Strangers in a Strange Land

This week’s post will be slightly shorter than the others as the topic, my first full day in Japan, was also a rather short one. To pick up where we left off, we successfully checked out of our hotel and caught a local train to the Asakusa area of Tokyo in order to find the Sakura Youth Hostel, our home for the next three days. For anyone looking to travel abroad on a budget, like many students, then utilizing the cheap and efficient living conditions of a hostel are absolutely essential. The Sakura is the quintessential hostel with both male and female dorm-style accommodations with up to eight people sharing the same room.

Now while I mentioned that one can feel completely at ease while travelling in Japan, it is at places like hostels one has to be most wary, due to the high amount of people coming and going, many of whom are not Japanese. At the Sakura, we encountered no problems, but they do provide each guest with a locker in their rooms to store valuables while they may be out during the day. If you’re worried about more expensive items such as a laptop, I would recommend renting a locker, as it’s cheap and allows you to walk around without being burdened with extra items to carry. Although we went straight from our hotel to the hostel, our rooms weren’t quite ready so we decided to store our luggage in the basement of the Sakura, and venture out to explore Asakusa. We were lucky enough that the area surrounding the Sakura had a wealth of interesting places to see, including a very picturesque park dotted with several shrines large and small and a wealth of shopping centers selling a variety of food and trinkets.

Needless to say we were still quite exhausted both from our flight and from carrying our luggage all over Tokyo in our search for a place to stay, so we only chose to explore for a few hours before returning to the Sakura to rest up. Because we were going to be in Tokyo for a few days, the first outing was more of a scouting expedition to find places to go when we had regained our strength. Even though our first day was rather short-lived as we spent the rest of the day at the hostel getting ourselves situated and relaxing, one moment became one of the highlights of my journey.

For some reason we never quite figured out, on that first day, Asakusa was quite overrun with what seemed like hundreds of elementary and middle school students. Our best guess is that it was some sort of district field trip, as we couldn’t hardly keep track of the number of different uniforms we saw.

As the three of us were walking through the central shopping area of Asakusa, we happened to pass a group of middle school girls who were waiting in front of one of the stands. Apparently one of them was still inside and had been separated from the group. Just as we passed in between the group and the stand, the last member of the middle-schoolers came bolting out of the small shop. After almost running into us, the girl shouted “ah, gaijin!” (pronounced guy-jean), before side-stepping us and joining her friends. Although our knowledge of Japanese was limited, we all knew that gaijin meant foreigner and when we heard the exclamation, we all looked at each other and burst out laughing, It had really struck home that we weren’t in America anymore and we were truly strangers in a strange land.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

gaijin - がいじん - 外人

meaning: foreigner