Day 5 pt. 2 -- adventure

*1 day later*

I am officially awake again! I had a rather hectic day, but most of it happened all at once. It feels like it happened a week ago honestly.

So for starters, I stayed up all night of day 4 to write and upload some of this stuff (that's how much I love you guys). So to start everyone in my group was going to Kyoto. For a number of reasons, I wanted to visit an area more like Akihabara, none the least of which was I felt like we somewhat rushed through Den Den Town. I also wanted to see if I could buy some cool games, anime or manga merchandise, and electronic parts. If I had time, I was going to go to the arcade, but I definitely didn't have time. But more on that later.

For starters, I had started the trip along with everyone else. I had decided in advance that I was going to Den Den Town instead of Kyoto. I have been to Kyoto before and, while it is very interesting and culturally rich, I spent a good portion of a trip I took in high school studying culture alongside visiting many shrines, temples, etc.

Now, I'm rather fond of computers and, since my high school tour kind of hurried me through Akihabara when we went, I figured this time I would spend more time in Den Den Town. Well, on the bus, a Japanese student who was going to Kyoto said it would take only 3 hours to get Akihabara, leaving me with a good 5 hours of time before I had to return to go to a farewell party they were throwing for us. So, I figured that 5 hours would be more than enough time, and I'd probably just come back early. So with that in mind I set off to Akihabara.

Akihabara!

The most recognizable building for me

If any of you are familiar with literary foreshadowing, you know that this story isn't going to end with me spending 5 hours in Tokyo and getting back in time for the party. Nope.

So the train ride actually takes 4 hours, which shaved off an hour each way. So now I had about 3 hours to do stuff if I wanted to get back in time for the party. It didn't sound like enough time, but I ended up doing most of the things I wanted to do. I visited several shops, including several electronic components and became even more familiar with the area. Unfortunately, there weren't really any sets of components to pick up, so it seemed like you had to know pretty well what you wanted before hand, whereas I was hoping for a box o' capacitors (Japanese capacitors are the best). I also looked at several measurement devices that are good and fairly uncommon, but they were all very expensive  on my budget, so I figured I'd just pass for now.

Electronics alleyways

I visited several anime, manga, and game paraphernalia shops, and bought a TON of merchandise. It was all less than $100 (give or take), but in the states it definitely would be $200+ before shipping.  I got some good N64 games (Mario Party 2, F zero, and Kirby 64), a ps3 game (can't remember the name , but involves a lot of mechs from a lot of different anime), and a DS game (Gyakuten Kenji 2). I'm pretty happy about everything!

I had to pass up going to the arcades, but they didn't seem well populated when I went anyway. While I was walking around, trying to find a Book Off! (used bookstore + more), a woman tried to give me a flyer. When I took it, she seemed surprised and said, in English, "Um… Art… Mueseum." I responded in Japanese, which surprised her, and she asked me where I was from. When I said North Carolina in America, she lit up and said she "knows that one!"

Some kind of promotion going on

I then basically took the train back. It doesn't sound very exciting I suppose, but I was very happy with what happened, and I navigated and spoke only Japanese, so it was a lot of fun. The problem was, the train leaving at 2 had gotten cancelled for some reason, so I had to take the 3 o'clock.

This is a bad picture, but I wanted ask what it meant. I seems like kita--------------! Is some kind of meme in Japan. That was on a billboard with Asuka. I was wondering what it meant, other than the obvious literal translation.

 So basically, I got home about 7. I asked a local if the bus to the university was still running. 30 minutes later, I realize it's not, and I simply take a cab home. I BARELY had enough cash for the ride. I looked around a little for the restaurant we were meeting  at for the farewell party, but in vain. Slightly defeated, but happy at my successful adventure, I went back to my room to write this. After which I promptly fell asleep. And the next day too. Sorry guys o.o

My train ride:

Some mountains...

Some houses....

