Hello there!

We've finally made it to the final weeks. This is the last update about my trip to Japan. It's a bit sad, but it's been amazing past few weeks. Knowing that the end was nearing, I definitely made more of an effort to go do more things so there’s quite a bit to cover here. Here's everything I've been up too!

Higashiyama Zoo

Now, one important thing I learned is that it can be a bit difficult to pinpoint exact details of who the Ninja were and what they did. Factual information about them can be hard to come by. This is partly due to them being very secretive by nature, but the romanticization of their existence by media both inside and outside of Japan doesn't really help things. Honestly, I was partially convinced that Ninjas were pure fiction but the museum wants to make it very clear that they were in fact real.

So, what were the Ninja then? First, they were highly trained individuals mostly specializing in the art of stealth and acquiring information. The idea was you would hire Ninjas to spy on someone, get information by watching their movements and then disappear without even knowing they were there. One example of this is a Ninja house, which is a traditionally looking Japanese house loaded with all sorts of contraptions to help a Ninja spy. These houses can be filled with fake walls, secret rooms and hidden passageways that allow a Ninja to watch a target closely. Additionally, the houses were battle ready too if a Ninja had to get in a fight. They have tricks such as hidden swords in the floorboards and secret stairwells allowing them to disappear without a sight. They gave us a whole demonstration with the presenter showing us how everything in the Ninja house was used, however there was no video allowed, so here are the few photos I took.

We then moved onto the museum section which showcased the various tools that the Ninja would use. Plenty of weapons and infiltration tools. Pretty neat stuff.

Grand Warehouse

One of Ghibli's more underrated movies is The Secret World of Arrietty. It's a film based on the classic story of The Borrowers, where tiny people live in the walls and borrow things from the normal humans living their life. There is a whole section of the Warehouse called "The House Below" dedicated to making you feel tiny. There are giant pencils, bottles and plants all over. It's a really neat attraction.

After about a 20 minute walk, you arrive at the destination. Dondoko Forest is based on the film My Neighbor Totoro, one of studio Ghibli's most famous works. It consist of two parts "Satsuki and Mei’s House" and "Dondoko-do", both of which are recreations of areas from the movie. 

Now, I said there were two parts to the Dondoko Forest area. The second "Dondoko-do" area sounds really interesting as it's a recreation of the forest where Totoro lives in the movie. However, I was not allowed inside. Only children can enter the area. I knew this ahead of time, but I thought I would be able to at least see some of it. But nope, there is a someone at the entrance making sure you can't get in unless you're a kid, though I didn't try the "I'm a kid at heart" argument so maybe I could have made it work. It may seems silly, but I actually love the idea. In the movie, only the children are able to see Totoro and go into the forest, so it's just a continuation of that idea. I appreciate the dedication to respecting the source material and the limitation does make the area a bit more special. I hope those kids have a blast in there in my stead.

Now, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the house, so I will do my best to describe the place. However, they did an amazing job recreating every little detail from the film. First, as in the movie, the entire upstairs is the antique shop itself. Literally every antique item that was in the movie was in the shop and it was all interactable too. Figures, books, clocks, strange trinkets and more, you were allowed to mess with everything. Of course, the Baron and Baroness were there too. 

The basement of the antique shop is actually a workshop for violin making. Again, in the film one of the main characters is a violin maker and works in the basement of the shop. As expected, there is an immense amount of detail in the workshop. One of the most famous scenes from the movie is when some characters are in the basement and they start singing Take Me Home, Country Roads. To encapsulate this scene, they placed the instruments the characters played in the room and you are free to play them yourself! There's a piano, violin and some sort of drums. The interactivity they allow you to have is really amazing and make the whole experience all the more special. It was really neat hearing some people play the violin or piano while taking it all in. With the right group of people, you could probably recreate the scene from the movie to a tea. 

The final part is the balcony which overlooks the park. In the movie, the shop is at the top of a hill and it overlooks the city below, but obviously they couldn't recreate that, but the view is still pretty nice.

That rounds out my Ghibli Park adventure. It was a lot of a fun and certainly worth the wait. It really is an extremely unique attraction and I hope I was able to portray some of that. Luckily, I have one last final semi-Studio Ghibli related interaction to mention a bit later on. But for now, let's talk about something else.

