Settling In
I live in Sendagaya, which is technically Shibuya-ku, but it's right by Yoyogi Koen and Harajuku. For many of you that may be complete nonsense, so let me find a map.
Here we go:
I'm in a pretty neat neighborhood. It's an 8 minute walk to Yoyogi JR Station, which is surrounded by interesting stores and restaurants, and it's a 60 second walk to the subway that I use (Kitasando Station), which goes to Shibuya (where my school is). Around my guesthouse there's bundles of convenience stores, a Subway (like, the restaurant), a Starbucks and other coffee shops, a little street full of shops (like a stationary store and a 99 yen grocery store and ramen restaurants), a Mos Burger, and a bunch more places I haven't looked in yet. And it's interesting because business mix with the houses, so there will be an apartment, then a cement shop, then a house, then a fill-bags-with-rice place, then a book printing place, etc.
My guesthouse is pink and full of Australians, Koreans, and French people. Here's the guesthouse, and here's the street it's on. The pink SAKURA HOUSE sign helps you if you're lost. Fill-bags-with-rice place is on the right there, with the red roof.
I live on the 4th floor, and have a small room (1st picture - it's better decorated now) but a sweet view (2nd picture).
I went to orientation at school on Friday. There's 40 new international students this year, from places as different as Mongolia, Jordan, and Venezuela. We met the International Programs Lady, Aya, who's actually a foreigner because she was born in Canada. But she grew up in Japan and speaks perfect Japanese and looks Japanese, so it's gotta suck a little bit. She lives here on a Canadian passport. Then we met our tutor Ayano and she gave us a tour of campus. It's actually a really beautiful campus, full of tree-lined boulevards and old stone buildings and gardens, surrounded by the artsy skyscrapers of Aoyama and Shibuya. Ayano's pretty cool, and she's even at the same level of Chinese as me, so we could theoretically speak in 3 languages, although Japanese dominated. I used Chinese when I couldn't remember something.
Here's a creepy/cool face statue near the entrance to my school.
That night I chatted up one of the Australians in my building (Matt - he's living here in Tokyo for 3 months. Why? Tourism, he said. He pretty much sleeps all day and then goes out at nights), and he took me around the area and showed me all the little holes in the wall, like the other grocery store and the hidden kaitenzushi place and his favorite ramen restaurant.
Yesterday I found a pretty large English bookstore and bought the Tokyo Lonely Planet guide, a collection of short Sci Fi stories, and two Japanese cookbooks, so that I can finally learn how to make Japanese food. It will be hard, though - the ingredients are many, the preparation is difficult, and the kitchen in my guesthouse is gross. But I'll start off simple and work my way up. Did you know that pretty much all Japanese food is cooked with Sake, Mirin, or Dashi? Mirin is this stuff made from rice and shochu (a kind of alcohol), while Dashi is sort of a of fish stock.
Today I decided to walk around Ikebukuro, in the northern area of Tokyo. I really liked it, because it was interesting and exciting and full of cool places and people, but it seemed a lot more down to earth. Instead of being solely inhabited by the most fashionable youths in the world (like Harajuku or Shibuya) or yuppie businessmen (like Shinjuku), it's a mix of all those people plus families and normal people.
Oh, and I caught a matsuri (festival) while I was there!
And yeah. I have another day off tomorrow, but I really want to spend it with someone other than myself. I'm emailing Ayano and this other girl that I met, along with some of the NCC Japanese students, but it's hard without a cell phone because apparently it takes all Japanese people 2 DAYS to reply to messages. I thought they were punctual?
Here we go:
I'm in a pretty neat neighborhood. It's an 8 minute walk to Yoyogi JR Station, which is surrounded by interesting stores and restaurants, and it's a 60 second walk to the subway that I use (Kitasando Station), which goes to Shibuya (where my school is). Around my guesthouse there's bundles of convenience stores, a Subway (like, the restaurant), a Starbucks and other coffee shops, a little street full of shops (like a stationary store and a 99 yen grocery store and ramen restaurants), a Mos Burger, and a bunch more places I haven't looked in yet. And it's interesting because business mix with the houses, so there will be an apartment, then a cement shop, then a house, then a fill-bags-with-rice place, then a book printing place, etc.
My guesthouse is pink and full of Australians, Koreans, and French people. Here's the guesthouse, and here's the street it's on. The pink SAKURA HOUSE sign helps you if you're lost. Fill-bags-with-rice place is on the right there, with the red roof.
I live on the 4th floor, and have a small room (1st picture - it's better decorated now) but a sweet view (2nd picture).
I went to orientation at school on Friday. There's 40 new international students this year, from places as different as Mongolia, Jordan, and Venezuela. We met the International Programs Lady, Aya, who's actually a foreigner because she was born in Canada. But she grew up in Japan and speaks perfect Japanese and looks Japanese, so it's gotta suck a little bit. She lives here on a Canadian passport. Then we met our tutor Ayano and she gave us a tour of campus. It's actually a really beautiful campus, full of tree-lined boulevards and old stone buildings and gardens, surrounded by the artsy skyscrapers of Aoyama and Shibuya. Ayano's pretty cool, and she's even at the same level of Chinese as me, so we could theoretically speak in 3 languages, although Japanese dominated. I used Chinese when I couldn't remember something.
Here's a creepy/cool face statue near the entrance to my school.
That night I chatted up one of the Australians in my building (Matt - he's living here in Tokyo for 3 months. Why? Tourism, he said. He pretty much sleeps all day and then goes out at nights), and he took me around the area and showed me all the little holes in the wall, like the other grocery store and the hidden kaitenzushi place and his favorite ramen restaurant.
Yesterday I found a pretty large English bookstore and bought the Tokyo Lonely Planet guide, a collection of short Sci Fi stories, and two Japanese cookbooks, so that I can finally learn how to make Japanese food. It will be hard, though - the ingredients are many, the preparation is difficult, and the kitchen in my guesthouse is gross. But I'll start off simple and work my way up. Did you know that pretty much all Japanese food is cooked with Sake, Mirin, or Dashi? Mirin is this stuff made from rice and shochu (a kind of alcohol), while Dashi is sort of a of fish stock.
Today I decided to walk around Ikebukuro, in the northern area of Tokyo. I really liked it, because it was interesting and exciting and full of cool places and people, but it seemed a lot more down to earth. Instead of being solely inhabited by the most fashionable youths in the world (like Harajuku or Shibuya) or yuppie businessmen (like Shinjuku), it's a mix of all those people plus families and normal people.
Oh, and I caught a matsuri (festival) while I was there!
And yeah. I have another day off tomorrow, but I really want to spend it with someone other than myself. I'm emailing Ayano and this other girl that I met, along with some of the NCC Japanese students, but it's hard without a cell phone because apparently it takes all Japanese people 2 DAYS to reply to messages. I thought they were punctual?