英語の先生になった日曜日です。 Ｔｈｅ ｓｕｎｄａｙｓ Ｉ ｂｅｃａｍｅ ａｎ Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ Ｔｅａｃｈｅｒ

At the end of the fall semester, my landlord approached me to see if I would interested in teaching at her English school once a month in the new semester. I thought it would be fun, so I said yes and waited for our first class. It was the last Sunday in January when I'd be starting to teacher and that Sunday is a day I'll most certainly never forget. Not because of the school, but because of how much snow Nagoya got on that day! It felt like I was back in Canada when I looked outside. In some respect, I wish i could have stayed inside the whole day, as when I went outside it was obvious Japanese people weren't used to driving in snow. Driving from our house to her school, I remember closing my eyes preparing for death several times as my landlord raced around turns and speed down narrow streets. Thankfully/surprisingly we didn't crash, nor somehow did I see any other accidents. Literally have no idea how...
Arriving at her school, I was surprised at how nice it was. A single level building with about 5 classrooms. Brushing the snow off ourselves, we took off our wet shoes, put on some comfy slippers and went into the classroom.

The first class of the day was children aged 4-6. They were simply adorable! Obviously knowing very little Japanese, let alone English, in this class we sang various English songs and played some simple games. It was a lot of fun, thought I must say I'm not much of a singer...

Following this class was the 6-8 year olds. We started the class off much the same as the previous one, with some classic songs like incy wincy spider, and then moved on to learning some vocabulary. I would first read through all the words, and then one by one read them as the children repeated after me. After that was a chance for some questions for the Gaijin (me!) having everyone be so shy, my landlord asked some questions and I got to tell them a bit about my background and where I come from, which is always nice.

Next up was the Junior High School students. It was obvious that they had very little practice actually speaking English, which wasn't surprising because I know in Japanese schools the teachers only focus on grammar, but even simple questions had the students stumbling over their responses. This class saw the exact same start as the previous two but now had an additional reading component. Very similar to the vocabulary, I would read out a sentence and the students would repeat it back to me. Fun stuff...

The final class of the day I think was still Junior High School students, just more advanced. They were able to introduce them selves and answer basic questions. That day's class had the students prepare a self introduction to present to the class, and I was able to help out with them. Trying to explain why certain words are spelt the way they are or why different words are used at certain situations really made me glad that English is my first language, as I can imagine it's hell to try and learn!

This past Sunday was the last time for me teaching at the school, and my landlord had a sort of party/games day for it. It started about 2 hours before the class usually started and with the children we made various crafts and such. It was a really nice way to wrap up my teaching at the school, and was really nice to see all the children having so much fun, rather than just sitting in class.

Farewell Party

Really? Is it this time already? Where did this semester go...I seriously find it impossibly to believe that it is already this time again. I can still remember last semesters farewell party like it was yesterday. I guess time surely does fly when you're having fun (or worrying about glowing in the shower/discovering a new super power that you have)!
During the weeks leading up to this party, our Senseis had been very eager to have us perform some sort of skill for the party. I tried to resist, but their passive aggressive ways took the better of me, so myself and my friend Adrian agreed to do something for the party.

Left to right, top to bottom-
Basa-San, Adrian, Alanna, Doi-Sensei, Kelsey, Me, Fukutomi-Sensei, Cha-San, Caleb, Mashida-Sensei, You-San, Jenny, Gengu-San, Samantha, Imon-San, Odeileku-San, Tario-San, Deigulu-San, Fukata-San, Inoguchi-Sensei, Joel, Kao-San, Antoni-San  

Now, lets run down what I can do to perform...um, there's juggling, err, I can juggle, and oh yes. juggling. Looks like i'll be juggling...Mind you prior to this I had only ever done this in front of my family and maybe a few friends. As for my friend, well his skills were limited like mine to one area, and that? Playing the Ukulele! Oh I could tell from that point that this was going to be incredibly embarrassing for both of us.
We got together a few times to practice, but lets be honest, there was pretty much zero synchronization in our separate skills, so it usually just ended with a bunch of Japanese people crowding around us taking pictures.
As the morning came, we met one last time for some practice (and a Chuhi!) and proudly (for now) went to the party. I did forget to mention that these farewell parties have a tendency to be overly awkward from the get go. I still remember back to last semester when this fool, Indiana Bob (as we called him) was showing us a type of martial arts when he fell on his back and put his foot through the tea ceremony room door...Then preceded to lay on the ground for a few minutes swearing to himself under his breath...
Adrian and myself were the first act, and got up and performed (kinda?) Of course there is video, so watch and you decide! :)

Hanami (Flower viewing)

Come spring time in Japan, if you're not out with friends at a park enjoying the beautiful Sakura blossoms, then there is something wrong! With some friends and teachers (Sensei), we went to probably the largest park within Nagoya, Tsurumai Koen. It was an absolutely beautiful day with barely any clouds in the sky and a nice cool breeze in the air, wafting the sweet smells of the cherry blossoms throughout the park. Not much more to say other than that it was amazing!

