Week 1-3

Hello!

There have been many people who have been curious about my adventures in Japan. Instead of trying to send a bunch of emails and images to people individually, I thought I would complie some things here and then send the one link. Here I can also add as many images as I want and Gmail won't scream at me about file sizes, hooray! I don't plan to take too much time to make these, so please excuse any typos and such as I throw this together.

I hope you enjoy!

The First Few Days

My trip here was a bit hectic. One of my flights got very delayed due to a "malfunctioning infotament system". While it seemed silly to me, it meant they couldn't show the safety video which they are legally required to do, so they had to try and fix it. Eventually they just decided to do the safety presentation manually (just like the old days) which meant the delay was pretty much pointless. Due to it however, I missed my connecting flight in Tokyo to fly to Nagoya where I am staying so I had to find another way to get there.

Luckily (or rather unluckily), I wasn't the only one to get stranded. In fact, everyone from my university who was going to Japan got their flights messed up in some way and all of us were stuck in Tokyo. Go Spartans! Two of them managed to get a flight for the next morning and stayed in the airport, but sadly we weren't so lucky. The remaining two of us ended up having to take the Shinkansen, or bullet train, to Nagoya. In hindsight, this wasn't anything to difficult to do, but both of us were running off of very little sleep, didn't speak any Japanese and were pretty overwhelmed with everything so it was quite a hectic journey. But after taking a few trains and buses, getting lost several times and getting a lot of confused looks by some Japanese people, we finally made it on the train.

Iwasaki Ontakesha Shrine

As I was getting acclimated, the experienced people suggested a few things to do around town. One of those things was a nearby shrine, specifically it was called 岩崎御嶽社 (Iwasaki ontakesha). So one day, I ventured out on my own towards the shrine. It was about a 20 minute walk from the dorms, though it was on quite the incline.

The shrine itself was really neat. As you may know, Japan has these all over the place, so it isn't particularly unique. However, it's still fun to go and walk around. This was massive in how many directions you could go. Each path had a little shrine that would lead to another, and then to a set of stairs that goes down to another 10 small shrines that have continuing paths of their own. This wasn't as well maintained as many other ones are, but that gave it it's own unique atmosphere. It's crazy to think that each of the hundreds of little shrines that were here were built with some meaning to someone so many years ago.

Toyota Countryside

The next notable trip was a mandatory "Welcome Event" from the school. We went to the Toyota city, famous for the cars. However, we went to the countryside part of it to an area called Sansyu Asuke Yashiki. It was one of those historical attractions where people reinanct how people used to live. They had blacksmiths and woodworkers and such. It's the type of thing I've seen before, but it was still interesting enough to walk around. One thing to note though is that it was pouring rain all day, which certainly got more and more annoying as the day went on. Everyone was soaked by the second hour when we still had many more to go.

However, the whole area was surrounded by mountains and had a river flowing through it. It made for some beautiful scenery despite the rain.

At some point, they told us that they would take anyone who wanted to go to this "ancient town" nearby. They described to us in quite vague terms the archaic nature of this town. Naturally, I was interested and so were the large majority of people. So a large group of us followed the coordinators through the forest to this relic of a town. We passed through the small town where the buses were park and then walk a through a maze of roads until they said "Okay, we're here." To everyone's surprise, it was just an average little town. Neat architecture and maybe a bit more "ancient" than usual, but it wasn't anything like what I had envisioned. They had a 7-11 after all.

They then told us to be back by a certain time and then left us all to just sort of figure out how to return to where we were. So for about the next hour or so, all of us wandered the town while simultaneously getting more and more lost. Luckily, through the power of GPS, we managed to find our way back, but I took some nice photos while we were there.

In between the city of a bygone time and the attraction we were there for, there was a forest which you had to venture through. Now that we were just wandering on our own, we took some time to explore around and there was a lot to see.

And, of course, in the middle of the forest was a shrine! So we explored that too. 

Someone mentioned to us that the shrine had a mountain trail out the back, and we figured we would check it out. It ended being much longer than we had anticipated. Every few mintues we would wonder how much was left. Along the trail were various structures of different kinds.

