A Sunday Afternoon in Tokyo

A while back I knew I had a long weekend coming up this month and made plans for a trip to Hiroshima this weekend. Unfortunately, those plans fell on the same days as a National holiday and it turns out the entire country has a 3-day weekend. Needless to say, tickets were booked solid. So here I am, with 5 days off work and nowhere to go. Today I ended up just visiting some places around Tokyo that I'd never been to before, and here are the pics:




Photos:

• Top left: the stunning-yet-controversial Yasukuni Shrine has a splendid little antiques market from sunrise to sundown every Sunday. (To see photos of the shrine, see my post from January 16th of this year.)
• Top right: after the shrine and a quick trip to Ueno I was off to Harajuku, a place known all over the world for its fashion. Sunday is a particularly interesting day to stop by, because that's when all the local young people "put on their Sunday best" and go out and let people take pictures of them. (But in this case, "best" actually means "weirdest".) I got there after most of them had gone, but this pic is one of my favorites out of the few that I took.
• Middle left: still at Harajuku. This man was doing some kind of weird interpretive dance in his boxer shorts and chanting. I think it goes without saying--though I'm going to go ahead and say it anyways--that this was one of the most intriguing attractions for the tourists.
• Middle right: a photo of the main street in Harajuku (Takeshita-dori) with all of the Sunday shoppers. Click on the photo to enlarge and take a look at how many people there are...
  
• Bottom left: concluded the afternoon with a trip over to Gakugei-daigaku (the area of Tokyo where my school is located) just in time to see the local annual harvest festival. Think of it as Thanksgiving for Buddhists, only without the turkey and football games.
• Bottom right: as in the previous photo, groups of (usually) young men carry portable shrines in a parade-like procession around the streets. Buddhists believe that this spreads the blessings of the god around the city.

P.S. by the way...speaking of Thanksgiving, mark your calendars; you're going to have something extra to be thankful for this year. :) A tentative visit back to PDX has been scheduled for the week of Nov. 20th to the 27th. I say tentative because there's a lot that hinges on how things go at my school over the next few weeks, but I'm keeping my hopes up...

It's rainy season...again.

The long awaited update

OK, so I officially haven't posted anything in a month. Sorry guys. This summer, especially August, has been particularly busy for me. But I'm happy to report that I have successfully renewed my visa and don't have to worry about being deported or anything like that. Things aren't going as smoothly at my current job, though, so there's a possibility that I'll be actively looking for a new job or maybe even checking into one-way tickets back to PDX (not my first choice, though). I'll try to keep things updated here.

But for now, here's a smattering of pictures that I've taken over the last couple weeks:




Photos:

• Top left: This is a picture of my friend Laura about 30 minutes before she went into surgery to have her tonsils removed. She's just giving you one last look at them. (Sorry Laura, I couldn't resist posting it.)
  
• Top right: Ran some errands in Shibuya one night and this is the sunset I had the pleasure of seeing. Honestly, it's one of the most beautiful I've seen recently.
  
• Bottom left: this one's just for kicks. I thought it was funny that they actually illustrated the poo. In true Japanese style, it looks so...neat.
  
• Bottom right: Azamino, which is the area of Yokohama where I live, had it's annual "matsuri", or summer festival. I got there just in time to see the fireworks!

IKEA in Japan

There's an IKEA about 20-30 mins by train from my apartment, but all this time I've never gone. All the talk from folks at home about the new store has made me pretty curious, though. So today I went for the first time. Actually, it was my first visit to an IKEA store anywhere. Pretty cool place:


Photos:

• Left: Entrance to the Kohoku IKEA in Yokohama.
• Right: my purchase. I thought the blue pot was too cheery to pass up. I've named him "Dennis" because it seems like a good name for something green, whatever that means...

P.S. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what kind of plant Dennis is. I have no idea.

