東京最高・・・？

For our most recent break, from February 7th to the 13th, the four of us hopped on a bus and went to that ever-infamous city where the towers touch the sky and the "people dress funny" (or so I've been told): Tokyo.

Oh, Tokyo.

Love of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul--okay, so not Lolita, but almost. I love this city for what it is and hate it for what it isn't. Tokyo is everything you have ever imagined it to be multiplied by three bottles of glitter, six cups of confusing and everything negative and positive in between...with a dash of speed (and it's up to you whether I mean the drug or if I'm talking about going fast). But it's not somewhere I would call my comfort zone, and it's not a part of Japan I'd want to live in for a significant amount of time--or even any time at all. It's a city that's strictly business on the outside, chaotic in the middle and absolutely seedy underneath the surface.

We left on Monday on a bus company that treated us well on the way there and actually shat on our faces (there is no other way to put it, so excuse my French) on the way back. I stayed most nights at a friend's house in Saitama (a city outside of Tokyo), which was so much fun, albeit very cold as she didn't have heating--and the days in the city with her and also the friends (the 'we') I'd come with.

Tokyo things:

1. Trains; or, The Eighteenth Circle of Hell. When in Japan, you ride the train. You don't really have an option. Even if you have a car, you ride the train. And why wouldn't you? The Japanese train system is fast, easy and convenient....unless you're in Tokyo. Let me put my Haterade down for one second to clarify that, okay, riding the train in Tokyo is convenient and it is very fast. But if you haven't lived there long enough to get used to it, it's not the easiest system to maneuver. In fact, we spent most of our Tokyo trip going, "I MISS THE NAGOYA SUBWAY SYSTEM."

Here's why: Nagoya has four lines and about fifty stations. Tokyo has a billion different stations and a thousand different lines, and although they're color-coded, that still doesn't help much (red and magenta look extremely similar). If you get on the wrong train and you don't know where you are, good luck getting back to your initial destination if you don't know what lines the station you're at services. Oh, and if you leave the station from the wrong exit, you can't go back in to get to the one you wanted. You'll have to trek around the station instead, and depending on what station it is, that could take anywhere from five minutes to thirty.

Take, for example, Shinjuku station. It is the bane of my existence. I would rather not talk about it, but to put it simply, Shinjuku station is a MAJOR connection hub and therefore the eighteenth circle of hell. It has numerous exits ranging from your regular North Exit and South Exit to the bizarre--Central South Exit, Central Northwest Exit, Northwest Exit (not the same as the Central Northwest Exit), etc. It takes twenty minutes, if you know where you're going, to get from the Central South Exit of Shinjuku station to the West Exit.

Shinjuku station caused us to miss our bus back to Nagoya because we had to go from one end of the station from the other in ten minutes carrying every single piece of luggage. The bus company hadn't given us correct directions to its location as it was independent and not a JR (Japan Railways) highway bus, and by the time we figured it out we only had ten minutes to go from the East Exit to the West Exit.

It was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. By the time we finally found our bus (which had left already, so technically we found the company), we were in tears and literally bruised. We are all still royally pissed at that bus company, especially since we booked another ride with them the next morning and they weren't where they said they were going to be.

Eventually we went home--a full day after we were meant to--on the JR Highway bus. They were on time, where they said they were going to be, and most importantly they brought us home. Yes, we were homesick for Nagoya. So homesick, in fact, that as soon as we pulled into Nagoya Station we all looked at each other and agreed that if the ground weren't so dirty we would kiss it.

(On the upside to missing our bus the first time, though, we walked into a fancy hotel where the rooms were $300 a night and apparently looked so pitiful that, once we started walking away sadly, the manager came over and said that he would give us two rooms for 12,000 yen each, or about $120. He said the air conditioners in those rooms were broken--they worked fine. We were truly lucky.)

