5th Week

Barbeque Week!!

I think this week will be rather short post because not much happened in the 5th week beyond love hotels and the Saturday Barbeque that my host family took me to. Jesus, Im actually writing about love hotels. Thank God nobody actually reads this thing. Lol. The post about love hotel will be in detail either in the next post or the last post of the blog of this summer. Gotta keep it on the down low dawg! Wink. ..

About the BBQ, it was sooooo delicious!! I left promptly at 9AM. Gabe and Eunbi said they were coming as well but they went out the night before, so of course they canceled. The ride took about 90 minutes in total.

After I got there, I was welcomed with a tour of my host mom's friend from middle school probably like 60 years ago- Maeda-san. He's this hilarious fella who is supposedly a company president but spends most of his time baking cakes and cookies.
Maeda hollers me up and shows me the goods. Woooo, it was three boxes of sliced beef and lamb. Ridic!!

I should've taken pictures of the beef and the house, but as always, I forgot my camera at home. Ok, fast forward to the part where one would actually eat the beef instead of talk about it, which is what my host mom did for like half an hour. Dannnnng. It's the best sliced up beef that I had since arriving at this rather racquety ranch house. but of course its the best beef right? Cuz i ate nothing else at this place. wink aggaaainn..

I was force fed basically 80% of the beef because my host mom was nice enough to invite Gabe and found out that the dude is going to be eating machine. Maeda prepared accordingly with lots of beef to satisfy everybody's appetite, but cuz those two did not show up, I basically had to eat everything. Not saying that I am complaining, but I ate until I was about to puke. Hold that thought, I did puke, but I went back to eating. Wink 3rd time...

After eating the beef, I went inside to avoid the awkwardness of trying to continue conversation, get misunderstood, reply lukewarmly, and then my host mom ends with a huge remark exclamation point that has nothing to do with anything. Love ya Mom!

I took about a half hour nap and then told everybody that I would be heading back.



Haha, the post is obviously a joke. I really do like my host family and Maeda-san. He was nice enough to host me at his place, invite me to Tsukiji (which took place today! Tuesday July 26. I attached a few pictures below). My life in Tokyo so far has been great. It's just that I got bored giving a straightforward account of everything, and I want to spice things up a little. Wink.....

4th week

I visited the Japanese Sword Museum with Josh, Haruka, and Chiharu on July 8th. It took us a while to find the place, but the experience was worth the wait. Even though the museum was quite small, the collection included a mishmash of "Katanas", or "刀”。 There was a Katana specifically used for "seppuku", which means to commit suicide by disembowelment. I could swear that I saw tiny strings of blood on the sword. Maybe the sword's last job wasn't too long ago...



We then tried to visit the NTT museum and Tokyo Opera museum in the Hatsudai station building, but to our disappointment, those two museums were closed for reconstruction. This would be the first of my three experiences to find museums closed for visitors; I now somewhat regret my decision to buy the Grutt Passbook. The Passbook, for a price of 2000 yen, allows me to enter most museums in Tokyo for free or at a discount. I now have to visit more museums to make my purchase worthy, but I guess in the end that's a good thing.

It did end up being a good thing because I decided to visit more museums with Drisana the next week. We went to the Tokyo station area and perused antiques in the Tokyo Film Museum/Contemporary Arts museum. Most of the items in the film museum were esoteric to me, and so I did not linger in the exhibition hall too much. One thing of interest, however, is the remnants of the Rashomon movie. I actually downloaded the movie before but neglected to watch it. Drisana explained its plot to me, and I found it fascinating. It was about a Japanese woman who intentionally created a love triangle by prodding her husband, a samurai, and a philanderer, who was originally a ninja. The two men ended up dead and imprisoned, but in the process the woman was able to concoct a lengthy affair that made something out of nothing. The museum had the film's original promotional poster.

Here is a picture from the museum tour.



I never liked museums when I was a kid, but now I find them stimulating. I guess this is a paradigm of an "acquired taste." Fortunately, I still do not regret not being an Art Major in college.

Moving on to the past week. Nothing happened during the week, but fast forward to Friday, I did speed dating, clubbed a little bit, went to my good friend Jin Li's house in Komagome, and ended the 3-day weekend with a BBQ by the Tamagawa river. The content of my weekend activities was not as PG as the weekdays, but I had soooo much fun, especially at the BBQ (Monday afternoon). Drisana brought her good friend Meghan from Kyoto over to the BBQ. We ate some sumptuous chicken and Japanese Yakisoba. The group mingled very well I thought. I even met some students from Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, a college located in Shibuya.

Update on the past couple of weeks on Tokyo.

Weekend: July 2-3
I went on a weekend trip with my family to the Nagano prefecture. So sad I didn't take my camera! Oh well, my host Mom took some pictures for me, and here they are.





We went on the trip with a group of friends that my host Mom knew from middle school. When my host mom explained it to me at first, I was perplexed. Apparently, they have kept in touch for over fifty years and go on trips as a group twice or three times per month. And they knew each other from a class in 6th grade, and they have never taken a class together in high school, college, etc... If anyone asked me how my middle school buddies are doing, where they are, I would have no idea.

We visited Zenkouji, Togakuji, and Obuse. The main course of the visit was Togakuji, a temple with over 1000 years of history. We stayed at a hotel attached to the temple, known as Gokui, a building also with around 1000 years of history. The entire weekend was luxurious. Dinner was served with 10 courses including fish (obviously), various types of sobas (Japanese style noodle), miso soup, shrimps, crabs, etc... Sumptuous meals throughout the trip.

The shrines were somewhat interesting. The reason I said that is I have visited many temples around Tokyo and Kyoto, and as for the ones I visited last weekend, they were not unique beyond the fact that they were very very old. The surroundings and courses of the shrines are also similar. Quite a little hike to the top, but not too difficult. One thing to mention though, is that the Cedars around the shrine were all as old as the temple. That made quite a sublime sight.




Skip to Wednesday this week. I visited the Yasukuni shrine with Drisana, Josh, and Ruth. This is the same controversial shrine in the center of Tokyo that draws the ire of Chinese and Korean politicians every year when the Prime Minister of Japan visits to honor dead Japanese soldiers, many of whom were the same war criminals tried by the WWII War Tribunal.

The names of the soldiers were engraved on light bulbs around the shrine. It was in all... interesting. But I can't help but say that I felt a twinge of nationalism. For the Americans reading this post, remember that this shrine is erected by the same ultra right-wing Japanese politicians who argue that Japan was actually forced by the US to attack Pearl Harbor because the US cut off Japan's power supplies... Yea, ok. Below are some more pictures from the shrine.