The title to this entry sort of sounds like a Harry Potter book title, though I doubt Mr. Potter would go to an Izakaya, unless he wants to risk getting mauled by Voldemort who is certainly close by drowning his sorrows in an appletini or some other girlie drink of sorts.
Sorry about the hiatus this last week. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about my lovely readers, it was just that nothing of note really happened last week (besides a “shopping” field trip with a 3rd grade Japanese class) and I couldn’t really think of much else to write about.
But alas, another weekend (my final weekend, actually, with the TUJ program) has passed and thus there are new morsels of my exciting travels to share with you all!
Friday night, myself and about fifty-five (actually, about thirteen – I was going for effect) friends and I returned to that Izakaya we went to last week. My friend Sarah from Cornell, who is currently studying abroad at Sophia University until July, came along as well – and boy, was it a weird feeling to be meeting her in Tokyo! Anyways, this time around we actually got our own room near the back and ordered tons of food and drinks and generally had a really great time. Of course, we befriended hoards (yes, hoards) of Japanese students and new company employees in the two rooms next door. The best part about Izakayas, again, something absent in American bars, is that you can pretty much walk into any room there and be welcomed. Obviously, the fact that we are exotic foreigners (I almost wrote farmers – no idea why) doesn’t hurt, but the overall friendliness-like (I love constructing new parts of speech!) atmosphere of the place is contagious and just makes the whole experience cho-fun (I’m going to start adding cho- to all adjectives in English – in Japanese, adding cho- in front of something is like saying “Super ____”. It just rolls off the tongue!) We are going to go back there for my last night on Thursday – which is technically my second to last night, but considering I need to wake up at 5:45 
AM on Saturday for Thailand pretty much rules out everything besides knitting on Friday night, a skill that I unfortunately do not possess, so I reckon I’ll just sort of sit in my room at count the number of blinds on my window curtain the entire night.
On Saturday, due a variety of circumstances/other plans/etc., a lot of people were busy so I decided to venture out on my own to the NHK building, home to one Tokyo’s TV stations, to take the tour and buy some Domo-kun merchandise (if you don’t know Domo-kun, Google it. He’s ridiculous). Much to my surprise – and joy – I happened upon the 2007 Major League Baseball Festival right outside the NHK building, filled with batting cages, pitching mounds, videos screen, merchandise – you name it! If I wasn’t alone, I probably would’ve partaken in it all but, as I have learned over the past three months, there are things you can and cannot do when traveling alone and running around a fake baseball diamond as fast as possible is really not one of them. To see my point, picture me huffing and puffing around the bases at full speed and sliding head-first into home plate, checking my official time, picking up my backpack, and nonchalantly whistle while walking away. Doesn’t seem right, huh?
After lounging around the festival for an hour or so (most of it involved me playing an MLB Playstation 2 game and thus denying hundreds of little Japanese children the chance to play; in fact, I waited for a while behind this one kid and I was surprised how upset I was getting at the kid because of his total lack of video game baseball skill. 
I found myself almost screaming aloud at certain points, wondering why in the hell he had left Curt Schilling in until the 9th inning when it was clear he needed to be taken out BECAUSE HIS STAMINA WAS AT A MERE 7% AND HE WAS THROWING WILD-PITCHES EVERY OTHER AT BAT, JIMMY, COME ON!!!! The kid’s name probably was not Jimmy, as it is not a very popular name here in Japan, but you get the point). Okay wait, I actually started this paragraph with a fragment of a sentence, but got so side-tracked with my parentheses rant that I sort of ended it without paying any attention to it making sense. Ms. Hackenburg, my 7th grade English teacher, is probably rolling in her non-existent grave right now (I hope it’s nonexistent, otherwise I’d sort of feel bad). Anyways, after the festival, I toured the NHK studios and bought assort Domo-kun “stuffs” including some stuffed animals, phone charms, and the like.
Today was definitely the most exciting day of the weekend (if you don’t count harassing 5-year old Japanese children by myself at the baseball festival exciting). Bernie, our Japanese friend Saya and I went down to nearby Kamakura to check it out, since Bernie and I hadn’t been there yet and had heard good things. When we arrived, we realized that the crowds of people was not attributed to my arrival (as I had hoped) but to the beginning of the week-long Kamakura festival. So we decided to do the crowded stuff in the morning and then do some
of the quieter things in the afternoon. Said “crowded stuff” refers to seeing the famous Great Buddha, a huge-normous bronze statue of Buddha that was cast in the mid-1200s that sort of towers over everything within a mile or so. The grandness of it all, however, was counteracted by the fact that the local tourist board actually stared allowing people to climb into the Buddha, and look out through a small wire grating in his back. Tacky!