Some tracks (playing around with the camera settings here)

A Cool looking building

My amazing picture of Mt. Fuji!

So good that the stations all framed it

This is a half second after a different bullet train passed. The fuzzy part is  the dust shockwave

When we entered a tunnel and all light outside turned off. I was pretty bored!

Stuff mountain!

Day 5 -- Adventure on my Own

I'm making this as a placeholder for now. I'm gonna write this tomorrow on the plane to Taiwan, since I have to get up early and I'm exhausted. As a preface though, I don't know how much you know about Japanese geography, but that is a 4 hour train ride by the JLR (read "cheap") tickets. A one way ticket on the kind of express route costs about 168 dollars, which is over half the cost of my railpass that lets me use any train, any time, as long as it's the right brand.


Anyway, look forward to hearing from you guys, but everyone will be happier if I wait to write this page.
:D

Day 4 -- Factory Tours, Party, and Bowling

1:36 PM

*YAWN*

(-_-) ☆☆☆☽☆☆☆

(-_-)　☁☁☁⛅☁☁☁☁

(~_~)←ーー☀

(の_の)　　☀

(If there are squares above, you can see this here: http://puu.sh/2U7JH.png)

Oh is it morning already? It seems last night I fell asleep writing my blog post. Sorry about the day's delay! As you have hopefully read, I was up pretty late last night!

Today we visited Mitsubishi and JFE Steel, which are Japanese companies producing cars and steel, respectively. At each, we were treated to a detailed description of the production processes, and an interesting tour of the respective factories. Both used fairly precise robotics or conveyor belt mechanisms to do most of the work. I couldn't take pictures inside the factories (company policy), which was kind of the best part of the experience, but I'll post a few tidbits from the reception areas*.

Still, seeing (and feeling 0.0) near molten steel, well over 700 degrees F, watching man and robotic arm working side by side to assemble a car, and having a guided tour the whole while was pretty amazing.

All of this, I should mention, was in Japanese. We had translators on hand (Yabe and Chen sensei, our teachers), but I understood a lot, and even asked a few questions in Japanese. That said, I do NOT know business buzz words in Japanese.

 We went shopping for a while, and later we went to a party hosted by the Okayama University students . I have never, EVER spoken that much Japanese in my life. I am proud to say, however, that I held my own, and even stopped feeling nervous, even when I couldn't remember a word or phrase.

I cannot describe to you, after years of work into learning a language, how satisfying it is to say something in Japanese and get a reaction of utter surprise. The conversation typically goes something like this:

Japanese student "Hello, I am Takeshi. Nice to meet you."

Me "Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you too!"

JS  "So, do you know any Japanese?"

Me "はい、僕の副専攻は日本語なんですから。" (Yes, because my minor is Japanese)

JS "WHOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA!"

I'm nowhere close to fluent, but it's awfully nice to hear things like "it doesn't sound like it's just your minor," or overhearing people telling their friends that you're fluent. It certainly makes it feel like I've made progress from the old days of "KNEE HON GO GA WA KA RI MA SEN" (poorly pronounced, "I don't understand Japanese").

After the party, a few of us went bowling with a Japanese student (Hiro). He was awesome, and we asked each other a ton of questions about each other's language. I didn't bowl too badly given my 8+ years down time (got 2 strikes in a row at one point!), though I still never made it above 120 in any individual game. We then paid a visit to the bowling alley's arcade, after which we came back to the hotel and crashed. Interestingly, the bowling alley played nothing but fairly new American songs (e.g. Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, etc.). Also featuring out front, the coolest car I've ever seen.

This carrrrrrrrrr

Despite the 300 pin challenge to the right, bowling works exactly the same here as in America.

I'm on the left screen at the top. As you can see, I'm great.

Taiko Drum arcade game, video below

 will be live at: http://youtu.be/0woXc-AKv2c

*I'll do it tonight. Uploading isn't working at the moment.

