tokyo take one

Our day started bright an early, meeting just outside of the dormitories of JCMU at 6:15am to travel to the station to catch the shinkansen to travel to Tokyo! The shinkansen is the famed bullet train in Japan that travels somewhere around 200 miles an hour, and outside of being expensive, is a sleek and fast way to travel. It felt like a mix between an airplane and the hogwarts express, since a trolley cart of goodies was pushed up and down the isle between each stop.

The ride was only two hours long to get from Hikone area to Tokyo (200 mile distance), but my friend Rory described it best as being "like the top thrill dragster minus the thrill". Cutting through the country side, mountains and flying over rivers was quite a joy to watch out the window. I even caught a glimpse of Mt. Fuji out the window! It slipped behind cloud cover before I could whip my camera out, but it was incredibly moving to see. It was so tall above the mountains we were actually passing through, that it looked like it was completely disconnected from the world and simply floating up there in the sky.

In Tokyo, our first matter of business was to visit the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA, as they affectionally referred to it) in order to be debriefed about the current relations between Japan and the US, as well as talk about Japan and Korea. The Deputies that talked to us were excellent at speaking English, well informed (as one would hope), incredibly sharp, and considerably young (30-40 yrs). We were permitted to ask them anything about the topics they brought up and were extremely patient and happy to talk with us. Most of all, they were just so grateful that we still came to their country even with the recent problems the country has had (radiation, earthquakes, tsunami...), but all the same it was a great experience that I know not a lot of people can say they've had.

After MOFA, we grabbed lunch and I ate THIS BEAUTY HERE (there was more tonkatsu on top of that curry, but I started eating before remembering that I had my camera and should take a picture to share)

With full bellies, we then moved on to visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It's is very controversial because it is a Shinto shrine that holds the memorials for the war dead, but also 14 Class A convicted war criminals of the Great East Asian War. Not to mention that quite often, Japanese Prime Ministers visit the shrine to offer their prayers, which is not looked upon very favorably by the Chinese.

Surprisingly, this shrine was really small considering how built up in importance it was. At least Ashley and I were expecting something larger, Arlington-esque even. The museum next to the shrine, however, was fantastic and rich in historical content surrounding WWII. Photography was forbidden inside, because flashes especially damage documents that they have on display in the cases, so I have nothing to show for the time I spent in there, but it was incredibly sad. One of the rooms toward the end of the exhibit halls simply consisted of 3x4 black and white photos of the Japanese who died during that war, and glass cases containing memorabilia of theirs. Two of the cases had on display letters written from father to daughter and brother to little sister. The raw emotion and honesty in those letters (these two had been translated into English, whereas the majority of the museum was only in Japanese) was enough to bring you to tears. Luckily for Ashley and me, the gift shop was right around the corner and we could escape to happier things like overpriced umbrellas and ichiban (number one!) headbands.

I mentioned umbrellas of course because as soon as we left the Museum, the sky ripped open and we witness our first Japan thunderstorm. Yes, we heard THUNDER. (Below is Ashley, ecstatic about the weather~ )

Due to the rain, our plan to people watch in Harajuku was canceled (the crazy anime/japanese cult culture district where people dress outrageously and super fashionably all the time) and instead we went straight to Shibuya, which is a high end shopping district in Tokyo, and eerily like Japan's attempt at a Time's Square.

Now, given that we had a multitude of shops to choose from, we had lots of variety and options for buying cute Japanese girly clothes, yes?

No.

Shibuya has top of the line clothing. 300 dollar top of the line clothing. We found nothing. We looked, for hours, but found nothing. It was so frustrating, because we were in a group of 6 or 7 and people were hurting and cold and wet and tired and hungry, and that hardly makes for good shopping company.

To make matters worse, when we all (the students in my class) met in the train station where our professor wanted us to return to at a specific time, he wasn't there. And didn't show up. This was because (as I found out through calling him on my cell phone) he was at a different station, and had been there for 45 minutes.

By the time we figured it all out and got back together and on our way home, everyone was frazzled. We even ended up taking the wrong Shinkansen and Professor Thomas's credit card stopped working (not to mention earlier that day he was charged twice for tickets for the ride to Tokyo-- a good $150 per person). JCMU was such a welcome sight when we finally pulled up in taxis at 11pm. Long long long day.

Next time I am in Tokyo (which I am planning on going for a set of three or so days with my friends staying for 3 months in the country with me) hopefully it won't rain, and we will have a better game plan. In fact, I am dead set on having a better game plan.

Now, if you're interested in what kind of person our professor is, skip to about 3 minutes in to the video below, and you will get a good feel for what he' like. He is an American version of the main character. Really.

Also something I should mention before ending this post is that Ashley and I made our first successful dinner tonight! Vegetable stir fry and eda mame over rice. A welcome change to the land of mushy textured food. There's just something so satisfying about crunching into a carrot.