2. Harajuku. Hi, my name is Tourist. Yes, we went to Harajuku, but you know what? Despite the fact that Harajuku is one big tourist dump, it does have good shopping and if you really want to see all that sparkly fashion culture that Japan is so famous for, you'll definitely see that in Tokyo. To borrow a little Francesca Lia Block (my favorite author) here, Harajuku is a trendy seventeen-year-old sister who wears whatever the hell she wants and somehow pulls it off. I can't really sit here and ramble on about how Japanese fashion is weird, though, because a) I'm used to it and b) I actually like it. Some of it is a little much, but overall, I'm a fan. And if you're going to start on how Japan has ruined me, let me just say that I've liked Japanese fashion way before I came here. But that's a topic for another day.

I went to Harajuku with Aes and Julia (who lives in Nagoya with us, but she goes to another school) to have lunch, and then on different days with The We and Julia to shop and eat crepes. Oh, Japanese crepes, how I love thee. You're no French stall but you're a culinary sensation all your own. We found a crepe stand that sold smoked salmon crepes with cream cheese, capers and onions--also known as one of my favorite foods ever--and I'm still craving another one to this day.

Mainly we shopped on Takeshita-dori, which is exactly as the Wikipedia article says--a pedestrian-only street lined with shopshopsshopsshopsshops. We didn't buy much, but we did find a store where everything was 500 yen (about $5) and kind of went crazy in there because they were having a scarf fiesta and we wanted scarves. We also managed to find a shady shop above a lingerie store selling Johnny's Entertainment (aka The Japanese Boyband Industry) merchandise, especially old and hard-to-come-by items--sometimes even concert tickets, which is as illegal as things go. But I wasn't about to pay $98 for a phone strap no matter how much I love Arashi.

3. Asakusa Smile. This was the name of the hostel two of us stayed at--me for one night, but mainly Massiel and Gray as Rachael was staying at a friend's as well--and it was my first experience with a hostel. It wasn't bad at all, not like the horror stories I'd heard of. I was even able to sneak in without anyone noticing.

The only thing worth mentioning about Asakusa Smile is this:

Massiel: [comes down the stairs after unlocking the door] Hey, we're friends, right?

Me: Uh, yeah?

Massiel: Good, because if we weren't, this room will make us friends.

It was about the size of a broom closet and a half. Hilarious. Also, a question for the masses: is wrapping plastic bags around your feet in lieu of shower slippers ghetto or resourceful? We'd really like to know.

4. Hakone; or, Paradise. And here's where this break saved itself from being a chaotic mess.

Hakone is an onsen--hot spring--town about two hours by rapid train from Tokyo (from the hellhole that is Shinjuku station, actually). Hakone is the essence of why I love Japan, and this is already too long an entry for an explanation of that so I'll leave it for another time. You can see a glimpse of it in the pictures, anyhow.

We went to Hakone mainly for a hot spring resort called Yunessun that I'd been to a LONG time ago when I lived on base in Yokosuka, when I was around 11 years old. I remember enjoying it then, and it hasn't changed from what I can recall. If it has, it's only gotten better.

There was an outdoor section and an indoor section, and once we'd changed into our bathing suits (the main reason we went to an onsen during this trip to Tokyo was because it required bathing suits, which is hard to come by in other onsen--traditionally, you go in naked) we basically ran into the indoor section and had five-year-old fits. I'd never been more excited to see water in my life, but there you go.

The most interesting thing about the indoor part besides the fact that we basically threw ourselves into every pool available was that they had a section where you could have your feet eaten by tiny fish! I don't know how popular this is anywhere else, but it's really popular in Japan as I'd seen it on Japanese tv programs before. I don't remember what the fish are named, but they basically eat the dead skin off your feet/whatever you put into the water. MOST TICKLISH SENSATION EVER. I spent the entire session in some sort of delicious, ticklish agony, and sadly we don't have any pictures to capture my lovely expressions (Massiel: "I turned to you and all I saw was teeth"), but afterwards our feet were all silky smooth. Thanks, fish!