Alanna and Myself under the Sakura Trees

Left to Right,
Me, Inoguchi Sensei (And her adorable child), Machida Sensei, Doi Sensei, Alanna

River that ran through the park. 

Nothing to do but be sad? I THINK NOT!

One can only sit in self misery for so long before your sad tale of missed friends, worried family members and fear for growing a third arm become boring and old news.
With this in mind, we decided to plan some fun.
First order of business was a party. Our house was empty of roommates, so what better time would there be to have a huge house party? I think none!
And as for what to call such party, I think our chosen name of "Meltdown Drunk" suited the circumstances quite nicely. It was a great opportunity to have some fun amidst all the bad that was happening. We even created our own "Radiation Cocktail" for the evening. I'm not quite sure what was in it to make it that colour to be honest.

As fun as parties are, doing that every weekend for the rest of the semester was a recipe for failing our courses, so we came up with other stuff to do. Certainly one of my favourite activities that we got up to was heading into the Mie Prefecture to enjoy a day at the Nagashima Spaland. 

Showing our ride bracelets. Ya, we're that cool!

Full of awesome rides, tons of roller coasters, and a butt load of good'ol fun, this was an amazing day. I made it a point of going on every single ride, and left the craziest one for last. The seemingly 100 story high Giga Coaster was almost more than I could handle, if nothing more than the 2 minute clime it took to get to the top...I think I can safely say one of the most terrifying (and of course most fun! ) rides I've been on. 

Seconds before we fell to our doom!!!

30 some odd rides later, a bunch of tasty, bad for us food in our bellies and feet as sore as ever, we headed back to Nagoya, and back to the life we were oh so pleased to get away from if only for a day. All in all, this was by far the most fun I'd had for quite some time! 

Weeks after the Earthquake

Following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, there was a lot of fear and uncertainty surrounding everyday life. Whether it be waking up to another large aftershock, reading reports of the extent of the damage in Sendai or watching coverage on NHK (national news agency) of the various reactor housings exploding, there was a lot to keep your mind racing. I think what possibly affected me the most about these few weeks was the misinformation coming from news sources around the world, but in particular from America. News agencies made it seem as if everyone in Japan had been washed away in the tsunami and that the nuclear crisis was immediately effecting everyone on this small island of Japan. Yes the crisis was bad. Yes there was reason for concern. But No there was no need for the amount of fear caused in the US.(Though causing fear is something America is known for, so why am I so surprised...) I remember reading that people in California had started to take Potassium iodine to combat the increase amounts of radiation that they were being exposed to. Really?...

 As the time passed, my class sizes began to diminish as my friends and classmates where being summoned back to their universities. The earthquake happened right as people were leaving for trips back home as it was our 10 day spring break. Many of them never got a chance to come back. Two of my roommates, Rene and James, left for home with every intention of returning after the break, and instead got denied by their schools and were forced to stay away. Rene's room still sits full of all his belongings waiting on him to return. Everyday that passed more of my friends lost their battle with their home universities to reject having to return home, and so day by day I said goodbye to friends who were devastated and heartbroken for having to cut their exchange short. I will never forget the complete empty feeling of sitting in a class that a week ago was full of discussion and chatter of friends and classmates that was now reduced to 3 students, sitting quietly taking notes to try and take our minds off of our departed friends.

8.9 Earthquake, 6th largest in recorded history

Yesterday was I day i'll certainly never forget. At 2:46 I was sitting in my Japanese Politics class on the top floor of B building when I started to feel my chair shake. Initially I thought my friend, Alanna, was kicking my chair and i turned around to tell her to stop. When i did, though, I saw she was also looking around in terror. At that point I noticed that the blinds on the windows were shaking fairly profusely against the window. It felt as though we were sitting in a boat on the ocean. The feeling of seasickness passed through everyone as the building began to sway. Though reportedly the earthquake only lasted a few minutes, i'm pretty sure our building swayed for almost 15 minutes. Now consider how far Nagoya is from the epicenter near Sendai. I can only imagine the feeling of the people who felt it there. Following the earthquake, an announcement came over the loud speakers at my University stating that it was only about a magnitude 3 earthquake (in Nagoya), and not to panic. We were able to feel the aftershocks for the remainder of the class, and I was all too happy to leave and get to solid ground when my class was finally over. One of my friends, Joe Blanche, was able to contact his girlfriend to get some information about what had just happened. Until his phone cut out, he was able to gather that the earthquake had indeed been a lot worse than we had thought, and that fires were ablaze in and around Tokyo. 