Day 3 -- Okayama Castle, Onsen, and Karaoke

Today was very busy, and I am extremely tired. It's about 3 am right now, and I only just got back to the hotel.

We started today by going to Korakuen Garden, which is behind Okayama Castle. Okayama Castle and Korakuen both belonged to the lord who ruled over the area in feudal times.  The scenery there was very pretty, and there were a lot of interesting facts about the landscaping and architecture.  For instance, at when the  garden was first made, it was designed so that from a certain summer house, the lord could see the whole garden. Then, at some point, one of the newer feudal lords decided that flat places are boring and had a hill made in the middle that's about 6 meters tall. Additionally, buildings nearby are not allowed to build past a certain height, and thus are unable to see into the garden because of the thick trees surrounding it. The garden's layout and design was said to represent the lives of a samurai, as well as a common man, which sounds very poetic and would probably make more sense to me if I knew more about flowers. The only thing I know is that a common metaphor in Japan is that samurai were like cherry blossoms in that they could have their life cut short at any time (or something like that. What I do know, is that this garden was pretty. It also had some endangered birds (red headed cranes, I think). Now, normally I try to not upload too many of my photos. This place was so amazing, I'm making an exception. See for yourself:

The garden led up to Okayama Castle, which is where the Feudal Lord lived. The inside offers various interesting things to do, such as dress in traditional clothes:

Who is that dashing samurai?!

Seriously though, I think I should change my hair to this style. It's so me.

On the left is Michelle from our group.

We all dressed up, one guy and gal at a time, but I don't have nearly enough space to show everyone. Sufficed to say, it was awesome.

Making traditional ceramics: 

That turned into a cup eventually

And, somewhat oddly, Naruto promotions. Go figure.

After the castle, we set out to a Kaitenzushi restaurant. For those that don't know, that's a sushi shop where you pay by the plate and take dishes off a conveyor belt. Here's what that looks like:

Shrimp Tempura

 Later, we visited an onsen (bath house). For those who don't know, an onsen is basically where you wash yourself off, and then get into a big, warm pool of water, whilst completely naked (non-coed, obviously). Some, like the one we went to, have many different types of baths. We tried most of them, but to name a few, there was one where you walked around (with foot massage beads of some sort on the bottom of the pool), an individual bath (about the size of a stout rain barrel), and an outside bath. There was also a sauna and a cold bath, though the sauna was so hot I had to leave almost immediately. I could barely breathe! We briefly jumped in the cold bath, which quickly became the frigid bath. Overall though, we had an amazing time.

For reasons that I should hope are obvious, there are not pictures of the inside of the onsen, and the outside was fairly regular. I wish I could show pictures of just the baths, because they were all very interesting, but I'm pretty sure some naked people would've been pretty angry with me.

Later that night, 6 of us (1 Japanese person and us) went to Karaoke (in Japanese, pronounced kah-rah-oh-keh) which was, not gonna lie, pretty rad. Here are some pictures of that. I have a video, but I'll spare you my shrieks.

All Americans who hadn't already heard it seemed to get a kick out of a popular song by Kyrary Pamyu Pamyu called "Pon Pon Pon," which is possibly the catchiest song ever. You can look it up (or click here), I'll wait.

…

The music video's pretty weird though right? I don't really get it either. Still, long after Karaoke finished (well over 3 hours, and well past 2 am, we meandered back to our hotel, everyone humming or singing the "pon pon way way way" part.

Oh you didn’t' look it up the first time? I told you I'd wait. Sheesh.

Anyway, even though we are in the city, no one ever felt unsafe, and there were lots of people very comfortably walking home alone. This was about 15 minutes away from the college on foot, so it isn't really like in the US where if you go a stone's throw outside of a college, you might just find a meth lab. Of course, not the whole US, but my point is it surprised me how safe everyone felt in the city at 2:30 am. 

Anyway that's all for now, more when I'm not dead tired.