Hakone

This week I took yet another day trip. This time I went to Hakone, a popular hot springs area close to Mt Fuji and about 2 hours by local train from my apartment. After arriving in the town, I took another train even farther up the mountain and went to the Hakone Open Air Museum, which I think is possibly the best museum I've ever visited. If you ever make it to Hakone, you must go. Later, when I stopped at the Tourist Information office after leaving the museum to ask which bus to take to Lake Ashi, they told me that there would also be a fireworks display on the lake that same night. How lucky am I? Here are a few photos from my day:






Photos:

• 1st row, left: group of sculptures on the "Green Plaza" at the museum
  
• 1st row, right: inside the "Symphonic Sculpture" at the museum; all the walls are made of stained glass.
  
• 2nd row, left: close to the entrance to the museum, the "seats" are designed like eggs. They're even cushioned so you can take off your shoes and walk on them.
  
• 2nd row, right: another sculpture at the museum
  
• 3rd row, left: traditional Japanese drumming at the "Hanabi" (fireworks) festival at Ashinoko.
  
• 3rd row, right: my very first glimpse of Mt Fuji. It's beautiful, isn't it?
  
• 4th row, left: some lucky kids are getting new pet goldfish at one of the summer festival tents near the lake. It took a serious amount of will-power for me to NOT come home with a new fish myself...
  
• 4th row, right: fireworks over the lake. You can also see the hundreds of paper lanterns that they floated on the water, if you look across the bottom of the photo.

A Fish Market and a Ferry Ride

Today I decided to be a little adventurous and head over to the Tsukiji Fish Market. Didn't end up actually spending a whole lot of time there, but I managed to find a few other things of interest:





Photos:

• Top left: a menu for one of the MANY fish/sushi/sashimi restaurants surrounding the Tsukiji market. It all looks identical to me.
• Top right: after you buy your fresh fish, you can cross the street and buy the knife to cut it with.
• Middle left: after the market, I went to the nearby Hama Rikyu Garden.
• Middle right: a view of the tea house in the garden. The ponds in the garden are all filled by the adjoining bay, so their level always changes according to the tide.
• Bottom left: after the garden, I took the Sumida River Ferry tour to Asakusa. Take a close look at the spelling they used on the sign.
• Bottom right: a view of one of the Chuo-ohashi bridge from the ferry boat.

July, thus far

I realize how long it's been since the last time I posted something, and that definitely makes it even sadder that I have very little of interest to show of how I have passed the last couple weeks...

My students often come in for lessons and when I ask them how their weekend was, they answer with one, typical, irritating response: "Nothing special." Then, if I'm having a particularly unsuccessful day, I plead with them to tell me something interesting--even if they have to make it up. (Some of my students have fantastic imaginations!) Just now I am experiencing the very same emotion as my students; indeed, my most recent activities hold very little entertainment value. The following photos are, for your sake, a last ditch effort to show you something mildly interesting from my life in Japan. The best part? I didn't have to resort to my imagination--it's all real. :)

Mother Nature has certainly been doing her part to keep us all on our toes, though. Plans for the typical beach trips and fireworks of the three-day weekend--July 16th is "Sea Day" in Japan--were thwarted (I've always wanted to use that word!) by the massive typhoon that worked it's way over the islands and up to Tokyo on Saturday and Sunday, and as if that weren't enough, the whole ordeal was topped off by a major earthquake this morning in Niigata and Nagano. I felt the earthquake this morning from 160 miles away in Tokyo--quite the experience! It felt like our entire building was floating on the ocean for about 30 seconds. The first quake was at 10.13 this morning and the last I checked, there were still aftershocks at 9.00 tonight. (Track earthquakes at this website.)




Photos:

• Top left: this is a page from my kanji practice book. I have so much respect now for Japanese schoolchildren who have to write each character over and over and over...it's uber time-consuming. I think these two pages took me nearly an hour and a half to complete. Here's a quick translation of the kanji in the photo, in order l-r according to the columns (both pages in the book are identical): "clam", "dog", "bug", "grass", "flower".
• Top right: this is quite possibly one of the greatest popsicles ever invented. It totally tastes like watermelon. And the little "seeds"? They're chocolate!
• Bottom: the school where I work has sets of really old flashcards they used to use for teaching vocabulary. This one is my absolute personal favorite, so it has now become my own "souvenir". :) It was used to illustrate the verb "Sit." Just look how happy that man is that he can successfully sit down! I only wish I had as much enthusiasm as he does...