After that we headed to the main shrine (I’ll spare the boring details, since it was just a huge crowd waiting for this dance performance to start, again, not waiting for me as I expected, and wasn’t very exciting at all.)
The highlight of the day was by far Hokoku-ji Shrine, a spot that I would never have found in a million years if not for Saya’s Japanese expertise. The temple itself was pretty and sort-of generic (though any temple here is not really “generic”, but I’ve seen so many already, that unless there’s some sort of flying pig hovering about or a giant chimp that shoots fire out of its ass, I’m not going to be overwhelmed) but the real highlight was the bamboo forest. This was my first bamboo forest of this entire trip, and it was spectacular. I seriously could have just set up a bed right in the middle of it all and lay there all day. The bamboo shoots were about 40 or 50 feet tall, super thick, and clustered very tightly together so not much light could get through. If you stopped on the path through the forest, all you could hear was the faint rustling and leaves and the occasional bird chirping – it was like the sounds were being piped in through speakers. To make it that much better, in the middle of the forest was a teahouse, where we drank traditional green tea in a hut, right in the middle of it all. It was heavenly and is surely something that I will not forget. To top it all off, after the forest Saya took us to a huge rock tunnel nearby that had a bunch of caves and crevices in it and was covered in all sorts of moss. Let’s just say, I was very happy to have her along.
Anywhos, it’s all starting to hit me now that this is my last week in the TUJ program and though I’m sad to be leaving some of these people behind (many that I’ll never see again), I’m certainly looking forward to getting out of this dorm and traveling around with my dad, etc. I’m also psyched for Thailand in less than a week and some time to just relax on the beach and unwind.
On Thursday, I’ll probably post a reflective, end-of-semester entry of some sort. For now, I’ll just leave it at that. If you asked me at the start if I thought 
the whole thing was going to go by as fast as it has, I surely would have replied “No way”, but looking back I realize that that would have been a foolish and quite naive response.
Jaa mata ne!
P.S. This last picture I posted is a bit random, but I wanted to show you (finally!) what Shibuya looks like when people are crossing the street. This intersection near the station is officially the busiest in the
world, and you can certainly see why! Enlarge the picture if you can.
Picture Guide: #1: Us and our new Japanese friends at Wara-wara, #2: The Great Buddha himself, #3: The fabulous bamboo forest, #4: The rock tunnel, #5 Shibuya
The title to this entry sort of sounds like a Harry Potter book title, though I doubt Mr. Potter would go to an Izakaya, unless he wants to risk getting mauled by Voldemort who is certainly close by drowning his sorrows in an appletini or some other girlie drink of sorts.
AM on Saturday for Thailand pretty much rules out everything besides knitting on Friday night, a skill that I unfortunately do not possess, so I reckon I’ll just sort of sit in my room at count the number of blinds on my window curtain the entire night.
I found myself almost screaming aloud at certain points, wondering why in the hell he had left Curt Schilling in until the 9th inning when it was clear he needed to be taken out BECAUSE HIS STAMINA WAS AT A MERE 7% AND HE WAS THROWING WILD-PITCHES EVERY OTHER AT BAT, JIMMY, COME ON!!!! The kid’s name probably was not Jimmy, as it is not a very popular name here in 
of the quieter things in the afternoon. Said “crowded stuff” refers to seeing the famous Great Buddha, a huge-normous bronze statue of Buddha that was cast in the mid-1200s that sort of towers over everything within a mile or so. The grandness of it all, however, was counteracted by the fact that the local tourist board actually stared allowing people to climb into the Buddha, and look out through a small wire grating in his back. Tacky!
the whole thing was going to go by as fast as it has, I surely would have replied “No way”, but looking back I realize that that would have been a foolish and quite naive response.
2 comments:
I'm glad you updated us, Dan -- I was wondering if you had forgotten us all!
When I enlarged that last picture, the first thing I noticed was a vintage VW beetle in the line of traffic -- pretty weird, huh? Is it really more crowded than Times Square? Yikes!
Enjoy your last week there, and of course, all the exploring you'll be doing after that. When do you return to the U.S.?
Peace -- N.G.
Haha, there are a few vintage Beetles tooling around KTM, too, but they probably haven't had their exhaust systems changed since they were first made ca. 1965. A Nepalese car just ain't a Nepalese car unless it's belching out clouds of opaque black smoke.
Dan, I love every picture in this entry - you and your friends look like you're having such a great time, and the pedestrian picture is insane. I love the bamboo and Buddha statue pix the most, though - I can see what you mean about wanting to hang a hammock there, hell, I'd want to become a hermit and live there!
Enjoy your last few days in the dorm - you might even miss that after you're gone, so treasure the small amount of time you have left. I look forward to hearing all about Thailand and stuff in a few weeks! :o)
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