Author: Christopher Wink

Kichijoji Omatsuri

(SEE VIDEO FROM THE KICHIJOJI OMATSURI IN EPISODE FIVE)

If you ever travel anywhere, from a neighboring county to a faraway country, will you find yourself a native? Put down your AAA Travel Guide and ask a local where to go, where to eat, what to do.

Thank you, Kyle Cleveland, Professor of Sociology at Temple University-Japan, for being just that for me. An American who woke up and found himself a longtime resident of Tokyo and avid researcher into Japanese culture, he has been instrumental in guiding my travel, experiences and decisions here in Japan.

It was he who directed me to Kichijoji Sunday morning. One of Tokyo’s most desirable suburbs, Sunday was the conclusion of the district’s annual Fall omatsuri, festival. There, one of Cleveland’s former bilingual students greeted me at the train station, poised to be my very patient tour guide for the day.

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Yokohama

(SEE VIDEO FROM MY TRIP TO YOKOHAMA IN EPISODE FIVE)

Excuse me Yokohama Tourism Board. I was less than enthused with my time in Yokohama.

As bad travel tends to go, I followed some bad advice and made some poor decisions. My first stop was in Shin-Yokohama, home to two sights, the 70,000 seat Nissan Stadium and my destination, the Ramen Noodle Museum. Well, if you dream of the thought that someday you might walk through those turnstiles into 10,000 square feet of noodle soup paradise, I hate to disappoint you.

It sucked.

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Learning Tokyo

Let me preface by saying I have been on this island for less than ten days.

That being said, I think I am beginning to get a feel for Tokyo. The best way I know how to evaluate that is to go right ahead and make wild, uneducated generalizations about this huge city, having only seen perhaps as much as one hundredth of it.

It is clean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard this. No, but really, Japan is clean. Upon entry in my apartment I was handed a friendly, non-threatening ten pages on garbage disposal here in the city. They tell me you have your bottles, plastic and otherwise, cardboard and larger, non-biodegradable items, and then you have food waste and burnables, paper and the like that can be safely burned for energy. There are two pick-ups weekly for each of the three categories.

I find myself taking pictures when I see graffiti and taking notice when I see trash on the street or gum in a urinal.

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Settling In

I am settling in. Initially the changes are small. I had some trouble with time: a radio alarm clock that I found was moving too slowly because of a problem with wattage and a windup clock that wouldn’t wind. They have a different Google here and it’s tougher to compare prices in supermarkets.

Most signs use Kanji symbols, others spell words out with the Japanese alphabet of Hiragana or the loan words of Katakana. I speak some scattered Japanese phrases, however I cannot write and I cannot read the language. I believe that makes me illiterate in this country, and my use of the currency a dangerous one to my economic survival. That survival is already tenuous because of this expensive city that doesn’t treat our American currency very kindly.

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Classes

Classes have begun. It’s a funny thing about studying abroad; classes are often a condition. A tough aspect of studying abroad is overcoming that vacation feeling you might have towards your travel and find balance enough to get a grade or too.

I am actually studying at Temple University-Japan, a satellite campus of my Philadelphia home university. Here in Tokyo, it is the largest and oldest American university in the city. In classes English is required. I suppose that’s good for me. (Nihongo sukoshi wakarimasu – I speak very little Japanese.)

Though most of the students are Japanese (with populations from nearby South Korea and China and other East Asian countries) and have been schooled in English for years, I am still left in awe at those around me who voice opinions in a second language, the type of political and philosophical thought that many native speakers struggle to reign in under their language control.

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Mount Fuji: Part 3 of 3

SEE EPISODE THREE

Read about my Fuji experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

In the dark, the terrain was uneven and a bit rocky for the beginning of one of the more trafficked nature trails in the world. Regularly, either my chance at night-hiking was ruined or my idiocy was saved by other groups of hikers with miner’s helmets, headlamps and the occasional flashlight.

My stretches of lone connection and attempts at mystifying my Fuji adventure were shortened increasingly the further I climbed and the faster I went. Moreover, the narrower the path got, the more often I was stuck behind slow-moving hiking groups.

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Mount Fuji: Part 2 of 3

SEE EPISODE THREE

Read about my Fuji experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

To review, I left off last time entering a bus station in the hopes of booking a ticket three hours southwest to climb Japan’s highest peak, the 13,000 foot dormant stratovolcano Mount Fuji.

I went to a ticket booth and after getting a dismissive smile when I asked if the teller spoke English (Eigo ga wakarimasu ka?), I threw at her the only two Japanese words I knew that I felt could help: climb Fuji-san. Then, I added a circling finger, trying to convey that I wanted a round trip ticket. This prompted a flurry of keyboard activity. Moments later I traded 5,200 yen (nearly $45 U.S.) for a piece of paper apparently reserving a seat on a bus departing two hours later.

Continue reading Mount Fuji: Part 2 of 3

Mount Fuji: Part 1 of 3

Read about my Fuji experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

I was in Shibuya: the busy entertainment district of Shibuya-ku, one of the centrally located wards of Tokyo. I had been telling a friend that climbing Mount Fuji had long been a goal of mine when he mentioned the climbing season for Fuji-san was coming to a close. (Stations, ten of which are littered along the Fuji ascending trail, and rangers are only active from July to late August).

Back in the States, I (probably laughingly) consider myself a bit of an outdoor enthusiast, but was without any form of hiking or camping gear. Yet, I knew, there walking alongside a train station in Asia’s busiest city, that that moment was so very likely my only opportunity in my entire life to try to climb Mount Fuji.

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For Starters

Everyone who is in Japan raise your hand. Note: I am typing with one hand.

Clever, I know. I am writing to you in my small – but expensive – two hundred thirty square foot apartment which I share with another here in the quiet residential Meguro-ku ward of Tokyo (one of 23 such municipalities). It has been quite a little adventure already, but let’s get ourselves orientated, no?

In the realm of self-evaluation, I love to consider myself the elder statesman of travel – at least for an independently traveling twenty-year-old. While most of my extended absences from my northwest New Jersey home have been wanderings throughout the continental United States, I spent the summer of 2005 in Ghana, West Africa. That was my first attempt at using education as a façade for international travel. Here in Tokyo I am keeping up that very pretext, though the time before I fall asleep is spent dreaming of travel and language, not books and tests.

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