Eventually, the 2 people I was with ran out of energy and said they couldn't go any farther. After hiking for so long, I was curious to see what was at the top so I went off alone sensing it was close by. It was about another 10 minutes or so, but I finally made it only to find a rock and a gazebo. It would have at least been a nice view, but there were too many trees in the way for me to see anything down below. It was a bit underwhelming.

Last thing to note about this trip was during it, we got the chance to make Goheimochi, which is a miso rice cake. Basically you beat some rice, put it on a stick, grill it and put some miso sauce on it. When they said we got to "make" it, they really meant we got to put the rice on the stick because that's all we did. In the end though, I didn't really like it that much. It's very sweet which doesn't really go with the rice in my opinion, but other people seemed to enjoy it.

Irigaike Park

Right before classes started, one of the people in my dorm asked if anyone wanted to go to a nearby park and walk around. I didn't have anything planned, so a group of us went. The park was about a 20 minute walk away and was quite nice. There weren't too many people there, but there was a class of young children there with their teachers, looked like a first or second grade field trip to me.

Some other things of note, many of the trees or plants were labeled. I found this very interesting and it's something I've noticed in some other places as well. I'm not sure if there is some law saying you have to do this, but it seems quite common. I've seen this sort of thing in the states too, but only in places where the wildlife is the focus like a flower garden or something. There was also a small lake in the middle of the park with these giant koi fish. I did not realize how big koi fish are, but they are at least a few feet long. We also spotted a few turtles, ducks and had some encounters with fearless pigeons who would almost fly into us.

Clubs!

Around this time, classes had started and I was trying to see if I could join any clubs. Particularlly, I wanted to try and join some music clubs. Not only would it be really fun and interesting, it also meant I could keep playing and not "lose my chops" while I'm here. After meeting and talking with a few people, I was able to join both the Wind Orchestra and the Jazz Club! It feels like High School again!

The instruments they have here aren't great, but they are good enough. Actually, both the horn and the bass they gave me were broken in some way so I had to do some quick fixing. We are playing a lot of music I'm familiar with (especially a lot of jazz in both ensembles for some reason) so it's fun to play these songs in an entirely new context. 

We have some performances coming up. Various clubs perform during lunch on an outdoor stage, so maybe next time I'll have some video of that.

Nagoya Castle

The first weekend after school started, a group of us decided to go to Nagoya Castle which is in the heart of the city. Technically, the school is at the outskirts of Nagoya in a smaller city called Takenoyama, so we had to take the train there. It was my first time using the rail system, and it's pretty simple. Japan's infrastructure for it is very impressive since the entire country uses the same system. As long as you have an IC Card (which is a pre-paid card which you can purchase and reload at any train station), you can simply tap in and out of any train or bus in Japan and the fare is automatically deducted from the card. There are a few exceptions and such to that, but for general everyday commute, it works flawlessly. It's also quite economical too, the entire trip to downtown Nagoya and back cost about ¥800 (which is about $6.00). 

The castle itself was interesting. Sadly, we weren't allowed to go into the main tower due to "poor earthquake resistance". It's been closed since 2018, so you haven't been able to go in for awhile. There was a smaller tower we were able to enter, but the line to do so was quite long so we didn't go. The surrounding area was almost like a park though with several other towers and bridges connecting the castle grounds together. There were also some gardens and such and some other interesting sights to see. Lots of people and lots of vendors selling food and souvenirs. It was quite lively for a 400+ year old castle. 

Some other information (most of this is from the brochure they gave us). It was built in 1615 after 5 years of construction by the Tokugawa family. It's architecture became a big inspiration for how the city would built it's buildings at the time, leading to many similar looking structures scattered about the city. Many parts of the castle were burned down during World War II, but it was rebuilt in 1959. So not much of the castle that stands today is original. When it was open, the inside served as a museum for various important artifacts to the history of Nagoya. 

Here are some pictures of the main castle. It's very large and quite high up off the ground.

