. It cut straight through the the inner city and then rode parallel to the Rainbow Bridge, one of the most famous bridges in Japan, and crossed the Tokyo Bay, leading us to Odaiba. The picture to the left, was taken after we arrived in Odaiba. To the left is Tokyo Bay, in the center is the Rainbow Bridge, and the rest is just a small fraction of the vast Tokyo skyline that could be seen from that spot.

After we did some shopping and some walking around, we rode the monorail back to downtown and headed straight for Tokyo Tower. As we were walking up to the tower I took this picture...

At the base of the tower we met with the other groups, took some photos together, and then those who did not want to go up on the tower went home or to other places. Of course, I was one of the people that chose to buy a ticket to go up the tower. The view was amazing. The pictures didn't turn out all that well, but looking out miles in all directions of the largest metropolis in the world, is something that I will never forget.

This was a great day not only because of all the places I went to, but because I was able to make a lot of new friends. I look forward to the next time that SISEC has an event, but I imagine that it will be hard to top the experiences that I had on this day.

Until next time....

Already a month!?

Yikes, its been two weeks since my last post. Part of the reason is that once school started up, I have not been around the dorms nearly as much. There is so much to do and see in Tokyo that I feel like it would be a waste to just go back to the dorms everyday after school.

The last two weeks have felt extremely long, as I have had a cold the entire time. The first week I thought it was just a normal cold, but it progressively got worse. I went to a doctor and found out it was bronchitis. Anyway, he put me on antibiotics and I am already feeling better, so hopefully it is gone for good.

Okay, enough of my sob story. The doctor was really cool. He had lived in Michigan for a few years and been to Wisconsin several times, so he knew all about the Brewers, cheeseheads, and essentially anything related to Miller-country.

Despite being sick the past couple weeks, I have still managed to go out and do some fun things. Last weekend, I went out to Shinjuku and Shibuya, which are two major downtown districts in Tokyo. We went to various places for food, shopping and drinks, before finally ending up at an Irish-themed pub. Before we realized it, it was like 12:20AM. Now if you want to go home via train, you better get to the station around midnight because the last trains leave around 12:30 or so. By the time we got to the nearest station it would have been impossible for me to make it back to the dorm, so my friend offered to let me stay at his apartment. We just barely made it into the LAST train and we had that "Hell yeah!" feeling.

Well, that feeling didn't last long. When we got off of the train, we realized that we never went and picked up our bags. Prior to going out, we put our school backpacks and anything we bought in the afternoon into some coin lockers. Turns out that in one of those bags, was the key to my friends apartment.

That meant we had to wait until 5AM for the trains to start up again. We went to a ramen restaurant, and then walked around for hours. It actually ended up being a really cool experience. Despite being in "suburbia" there were countless things that caught my attention. Shrines, temples, and statues were scattered throughout the neighborhood that we were in.

Here is me and the buddha....

It is a little difficult to see but it was really dark out and we weren't near a street light. Since I have spent most of my time in the busier parts of the city, I have not had the chance to see many historical aspects of Japan. We also stumbled across a temple that made me really feel like I was back in ancient Japan.

Upon seeing this temple, an eerie feeling swept through my body. All of the sudden it hit me. I had never felt so far away from home in my life. I had known all this time that I was roughly 6400 miles away from Wisconsin, but what I felt in that moment cannot be described as simply a number measuring distance. It was a mixture of loneliness, excitement, fear, and optimism.

Sure I was with a friend, but I felt lonely when I realized that I could not share that moment with any of the friends that I grew up with. Excitement, because I felt like I had traveled back in time, and ended up at that very spot. The fear was when I understood that this life in Japan is my new reality. Hate it or love it, that fact that I will be hear for another 10 months is not going change. Yet, this fear quickly left as I felt a surge in optimism for the future. I have barely scraped the surface of what this country has to offer.

Okay, my emotional Dr. Phil time is now over.

5AM finally came, and we went back to Shinjuku to get our bags. We parted ways and I got on a train back to my dorm. I fell asleep on the train and awoke to a train attendant telling me that we were at the last stop and I needed to get off. When I looked at the station map I found out I had rode the train 50 minutes past my stop. The most embarrassing part of it all, was that I fell asleep a second time on the next train and missed my stop again. When I finally got home, it was 9AM.

Regardless, that night was a fun and unique experience that further solidified my decision to study abroad in Japan. This weekend I am going to a Japanese festival that has been an annual event for around 400 years.

Hopefully this time, it won't be two weeks until I get around to writing another post.