Um, no thanks. I'll go check out one of the museums.
My facebook News-Feed has been bombarded with those "25 Random Things About me" notes. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon there, I'm bringing the "25 Things" list here and making it specifically about my trip to Japan last summer. (I'm in a nostalgic mood. Forgive me.)
So, here are my 25 random things:
1) For someone who likes walking, like me, Japan is perfect. Unlike some places *cough* Europe *cough*, pedestrians get more respect.
2) Public baths with strangers are not as scary as you'd think, even when you've barely been in the country for 5 hours and met some of your classmates only 36 hours before. I made my first Japanese friend in one of these baths, and it's a great place for conversation.
3) Jidouhanbaiki (vending machines) really ARE everywhere. I think they're one of the most useful inventions ever created, especially when you've just trekked the Yama no Be no Michi hiking trail in Tenri and need some ice cream or water.
4) I will never forget our "extracurricular" trip to sing karaoke with our professor for our culture class. Emily has a video of our final performance: 15 American students belting Elton John's "Rocket Man." A must-see. (I think there's a video of Emily and me singing Shania Twain, too...) The next time I go karaoke-ing, I might be brave enough to sing one of my many J-pop songs. KAT-TUN? Ai Otsuka? Yuna Ito? Teppei Koike? Who knows?
5) I'm a school nerd. I STILL enjoy looking up other colleges and touring their campuses, even when I have one to call my own. It shouldn't be a surprise that during my last night in Tokyo, some friends and I wandered around Tokyo University's campus. Coolest thing ever? Their mailboxes. Leave it to the Japanese equivalent of Harvard to have the best mailboxes.
6) If you can, wake up early and watch the sunrise over your city on your balcony. I did this for all two weeks in Tenri (though not on the balcony, because that would have disturbed my two roomies). Don't worry about sleep schedules. You're suddenly 14 hours ahead - watching the sunrise won't hurt you any.
7) Seeing a billboard in Kyoto with one of your favorite recording artists on it turns you into a complete fangirl.
8) No matter how many Japanese baseball teams I end up following, the Hiroshima Carp will be my first baseball love. I still have a #1 Maeda hand fan from my first game.
9) Speaking of Hiroshima, the Memorial Peace Park and A-Bomb Museum were breathtaking in the saddest way. I didn't cry until we left Fukuromachi Elementary School, where children had seen the planes carrying the bomb and began waving at them in joy, moments before their city was destroyed...
10) Spending a day with the Tenri University English majors was probably my best memory yet. Hanging out with my language partner Fukuda and his friend (I thought his name was Yuki?), playing shiritori (similar to the game where you have to start the next word with the last letter/syllable of the previous person's word) in both languages, walking in the rain to get dinner together, eating okonomiyaki for the first time, pushing the Ramune bottle's marble thing too hard and spraying my new friends, discussing our favorite Hikaru Utada songs, listening as the older lady running the okonomiyaki shop ranted in Japanese about what MacArthur did to Japan...
11) Teaching the Tenri Elementary School first-graders English ("Cake! Cookie! Bread!") and then getting our butts beaten by how athletic those young'uns were. It was disappointing when they yelled at me to climb up the fireman's pole after them and I had to use the steps to get to the slide.
12) I'm the ideal shoe size here in the U.S., but in Japan, I'm a large. And that goes for most clothes, too. *sigh* It made shopping in Shibuya slightly difficult.
13) I realized how much I LOVE traveling alone when I had to commute to classes by myself for a week in Nara. I got on my first train, pulled out my iPod and newest volume of Tsubasa (in Japanese), and suddenly I felt like a typical Japanese student.
14) If you love feeding fuzzy animals, go to Nara Park and feed the shika (deer). They are the cutest animals I've ever seen (outside of my dogs, of course).
15) This one's an anecdote. One of my classmates, who is bigger-boned than the typical Japanese girl, was standing with the rest of us near Nara Park when a local elementary school class walked by. We all said "Konnichiwa" in answer to their "Hi! How are you?" One girl then came forward, placed her hands on my classmate's belly and asked, "Aka-chan?" She had asked my friend if she was pregnant.
16) I love it when people mistake me for a Japanese girl. The stewardess on the flight over asked me a couple questions in Japanese, and when I looked up at her, she began to apologize in English. I think my blue eyes tipped her off that I wasn't Japanese. Either that or my NAKAMA Vol. 2 Japanese textbook and kanji worksheets in front of me.
17) Japanese yukata are meant to be incredibly long so that you can wrap the fabric up around your waist. Keep that in mind when you buy one so you don't have to buy two because one's too short - like I did.
18) The best place to buy souvenirs for extended family is at a 100-yen shop (similar to a dollar store here). For example, I bought my mom charms from Shinto shrines and my dad baseball memorabilia from the Tokyo Dome, but if a great-aunt who never talks to you starts to just because she wants something from Japan, then buy something cheap that looks stereotypically Japanese. I mean, it IS from Japan, and you can save your money for really nice souvenirs for people closer to you. :)
19) In Nara, I fit through Buddha's nostril, so I'm guaranteed longevity. Sometimes being petite has its advantages.
20) Kabuki (traditional type of stage theatre) is spoken in very archaeic, formal Japanese, much like Shakespeare's English is to us today. Even my native Japanese professor had to listen to an alternate version of the play to understand it.
21) Small family-owned restaurants and bars are possibly one of my favorite places. Few tourists take advantage of the authenticity and opportunity to have a real Japanese conversation. We went to the same Tenri yakitoriya, a locally owned restaurant that sells grilled chicken, among other things, for almost two weeks. At the end, we received free gifts, lots of great food, time to play with the shop owner's 1-year-old son Haruto (who liked dipping his pudgy baby fingers in customers' beer), and the chance to leave a lasting mark by writing our names (in English and katakana) on the store's walls in its upstairs room. No, seriously.
22) Gion, the old geisha district in Kyoto, is gorgeous. Buy a yukata (summer kimono) for about 50+ dollars, take the train all dressed up and walk through Gion. The locals will applaud your effort to enjoy old traditions; many older Japanese women and men passed by Emily and me and generously expressed their compliments. Just make sure you put your yukata on correctly. If you wrap the wrong side around the other, you're wearing it in the style found on the deceased at funerals.
23) Don't fall asleep on trains unless you want Japanese teenagers to take pictures with you with their camera phones while you're unconscious. Yes, this happened, and my American classmates took pictures of the Japanese students taking pictures of me.
24) For our free day in Tokyo, my friends and I stayed out late in Shinjuku and Shibuya (see #25) and then slept for 3 hours in a hotel before going to the world-famous Tsukiji fish market. I don't care how much fish guts freak you out; this place was amazing. (Especially because we went to see the tuna auctions just months after Japan issued regulations keeping tourists away from the market during the mornings, and we ended up being the only foreigners there. We didn't know, and they didn't kick us out. I'd recommend checking first, though.)
25) Go play in Tokyo's many districts. Granted, have a bunch of people with you for safety, but it's an amazing time when you're crossing the famous intersection at Shibuya or playing at one of many pachinko-type parlors in Shinjuku while gazing in awe at how neon the lights really are or how high girls' heels are. I mean, you're in Tokyo of all places - why would you call it a night at 10 p.m.?
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