Outside of the castle, we also explored the surrounding area of downtown Nagoya. This fountain and "Nagoya" sign are right outside the subway exit to get to the castle.

We also went more towards the outskirts of Nagoya to an area called Sakae. We went to a neat shopping center filled with people. There was an above center with a pond, tower and lots of shops and then an underground section with even more stores and an intricate array of stairs, ramps and elevators.

Shirakawa-Go Village

Part of the international program at this university is the selection of university-sponsored "excursions" to different parts of Japan. There are about 10 lined up for the semester and I'm pretty much planning to go on all of them if possible. The first one was to Shirakawa-Go Village.

Here's a summary of what the brochure about it says. This village has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage since 1995. The main reason for this are the houses within the village. They are a type of traditional Japanese farm house called Gasshou-zukuri. These houses feature a uniquely thatched roof that is designed to maximize space efficiency. There less than 150 of these types of houses remaining, and most of them are located in the village and it's surrounding areas and are carefully maintained. The houses hold cultural significance for their unique construction and on how they exemplify traditional Japanese culture. 

The village itself was packed, mostly with tourists from all over. I specifically spotted groups from Taiwan, Korea, Argentina and America (you can tell because they have little flags that the leaders would hold to help navigate the group through the crowds). To be quite honest, the village was pretty straightforward. Besides the houses, there wasn't anything particularly interesting about it. There were some museums and such you could go to, but we really didn't have much time to go to them. However, it was still fun to wander around and look at the scenery. I've found that a lot of these places I've been to have been surrouded by mountains which makes for a great backdrop. You can see the houses, the mountains and the creek that ran through the village.

Some of the houses that make this place special.

Kyoto Scavenger Hunt

The day after Shirakawa-Go, we had another excursion to Kyoto. The gimmick was that it was a "exchange event" that mixed the international and domestic students. Generally, most of the domestics students could go their entire college career without interacting with the international students, however that is very discouraged. The university is designed as an international school, so the Japanese students who are there study things like Global Business, International Studies, or a language like English, French etc. Every student has to be able to prove their proficiency with English to even apply to the school. So, everyone here can at least hold a basic English conversation. This event had us going to Kyoto in groups of 4 (two international and two domestic students) and tasking us to find 16 landmarks with only pictures as clues. 

I was a bit skeptical about the assignment originally since I thought it would just get in the way of exploring the city, but it actually ended up being a good way to see all the major sites in the 4 hours we had there. The Japanese students I was paired up with were also extremely nice, and one them had been to Kyoto many times before so they did a great job navigating us through the city.

The city itself is very chaotic in a good way. In the heart of it, there are hundreds of people crammed onto these extremely narrow one-car wide streets. There would be times where the crowd would have to slowly part for an oncoming car. The streets themselves are filled with shops and restaurants of all varieties. It is pretty much impossible to not find something to do while you're there. And the way the main part is designed is fascinating. Each road leads to a small plaza with roads splitting off into several directions and each of those roads lead to their own places. Each alleyway is just another road down to more vendors or to more roads, it really feels never ending at times. We were very grateful GPS exists because it's is unbelievably easy to get lost. Outside of the main central part, it becomes a much more typical city, but it's still equally as crowded.

I'll be back there soon with a lot more time to explore, so I'm happy I'm a bit more familiar with the city.

Here are the images we took for the scavenger hunt. We ended up finding 14 out of the 16 locations (though I only have pictures for 13, don't know where the missing one went). I'll explain where each of them are.

That was the Kyoto trip! It was a lot of fun and I'm really happy I went. To round off, here are some pictures I took on the bus on the way back of the Japanese scenery.

Food!

Lastly, here are some pictures of some of the meals I've had. I thought I would group all these here at the end.

That's All Folks!

That's all for this series of images. I think if I keep doing this, I'll try and make them shorter, since this was a lot to write and probably a lot to read. Thank you everyone for being so supportive while I'm out on the other side of the world. I appreciate everyone's messages and interest in my adventure over here.

I hope you enjoyed looking through all my pictures and I'll be sure to try and keep everyone updated as I continuing adventuring.

See ya!