Voyage Junkie

Matt here. This is my first post under this name, so I'll try to make it a good one. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu! On Friday (2/18) I secured a rare day off work to head up to Yokohama and take an entrance exam for the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies. If I get in, I'll leave with full fluency (level 1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test certification), as well as a sure spot in a PhD program. I'll hear in a month how I did. So that's the business part of the post out of the way. I took the shinkansen up from Nagoya again, and I planned to study the whole way. However, when the sweet college student next to me nearly spilled the opera score she was preparing into my lap, we struck up a conversation and I wound up practicing my Japanese for a couple hours the old-fashioned way: by talking with a native. I felt pretty well prepared after that. From Shin-Yokohama station I took a couple different lines down to Minatomirai, Yokohama Harbor, w...

We had a pretty lazy last day in Yokohama, because the weather suddenly turned bone-chillingly cold, and because we had to get up at 5am the next morning to make it home. We did, however, brave the cold for a walk to a yakiniku and shabushabu restaurant. Vegetarians be warned, this is unsafe territory! Yakiniku is fried or grilled meat, and shabushabu (literally "swish, swish") is the sound effect of thinly cut strips of meat being swished in a bowl of broth. We ate mostly yakiniku . To the left, I am turning some meat on the little grill at our table. It's a ceramic or earthen bowl ( shichirin ) with wood charcoal in it, and the little metal plate on top gets continuously replaced as it dirties. The metal tube above it is for ventilation. For those who can eat wheat, there are delicious soy, miso, and garlic sauces to add post-grilling. I just put kimchi and garlic paste on mine, which I think is equally delicious. The funniest part of dinner must ha...

We met Nik's girlfriend, Megumi, for an amazing lunch on the way to Roppongi Hills, where we met up with her friend Misa. Roppongi Hills is an incredibly upscale shopping district in Tokyo, even more upscale than the Ginza. I couldn't afford to look at the stores. We passed by a German-influenced illumination display, honoring 150 years of German-Japanese friendship. It was really beautiful and seemed traditional (I'm going to run it by my German friend to test its authenticity).  In the first two pictures you can see Japanese people chowing down on dark lager and brats, as well as a lovely carved statue with figurines and candles that constantly turned on a podium. Misa was hungry so we got her a lunch snack, and when Matt saw a bagel place he succumbed to his Jewishness. Pictured is his bagel with cream cheese and lox, which he ate in the face of Christmas with Nik. Roppongi Hills also has many beautiful sculptures, including a giant spider of which I didn'...

Today we went to the big city! It was truly amazing and awe-inspiring, for both historical sights and incredible numbers of people. First up: Asakusa, where we visited the Senso-ji . Also known as the Asakusa Kannon Temple, it was completed in 645, making it seriously old. To the right is the main gate. There are two statues in built into the sides of the gate, if you look closely. One is a Thunder God, named Raijin , and one is a Wind God, named Fuujin . Those have been rebuilt time and again since the gate was first created, due to fires and other such disasters. I liked the bright color palette of this temple: everything is red, gold, and black. Matt and I decided to be super-touristy, since everyone was doing it. Why not? So we buckled in for a Buddhist experience. First, the purification process: 1. Dip water with the ladle (you can see me doing that in the first picture) 2. Pour water over the left hand, then the right, pour out the extra water and turn th...

I'll let my intelligent readers figure this one out.

Today we packed up and went to some old, famous areas near Yokohama. First up: Enoshima, an island covered in shrines, laid in Sagami Bay between the Miura and Izu peninsulas, complete with a view of Mt. Fuji. I felt like I took off from Tokyo and landed in California, complete with Billabong stores and surfers cavorting everywhere. Bear in mind that on December 23rd, the day was sunny and beyond warm. Above: Enoshima station, traditionally modeled.   To the  is Mt. Fuji, with some of the surfers in the foreground. Surfers covered the waters for as far as I could see, palm trees caught the breeze and large hawks soared in the skies. Tourism was alive and well in the coastal community, and everyone seemed prosperous and happy.  The only problem with this island paradise? Their  meibutsu , or famous product, is  shirasu , a tiny fish. It is eaten whole in and on everything. Here, Nik and I pose in front of the sea. In the washed-out background is Mt...