Originally planning on going out that night, I decided instead that getting more information on this disaster would be a good idea, so I headed home. Once home, I immediately found tons of information about what had happened and promptly told my roommates. This was of grave concern for them because 2 of them were planning on flying through Narita (Tokyo's airport) the following day. Ben in fact was planning on getting on a train only a few hours later when I told him what had happened. Spending the remainder of the night trying to get as much information as possible, it was hard to think of what we should do. One of my Japanese roommates, Yappi, ran us through emergency protocol for our area if another earthquake were to strike. What people fear here is that the series of recent earthquakes will lead to the Tōkai Earthquake. "The Tōkai earthquakes are major earthquakes that have occurred regularly with an interval of 100 to 150 years in the Tōkai region of Japan. The Tokai segment has been struck by earthquakes in 1498, 1605, 1707 and 1854. Given the historic regularity of these earthquakes, another is expected in the near future." 

As for now, all I can do is simply wait and see what will unfold in the wake of this disaster. My heart goes out to all my friends and the families of people affected by this disaster. 

Trip to Ise and Kyoto! =D

This past week I was lucky enough to have completely off from school thanks to the entrence exams at Nanzan for all the poor new university students. Crappy week for them = awesome week for me. Life just ain't fair! For the month leading up to the week off, a bunch of my friends and I knew we wanted to go somewhere, but just couldn't come to a consensus on where to go. Some people wanted to head back to Tokyo, some wanted to fly to Okinawa and a few even wanted to head off to Korea. After a bunch of meetings and much planning we decided a nice, easy trip to Kyoto would be a great way to spend a few days, and also wouldn't break the bank. We also thought it'd be nice to pass through Ise on the way and take a wander through the most sacred Shinto shrine in Japan and visit the famous Meoto Iwa (The Wedded Rocks).

After all the planning and reservations were in place, and we could do is sit back in anticipation until Wednesday morning rolled around. The train we had planned to take would be leaving Nagoya Station at shortly after 10:30, so we arranged for everyone to meet at around 10. I left my house early that morning with 2 of my new roommates, Ben (from the Netherlands) and James. On a side note, my roommates this semester are 1000 times better than last semester!

Left to right : Jenny, Whitney, Yukiko, Me, Kelsey, Keely and Alanna 

We met up with Yukiko (a Japanese student who came to Carleton last semester), a friend from last semester(Whitney), my friend from Carleton, Alanna, and her two new roommates Katri (from Finland)  and Kelsey and two new friends from Nanzan, Keely and Jenny. The train to Ise took about an hour and half, so we arrived around noon. It was interesting getting off the train in something other than a huge city. This was really my first time seeing Japan's countryside.

Our first stop in Ise was to head to the Wedded Rocks. As we moved away from the station and got closer to the ocean it got much colder and extremely windy. For both Alanna and myself, this was our first chance to see the ocean up close, and we decided we wanted to touch it. As for myself I timed it so the waves had gone out when I walked down and swept my hand through the low waves. Alanna on the other hand failed to realize the size of the waves and as she bent over, she was soaked by a huge wave. Being the good friend I am, I was able to get a great photo of her.

We then moved down the beach towards the Okitama Shrine and the Wedded Rocks. After spending a while there taking a bunch of pictures we headed to a nearby resturaunt for a quick bite to eat. Following lunch, it was back to the station, a quick train ride into Ise-shi (Town of Ise) and a short walk to the Inner Shine (Naiku), which enshrines Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. Naiku is located near the foot of densely wooded hills and has many smaller shrines spread throughout the forest.

Seeing as it was getting a bit late, and we still had a lot of travelling to do, we decided to leave the shrine early and slowly make our way to Kyoto. After a 2.5 hour train ride, with a few transfers, we arrived at Kyoto station. It was now time to try and find our way to our hostel. As Ben, James and James' friend Wei Wa were staying at a different hostel, we split up at the station and went our own ways to find our hostels. After wandering around for almost an hour, we finally got the proper directions to our hostel; checked in and dropped our stuff off. That night we explored Kyoto station a bit, but returned early as we were all very tired and had a busy day planned for Thursday.