Final Wind Orchestra Performance

I've mentioned a few times now that I joined the Wind Orchestra club. If you'll allow me, I would like to say a few words about the club itself. My time there has been amazing. It was very casual, but it allowed me to meet some great people and maintain my chops. Everyone in the club showed me so much kindness and hospitality despite the difficulty communicating at times. I personally understand how challenging that can be, so I am truly grateful that they made the effort to get to know the strange American kid. Without a doubt the best decision I made during my whole trip was joining the club and that's all thanks to them. I feel blessed to have been able to meet everyone and I hope that we will meet again.

To end off my Wind Orchestra career, we had one final performance scheduled a few days before I left Japan. I'm really happy was able to make it! The university was having an Open Campus event for the incoming students, and we were performing (alongside some other clubs) to show what NUFS had to offer. We played a medley of music from The Little Mermaid and I have a recording! You should be able to just click/tap on the video below to view it. Depending on your device, it will either play within the site or take you to a different page. Either way, you should be able to watch it. The actual song doesn't start until about 40 seconds in. Be sure to turn up your volume, it's a tad quiet. Enjoy!

Joe Hisaishi & World Dream Orchestra

Alright! This is the final event I did in Japan! What a note to end on.

Let's flashback to the start of the year when I am preparing for my trip to Japan. While researching what I wanted to do, one of the first things that came to mind was to go to a concert. However, as I've mentioned several times, COVID restrictions took far longer to be lifted in Japan. Due to this, concerts will still few and far between so there weren't many options. With this in mind, I tucked away the idea of going to a concert in the back of my head in hopes of looking again later.

Fast forward a few months to May, I am in Japan and the final COVID restrictions had just been lifted and I decided to check again to see if any concerts had showed up. While the pickings were still slim, some had started to appear, and one name immediately caught my eye, Joe Hisaishi. Joe Hisaishi is composer and conductor best known for his film scores, particularly for scoring many Studio Ghibli films. As I've since learned, his music is synonymous with Japan, it's known by everyone. While it's not an exact comparison, you could say he's like the Japanese equivalent John Williams. When we would play Star Wars or Indiana Jones at a concert as a crowd-pleaser, a Japanese band would play My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki's Delivery Service. One of the first things the people in Wind Orchestra asked me was if I knew any of his music. Of course, my answer was yes, I've been a big fan of his for many years; so the chance to see him live was too good to pass up. 

I'll be honest, I feel like the universe was making the stars align for this. Not only was Joe Hisaishi having a concert, but it was happening 3 days before I left Japan less than an hour away from my dorm. It literally couldn't have been more perfect, so all I had to do was get tickets. I didn't even know if I was going to be able to buy tickets without a Japanese phone number, which I didn't have, but all I could do was to be ready on the day the tickets became available. The day came, and I overslept. The tickets released at 10:00am, and I got frantically got on the website at 10:10am. By the time I got on, they were marked as sold out. I was pretty bummed, but just in case it was the website being dumb, I hit refresh a few times and to my surprise it said "tickets available". I quickly purchased a ticket at a random seat (no phone number required, yay) and I celebrated. All I had to do now was wait two months.

Fast forward once again and it was finally time to go. The concert was taking place at the Aichi Prefectural Art Theater in downtown Nagoya. The theater is part of the larger Aichi Arts Center which is this massive complex for all sorts of Arts related activities. I had actually walked passed it multiple times without even realizing it. The program consisted of half classical music, particularly Debussy, and half Hisaishi's original works with a special focus on his score for the film Ponyo. The quality of the sound that came out of the orchestra was incredible, there was even a choir for some pieces. One particularly interesting thing about watching Hisaishi is that for some songs he will conduct but also play piano. He will quickly switch between the two mid-song. I ended up having an amazing seat, I was practically right over the conductor's podium. Due to where I was sitting, I was able to see Hisaishi from the front as he conducted which isn't something you normally get to see at a concert. He was so expressive and animated and you could just tell how much he enjoyed being there. 

It was honestly an amazing concert experience. To say the crowd went wild is a gross understatement. We collectively clapped and had standing ovations for minutes on end, I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm so happy the stars aligned and allowed me to go see someone I respect so much. What a way to end.

Elevators & Escalators

While elevators are mostly the same, there is one things about them caught me by surprise. In the States, elevators have those buttons that will force the door open and closed. Now, I've heard many times that the close door button in an elevator doesn't do anything, that it's just a placebo to make you feel better. I didn't entirely buy that, until I went to Japan. Japanese elevators close instantly once you press that button, it's a bit alarming. Not only that, but many times the elevator will not close unless you press the button. Several times, I found myself awkwardly standing in the elevator waiting for it to close until I remembered I need to push the button myself. Of course, not every elevator is the same, but that's the general behavior I experienced.

