Shimokitazawa

Kat and I used the last day of nice weather for a while to do a quick tour to 下北沢(Shimokitazawa). It’s a part of Tokyo that’s a couple of train stops before Shibuya. I mentioned once I think that Harajuku, right next to Shibuya, is the young and alternative shopping area. Shimokitazawa is just like that, but less expensive and closely resembling Camden as Kat pointed out to me.

We haven’t had food all day so eating was No. 1 on the agenda. We found a nice little café/restaurant that had a bit of a Trof feeling about it. We ordered some banging salad and each had a pizza. All in all a good place if you are willing to spend 450 yen on 190ml Cola.

After eating we just wandered about until it got dark. There are many cool shops, too many to register in the short time we had so I’m definitely going back there again. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot my camera.

Yokohama

Yesterday I went to Yokohama, a city I have already visited years before and enjoyed a lot. I can safely say this time around just as much fun was had, and just as much beauty was found. I’ll start you off with a few pictures:

View from the port of Yokohama. Most beautiful port I have ever seen.

Here by night with a brilliant light display.

Once Kat and I met up with Tatsu, we took the train from Shibuya to Yokohama Chinatown. Chinatown was a neat little place and, I bet due unusually nice weather, also quite crowded. We (Kat) checked out the shops, ate some Nikuman and stopped at a temple:

110% Tourist Style.

After that we strolled down to the harbour to enjoy the views (see pics at beginning). Kat really wanted to go on a roller coaster ride that was close to the harbour, so all three of us went on it. Tatsu isn’t a big fan of them, but we convinced him to try it anyway as it looked relatively mild. The ride was fun and faster than it looked, but Tatsu wouldn’t be able to confirm this because his head was down and eyes closed the whole ride.. haha. Sorry for making you buy that ticket, Tatsu.

We then went shopping a bit in that area and ended up waiting in Starbucks for Tsugumi and Hiroshi to arrive. Once the Manchester gang was reunited, we headed to a nice restaurant close by and had plenty of dishes for our meal.

Ribs! Also had chicken, pizza, rice with meat and salad. Desert was cheesecake and.. some other cake.

And then.. the unexpected happened. Hiroshi called up his girlfriend to come and join us at the restaurant. Until yesterday, I was of the strong opinion that Hiroshi had made up his girlfriend and based or on a manga or some sort of dating simulator game. When she turned up I strongly believed she was an optical illusion.. but once she took my napkin to blow her nose I knew she was the real deal. Here are Toshiko, Hiroshi, Kat and me at said dinner:

Hiroshi you missed.

After dinner Toshiko took the train home and the rest of us went to 大さん橋(Oosanbashi) one last time before we parted from Hiroshi and went home.

Ketchup

HI BLOG! I haven’t written in a long time and thus only remember half of what happened. Therefore, I went through my pictures and shall now present you one photo for each occasion. Here goes:

Snow.

Setsubun is where people go to the shrine for a ceremony that is held within and that can't be seen by public. We waited outside until all the people in neat clothing came out and threw beans at the crowd. Doraemon was there, too. People then grab as many of those beans they can, go home and throw them out of windows and doors to drive off evil demons and invite good luck.

Of course, many a sushi were had. Mhh sushi.

The ryuugakuseika gave out free tickets for some sort of Asian Cup or whatever football matches. I went to the women's finals (China vs. S. Korea) with my tutor Shin, and we routed for China - and they won. There were about 300 spectators in that huge stadium.. which nearly TRIPLED!!! when the men's finals were held between the same countries. China won 3-0, even though I was routing for Korea. Boo. I was supposed to meet up with my friends from the dorm for this game, but they all bailed and left me watching alone in the cold rain. Shame on you.

In Japan, on Valentine's Day girls give boys chocolate etc. and not the other way around. And so, the managers of the TUFS baseball team made the players cookies for V-Day. They're still hanging from my lamp to remind me how good it felt to belong to a team - can't bring myself to eat them.

Apart from all this sort of stuff happening, I was mainly caught up in Japanese class related work and going to baseball practice. Theoretically, we have on average about 4/5 times practice a week now. My body is slowly catching up with training demands, although ye ol’ knee injury frequently keeps me from performing at my best.

Coming Sunday my parents will come to visit me for 3 weeks, out of which 2 weeks we will spend together traveling in the Kansai area. Maybe I’ll find the time then to do some more blogging. During the time I spend with my parents I obviously cannot participate in training and practice games we have against other universities. I’m a bit relieved, to be honest, that I don’t have to go to the practice games, because I feel nervous enough as it is now having to speak and understand Japanese during training with my club mates. Even so, it’s not like I’d be in the starting lineup for a game at my skill level, so cheering on is all I’d have to do.

Yakyuu.. Baseball!