And then we went outside, which was--oh. Freezing, but wonderful. You go right from being cold to being the warmest you've ever felt, and the best thing is that the baths outside were themed--though by themed I mean flavored. There was a coffee bath, a sake bath, a wine bath, a green tea bath and a charcoal bath, and each one was colored and scented to match its "flavor" (though the taste wasn't the same...yes, we tried. Can you blame us). We liked the coffee one the best, because it smelled heavenly and was the most comfortable--not too hot or too lukewarm. And since Hakone is in the mountains and Yunessun is at the very top and buried in the forest, you're surrounded by nature as you're bathing. If you weren't, it wouldn't be an onsen--that's what they're known for.

Before we left, we went to the gift shop and I bought a Yunessun mascot plushie because I've been wanting one since the first time I went there at the age of 11. You think I'm kidding. The mascots are called Spakoneko, which literally means 'Spa Kitties,' and they were. Spa kitties, I mean. There were different ones and they were all a family, and there were statues of them all over the inside of the building and even outside in the greenery! Japan, I love you.

5. To Assume Makes an Ass out of U and Me; or, Hey, I spoke to you in Japanese! Yes, yes, it is awesome that Tokyo is so diverse! You can find multiple people in that city that speak the most obscure of languages. But please, Tokyo--and I say that because this only ever happens to me there--please don't assume that I'm a tourist and that I need to be spoken to in English when I am perfectly capable of getting around in Japanese. This isn't so bad when, say, a Japanese person talks to you first and then you speak to them in Japanese and they switch. What irks me is when I speak to someone in Japanese and they continue talking to me in English as if they think I just know a couple of phrases and can't handle a full conversation. If they want to practice their English with me, that is wonderful, it really is--I like language exchanges. But that would be more expected if I spoke to them in English first.

6. Arashi; or, Remember that time I posed with a giant picture of my favorite idol?

Julia hides her head in shame.

There's more of these with two others from the group--we couldn't find the others. Also, Arashi is the representative for AU, a Japanese cell phone company, and they had ads all over the trains! :) :) :) :) They do in Nagoya, too, for a different company, but only on one of the trains on the Meijo line, so I don't see them as often.

7. A jumble of other things; or, I love exclamation points! We went to see GANTZ! It ripped my heart in two and oh boy Nino in a leather suit, yes please. I went to Keikarou! You won't understand that unless you know Arashi's Aiba well enough. We went to Tokyo Tower on a cloudy day! Not a good idea, but it wasn't our fault. MOOMIN-THEMED CAFE! Actually the cutest, with stuffed Moomins sitting in chairs, and good food. We went to a shady izakaya that was hidden in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the city! Oh, you think I'm kidding but I'm not. We (four of us) finished an entire bottle of delicious umeshu/plum wine! You know you want to high-five me for that. Karaoke in Tokyo, twice! Pretty much the same as karaoke in Nagoya. ;)

Here are the pictures! I apologize for not having many pictures of the city itself, but it was difficult to take good ones without having fifty people plow over you and also, honestly, if you Google the city the photos won't come out much differently. I like taking photos because sometimes you won't know what a place really looks like unless you capture it yourself, but in Tokyo's case, so many other people have done that already.

So, the consensus: if you've never been to Tokyo, GO GO GO. It might not be my favorite city in this country, but there's no doubt that it's one of the most exciting, and this trip was worth it despite the bumps in the road and the weather--SNOW, TOKYO, REALLY?

And even if it isn't my favorite city, I still fell in love with it the first time I went and I can't let that love go....even if Shinjuku station still exists.

