Tokyo...

By Jessica Tamblyn, Camosun exchange student in Japan

Friday afternoon, after I finished my classes, I caught the school bus to Tokyo! It takes about the

same amount of time, but is only 6 bucks (which is about half the price! Also not having to transfer a bunch of times, and comfortable seats are always a bonus.) Like everything else at the school -including rent- to pay for it you have to put cash into a vending machine, and it poops out a little piece of paper.

 

My friend was also taking the bus, so thankfully I had company on the way to Tokyo, and she showed me where to go to get over to Shibuya, which is where I was meeting my Japanese friend from High School!

With some help of my friend, I was able to get to Shibuya from tokyo station without any difficulties, as soon as I walked out I recognized the street that is in so many photos! It was really, really busy, but mainly exciting!

Afterwards, we did the obvious thing, which was to take purikura! For some reason this one didn’t let us get a digital copy, so taking a picture of it was the best I could do. We went to some bar-type place and ordered various small dishes of food while we caught up on the past how-ever-many years!

On Saturday we went for food, and it took us a while of walking around before we could pick one place. There was just too many options!! I was kind of missing Canadian food, so we went for burgers at a small place named Whoopi goldburger.

I ordered the Kevin Bacon burger :)

After that we walked all around, looking at a ton of stores and malls, making our way towards Harajuku. Unfortunately it was raining, so we pretty much stayed indoors, and I didn’t get to see much of Harajuku before it was time to catch my train home. I will go again though for sure! A lot of the stores were really expensive (I really shouldn’t be surprised…) and I didn’t really find something that I wanted, so I didn’t buy anything this trip.

My late night journey home after taking the train home was kind of creepy since I walked through the school and it was so quiet. (Also I almost stepped on a baby frog!!)

On Sunday, I decided to stay in so that I could write my Japanese essay and catch up on some other homework, since I didn’t do any of it Friday/Saturday. Before my day of homework though, I made pancakes!!

At first I assumed that you just add water, but thankfully I read the box carefully, and noticed the kanji for egg, and looked up the kanji for milk. So they were a delicious success! And this time I was smart enough to have syrup!

I managed to finish all my homework in time, and that was the end of my weekend.

A bit on bikes in Japan

By Jessica Tamblyn, Camosun exchange student at Josai International University

So having a bike here is COMPLETELY different than in Canada. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Helmets are only required for students in elementary and middle school, nobody else ever wears them...which is awesome because I hate wearing them.
2. Bikes have the right of way pretty much always, and we ride on the sidewalk. (Sometimes people will ride on the side of the road, since the sidewalk is so busy)
3. 
   Driving and biking is on the left hand side of the road. (which is opposite from Canada and I still struggle with what side I need to be on from time to time.)
4. People on bikes are not legally allowed to use their cellphones while riding, but cars can.
5. You cannot drink (alcohol) and bike.
6. It is required to have a bike light at night (I guess that's the same)
7. When you purchase a bicycle in Japan, you must pay an extra 5 dollars for insurance. Doing this requires giving them all your information, so that if you get hit while on a bike, you would be insured. Or if your bike gets stolen, you could go to the police and they would report it. (So if a policeman were to pull you over, they check your bike licence number and your name, if it doesn’t match then you most likely stole the bike.)
8. It is illegal to have someone ride on the back “seat” of your bike, the bars at the back are meant for carrying boxes.
9. Bikes here have keys to lock he bike, rather than a bike lock. The lock tightens around the wheel. Maybe I’ll take a picture or video of it later. 

We went to Cainz and looked for the cheapest possible bike, which was ¥8,900 or about $90. This was the basic grey one with the black basket that every foreigner that we saw with a bike so far had. (Naturally, since its the cheapest option) We went to the shop worker and asked him for the cheap bike. He then said a bunch of words in Japanese and pointed at two different bikes. I was kind of confused and pointed to the cheap grey one outside, so we went out there and he proceeded to explain that the bike doesn’t have gears, the light did not have a motion/sunlight sensor, etc. He then took us inside and showed us the cream/white bikes. The original sign on it said ¥19,800 but he said it was only ¥9,800 (he said this by repeating the price and also covering up the 1 with his finger). Okay, so these bikes were much better, and looked awesome, for only about $10 more! Renato got the white one and I got the cream one, we filled out our paperwork and headed home.

Welcome to Josai International University!

Excerpts from Jessica Tamblyn, exchange student

Day 1

 The night we arrived they told us that we had a welcoming ceremony, which we had to wear formal clothing for. I hardly brought fancy clothes, but I guess I did alright by wearing a skirt/semi fancy top. When we got there though, all of the students were wearing SUITS, it was crazy fancy!! I definitely felt out of place, but luckily there were more foreigners that weren’t too crazy fancy, so it wasn’t so bad. The opening ceremony was basically like a school assembly, but I think it was only for exchange students? All the important school staff were there, like the president and the chancellor, they spoke all in Japanese, so naturally I didn’t understand much of what was happening. OH! And every time someone got up to speak (every time, doesn’t matter how important the person was), everyone in the audience had to stand up, wait for them to get to the podium, and then bow, then we were able to sit down, then when they were done we had to stand up and bow again. (I think all that moving around was the only thing that kept me awake at that point, actually.)

After the president, the chancellor, and some other people (teachers, maybe?) spoke, visitors from various embassies gave their speeches, some short and others a bit long. They were half in English though, which was a relief to hear after having everything thus far spoken in Japanese. There was someone from Poland, Norway, and somewhere else... No Canada or America though. The guy who spoke (he was from Poland I believe) was very inspiring!! He went off about how the true meaning of がんばって (ganbatte/goodluck) was work hard, try your best and most importantly, persevere. I should’ve recorded it, it was actually pretty a good speech.

Immediately after the ceremony we walked out, and there was a pathway of people clapping and cheering as we walked out. I don’t know how to explain it really, like two rows of people, and we walked in between them as they faced us. Anyways, it felt pretty cool, but weird at the same time. We then headed over to the English tea room. In here we had to find the table that had our country’s name on it, ours was combined with a lot of other countries since there was only 3 Canadians at our school. Here I met the 3rd student from Camosun that came to Josai as well! He had already been in Japan for I think a week by that point? Then we started to eat and mingle with people, I met a Californian girl named Kelsey who then introduced us to a few more people.

One of them when they found out that I was from Camosun College told me that I need to introduce myself to the chancellor. I already realized during the assembly how important this lady was, and was quite nervous to meet her because I didn’t want to offend her in any way. So, apparently Camosun is some super famous school according to Josai, which I was really surprised by!! As soon as we went to talk to her, instantly 4-5 photographers were taking photos of us with her.