I finally gathered enough courage to join a club here at university. I have played tennis all my life and, while it can be a fun sport, it gets old after a while – to me anyway – so the tennis club was not an option. I’ve watched countless Japanese movies, dramas and animes and in plenty of those baseball plays an important role in high school life. I’m the kind of person who likes hitting, throwing and chasing balls so baseball struck me as the perfect sport to pursue here in Japan, where baseball probably is the most popular sport in the country.

I’ve watched the baseball club’s training a couple of times from my balcony and was impressed at the speeds and accuracy they achieved throwing the ball.. to the extent of feeling depressed about the idea of ruining their practice with my noviceness. However, I told my class mate, who is a manager in the club, that I wouldn’t mind trying baseball if I got the chance. She then asked the captain if it was okay for me to join and a week later I went to practice to check it out!

When I first got there I felt so nervous and out of place because, well.. I was wearing lame jogging slacks and a normal windbreaker, with a hint of running shoes virtually useless on dirt ground. To top that off, apart from my classmate, I’m the only foreigner participating and my Japanese is terrible. It turned out, though, that everyone was really nice and they gave their best to make me feel welcome.

First up on the menu was running 5 laps, followed by sprinting and general exercises. Not having done sports in years, they already got me with the running. But I gave it my best and in the end (sort of) managed to keep up with practice, though looking clumsy and definitely not baseballer-like most of the time. After exerting ourselves, we practed fielding and batting. I was terrible at judging the ball path at first, but towards the end I got used to it and one time even managed to make it look like a regular play, albeit a slow one. As far as batting is concerned, I have little problem hitting the ball. My biggest concern here is the batting stance and distribution of weight during the swing, which I just cannot quite wrap my head around.

After fielding and batting we played consecutive catch games that finally gave me the last push onto my knees. Once practice was over, everyone went for food together and the team treated me to lunch. They are a great bunch and I hope I will be able to stay with them until I leave Japan.

Oh yeah, and Tatsu went shopping with me to get some baseball stuff:

Only missing spikes and a massively expensive baseball glove!

Bank Notes

While I was in Yanasegawa last year, I came across something interesting in a Familymart. I withdrew 4,000 yen from an ATM and to my surprise the sum was presented to me in.. 2 notes! Until then I thought Japanese bank notes were limited to 1,000 5,000 and 10,000 notes but it turns out 2,000 notes exist as well. I wasn’t too sure at first if it was real money, to be honest, so I spent my first 2,000 note in mentioned konbini straight away to confirm its validity. After successfully buying my drink with it I felt a bit stupid as surely no ATM would happily hand out monopoly money in the first place.

And so, I decided to keep the second note until I leave Japan. This turned out to be a good idea, as Hyun-Hee (sorry if I misspell your name >_>) explained to me, because apparently these notes are rare and are said to bring the owner luck. Yay! A couple of days later I proudly showed Tatsu my note and he said there existed another rare-ish note: 100 yen. Tatsu works part-time at a konbini so he said he’d check the register for me next time he went to work. Sure enough, next time I saw him we traded two 100 coins for two notes!

So here they are, my monetary all star team! (well, duo):

Look at these bad boys

Yen has never been this sexy.

Old Year, New Year

This entry is a bit late, but when aren’t they. 2009 has passed and we now live in the future: 2010. Let me try a straight off the top of my head review:

• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Milton Keynes life
• Oxford, PA life
• Milton Keynes  life
• Katsu kare

Add in a bit of university, a depressing Christmas and an uneventful New Year’s Eve and you’ve got the essence of what I felt about 2009. Of course there were countless highlights, but the dragging of time has dominated last year mostly. Coming to Japan this changed at first to the total opposite, but daily life has set in and the novelty of being in this country has disappeared.

With that out of the way, I have enjoyed these past 12 days so far doing mostly nothing but sleeping, watching anime and playing games. The few times I didn’t was when Kat and I met up with Mariya and Jesse for お節（osechi, food served during the New Year’sHolidays) at Mariya’s grandparents’ house somewhere in Chiba.. I think. I also had ramen from a proper street vendor for the first time, so I can tick that off  on my Japan todo list! Next on the list would be leaving the Tokyo area for the first time which was actually planned for this week. However, the Japan Rail representative at a station misinformed Tom about the deadline to buy the 青春十八切符(seishunjuuhachikippu, lit. Youth 18 Ticket), so our trip to Nagoya and Kobe fell flat. I’m pondering going to the Zoo or Yokohama instead this week-end….. or maybe BOTH.

Anyhow, apart from New Year and Mariya and Jesse’s visit, not much really happened. It was a good opportunity to recharge my batteries and the sleepins will be missed.