Nekutei bendeingu mashinnu (Necktie Vending Machine) I found near the station.



Off to an early start Thursday morning, we headed to our first destination of the day, the Sanjusangen-do temple. This temple is known for the thousand and one armed Kannon statues that line the interior along with thirty statues which stand in front of the Kannon-Bosatsu. These are statues of spirits called "Ninju-hachibushi" that attend to Kannon-Bosatsu through such qualities as beauty, wisdom, prosperity, wind, thunder, etc. are deified.

This temple is also very famous for the Toh-shiya (Archery Contest) which still takes place today around January 15th. This ceremony apparently dates back to the middle of the 12th Century. It is said that master archers were able to hit their targets across the 120-meter space between northern and southern ends of Sanjusangen-do Temple. In the Edo Period, a contest began based on the number of arrows hitting the target during the 24-hour period from 6 o'clock in the evening to 6 o'clock the next day. The greatest record so far achieved was by Wasa Daihachiro in 1688 when he successfully shot 8,132 arrows, achieving a hit ratio of an astounding 62% at an arrow being shot every 9 seconds...FOR 24 HOURS!!!

Our next stop was Kiyomizudera (Pure Water Temple), founded in 780 on the site of the Otowa Waterfall in the wooded hills east of Kyoto. Kiyomizudera is best known for its wooden stage that juts out from its main hall, 13 meters above the hillside below. Behind the main hall we went to see the Jishu Shrine, a shrine dedicated to the deity of love. This Shrine has two stones about 18 meters apart. It was quite funny watching high school girls attempt to walk from one stone to the other to see if they would find love. Apparently successfully finding your way from one to the other with your eyes closed is said to bring luck in finding love.

Along with the amazing sightseeing, there were many shops from the top of the hill winding all the way down the old road to the bottom. This reminded many of us of Diagon alley from Harry Potter. For dinner we headed towards the Gion district, which is famous for seeing Geisha and Maiko (apprentice Geisha). We saw a few Maiko, but were unable to get our pictures taken with them. We ate a quick meal and headed back towards our hostel with plans of going to sing some karaoke. We sang some songs, had some drinks and headed back to our hostel.

Funny statue in Gion

 For Friday we had plans of going to a few places but one of our friends had a bit of an 'exciting' night and we didn't get going until around 2. On an extremely crowded bus ride to Kinkaku-ji (Golden temple), I guess our friend wasn't quite feeling as well as he thought and fainted and fell on the ground of the bus. This was not a fun experience for him or the rest of us as we tried to get the bus to stop, get the Japanese people to move and help him off the bus. As we were getting off the bus, he fainted once more and fell. Skipping the more graphic details, 2 hours later we were back on the bus for the temple minus a few people who went with him to help. After a long, packed and hot bus that took some 50 minutes we finally arrived at Kinkaku-ji.

Once there, it was an amazing sight to see. Probably one of my favourite temples i've seen thus far. We had wanted to get a group picture in front of Kinkaku-ji, so we found a nice couple and asked them to take the picture. They happily agreed and we lined up. What we didn't expect was that a bunch of other people started taking pictures of us with their own cameras. Just goes to show that even in front of a famous temple, foreigners are still picture worthy. Kinda disturbing though to think photos of us are on some random Japanese person's camera... After such a crazy day, no one was really in the mood to go out, so we headed back to our hostel and just hung out in our rooms for the rest of the night.

The following day we had plans of going to  Koga to see a Ninja village, but I, along with a few others didn't really feel up to it, and choose to just make our way slowly back to Nagoya. It turns out this was a lucky choice. Our friends who did go found that the Ninja village was a fair bit away from the station and ended up getting driven there by a creepy old man. Apparently the village itself was also creepy, with few tourists and a really scary atmosphere. To make matters worse, on their way home, Koga was encompassed in a fierce blizzard and all trains to the station were cancelled for some 4 hours. During this time they had the pleasure of being hit on by a bunch of Japanese Salary men. Not a good way to end a trip.

Even with the little speed bumps along the way, i'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we had an amazing time in Kyoto with many memories we'll certainly never forgot, whether good or bad.

Back to Japan!