テキトで

I have nothing to do--really, I don't, because I've somehow caught the infruenza (or as you Americans call it, 'the flu'). It's been in the air here for awhile and my teachers have told us time and time again to wear masks--because if you're sick here, or afraid of getting sick, you wear a hospital mask--to wash our hands, and to gargle. I don't understand why gargling supposedly fights off the infruenza, but I'm not about to ask questions. I actually did gargle a couple of times when I thought I might be getting sick. Then I stopped. Then I got the flu. Connection...?

This is a general HEY MELISSA HOW'S LIFE IN JAPAN post, because I thought about it the other day and if I just keep writing about all the important stuff I'll never remember to write about my day-to-day routines and little culture shock explosions (that happen every day, mind you). And I know you don't care about me and all you want are pictures of food, but you have to deal with this first. So there.

Life so far? Is cold. We've come to the conclusion that we can't do anything of much interest right now besides shopping and indoor day trips because it's just really cold...and by that I mean in the 40s. With wind chill, so it's pretty bad, guys. (Not anything remotely close to that ridiculous snow falling all over America, though, and for that I am glad.) The other day we went to Inuyama, a little spot in the almost-country about half an hour away. Inuyama literally means Dog Mountain, and we went to see the castle and the surrounding temples. The light was beautiful and I fell in love with the Japanese countryside for the 85th time. I can't wait until we get to Gifu, which is a two-hour train ride from Nagoya and all country (and an outlet mall, I think) and dotted with old farmhouses and mountains that stretch on for years and green, green, all that green in the rice fields. But like I said, as of right now it's FREEZING. And Gifu is all outdoors, so that will have to wait.

Inuyama was really wonderful, though. We got to ride on the trains that let you swivel the two-seaters around so that you can have a four-seat group, and it was a nice half-hour of traveling through country (even though we were all REALLY HUNGRY so it wasn't so much "nice" as it was "cool but WHERE IS THE FOOD WHERE IS IT WHEN ARE WE GETTING THERE").

And then we got to Inuyama and had to walk through a long street of shops to get to the castle. On the way there we passed the sweetest lady on earth, who worked at a panya (bakery) and actually offered to make reservations for us at a restaurant nearby when we asked if she knew of any place we could eat. Eventually she told us of Ikeda-ya, a Chinese place down the road, wherein a nosy Japanese man tried to translate everything for us even though we didn't need his help. At all. He was but a fly in the ointment, though, because the old ladies who worked there helped us out with the ordering and then let us have 200 yen off the check. :) They also put ham in a meal we asked to be vegetables-only because Gray is vegetarian, because apparently ham doesn't count as meat? Neither does octopi, apparently. But they remade it for her.

Then we went to the castle--though honestly the shrines around it were much more interesting; not to say the castle wasn't but it took us all of 10 minutes to get through it (and then a extra 20 minutes for landscape pictures....I like my landscape pictures, okay). As for the shrines, we did our thing with the water basin (I really wish I could remember the name! Sorry, Japanese major fail. I can tell you that the ones in tea gardens are called tsukubai, though...) where you pour water over your hands and wash out your mouth in order to purify yourself. We also did ema, which is a block of wood where shrine visitors write their wishes. The shrine priests then bless the wood and hang it up so that it can come true. Since we're broke exchange students (more on that to come), we 'split' an ema four ways and wrote each of our wishes on one block. Picture:

There were a lot of ema already up, and we spent a few minutes reading the ones we could understand. Quite a few were in different languages--English, Spanish, French, Vietnamese. One of them simply said ai, or 愛, or love. :)

Inuyama pictures:

Other than Inuyama, we haven't been traveling outside of Nagoya much. When we're in Nagoya we do three things: 1) attend school, 2) shop and 3) go to Daikoku (you could also add in 4) messing around the city, though that usually mixes in with shopping). Upon discussing our not-so-exciting lives we came to the conclusion that we can't do anything because of--you guessed it--the cold. We want to go to parks and the zoo and Gifu and so many other places, but alas. The temperatures are going up, though--into the 50s! SO HAPPY.

And now I'm going to talk about shopping.

