I think the best place to start when recounting the glorious time I spent in Japan would be where my adventure began - Tokyo in the summer.
My plane left my hometown of Cincinnati at 4 p.m. to begin a 14-hour flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo with a 2 hour layover in Detroit. It was in Detroit that I met up with my fellow travelers, who, for the sake of their privacy, we'll call John and Peter. We departed from Detroit in the late evening and to our luck, we were all sitting in the same section of the plane.
As the flight wore on and we partook of the international flight snack cart multiple times, we agreed that it would be best to stay awake for the entirety of our flight in the hopes of combating jet lag - our flight was expected to land at 11 p.m. local time. We, in our very incomplete knowledge of how jet lag works, reasoned that if we stayed up the whole flight, the equivalent of the night in our home time zones, then we would be exhausted and ready to sleep on a normal schedule once we made our way through immigrations and customs.
None of us had any problems coming through the gates, I mean, come on, who's going to question three college students who say they're in the country to study puppets? Again our naivete showed when we thought that, after sending our luggage on ahead to our host families in Iida city in the Nagano prefecture, we could simply walk out the front doors of the airport and walk to our hotel. It took all of 15 minutes of walking before we realized we were about to walk on to a major highway. It was hear I first came across the phrase ki wo tsukete, which John said when he was the first to realize our mistake.
Begrudgingly we turned around and eventually figured out we had to take the train from the airport to the district where our hotel was located. This is where things started to go south. Upon arrival in the Chuuo special ward, we left the station to discover that Peter, who had made the reservations for us, failed to get directions or a map of where this place is. All we had was a name, which escapes me at the moment as I was too exhausted to really pay attention to it at the time. Well, that, and a questionable GPS smartphone that didn't seem to know downtown Tokyo too well.
Luckily for us, we were so pumped up to be in Japan in Tokyo that we didn't really care, it was 12:30 a.m. and here we were, three foreigners wandering around the streets carrying our duffle bags of clothes for the next two weeks, just taking it all in.
It was during our exploration that we first discovered the magic of the Japanese vending machines. These things put their American counterparts to shame in terms of not only variety of selection but in the quality as well. John, Peter and I each selected a different drink, myself electing for the Dragonball Z-themed orange drink while John and Peter each selected different types of teas. This was perhaps the greatest thing about the vending machines in Japan is that you have the option to select warm or cold beverages. So depending on your feeling you could have a hot coffee or an ice cold Pocari Sweat, the Japanese Gatorade. There are a wide array of vending machine offerings, but that'll be for another post.
By some magic or guardian deity we managed to arrive at our hotel around 1:30 in the morning, to find, much to my surprise, a concierge awaiting our check-in. I had thought we would have missed the mark, but apparently Peter had the foresight to request a late check-in time for us. We soldiered on in our broken Japanese to let them know we had a reservation, which they politely and patiently managed to decipher and we got into our room around 2 a.m. After some much needed uses of the restroom, we all got ready for bed expecting to be passed out for several hours, thus thwarting the devil jet lag and adjusting our biological clocks in under 24 hours.
We awoke to light pouring in a crack in our window and we thought that surely it must be 10 or 11 a.m. We looked at the clock and were shocked to see that it was 4:30 a.m. We struggled to go back to sleep and could feel that our bodies were hardwired not to be sleeping at this time back home, so we eventually trudged out of bed at 6 a.m. Japan is known as the Land of the Rising Sun for a reason. They are at the very edge of their time zone and as such the sun will rise sometimes as early as 3:30 in the morning, or so I'm told.