Well I knew that the good times of my winter vacation would soon have to come to an end, and today was that day. With another early morning flight, I had a nice long day of traveling to look forward to. With traveling comes long periods of waiting and with it I had a nice chance to look back on how wonderful the past 3 weeks have been. From the moment I arrived in Ottawa to the cold brisk air and being greeted with my loving parents, I knew I was home. Well maybe not quite. With the unfortunately circumstances around Jessica's exam schedule, I wasn't able to see her until a while after being home seeing as she was writing an exam. But once I had her in my arms again, everything felt right again. For the first week or so I had a great time visiting all the people important to me. Whether it was a relaxing night spent with Serena and Jess to a nice sit down with my caring neighbours, it never felt so nice to just be home.

For Christmas it was wonderful to get a chance to see my brother, though for as short as a stay it was. After I’d had a chance to see everyone I finally got to spend some quite time just relaxing with Jess.

We went and saw a Sens game together (that the Sens unfortunately forgot to show up for...), went out with a bunch of Jess's friends and spent an awesome evening enjoying the amazing Cake Boss Buddy Valastro. All in all I couldn't have asked for a better vacation.

My flight to Japan the second time had a completely different feel than 5 months prior. Though I was still extremely sad to be saying goodbye to my friends and family, the fear of the unknown I had the first time wasn't present. Instead it was a feeling of familiarity and confidence of where I was heading and what was to be expected. For this flight, unlike the others I’ve had, decided to route me through the Dullas airport in Washington. As the only part of the trip that was new to me, I expected to have a bit of difficulty navigating around. And boy did I ever. When I finally found my way onto the shuttle, got off at the correct terminal and waited what seemed like ages in line at screening, the final boarding call had been issued for my flight. Not a great way to start a 13 hour flight; hot, sweaty and hungry. It took me about 10 minutes into the flight to finally get settled at which point I realize that we did in fact have our own personal TV screens. From there on in, the flight started to get better :) I arrived in Nagoya around 7 pm after taking a quick flight from Tokyo. My friend was meeting me around 9 coming from China, so I had a while to wait. And of course while I’m sitting minding my own business, not causing trouble, not making noise, just being a foreigner I got approached by a pair of police officers. I guess I was wrong in assuming that a place I was safe from that kind of harassment was inside an airport, where 1000s of other foreign people go through daily. It was somewhat more challenging this time seeing as my Japanese was a bit rusty after not using it for more than 3 weeks, but after about 10 minutes they let me get on with what I was doing...oh ya, which was nothing.

I met with Rene around 9:30 after he cleared customs and we made our way back home. With no roommate or landlord to pick us up this time, we had to get home on our own. Not exactly what one wants to be figuring out after 20 some odd hours of traveling, but we managed and we were glad to open our front door and be home. I have now only met one new roommate, named Yuu from China, and look forward to meeting the rest tomorrow.

Tokyo Disney :)

It's been a few weeks since I went to Disneyland, but all the same, wanted to write a little something about it.

We left our Hostel around 7:30 seeing as we wanted to get to the park for when it opened to hopefully avoid any long lines. We arrived at the park about 20 minutes before it opened, but our hopes of there not being very many people there were crushed as soon as we got in view of the park. There were more people crowded around the entrance than I'd ever seen in one place before.

We had a friend meeting us at the park and quickly tried to find her amongst the hordes of people. After we did, we got in one of the 24 lines that had formed to enter the park. When we finally got to the front of the line we were disappointed to see that we had been waiting in a line to enter the park, not to exchange our online ticket for a real one. Who knew? We nicely asked the people in line next to us (the line we should have been in) if we could switch over, and they nicely let us in. When we finally did get into the park we wanted to take some pictures with some of the Disney cast, but found huge lines had already formed to get photos. Seemed like waiting in line would become the theme of the day...

We decided not to waste our time and headed inside. Near the front we took turns taking pictures with Mr. Walt Disney himself (seemingly no one else had noticed the statue so there wasn't a line for this XD)

Because we had been so rushed to get to the park on time, we had neglected to get anything for breakfast. We decided to stop at the first place we saw to eat, which turned out to be a hot dog restaurant. Their slogan was "Best in Town. You'll love our wieners. Wrapped in a Bun. They're big on taste and large on fun!" We all had a nice laugh at this. The wieners were surprisingly tasty I must say. After "breakfast" we made our way over to The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was certainly not what I had expected, but fun all the same.

On our way to the next ride, we stopped by a booth to buy some funny hats for the day. Figured if we were at Disneyland, mind as well dress the part too.