Actually, I'm going to talk about money.

Cash in Japan is no joke. When people say that Japan is a cash culture, they really mean that if you're not carrying cash around, you're screwed. No one cares that you have a credit card. Oh, you can use it--but not everywhere. Maybe a department store here and there, but not when you're buying groceries or trying to buy a train pass or anything actually relatively important. You might have money in plastic but that doesn't matter.

So you decide to withdraw money. Unfortunately, because you are a gaijin with a gaijin debit card, you can only withdraw money at post offices. And because this is Japan, the ATMs at post offices--in fact, the ATMs everywhere--close at around 5:30 PM. If you want to exchange money, like traveler's checks or those pesky US dollars still hanging out in your wallet, that's great...just make sure you get to the bank before 3 PM: WHEN THEY CLOSE.

The story of Japan goes like this: everything is open when you don't need it and closed when you do.

But back to money. Say you've finally gotten to the ATM and have finished crying about how ridiculous the exchange rate is (about 80 yen to a dollar--raise your hand if you remember when it was 110 to a dollar. Yes, my hand is raised. Yes, I am sobbing). For the purpose of this anecdote, you've withdrawn ichiman yen, which is 10,000 yen, which should be $100 but is more like $80 in value and an actual $120 out of your account. (Sob, sob.) You've got money in your wallet and you're ready to go!

Fast forward to midnight. You've got 2000 yen in your wallet. You've spent about $80 going through your normal routine. You haven't splurged on anything big. You haven't bought yourself anything fancy. Then why oh why have you spent what seems, to us little Americans, SO MUCH MONEY?

I'll walk you through it.

Train (if you don't have a train pass) - about 520 yen round trip if you only have one destination; two or more is ~700 yen

Lunch - 2000 yen

Shopping at the cheapest places possible - ~3000 to ~4000 yen

Snacks at the convenience store - ~300 to ~500 yen

Dinner - ~2000 to ~3000

That comes out to ~8000, give or take change.

The moral of this story is that being an exchange student in Japan is REALLY DIFFICULT, money-wise. This is probably a trend no matter where you study abroad, but the fact that this is Japan--a country notorious for having ridiculously high costs of living--just hurts your wallet. If you want to know a few useful Japanese phrases that will actually convey your feelings in an accurate manner, consider the following:

- 私のサイフは泣いている。(Watashino saifu wa naiteiru.) My wallet is crying.

- 私はｘ円がしかない。(Watashiwa x en ga shika nai.) I only have [x amount of] yen.

- お金がないから、コンビニで昼ごはんを買う。毎日。(Okane ga nai kara, conbini de hirugohan wo kau. Mainichi.) Because I have no money, I buy my lunch at the convenience store. Every day.

- 今日お金貸してくれない？(Kyou okane kashite kurenai?) Will you lend me money today?

- お金がないから、できない。(Okane ga nai kara, deinai.) I can't do it because I don't have any money.

- 私のサイフは泣いている。私も泣いている。(Watashino saifu wa naiteiru. Watashimo naiteiru.) My wallet is crying. I am also crying.

- お金の木はどこ？(Okane no ki wa doko?) Where are the money trees?

- 名古屋銀行のアカウントに、一円しかない。(Nagoya ginkou no akaunto ni, ichi en shika nai.) I only have 1 yen in my Bank of Nagoya account.

- やりたいけど、お金がない。(Yaritai kedo, okane ga nai.) I want to, but I have no money.

I'm supposed to get a big deposit from Nanzan in my account, though, so I'm happy about that--but it doesn't come in until next week. I'll already be on vacation. What awful timing, really. It would have been nice to have that money beforehand. But I'm not complaining. As we know all too well, money does not grow on trees.

And that was my sad story of the day. To those of you coming to Japan for study abroad in the future, I hope you feel my pain.

Until next time! We are going to Tokyo for 5 days next week. Hopefully we will make it out of that city alive.