Host mom brought back this massive apple pie from Costco, yes Costco is here too. We warmed it up and on my recommendation ate it with vanilla ice cream. It had lot of cinnamon in the filling and butter in the crust. It was my first western food in a very long time and really hit the spot on a day where I was thinking a lot about back home. I was extra-frustrated after class with my Japanese language today and was feeling down and tired of Japanese isolation. First time I really wanted to go back and see home for [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday I went to Yokohama to meet Asako, the Waseda student who was at Lafayette two years ago and Sam, the Lafayette student who was at Waseda last year and never went back. Japan was that good to him. He had an internship lined up with Morgan Stanley over here but they canceled on him. He is going back to Lafayette in the Spring to finish up 2 courses and graduate. While I was in Yokohama I got some good advice from him about how to make the most of your time in Japan...he certainly did. I need to make sure [View Full Entry]

---

---

Haven't posted in a while. Been busy here with joining a few extra-curriculars and banging my head against this wall of language day in and day out. It's been a month now and I know I made the right call coming here. It's been a month now....two more to go before I'm supposed to hit some magical threshold where Japanese is no longer a fight. It's tiring when communicating is work rather than an automatic process. Also trying to find a suitable electronic dictionary (a necessity) is near impossible. There are a billion kinds but all cater to Japanese people learning [View Full Entry]

---

---

My host father is a Yomiyuri Giants fanatic. Every night he watches them religiously and I've been joining him because the Yankees haven't been in an exciting race for a month and are now sitting on a beach and playing golf. The Giants on the other hand are .5 game behind the Hanshin Tigers for a playoff spot with four games to go. Now that's baseball. We went to the game today and it was great. 3-0 win by the Giants with a little tension in the end. All runs were scored via the home run. The closer, a fool name [View Full Entry]

---

---

Took a ride to Akihabara. It's the famous electronics district of Tokyo that spring up Post-WWII as an area where entrepreneurs began selling old radio parts to try to scratch out a living when Japan was bombed into a parking lot. Now, its electronics to the nth degree. Computers, laptops of every size, cell phones, accessories, rice cookers, wires, transistors, screens, electronic tools, lightbulbs, you name it its there. Rows and rows of cramped store fronts that expanded vertically rather than horizontally. Each one was lit up in neon blasting techno music. I bought a 7 dollar iPod to [View Full Entry]

---

---

First week of classes is almost over. I think I'm in for a good time. SILS is really two very distinct halves, Intensive Japanese and everything else. The Japanese classes are very intimidating, They are taught all in Japanese, 9 hours a week plus an 1:30 hour elective that I chose to take. At this point I feel a little over my head but I'm supposed to. Sometime recently I've stopped thinking of Japanese as a class and rather thinking of it as goal. It doesn't matter if I get owned by the class, as long as I learn the language. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Went on a day trip to Hakone with the host family. Hakone is famous for its volcanic hot springs and is a big tourist attraction in the summer and fall because of its views of its mountains and hills. On good days, Mt. Fuji is also visible. It was pretty cloudy today and at first it looked like I was going to be shut out again of seeing the big famous mountain (first time was Mt. McKinley), but as we were coming down from one volcanic mountain the sun came out and burned off enough of the clouds to catch a [View Full Entry]

---

---

The international community center at Waseda took 20 students to Kamakura, about an hour and a half out of Tokyo. I was fortunate enough to get in. The trip was absolutely wonderful. More than half of the students were Japanese so I got to embarrass myself for the whole day. Practice is starting to pay off though, just by talking as much as I can and reading every street sign, advertisement, and menu I'm seeing and hearing things coming out of the woodwork. We saw the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, the most important shinto shrine in the area, the Hase-dera, a complex of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day off for everyone today...national holiday celebrating the equinox. The Japanese have lots of national holidays. I think there are about 5 random days off at Waseda. Miraikan is the "Future Museum" The whole family went. Got to see all kinds of fancy Japanese robots and the most bizarre skyline ever. Most of it was in Japanese so I got to practice a ton of reading. We ate lunch over there, details on my food blog. Afterwards we went to a bizzare resort/spa/bath. It was like a carnival plus relaxation, another crazy blend of Japanese culture. Upstairs were the hot baths, [View Full Entry]

---

---

Very nice opening ceremony. I don't know why it was one week before classes started. There are about 300 students in this year's SILS class, half of which are the 1 year study abroad students. The dean spoke to us about stuff that dean talk about. Oddly enough he is a very tall British man from Cambridge. Because of that he said nothing using many many words. The best part was the Wase-Oke, short for Waseda Symphony Orchestra. There were about 40 of them at the ceremony playing at the beginning and end. In total, there are 300 members. I want [View Full Entry]

---

---