As the day moved on, more and more people filled the park. We decided we'd need to make a plan if we wanted to see all the attractions. We set out to get a fast pass ticket for Big Thunder Mountain and then headed for the long line to Splash Mountain. And boy was the line ever long. I believe we must have waited for almost an hour and half. The long wait was worth it though, as the ride was quite enjoyable. Got pretty wet though, as someone (Taylor) had told me people sitting in the front wouldn't get as wet. Ah well:P Another group of friends we were planning on meeting had arrived at the park while we were in line, and we met up with them on our way to Big Thunder Mountain. Thanks to our fast pass, we were able to skip to long line for this ride, and pretty much walked right onto it.

We took some time after this ride to walk around a just enjoy the park. |We eventually made our way to Space Mountain and picked up a fast pass ticket. To our surprise our timeslot wasn't for another 5 hours, so we decided to kill time waiting in another line for Haunted Mansion.

We stopped off in the Queen of Hearts dining hall for a late lunch/early dinner. Their entire menu was that of western style meals, and I had a bacon salad, chicken breast with trimmings and a piece of pie. Very Yummy!

We did some shopping after dinner, took tons more pictures and continued to explore the park. We found ourselves back at the entrance and split off into to a few different groups planning to reconvene for the parade in an hour or so. I went with Taylor into a Penny Arcade were we played numerous hilarious old school arcade games. When we left the shop, we saw someone playing the music on a portable piano. He was extremely hilarious!

To finish off the wonderful day we were treated with a lovely parade celebrating all the Disney characters throughout the years. It was an amazing performance. On our way home, we were not at all too tired to recap all the fun parts of the day to each other, and had a great subway ride home recounting the great day.

Trip To Tokyo!!!!

After months of planning and a great deal of anticipation we were finally going to Tokyo! The original plan was to go with a fairly large group of friends and all stay together in the same place and do the same things but different people wanted to do different things, so in the end it was just the 4 of us, Alanna, Yukiko, Naomichi and myself heading to Tokyo on that day. It turns out we were quite lucky to have decided to go a day later as a pretty bad typhoon hit Tokyo the day before. My roommate had actually gone down that day and ended up coming back the same night because all the trains were shut down and he couldn't get to where he was planning to stay.

I knew going to Japan I needed to ride the bullet train at least once, and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to do so. It was fairly pricey but the experience was definitely worth it! When we first boarded the train it felt as though we were in the cabin of an airplane. As the train began to pull away from the station, the similarities to flying continued as we approached 300km/h. A really nice feature that our train had was that we could spin our seats around and face each other for the duration of the trip. We played some cards are chatted to pass the time. (Though there wasn't much time to kill. We got to Tokyo in a little under a hour and a half!)

When we arrived at Tokyo Station we had the great fun of navigating Tokyo's maze of Subway lines to meet up with our friends in Harajyuku. We managed to get to where we would be staying for the next few nights, Sakura Hostel, with fairly little effort thanks to Naomichi and Yukiko's amazing navigation abilities! For the first night we would be staying in a traditional Japanese style room which consisted of four Japanese futons laid out on the floor. We set our stuff down and set out to enjoy some Halloween festivities around Tokyo.

We came across a really neat festival of sorts which had a couple really spectacular floats. After taking a bunch of pictures we decided to head back to our hostel and call it a night.

The following day we decided to visit some famous places in Tokyo. We started out by going to Asakusa Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Needless to say it was amazing! Afterwards, a couple of friends wanted to do some shopping in some famous shopping district in Tokyo so I tagged along.

We saw many interesting things, but possibly to strangest was a women who was walking a monkey like a dog. I laughed to myself about how much of a pain it must have been for her to be allowed to have one, considering how hard it was for me to simply open a bank account...

To finish off the day we headed to possibly the most famous place in Tokyo, Shibuya. You may know this as the busiest intersection in the world. It certainly lived up to its name. The moment the lights changed to allow people to cross, the streets flooded with people from every direction!

That night we changed rooms to one with 2 bunk beds. It was certainly a downgrade from our previous night, but it was almost half the price so it was not much of a sacrifice. It didn't matter much anyways seeing as the following morning we'd be heading to Disneyland, so we were all in good spirits!

Halloween!!!

I had such a tough time deciding on what I wanted to go out as this year for Halloween. I knew I wanted to be something that at least remotely represented Canada. I bounced around a couple ideas with my fellow Canadian here, Alanna, about possibly being a pair of Canadian Mounties, or possibly a Tim Hortons Cup and Doughnut. While these would have probably looked quite funny we decided they were just too tough to create. Alanna threw out an idea for us to be Lumberjacks and I liked it, so we began our quest to make the costumes.

The hardest thing for us to find seemed to be a pair of overalls that were actually big enough to where. We finally found some in Osu Kannon in a dress-up shop, along with a bunch of other stuff we had fun trying on! Oh, and I forgot to mention that we were doing all this shopping only a few hours before the Halloween party we were going to, so we were cutting it very close!

