The Weekend Review - Part I: OE in Tokyo

What a weekend! It's Wednesday today, but my first day at work this week. Even though I've been in Tokyo since Saturday morning, however, I've been really busy and I can't believe the week is almost. Overall, the trip to Tokyo was fantastic and I felt like we had a really productive Opinion Exchange (between my volunteer organizations and CLAIR, MEXT, MOFA & MIC, several government ministries and the Council for Local Authorities).

Viva las TOKYO

I essentially left for Tokyo on Friday, as I didn't go back to my apartment after leaving for work on Friday morning. I didn't actually have that much to do at school on Friday because most of my students were giving presentations but I was also still coughing a lot so it was a good thing. On Friday evening, I went to Japanese class and then met some friends to hang out, watched Japanese Comedy (a DVD of a group from Osaka called Downtown) for a bit and then stayed near Osaka since I was leaving so early on Saturday.

Class actually went really well on Friday, too, which makes me kinda bummed that we will break for a few months soon. I think I just like being in an environment with other Japanese language students who are around the same level, but really want to practice. A lot of people in my class, who are mostly around my age or older (well, with the exception of the four AFS high school exchange students from Cambodia, Germany and China) and you can tell some of them are putting more time into their studies right now as they prepare for the upcoming Japanese Proficiency Test. I’m not taking it this year, but most people are taking Level 3 with some taking level 2.
On Saturday morning, I was up and out the door a little later than I would have liked (I knew it was going to happen and printed off later train times anyways, haha), but once I was out it was a smooth trip. I just went straight to the Shin-Osaka Shinkansen Station, bought my tickets out of a machine (about $130 each way) and three hours later, I was in Tokyo.

H&M m-A-n-I-a!

I was meeting the rest of the national committee (for my volunteer org) at our hotel in an area called Aoyama around 12:30, but since I arrived early, I decided to stop at Ginza on the way to check out the new Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) store. I know H&M isn’t that exciting when you have it at home (they’re everywhere in Europe), but it’s been a while since I’ve been to one and I wanted to check out the store here for personal (or maybe nostalgic?) reasons.

When I arrived in Ginza, I asked the station attendant if he knew where H&M was, and was honestly a little shocked when the guy pulled out a map FOR H&M (again, this was a public subway attendant). Once I got outside and walked half a block, I understood why - the line to get in the door was over three blocks long! H&M opened in Japan (Harujuku area of Tokyo) last month, the Ginza store opened last week, a Japanese designer is currently doing a line for the chain, but I don't think I expected that much of a frenzy. I thought about coming back (especially since I only had an hour until my meeting started), but decided to try the line and was pleased when I realized how quick it was moving. Once I made it inside, though, things were almost a little worse because it was so packed. I had a laptop bag, my purse and a small suitcase with me, but people were literally manuevering between clothing racks in concert-like (shoulder-to-shoulder) crowds. I checked out every floor, tried on a few things and bought a cute top and some earrings before leaving, but I was sweating by the time I left... just from being mushed between the crowds for so long.

Let the Meetings Begin

One I arrived at my designated station, I started off for the hotel, but gave up on the scavenger hunt and just took a cab when the paper bag I was carrying (full of papers, snacks and stuff) ripped. Unfortunately, the one time I was early for a meeting, everyone else was late, so I had some time to hang out, settle into the conference room and catch up with the others in our conference room before our meetings started. The first day was pretty much just information about what we've been up to and working on, what's going on in our parts of Japan (since most of us are regional representatives and have one other liaison post) and then just information on what our meetings that weekend would be like. The second day was all the rest (run throughs of our presentations and powerpoints), but we did surprisingly well - for us - of keeping on time, especially considering we started an hour and a half late.

Food and On-the-Side FUN!

The highlight of going to Tokyo, though - both this trip and on most trips there - was definitely the eats! On the first night, we finished our meetings and all headed over to this amazing little Israeli place in Egota called Shamim. For about $20, we got all-you-can-eat kebabs and salads (with a coupon for free desert or coffee)... and most of us literally did eat all we could. We were talking the whole time, but I must have had at least 4 full pitas and literally felt ill afterwards because I was in so much pain from overeating.

On Sunday night, we had the evening to ourselves to prepare for our Monday/Tuesday meetings or go out, so I ended up going to Shinjuku with a group of friends. About half of the group headed over to the Dubliner for Irish dinner and the rest of us went searching for a good Thai place. Sinjuku is actually really close to where all of us stayed this summer when we helped run an orientation for new foreigners coming to Japan (near the Keio Plaza... I only did a week, but pretty much everyone else was there for two weeks), so we were generally familiar with the neighbor hood and ended up at a place my friend Caroline knew about. I am not sure what the name was, but it was definitely the best Thai food I've had outside of Thailand. After dinner (still very happy after my green curry and fresh spring rolls), we saw off our friend Goran - who had to be back at work in Kobe on Monday morning - at the station and decided to go explore some festival stalls we had seen down one block. Along the way, we stumbled into a cozplay (costume play - like Harujuku Girls) emporium and spent some time trying on the dresses. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but I did get some shots of me in one doll-dress (sans hat and shoes)... I might have bought it (to wear home as a joke?) if it wasn't over $200 for the dress alone!

When we were finished playing dress-up and made it down to the stalls, we soon discovered that there was actually a giant harvest festival taking place at one of the local shrines. For the next two hours, we just wandered around, looking at all the stalls (and trying food from quite a few of them, too) and talking to people inside the temple area. One woman was really excited to show us her dogs (she had named the black one Obama, which seemed a little racist, but I was encouraged by her enthusiasm to talk about the election in America with us) and the guy outside of the traveling "freak show" let me touch a bag full of snakes. I think some (or all of them) might have been small cobras, but I didn't stick around long enough to talk.

After the festival, we decided to walk over to the Park Hyatt, which is one of the highest hotels in Tokyo and was located in the neighborhood, to grab a night cap and see the view. The Park Hyatt is included in the book "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" for it's breathtaking views of the skylines (my friend Megs sent me the Japan pages a while ago), but it's also famous for being featured in the movie Lost in Translation. We were worried how much the drinks were going to cost and realized when we got to the top floor bar that we'd have to cab home to the hotel, but it really wasn't as expensive as you'd expect and the cab ride was almost the same price as the subway. In addition, the atmosphere was really relaxing, far less formal than you would exect, and the view of the Tokyo skyline was a treat. It was a little hazy on the night we were there, but even so, there were a lot of skyscrapers, blinking red lights and large bright clouds over where the major train stations were located. We also ran into a few Semester At Sea (college-aged American) girls who were in Tokyo for a night while their ship was docked in Japan and asked us for advice on where to go clubbing when they saw my friends and I in the bathroom. It was cute to hear about their adventures in Asia so far and reminded me a little bit of studying abroad when I was in college, but their reactions to everything also made me realize how comfy I've gotten here. And I hope they took our advice and didn't head towards the sleezy clubs other poeple had refered them to!