Christmas in Yanasegawa

On the 25th of December, Kat and I ventured out to 柳瀬川(Yanasegawa) which is part of Tokyo. The distance itself is not that great, but the train connection is slightly odd: 4 lines, 3 transfers and 3 different train companies. Roughly 1 hour and only 760 yen later, we arrived in Yanasegawa and were picked up by Mariya’s grandfather and taken to the nearby store called Summit, where Mariya, Jesse and Mariya’s mum and brother were shopping.

Once we got to Mariya’s grandparents house, we sat down, had a little talk and were suddenly surprised by a truckload of Christmas gifts from everyone. I was so surprised! They were gifts from the family and from Kat’s mum. We spent the rest of the day sitting at the table chatting away, a good part of which was in Japanese. The grandparents are so lovely, I was so amazed! They made a big effort to make us feel at home, comfortable and to involve us in conversations. Kat and I both truly appreciated their kindness and openheartedness that was so rare to find even in the past few days before and during Christmas.

That evening we went to bed before midnight, so Kat, Mariya, Jesse and me played a couple of games we found in the room: かるた, Fang den Hut, and Packesel. We had so much fun we lost track of time and went to bed around 2:30am.

The next day we sat together again, had our lunch and then headed out on our way back to Tama. It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone, and especially to the grandparents as they have been so great to us, giving us various home grown/made things to take home with us. Mariya and Jesse will be here until just after new year, so we will definitely get to see them again.

Before we headed to the trains, Kat and I succumbed to the cheap prices in Summit. Kat got a truck load of cheap clothing while I looted the 100 yen shop and bought 2 long sleeve shirts (290 yen each) and a huge sweatshirt (1199 yen). Bargains! I was especially happy that each one of those clothing items had weird English on it that made me laugh such as “PERFECT INANE – That fell on the way, later to wake from the trance. And let life’s pursuit put them in a twisted stance?  – GRAND HONORABLE HIGH SOLDIER”. Super cool.

Christmas Days

Just like expected, nothing happens on Christmas here in Japan. While Christmas paraphernalia sales boom, on the actual day(s) Christmas cannot be felt. The only feelable change is that apparently loads of restaurants were booked out, KFC being one of the most popular (don’t ask), because Christmas is a couples thing here.

Anyhow, after celebrating Tom’s and my birthday, the 22nd of December was a celebration of freedom from class for the coming 3 weeks. That evening, Tom hosted a burger party in his room and it ended up being packed with roughly 10 people. The day after that was supposed to be Kat, Tom and my day in with lots of cooking, eating and movies, but we all slept in too long and didn’t get shopping and other things out of the way until it got very late in the afternoon. I was a bit disappointed that it ended up in just cooking dinner together and watching a few movies with the others.

I spent the 24th of December, which is traditionally the most important day, well evening, in Germany, I spent with Kat waiting for it to pass.. slightly depressing. Then again the outlook of the following day kept me going. This shall be explained… in the following post!

Christmas (no, not Xmas.)

It’s Christmas time even here in Japan, where I believe Christianity is not too common. (1-3% if I recall Ian’s lectures correctly?) In the end it’s just like in most countries in the World where it’s celebrated: commerce. I really dislike seeing Santa Claus & Co. everywhere I go, but no mention or depiction of Jesus anywhere to be found. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly interested in religion in that way, it’s just that the reason for Christmas is, well, Jesus Christ’s birth and thus the name of the day. It just seems odd that because the religious explanation doesn’t sell well, Santa Claus was invented and now celebrated instead.

Anyway, enough complaining. I bought Christmas lights!

1500 yen at Donki!

They make for a great atmosphere, very soothing. I might get one or two more Christmas ornaments, but it would be a waste of money to get too many things, as they can be used only for a couple of days and will be thrown away once I leave Japan.

Tom, Kat and I were talking about making it all homely and Christmassy so that we can get together one of these days and spend a whole day in: watching movies, listening to Christmas songs, eating sweets and a nice meal. Personally, I would love to do this on the 24th as it’s tradition in Germany, but Tom already has plans, and Kat and I have plans for the 25th. I wonder if and what day we will turn our hope of a great, festive day into reality?

Mid-Term Exams

On Monday we had our mid-term exams in Integrated Japanese 401 and Kanji 902. I spent less days studying that originally planned, but in those two days of study I only stopped for food and bathroom. As a result, the exams went seemingly well. We received our results for 401 yesterday and I got 80%, which is 20% above passing and, obviously, 20% below aceing the exam. I’m not too sure whether this is considered a good result or not, but, relating it to the feeling I had when class first started and thought it was too difficult for me, I’m quite happy. The only depressing thing about the exam was that ONE page where I apparently failed hard: 1 out of 12 points, haha. OTL

902 results will be announced on Monday, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be around the same percentage.