We headed home to put on our costumes and met a while later. A couple of Alanna's roommates came with us as well dressed up as Mini Mouse (Kristin) and a High School Nerd (Crystal). When we finally arrived at the party, we were greeted by Spider Man and a Ninja to take our tickets. We knew then it was going to be a fun night!

We stayed at the party for a couple hours and left when people started to get a bit out of control. Not wanting to go home quite yet we decided we'd go to an American sports bar by Imaike Station. We must have been quite the funny site on the subway, as we were traveling with Lady Gaga(Whitney), a Garden Gnome (Melody), Stewie from Mad TV (Taylor), Mini Mouse, a Nerd, and a couple of Lumberjacks!

 I remember thinking when I first arrived in Japan how much people would stop and stare at me as I passed by. Let me tell you that that had nothing on the amount of strange looks I received that night!

Nagoya Festival 2010

This weekend is the 56th Nagoya Festival commemorating Nagoya's 400th anniversary.       

"This year is Nagoya's long-awaited 400th anniversary. Nagoya, a City of Samurai Warriors which produced many great warriors in feudal times. I want to make people aware of this unique culture and appeal while developing the city in a way that people can feel a closeness with its history. Nagoya Festival started in 1955, and it is the grandest festival to enliven the city in autumn. Of course, the highlight of the festival is the procession of the Three Feudal Lords. The Three Feudal Lords, Nobunaga, Hideyoshim and Ieyasu are accompanied by around 700 arnored warriors and foot soilders in an intense battle as they march around the downtown area displaying a gorgeous and extravagant procession much like those depicted in old picture scrolls. On top of all that, this year we are celebrating the city's 400th anniversary, and on Saturday, the 16th, there will be a Grand Dashi Float Festival and the Kiyosu-goshi Dream Walk. COP 10 will be help in Nagoya in October of this year, which is one of the reasons the world's attention is focused on Nagoya. Let's come together under the refreshing autumn sky and set the mood for Nagoya to go down in history"

Takashi Kawamura,

Mayor of Nagoya 

 My friends and I spent most of yesturday enjoying this wonderful festival. We started off in Sakae around noon. There were manys different attractions here. From street vendors selling tornado fries to a concert in Oasis to a Japanese style fashion show to a chopstick making stall. After visiting all of these, we went back to the location where the parade was going to pass and waited to get our spot. The parade lasted about 2 hours and consisted of many amazing floats, costumes and dancers.

Part 1

Part 2

Summer in October..

Well it certainly feels that way at least. With temperatures still reaching the high 20s, it sure doesn't seem like it's ever going to be fall around here.

Let's see what I’ve been up to lately...

Last week I went to my International Friendship Club and met some nice Japanese students. The club meets on Mondays and Thursdays, so I’ll be going back again tomorrow.

This past weekend I enjoyed celebrating thanksgiving alone in my dorm. I made myself as much as a feast as I could muster; carrots, potatoes, broccoli and the biggest chicken breast I could find. I had no luck finding any turkey unfortunately. It was quite enjoyable.

I also met with some friends to start to plan a trip to Tokyo at the end of the month. We have a few days off at the beginning of November, so it'll work out quite nicely. I'll finally get to ride the 新幹線 (Shinkansen) =D

On Tuesday I had another class in Japanese Foreign Policy. It’s by far the most interesting class I have. The professor is very insightful as well which really helps.

Today I had shortened classes and went with some friends to do some shopping. I got a hair cutting set, so I’ll be doing that some time soon. Should be interesting...

What A Month!

It's so hard to believe that it has already been more than a month now that I've been here. This has been without a doubt the best and worst month of my life. Every day that I spend here I feel better about my surroundings and worse about not being with Jessica. I know that my feelings are going to continue to be torn the longer I'm here. I just hope that my positive feels for this trip continue to outweigh my negative ones for Jessica.


