Tokyo Silver Week

Golden Week in May is the biggest travel weekend in Japan, when three holidays in a row create a 5 day weekend. For some reason, this year, I guess they shuffled some holidays around in the Fall so that they did the same thing, and they're calling it Silver Week. It was this past weekend, and Caitlin, Lana and I went to Tokyo.

Caitlin and I took the Shinkansen up on Saturday, and hung out in Asakusa, where we were staying. We had dinner in Shibuya, burgers, real burgers, with cheese and bbq sauce and pineapple. Due to the stupid fact that Tokyo subways stop at 12, we decided not to go dancing like we'd planned, but go back to our hostel.

Sunday we scoped out a flea market and then met up with Lana in Harajuku. We shopped and saw Meiji Shrine, and a bizarre store called condomania, which is exactly what it sounds like. We had Thai food for dinner, which was great, and then met Caitlin's friend Cameron and his 3 friends back in Asakusa. Since there's nothing much to do in Asakusa, we ended up getting an all night karaoke room and hanging out there, until circumstances required that we return to our hostel.

Monday we went to the Tsukiji Fish Market, and had really fresh sushi at a little place in one of the many maze-like alleys around the market. Walking (or, more accurately, squeezing and staggering) through the market area made me feel like I was really in Asia, the foreign smells and the jam packed little streets with severed fish heads staring at you and weird creatures floating in icy water. In the afternoon we walked around Ginza, the fashionable shopping district. I came across a print shop where I found this gorgeous print by a Japanese wood block artist from the early 20th century names Kawase Hasui. I've fallen in love with his work, it has a very realistic and yet very picture-book feel to it. It's very idealized, peaceful and calm. You can take a look at some of his prints here. The one I bought is below.

Monday night we went to Tokyo Tower, because the view at night is really cool. Then Tuesday we went to Nikko, about 2 hours outside Tokyo, where there is an impressive collection of shrines and temples. One of the shrines has carvings of monkeys on it doing the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose. Apparently these carvings have something to do with the origin of that phrase, though I don't understand how. Due to unfortunate circumstances, we were forced to stand the entire 2.5 hour train ride back to Tokyo, and were exhausted when we got back. We had dinner at a little place near the hostel, and accidentally ordered spam patties. Then we went back to Ginza to have dessert at a place called Alice Cafe, which is a theme restaurant where the waiters dress like Alice and the place looks like Wonderland. It's dark, like you really are in a rabbit hole, the walls are draped with blue fabric and there are mirrors on the ceiling. It was a lot of fun, but I was very conscious of being the only foreigners in there. Clearly it was off the beaten path.

Tuesday night, Cameron and his friends were supposed to come in to the city again to meet up, but due to what I'm not sure, lack of consideration or immaturity and poor planning, they chose to wait until 10 to let us know they were actually still in Hanno, where Cameron lives, an hour outside of Tokyo. But why didn't we come out there? We could have a house party. Long story short, Caitlin and Lana and I disagreed about whether such a plan would be a lot of fun or a mind-numbingly juvenile throwback to freshman-year frat parties, and we parted ways, them going to Hanno and me going back to the hostel.

We met up again the next morning. I had breakfast at a little cafe in Asakusa, did a little last minute souvenir shopping (I bought a gorgeous silk robe and a Starbucks mug-I'm collecting the different ones from the major cities). We went to Roppongi Hills, the huge shopping/housing/entertainment complex for lunch, and while Caitlin and Lana shopped I went to try to find the studio of Murakami Takashi, a Japanese artist I like. I assumed his studio would include a gallery, which it did, but the building was closed, probably because of the National holiday. So I didn't get to see it, but it was still cool to see where his studio was.

