To The Park!

(Austin)

April 14, 2016

    On a bright, sunny Thursday after classes had ended for the day, Rachel and I decided to go to a nearby park. I had actually been to this park before, but that was back during the first week or two in Japan, and it was at night, so I didn't really get a good view of it.

    We took a bus to a nearby stop and walked through neighborhood to get to the park. While walking through the neighborhood we saw many farms and greeted a few people with pleasantries as we walked through.

    The park itself is quite large, including a small lake on one side. There is a small river that runs through the center of the park, so the park designers created many bridges to traverse to the different areas. They put particular effort in one bridge, the main white bridge in the center of the park. It gives a feeling of centrality to the area because you can see the white bridge from most parts of the park. There is also a large bamboo forest in the park that we walked through.

    After walking for a while we sat on a covered dock that jutted into the lake. There were many ducks and a swan near the dock. We even saw a beaver! Or was it an otter? I don't remember. The breeze was quite nice under the cover of the dock, so we stayed and talked for a while in the nice weather.

    We decided to head back, walking through the neighborhood again. While we were walking back we saw two highschool boys kidding around like they were going to fight. It was obvious that they were good friends. When we got close and passed them, one of them said hello to me in English, which I responded to him in English and then in Japanese. I went on and asked what year of school he was in. They seemed surprised. We told them that we went to Kansai Gaidai and they were super excited. It seems that Kansai Gaidai is actually pretty famous. We talked in Japanese for a while longer and then headed back.

    After catching the bus, Rachel got off at the school to walk back to the dorm and I headed to the train station to head back to my homestay. The last picture is a shot from the train platform in Kuzuha station, my home station.

    

Tokyo Trip: Exploring Tokyo

Day 3, Part 1

(Austin)

    Considering the craziness of the previous day, we decided to adventure around Tokyo with no real schedule in mind. We wanted to go see a few of the famous towns in Tokyo while we were here, so we decided to do that this day. The first place we decided to go was Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is a very famous entertainment district in Tokyo. It is also the setting of a few Japanese TV shows and anime. A very famous anime named Durarara is set in Ikebukuro. Of course, before we headed there we ate breakfast at Yoshinoya again.

    After breakfast we grabbed a local train and headed towards Ikebukuro. The train ride was maybe about 10 minutes. Coming out of the station we found a map. I have watched Durarara so I wanted to try and find some of the places and landmarks shown in the show while we were in Ikebukuro. We found the parks on the map and headed towards them as I was sure I would recognize something.

    We found some local parks that I had seen before and we also took pictures of other statues. Sadly, the pictures that we took with Elijah and I in front of some of the statues were lost because Elijah's phone broke :/  Before leaving Ikebukuro we went to the local Animate store. On the very top floor they had an entire display "museum" setup for the anime/manga called Shingeki no Kyoji (Attack on Titan). Really cool.

   

     On our way back to the station we grabbed food at a fast-food restaurant called Auntie Anne's. This is actually a restaurant that exists in America as well. The specialize in pretzel based food; It was really good. We ate and went back to the station. From there we headed to Shibuya. 

    Shibuya is world famous its "Shibuya Crossing", the largest and most busy pedestrian crossing in the world. During peak times upwards of 2500 people might cross during a single light change.

It's nuts.

    After we crossed we walked around and found a game arcade. If you didn't know it already Japan is pretty famous for its game arcades. Tokyo is of course no exception to this and Shibuya had quite a few. After playing games for a while we walked down the street and found the Disney store. The outside of this build is crazy to say the least. From the outside it looks like a giant metal fortress. The inside was stuffed with Disney related stuff from mugs to stuffed dolls. I bought a few buttons and Elijah bought a mug. 

It was late afternoon so we decided to head towards or final destination... which is in part 2!

Park in Ikebukuro. Featured in anime: Durarara

Ikebukuro is the tall building on the right.

These are right in front of the Ikebukuro station entrance.

Attack on Titan museum in Ikebukuro Animate

Disney store in Shibuya