 

PURIKURA Fun XD



This past week was pretty enjoyable. The weather was in the high 20s which was actually fairly refreshing considering most of the month was around 35. It's a nice sign that spring weather is just around the corner. Yay for finally being able to wear jeans and a sweater! This week I had a full load of classes. I had the first class of my course on Japanese Foreign Policy. It was very neat. The professor was apparently somewhat famous and had lots of very interesting things to say. It was the first class I've had for a while that I wasn't watching the clock. My Japanese classes have begun to pick up the pace a bit, which has been nice. On Friday I had previously been told that my Japanese Economics class had been cancelled because my professor was out of the country but I was approached in my Business class a day earlier telling me that I did in fact have to go to class. I was very surprised that they made the effort to go to everyone who had registered in that lecture's class to tell them that they needed to go. It was a complete waste of my time though. They had us watch one of my professor's lectures that he had done in a previous year. To add to the fact that my professor has a very thick Japanese accent, the audio quality was horrible. I used the time to play Ninjump on my iPod. Fun times... =D

On Friday night a few of my roommates decided to go out to a nomihodai, or an all-you-can-drink bar. I had originally planned on going, if nothing else to simply relax with my friends after a long week, though I decided against it at the last minute. I'm glad I did. It apparently got quite out of control. All I'll say is I had to go out at 1:30 to help my friend from a subway station...


On Saturday I made plans with my friends who had come to Carleton last year on exchange from Nanzan to go to Nagoya Station. Once there we decided it'd be fun to go bowling. The place my friend had in mind was fairly close by, so we just walked. It's truly amazing being downtown in Nagoya on a Saturday night. There's soo many people!!! The bowling alley we went to was actually on the 6th floor of a very tall building. I never imagined I'd bowl in a high-rise. We had a ton of fun! After bowling we went to an English bar named "Hub", got some drinks and just chatted for a couple hours. Fun Stuff. :)



Left --> Right : Me, Naomichi, Alanna, Kristen, Crystal, Yukiko, Brandon



Today I had a nice chance to just sleep in until about 9. Surprisingly this was probably the longest I've slept in here. I intentionally made no plans so I wouldn't feel obliged to wake up early. At around 6 our landlord came by for our scheduled cleaning day. It's supposed to happen every week, but this was the first time we'd cleaned as an entire house. Hopefully this'll become a regular occurrence now. She was nice enough to make us a huge pot of curry, which we enjoyed together after all the cleaning was finished. It was wonderful to sit around the table with everyone. It's a rare event that we have everyone in the same room at one time.

I Spy in Sakae

This was an assignment for one of my courses, and I thought it would fit nicely into this blog.

For my I Spy assignment I choose to visit Sakae. I choose this location because Sakae is located in the heart of Nagoya and as such is one of the main places where people go to shop. I feel that it best represents the overall feeling of Nagoya I’ve had thus far into my trip. It was around midday on Saturday when I came to sit on a lonesome stone bench outside a busy Japanese restaurant. This is what I observed
Undoubtedly the first thing I noticed not only about this location in particular, but about any time I was outside in Nagoya was the heat. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. On this day it was forecast to reach highs of around 44 degrees. And of course, along with this heat came the humidity. It was very interesting to see how people dealt with this. Throughout the hour that I was sitting by the restaurant I don’t recall seeing neither a single lady without an umbrella to block the sun nor a single gentleman without a towel to wipe the sweat from their faces. I even noticed some younger men with towels around their neckline to stop their sweat from ruining their clothing. Oddly enough even with this heat, most the men I observed were wearing suits and jackets.
The buildings around Sakae really caught me as very typical Japan. In every direction I looked, the buildings all seemed to look similar. They were all tall, impressive towers most of which had massive billboards on them. The largest building right above Sakae Station literally had a huge ferris wheel attached to the side of it. One the ground level of pretty much every building is some sort of store. Directly across from where I’m sitting is one of many electronic stores on the block. Along with these are a multitude of restaurants, convenient stores, and clothing stores. On the extremely narrow 8 lane city street in front of me is a seemingly endless flow of small cars and old fashion bicycles, all of who seem to be in an intense hurry to get where they need to be.
From where I’m sitting I can hear people’s conversations as they pass by, all in very casual Japanese. Every 5-10 minutes I can also hear the subway rumble by underneath me. I heard a lot of birds chirping which I thought was strange because I didn’t see any birds. I later found out that they play bird songs in the subway stations. Contrary to what you may think with the high amounts of traffic on the road, I not once heard someone honk their car horns or hear any pedestrian curse at a driver who cut them off.
The smells that I experienced varied extensively throughout the hour. When customers came in and out of the restaurant next to me, I could smell the delicious scent of tonkatsu and korokke. As the subway went by under me, a foul scent of garbage rushed up. And while neither of these were occurring, the constant smell of stale air was apparent.
Although I was meant to be observing everything I was experiencing through this hour, it was clear to me several times that I myself was being observed. Numerous times I would look around and see groups of Japanese girls looking at me and speaking to each other. What surprised me was that even when I noticed them looking at me, they wouldn’t stop starring.