We left Tokyo at 3 and got back to Yamasaki around 8 or 9. It was a fun trip, but it was tiring. The hostel we were staying at was in no way relaxing. It deserves its own entry, but I'll try to do it justice here. The only redeeming quality was the price, which at under 20 dollars a night is unbeatable. That said, I would at all costs avoid staying there again in the future. It was not too far from the subway, which was good. But Asakusa is not the most exciting area of Tokyo. The guidebook actually used the word "yawn" to describe it. There was one toilet per floor (one physical toilet) and it kept running out of toilet paper. One of the girls in our room the first night came back at 6 am and had forgotten her key, she knocked and woke us up to let her in. There was no one at reception at that time. The other 3 nights we moved into an 8 bed mixed dorm. There was no lock on the door. Again, 1 toilet for the entire floor. The common space was a kitchen (cockroaches) and through the kitchen was the one sink and shower (no lock) on the floor. Zero privacy. I showered on Sunday night because there was no one around at 3 am when we got back, but that was it. I couldn't shower again until I got home Wednesday night. I know. Disgusting. The security was a joke. They told us that after 12 the front door would be locked, and we would need a code to get in. When we came back at 3 Sunday night, the door was open, which meant we were able to walk right in, and right up into our dorm room, which, you will recall, also had no lock. There was one guy sitting up in the kitchen on his computer at that time, a guest with insomnia, I assumed. It turns out he wasn't even a guest there. His friend was, but he had nowhere to stay, so he was just hanging out in the hostel. He made himself perfectly comfortable in our dorm. We came back one day to find him sitting with his laptop on Caitlin's bed, which he had clearly climbed over to plug in his cords. Caitlin was understandably annoyed. It's common hostel courtesy, don't enter another person's bed space. I've stayed at a lot of hostels, and some of them were pretty dirty, but I've never stayed at one that was so completely oblivious to the convenience and comfort of their guests. They didn't even have individual bed lights, so when you got back late, like we did every night, and the lights were off and people were sleeping, you had to fumble around for your things in the dark, or use your cell phone light.

Anyway, other than the hostel and the unfortunate disagreement about Hanno, it was a great trip. Here are pictures:

Tokyo Silver Week

Japanese Drivers License

Finally, after months of agony and defeat, I passed my road test on the second try and got my Japanese license. Yay! No more biking around the inaka. I can go to the gym again. I can drive to Himeji. Life is good.

The process of actually getting the license started in July before I went home, when I started the whole process of filling out the paperwork and such. I had to schlep to Akashi, which meant taking the bus an hour to Himeji, then taking the train to Akashi, for my road test, which I failed the first time. You drive on a closed course, which sound pretty simple, right? Well, driving on the course, that is to say, what they expect you to do, bears little resemblance to what I've known for the last 8 years as "driving." In fact, all the road test tests is your ability to take the test. Not actually drive on a road, where you're more concerned with paying attention to the real-time action on the road than with following the procedure.

My second road test, scheduled on the earliest available day, which was a month after my first road test and luckily on a day I had off from school, I left the house at 7:30 to catch the bus to Himeji. I caught the train to Akashi, and the bus to the driving center, where I arrived at 10. I checked in to the test window, and then had to wait until 12, when they let you walk the course. Since it was the same course as last time, and I spend the whole 2 hours that time stressing and studying the course map, this time I decided for my own sanity to get out of the building, and I went to Starbucks and read until 12. I walked the course twice. I chatted with a guy I assumed was American (Japanese-American) but who turned out to just be Japanese, though his English was completely unaccented and fluent. All these things helped calm me down, and at 1 I was the first to go. I was really nervous, but I stayed calm, and drove the course without incident. Though, that alone is not enough to ensure you pass, they're so anal. When I finished, the cop was trying to tell me my result, but I didn't understand what he was saying. He repeated himself about 5 times before (a little exasperated, I think) he said "Ok! Ok!" Which I took to mean I had passed. I was so relieved, I was shaking. They told me to go and sit inside and wait.

As it turned out, I was the only one of the group that day who passed. They test all the foreigners together in that 1 o'clock block, and there were about 12 of us. I waited until 2, then they took me to another office, handed in some paper work, and took me to another place to wait until 3. At 3 they had me go wait in the lecture with all the Japanese people who had passed their tests, and take our pictures. Finally at 4:30 or 5, I got my license and left. I got back to Yamasaki at 7. It was a 12 hour day.

Back to School

School has started again, and that means it's sports festival time~! The sports festival is an annual event, like field day or color wars, but WAY more ritualized, because, after all, this is Japan. The actual thing isn't until the 13th, but the week and a half before are dedicated to practicing everything from marching, to singing the school song, to dancing, to more marching, to group calisthenics. There is not much going on in the way of classes, which means a continued light load for me. I'm spending the time working on my English boards and re-vamping my Miriam Dollar system. In light of the recent crime wave (ie kids stealing Miriam Dollars from one another, and in on instance, a second year setting up an extortion racket), I decided to change the rules. Now the students have to write their names on the Miriam Dollars (or I have to do it for them) so no one else can use them. The tricky bit is while I know many of the kids names, I have trouble recalling them from nowhere. If I see a kid's name written, I can usually find the face, but going from face to name is much harder. So we'll see how this works.