Hello all. So this semester I've been teaching English a little bit... it's quite an interesting experience and I never really anticipated doing it before coming here, but I have come to love it! I have several friends who have private students, and with their guidance I found a service online that matches potential students with potential sensei (teachers). Basically native-English speakers post a small profile on a website and then note the locations in which they are willing to teach. The locations are based on the train system, so students living in one part of the city look for teache [View Full Entry]

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Sashibuti! Long time no see! Well, second semester has been going well in Japan so far. I feel much more immersed in life here... it really feels like a second home in a way. I am living in the same dormitory as last semester (in north eastern Tokyo) and I'm still going to Kanda Gaigo Daigaku (Kanda Foreign Language University). The new kids this semester are great... at first it was hard to adjust to not having my old friends (oh, how I miss the Ayase Ladies of last semeseter), but everyone this time around is also really fun. Re-entry to [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, Today I move out of the dorms and into a hostel with Jenny and Annie from the States. I have to admit that this semester has been incredible and I'm not sure if I can comprehend it being over. The past week and a half has been an interesting mix of goodbye's and traveling. It was insanely difficult to say goodbye to the Ayase ladies and for awhile it was so lonely to be the only one left in the dorm. We grew so close over the four months of living here in Tokyo and it seemed unnatural and [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday afternoon/evening I went to Odaiba with Carrie and Zvi and we later met Becca, Tiana, and Katherine there. Odaiba is a very commercial and entertainment district that was built within the last thirty years or so. The area is built entirely on reclaimed land which is pretty amazing... it looks incredibly futuristic. There is infrastructure (highways, monorail tracks, etc. etc.) winding in and out of the enromous skyrise buildings, there are buildings that look as though they belong in outerspace or something. It is really quite incredible and almost inhuman. We took the monorail [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, It's been awhile since I've updated with a new article, but I've had a super good week and I think I should share it. I think that I have learned to appreciate Tokyo as a city now, rather than being overwhelmed by everything Japan. Over the past three months I have most definitely become acclimated to Tokyo and so it feels like home and things are starting to feel normal. I worry sometimes that I have gotten so used to my routine and my life here that I am forgetting to be a tourist. But this week I did [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, finally getting around to updating more about Nagano! I can hardly believe that it's been two weeks since we've been there! I am super homesick, but the days are certainly flying by! Ok, so I mixed up the days last time I wrote about Nagano, it was actually the second day that we went to the Zenkoji Temple and made soba noodles. Anyway, on the second day of the trip we did lots of other stuff. After lunch (making soba noodles), we went to this Ninja Museum. At first everyone on the trip thought that it was going to [View Full Entry]

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So as preparation for my midterm this week, and also to inform you guys on some Japanese history, I've decided to write a little summary of the Edo-period history, the Edo-period architecture & urban planning schemes, and even some history about the "opening" of Japan to the rest of the world in the seventeenth century. This entry might be a little more boring, but hopefully I can supplment the more textbooky stuff with some photos and stories about what we've seen first hand. I will also try to write about some contemporary social organization of the Japanese workplace as many of [View Full Entry]

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Hey all, sorry to not have updated in forever! So much to say. I just got back from a trip to Nagano with the entire IES group last night, and I have millions of pictures and exciting stories, so I think that before I backtrack and update I'll write about this past vacation. It really was a vacation, we went into the country, did tons of country things, and really just relaxed for four days. It was amazing to be out of the city, I never realized how tiring living in Tokyo can be. I think that everyone had an amazing [View Full Entry]

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Alright, this entry is about a big dinner with all of the IES studenst in Ginza and then another trip to Ginza when we saw Kabuki theater (seperate from the dinner outing). It is a bit dated (as we went about three weeks ago), but the place we went to dinner at is super cool, the Kabuki theater was a really different experience and I have lots of pictures for both. So at the end of orientation week, the IES staff took us out to eat in Ginza, one of the biggest sub-centers of the city. Basically this event was to [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so I have a lot to update on, and I hopefully I will be able to do it slowly but surely. There is really just so much that happens every minute of every day that I have no idea how I can adequately keep up. Fortunatley, I've been taking pictures almost everyday (except for those few scary days when I thought I had lost my camera), so when I come home I could give you a pretty good (and infinitely long) slide show of all the experiences in Tokyo. Taking pictures is actually kind of a weird thing... sometimes I [View Full Entry]

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