Demonstrations, Shrines and Art

I went to Omotesando today. Turns out it was some kind of protest going on there today which I randomly stumbled upon. Protests in Japan are weird. They had a police escort in front of them, had a car with a megaphone shouting something and flyers were handed out. Seriously the most peaceful anti-current government protest I've ever seen.


The main reason I went to Omotesando however was to see the Meiji Shrine. It's one of the most visited shrines in Tokyo, being almost in the middle of Tokyo, and having the name of Emperor Meiji. A fun thing I noticed was that on the Ema some Polish person wrote their wish (to find a relationship partner) in Polish and added their phone number. Way to believe in the shrine's power, haha.

 Also spotted a wedding, and apparently the western style weddings are really popular here, but they keep the old traditional style somewhat in there by having the mothers of the newlyweds in kimonos.

Lastly, went to a Meiji Era art gallery, which was really cool as I learned some more about the history of Japan. I mean, I never knew the Empress of Japan wore a classic English Victorian dress at one point. Seeing art of that was amazing.

When it comes to studies... Exams the next two weeks, so I'll probably make a post about that later...

Kyoto, Roppongi and anime figures

 Summer vacation is about over, school starts on Monday. It has been an eventful summer vacation though!

To start off I went with a classmate to a mixing party in Roppongi, where the objective for the party planners were to have foreigners and Japanese people around the same age meet. Lot of fun, and we ended up walking back to Shinjuku afterwards, drunk, haha.

 Also took a trip to Kyoto, rented some bicycles and just went all over. Kyoto really is a beautiful city with a lot of temples and shrines, but it still looks like a modern city near the center. Next time I think more on the outskirts of the city could be better.

 Also saw a collection display of anime figures in celebration of Kyoto station's 50th anniversary. Sadly wasn't allowed to take pictures but I did buy some memorabilia. Bought a Solid Snake (MGS1) figure, a small Yotsuba figure (from "Yotsubato!", a manga from the creator of Azumanga Daioh) and lastly Black Hanekawa from Bakemonogatari/Nekomonogatari (pictured).

Speaking of anime, I recently started Sword Art Online 2. The beginning of the series was a bit stupid but it has gotten quite good after episode 6. (I had been told this and wanted to know for sure, otherwise I would probably have dropped it earlier). I may make a post about this separately.

This Sunday is the Awaodori, so I'm going to catch that event and get some pictures. More pictures of the Kyoto trip is at my tumblr.

Summer Vacation

Summer vacation starts tomorrow and I had my mid-terms earlier this week. I'd like to think that I did pretty well with a 95% in kanji and 85% in grammar. Also got quite a bit of homework to do during the break, so I'm not gonna be bored, haha.

I went to the Sumida Firework Festival that was held not too long ago. There was a LOT of people there. But seeing the fireworks they had, and that it is only held once a year, I can understand why.

I got some plans for the holiday, but how much of it that will actually will happen remains to see. I'm not the best at following my own plans...

Anyway, more firework related goodness can be found in my tumblr and youtube channel.

Festival Fantasy

Last week I did go to the festival that I mentioned last week. Along with half of Tokyo. The place was seriously crowded, but it was still a lot of fun! Saw the decorations, tried some of the food from the food stands and saw the lanterns float on the water down-river.

The decorations for the festivals are surprisingly elaborate for the few days they stay up, which surprised me. It's really great! The food at the stalls are also really good, but a bit more expensive than food you would find at other places.

I also went to the Square Enix offices and their shop nearby my school. I ended up buying a small Tonberry plushie as well. Inside the store they had a lot of stuff like soundtracks, games, plushies, food (as it was like a café in a small portion of it) and figures. It's been a pretty good week, and if you want to see even more of the pictures you can find them on my tumblr.

Trying to be a tourist

So I went to Ueno and Asakusa today, in a weak attempt to be a bit more like a tourist since I am in Japan on a limited time after all. The big shrine in Asakusa looks great around 7 in the evening, but most of the shops there close at 6.

It's a veery big shrine, lots of stores. Definitely worth the trip. Ueno on the other hand didn't have too much to offer today, as the supposed festival there hadn't started yet...

Other than that, there is a festival I'm going to tomorrow. If it's good I might post something about that tomorrow. Also, the following xkcd comic strip fits me surprisingly well... Well, the French and blog part anyhow.

Level up!

Level 2 classes have started and I can honestly say that they want us to step up our game when it comes to learning Japanese. From now on, all the class lessons are in just Japanese, the amount of kanji we had weekly before is now daily, and we are now also gonna have a class weekly on Japanese old-style culture. Guess the real schoolwork starts here.

I've also discovered why the karaoke places are really popular here. It's not crazy expensive and you can get as much as you want to drink included in the price. The only downside us that non-alcoholic drinks are self-service.

Anyway, that's it for this post I suppose. Nothing too special going on in this past week.

Delayed Status Update

Been a while since the previous blog post... Again. I've been bad at keeping this blog up to date and as an apology I've added some photos.

Been really bust lately, with my end of level 1 exams (last one on Monday, with feedback on Wednesday). Luckily it's "only" 133 Kanji for level 1 to know, and a whole lot of grammar. (；´Д｀)

I've gone ahead and gotten myself a Japanese phone, which makes blogging a whole lot easier than it was on the iPad. I also recently went to the Okinawa Music Festival in Ueno with a friend. Lots of fun and very catchy music.

I've gotten a lot of impressions and started to settle in a bit more here in Tokyo, so I'm planning on doing a post about the more different aspects of Japan and things I would've liked to know earlier, instead of when I had arrived in Japan.

Anyway, this was just supposed to be a short post letting you all know that I'm still alive and blogging! (The pictures are hopefully a nice bonus). Until next time! (≧∇≦)b