After showering and repacking our bags, we headed downstairs to check out and make our way to our hostel in the Asakusa special ward. We left the hotel expect Japan to still be somewhat asleep, but we continued to be wrong as everyone from grandparents to businessmen heading to work to high schoolers catching the morning train to school. After giving vending machine roulette another go, this time with coffee, we were betrayed again by our lack of language proficiency as we held up the ticket line for awhile trying to figure out the kanji for Asakusa, it's 浅草 by the way. Eventually, a businessman, clearly seeing we were new to the country and struggling, stepped up and helped us buy our tickets. We knew enough Japanese to say we wanted to go to Asakusa, thank goodness. After awkwardly making our way onto the train balancing our bags, we experienced for the first time Japanese train rush hour as we were packed like sardines into these underground metal tubes. People poured out at popular spots such as Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Akihabara before we finally made it to our stop. We got off and left the station, only to realize Peter had lost his ticket in the shuffle. The Japanese station workers couldn't understand our fractured attempt to explain the situation and eventually let us pass.
Luck decided to finally smile on us and we were able to find our hostel with minimal effort and after dropping off our bags to wait for check in, we found a local convenience store to grab breakfast. It didn't take us long to realize that these convenience stores, called コンビニ or conbini, would become our life-blood during our time there as again, the Japanese outclassed the American version, with not only a plethora of cheap food options but also microwave capabilities and international ATM access. Our stomachs full and our wallets replenished we headed back to the Sakura Youth Hostel to check in and start exploring the cultural center that is the Asakusa special ward of downtown Tokyo.
Useful phrase in this week's post:
ki wo tsukete - きをつけて 気を付けて
meaning: Be careful!
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Friday, September 27, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Adventure Begins...
In June of last year, I began what was to be the biggest undertaking in my life to date. From June 2012 to May 2013, I lived in Japan as a foreign exchange student in various cities across the Chubu and Kanto regions. For the summer, I participated in a cultural studies program for my home University of Missouri while I spent the academic year studying the Japanese language at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Hikone, Japan.
The summer I spent traveling across Japan, being primarily based in the city of Iida in the Nagano Prefecture, as a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater. Our cultural studies program took the form of spending eight weeks living in Iida and learning the art of ningyou joururi, puppet theater, from the oldest active puppet troupe in Japan, the good people of the Imada Puppet Theater. This all culminated in our participation in the annual International Puppet Fest hosted in Iida, performing both as students of Imada and as members of Bunraku Bay.
I began my travels as most foreigners do on their first time in Japan, in the capital city of Tokyo. I was traveling with some classmates of mine, Joe Shadduck and David Parker, who were also on the summer program with me. From the get-go, our time in Japan was one of exploration and discovery as we struggled to find our hotel on the first night and carried our luggage into the wee hours of the morning on the streets of downtown Tokyo.
After a couple days in Asakusa, a district of metropolitan Tokyo, we made our way to Nara, a city I came to call my favorite in Japan, for the beginning of our summer program. There again we met challenges as people began to gather at our youth hostel in Nara for the start of the summer. But that's a story for another post.
After all 12 members of our group, 10 students, one student leader and our professor, Martin Holman, the head of the Japanese Department at Mizzou as well as the founder and head of Bunraku Bay, found their way to Nara, we spent a week taking in the sites, rapidly learning japanese just from sheer exposure and learning about the rich history in the former capital in ancient Japan.
We spent nearly a week and a half in Nara, after which we moved to Kyoto where we stayed for a week in the best youth hostel in Kyoto according to many travel guides, the Utano Youth Hostel. Although so much of the country is steeped in history, many consider Kyoto to be the cultural capital of the country, including my sensei, who said, "You could spend ten years living in Kyoto, which I have done, and still not see all there is to see or do all there is to do in this city."
Our time in Kyoto was all too brief, but I would be making many trips back to the city in the coming year. After leaving Kyoto, we got into the meat of our summer program, living with Japanese host families for eight weeks in the rural mountain city of Iida. During this time we practiced learning puppetry for 15 hours a week in addition to language classes with Holman-sensei and cultural opportunities such as learning kyuudo, Japanese archery, and volunteering at a local daycare.
