Adventures in Japan: August 2015

Ok so I have now successfully lived in Japan for one week. In that week I have done, seen, and learned many things.

First things first, lets start with the plane ride. All in all our total trip time was something like 22 hours with very slight layovers. The first flight was from Charlotte to Chicago which took about an hour and a half. Our longest layover was in Chicago which was around 3 hours, then from Chicago all the way to Tokyo. This was a 12 hour flight and let me tell you sitting in a plane for 13 hours is no small task; however, they made it as comfortable as possible by providing everyone with their own mini entertainment system with a vast selection of movies, games, music, and an up to date gps system that showed you where the plane was, where it was going, how far you had traveled, how far you had to go, and most importantly a countdown. Through the provided entertainment system I watched both Tomorrowland and Fast 7. They also provided 2 meals and a miniature breakfast while alternating between cabin lights on and off to create a theme of day and night making it possible to get some sleep. After the longest 12 hours of my life we finally touched down in Tokyo with about 45 minutes until our flight from Tokyo to Osaka left. That in mind we still had to go through immigration, customs, security, and then find our terminal. Somehow it happened, immigration took all of 10 minutes, they waved us through customs after taking a form we filled out on the plane, security gave us minor issues because of Austin's electronically saturated backpack (and hidden pair of scissors), but we made it we found our gate and literally 5 minutes later we were on a bus on the way to our plane. The final plane ride was only 45 minutes and we arrived at ITM in Osaka right on time at 6:15. Upon arrival we met up at baggage claim with a small group we had formed in immigration in Tokyo and then proceeded to find our way to the bus pickup which was at 8 so we had some waiting around to do. After what felt like an eternity on an entirely different scale from the 12 hour flight 8 o'clock finally came and we headed towards the bus with all our luggage. Once on the bus we ended up waiting for around 45 minutes for some unknown reason before beginning the 45 minute drive to the seminar houses.

Next, we arrive at the seminar houses, or so we thought. In actuality we had arrived at seminar house 4 and are told that if we were assigned seminar house 1, 2, or 3 we'll have to walk there. Luckily they had a van there that brought our luggage for us so we only had to carry a few things. After about a 10 minute walk we arrived at seminar house 2, checked in, received our orientation packet, and moved all of our stuff into our rooms. Almost immediately following everyone getting checked in the RA's announced that there would be an expedition to a nearby convenience store for everyone interested. So naturally just about everyone came and picked up some food for the next day and some bottles of water and such. The first thing we noticed is just how cheap things can be here, for example, I purchased a 2 quart bottle of water for 69¥. That plus two large bowls of instant ramen cost me about 320¥. For comparison the current exchange rate is 123¥ to 1$.

Queue training montage. From Tuesday to Sunday with the exception of Friday night and Saturday all we did was run to and from campus, with some runs to the nearby convenience store filtered in, for orientation meetings, banking sessions, phone service sessions, you name it we probably did it until at last Friday night, the big Kyoto tour.

Friday at 1:30 a multitude of both Kansai Gaidai students and International students all met up and were divided into small groups of around 5-10 students. Our group consisted of Austin, Nygel(my temporary roommate in the seminar house), Nicolas, myself, and two Japanese students, Tomomi and Nagisa. Our first adventure was the train system. We walked from the school to Gotenyama station where we bought our very first train ticket for 350¥ which would take us all the way to Kyoto. The first thing I noticed about the trains are that they were much bigger than I expected. However, once we got off the train in Kyoto we found our fair share of small as the 6 of us crammed into a tiny elevator to get to street level where we began our trek up to Kiyomizu temple. The temple was very beautiful and had very intricate design. It was up a large hill such that when arriving at the top you could see out over the city, and unfortunately the incoming rain. After it started raining we took shelter under a natural overhang made of branches and vines. After 10-15 minutes we decided it would be better to go out in the now pouring rain and visit some of the small shops near the temple while we waited for the storm to blow over where we found some awesome looking chopsticks and Japanese fans. On our way down from the temple we tried some free Japanese sweets with the famous red bean paste. After that we got on a bus that took us to a more city like area of Kyoto where we went to a store called Animate full of manga, music, dvd's, and merchandise all pertaining to anime. We spent more time in this store than I care to admit so onto the next thing, the CD store! Here we spent a good little while looking for artists that we recognized before we finally found some good ones like Babymetal and Man With a Mission. They also had a rather healthy English pop section as well as a significant amount of Korean pop. After leaving the CD store we went to a noodle shop where I got original style soba noodles and some kind of tempura fish cake, both of which were very very good. After dinner was over we headed back to the seminar houses by way of train and bus and parted ways with the promise of future karaoke.

Since then I have met my homestay mother, and I moved into her house on Sunday. She is very nice and has had homestay students before. She is slowly teaching me Japanese and in return I try to teach her what English I can. I have my own room upstairs with a bed, desk, chair, dresser, and closet. Overall I am very excited for this upcoming semester with classes starting on Wednesday there are plenty of learning experiences ahead.

Continuing my day trip to Kyoto as part 2:

We hid from the rain in a nearby souvenir shop where I bought a pack of chopsticks. After the rain let up, we walked back down from the hill that the temple was on and got on a bus.

From there we rode the bus to (basically) downtown Kyoto. We walked along many businesses and eventually found the Anime and Magna shop we were looking for. I've never seen so much anime and manga merchandise in one place before. It was amazing.

After spending roughly 40 minutes in the shop, we left to go get dinner. Along the way we stopped at a CD store where I bought an album by MAN WITH A MISSION called '5 years, 5 wolves, 5 souls'. It is their 5th anniversary album.

From there we went to the noodle shop. I got Curry Udon and Chicken Tenpa (fried chicken). It was absolutely DELICIOUS.

We went home after that. Glad to be back because my feet hurt quite a bit afterwards Haha. Thus ended our day trip to Kyoto.