In a similar vein, escalators will turn off if no one has used them in awhile. They have motion sensors to detect if someone is walking up to it and then they will start back up. I'm guessing it's a power saving thing, but I'm not entirely sure. The first few times, I took a long flight of stairs after assuming that the escalator was just broken after it wasn't moving. Whoops.

Trash

If you were to ask me the one thing I will not miss about Japan, it's easily organizing trash. I'm sure this is a pretty common answer for a lot of people.

In Japan, you have to organize your trash into a few categories. Generally, it's 3 main groups being combustibles, plastics and bottles. That would be simple enough, but sometimes you have some other stuff thrown in the mix. You sometimes have to sort incombustibles, which would include plastics but also some other things like shoes. Sometimes, cardboard goes into combustible trash while other times you have to recycle it. Cans are also their own thing, but sometimes they grouped into bottles. It's a whole mess and I still don't entirely understand it.

To make matters worse, you may have heard that Japan does not have many public trashcans and this is painfully true. It's expected that if you have trash, you are to carry it around with you until you arrive home. The only exception is trashcans for bottles, which can be found pretty regularly. 

Smoking

Smoking culture in Japan is very peculiar. In some ways, it's more accepting than in the States, while in others it's way more restrictive. For example, you generally can't just smoke anywhere outdoors. Most places have dedicated smoking rooms/areas. In a way this is more strict, however, it allows there to be smoking in places where there would never be smoking in the states. For example, some places like a school or hospital in the states are generally non-smoking areas across the board. However, in Japan, places like these most likely have a smoking room somewhere. Heck, even the shinkansen (bullet train) has a whole smoking car which is just incredibly strange to me.

Umbrella Culture

I don't really use umbrellas that much. It's something I didn't really realize until now, but I'm rarely in a situation where I need protection from the rain for more than a brief period of time such as running from the car to a restaurant. However, in Japan it is quite different. Since most people use public transit and walk everywhere, it's quite rare to see someone without an umbrella on a rainy day. I guess this could apply to any big city, but Japan in particular has a unique etiquette that has developed around using umbrellas. 

For one, if you have a wet umbrella and you need to enter a building, you will either leave it outside (most buildings have umbrella holders next to the door) and just hope no one takes it or you put it in an umbrella shaped plastic bag that can normally be found at the entrance of a building. Interestingly, the most common umbrella by far is the basic clear plastic full sized umbrella. I theorize this is because they are cheap to replace if stolen and they fit very easily into the umbrella holders and plastic bags making them far more convenient for Japan's umbrella etiquette. 

ATMs

If you ever try to take money out of an ATM in Japan, here are some things to note. First, a lot of ATMs are these large boxes. It's almost like a telephone box, but with an ATM inside instead of a phone. And it's not like an open box either, you can fully close and even lock yourself inside to make sure no one is coming after your money. 

Another thing to note is that some ATMs will charge you for withdrawing money outside of "normal hours", if they even let you withdraw at all. I ended up getting burned by this a few times and losing a few bucks. 

Store Jingles

If you walk into a Japanese store, especially a chain location, and listen to the speakers, you're bound to start hearing a pattern. So many stores have little jingles or theme songs they will constantly play in the store. I think the idea is if you get it stuck in your head and start singing it to others, you have some free advertising. I have the Daiso and Book-Off jingles ingrained in my head.

Gambling

One thing you will not find in Japan are casinos as gambling is illegal in Japan. That being said, even if gambling is illegal, they sure love their loopholes. There are so many popular Japanese activities that are borderline gambling that it's just astounding to me that Japan is techincally and gambling free country. 

Some of these activities include Japanese pachinko and slot machines. If you don't know what pachinko is, it's a game about launching small metal pellets into a hole. I'd suggest looking it up because it's a bit difficult to explain. However, pachinko/slots parlors are generally these massive multi floor warehouses. People will stay in there for hours upon hours playing.

Another popular form of non-gambling is gachapon, or just gacha, machines. Gacha machines are a sort of vending machine that give you a random product out of a selection of possible products. Generally, they will be themed around some popular series and give you the chance to win a figurine, bag or some other merchandise of your favorite character. However that's where they get ya, since it's random what you get, odds are if you want to try and get a specific thing, you'll have to play multiple times. This sort of tactic is used outside of the machines as well. In Japan, you'll find all sorts of products that use the same idea of "could be one of six things", forcing you to buy multiple if you don't get what you want. 

These industries are huge in Japan, and it's pretty wild all the ways the gambling ban has been circumvented and has created these insanely popular alternatives.

So long, farewell.