As busy as we were, the summer flew by and before I knew it, it was time for my friends and classmates to return home, while I readied myself for spending my academic year in Hikone at JCMU. There was a month gap between the end of my summer program and the beginning of my academic year, but I was lucky enough that one of the host families allowed me to stay with them for that time, which allowed me to get comfortable with everyday japanese without the added pressures of practice and classes. It was during this time and the beginnings of my studies at JCMU that really saw the greatest change as I became more adapted to life in Japan.
In this blog, I will be sharing my experiences in the Land of the Rising Sun, the good, the bad and the ugly, now that I've had a full summer living back in the good ol' US of A to process what happened in my year abroad. Because it's become such an integral part of my current vocabulary I will also be sharing some useful Japanese phrases I've come to love as well as provide a little advice and tips to people looking to have their own daibouken in the isles of Japan.
Useful phrase in this week's post:
daibouken - だいぼうけん 大冒険
meaning: great adventure
The summer I spent traveling across Japan, being primarily based in the city of Iida in the Nagano Prefecture, as a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater. Our cultural studies program took the form of spending eight weeks living in Iida and learning the art of ningyou joururi, puppet theater, from the oldest active puppet troupe in Japan, the good people of the Imada Puppet Theater. This all culminated in our participation in the annual International Puppet Fest hosted in Iida, performing both as students of Imada and as members of Bunraku Bay.
I began my travels as most foreigners do on their first time in Japan, in the capital city of Tokyo. I was traveling with some classmates of mine, Joe Shadduck and David Parker, who were also on the summer program with me. From the get-go, our time in Japan was one of exploration and discovery as we struggled to find our hotel on the first night and carried our luggage into the wee hours of the morning on the streets of downtown Tokyo.
After a couple days in Asakusa, a district of metropolitan Tokyo, we made our way to Nara, a city I came to call my favorite in Japan, for the beginning of our summer program. There again we met challenges as people began to gather at our youth hostel in Nara for the start of the summer. But that's a story for another post.
After all 12 members of our group, 10 students, one student leader and our professor, Martin Holman, the head of the Japanese Department at Mizzou as well as the founder and head of Bunraku Bay, found their way to Nara, we spent a week taking in the sites, rapidly learning japanese just from sheer exposure and learning about the rich history in the former capital in ancient Japan.
We spent nearly a week and a half in Nara, after which we moved to Kyoto where we stayed for a week in the best youth hostel in Kyoto according to many travel guides, the Utano Youth Hostel. Although so much of the country is steeped in history, many consider Kyoto to be the cultural capital of the country, including my sensei, who said, "You could spend ten years living in Kyoto, which I have done, and still not see all there is to see or do all there is to do in this city."
Our time in Kyoto was all too brief, but I would be making many trips back to the city in the coming year. After leaving Kyoto, we got into the meat of our summer program, living with Japanese host families for eight weeks in the rural mountain city of Iida. During this time we practiced learning puppetry for 15 hours a week in addition to language classes with Holman-sensei and cultural opportunities such as learning kyuudo, Japanese archery, and volunteering at a local daycare.
As busy as we were, the summer flew by and before I knew it, it was time for my friends and classmates to return home, while I readied myself for spending my academic year in Hikone at JCMU. There was a month gap between the end of my summer program and the beginning of my academic year, but I was lucky enough that one of the host families allowed me to stay with them for that time, which allowed me to get comfortable with everyday japanese without the added pressures of practice and classes. It was during this time and the beginnings of my studies at JCMU that really saw the greatest change as I became more adapted to life in Japan.
In this blog, I will be sharing my experiences in the Land of the Rising Sun, the good, the bad and the ugly, now that I've had a full summer living back in the good ol' US of A to process what happened in my year abroad. Because it's become such an integral part of my current vocabulary I will also be sharing some useful Japanese phrases I've come to love as well as provide a little advice and tips to people looking to have their own daibouken in the isles of Japan.
Useful phrase in this week's post:
daibouken - だいぼうけん 大冒険
meaning: great adventure
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