MatthewMeyer.net

I have to admit I don’t take too many photos. I’m really bad with remembering to bring my camera along with me, and when I do, I hardly ever take photos of people, just scenery. Don’t ask me why… just one of my stupid tendencies. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photos that I took… and if you want to see more then visit Leo’s photo page or Joy’s photo page. They’ve got a lot more than I do, including the places that I forgot to bring my camera.

I did however, manage to bring my sketchbook to as many places as I could, and when I didn’t have it with me at the time, I sketched from photos and from memory at night after doing my homework. I worked quite a bit on the sketchbook after coming home as well.

As with any journey, the return trip is the worst. The whole flight(s) I was checking my little green watch set to Japan time, imagining what I would be doing were I still in Kanazawa, and remembering what it was like to arrive at Eurocentres on that first day of class, not knowing anyone, and having no idea that I was in for the biggest adventure of my life…

The moon looked so beautiful over the Pacific Ocean on the return flight… unfortunately my camera could not capture how pretty the view was

My last day in Japan! :’(

We woke up late in the morning again, and it was a rainy day. Since I had to go from wherever we went to the train and then to the airport, I had to carry my giant, heavy granny-suitcase everywhere I went. :-S That was not fun at all… it was hot, rainy, and Japan is the *least* handicapped-accessible place I’ve ever been to, so there were no ramps or escalators or anything… and since we used the subway so much, I had to carry my heavy suitcase up and down probably 3 miles of stairs alone.

The first thing we did was buy umbrellas… Frances was incredibly helpful the whole time, either holding my umbrella for me, or helping me with my suitcase. We really want to eat, so we set out looking for food, me trailing behind with my luggage. (Chris, Dave, Seul, Jose, and Frances were all lucky enough to be staying longer in Japan than I was, so they didn’t have much to carry.) We went to an old train station-looking place that was converted into restaurants, but no luck… so we went down more stairs, to the basement of a really really tall building… no luck… back down… around the underground areas like a maze, until finally we found a restaraunt suitable to everyone’s liking. We were tired and starving, so we all crawled in there, ordered huge beers (which made us even sleepier) and ate as much as we could.

Even though it was only early afternoon by then, I had to get to the train station with enough time to make it to Narita, so we went back to the subway. Tokyo’s subway system is amazingly efficient — you could probably get to anywhere in Tokyo without ever seeing the light of day. We took a number of trains through the subway maze (again, thanks to David’s knowledge of the area), and we found a JR ticket area. We said our goodbyes, only to bump into eachother again when the group going back to Eurocentres discovered they had gone the wrong way. So once again we said our goodbyes (it was especially hard to say goodbye to Frances for the 2nd time ) and parted again.

Getting from Shinjuku to Narita was strangely a bit harder than getting from Narita to Kanazawa, but I managed it alright. Once again, it wasn’t really until I was waiting for my plane to arrive that I realized I was going away. I tried practicing speaking to a few people in the terminals in Tokyo and Toronto.

The whole time I could only think how lucky Frances and the others were to be going back to Eurocentres at that moment instead of flying to America. The moment I that left, I was already dying to go back.

Our second day in Tokyo was one of the most fun days in Japan (though it’s hard to really compare them to eachother). We woke up late and decided to head out for lunch and take a long walking tour of the city (or at least the small fraction of it that you can see in a day). We met Chris on his way in on our way out. I think he spent the day in bed with a hangover.

We took the subway from Jimbocho to Shibuya again, looking a bit different in the day, but just as crowded. There were street performers, speakers blasting Japanese pop music on the corner (familiar stuff to me, having played so much DDR), and protestors in loudspeaker-equipped trucks shouting things about China. One of the very interesting features I saw in Shibuya was a glass-encased “smoke area” where smokers could light up without disturbing the rest of the citizens. Occasionally we saw people wearing face masks (originally I thought it might have been SARS fears, but I think it is just a common courtesy thing to do if one is sick). Finally, we were too starving to go any further so we went into — go figure — a TGI Friday’s. Our waitress was very cute and friendly, and spoke English pretty well. When we complimented her English, she told us that usually Americans laugh at her and tell her that she doesn’t speak well… which is really a rotten thing to do, especially since it wasn’t true.

After Friday’s we went on an incredibly long walk that tired us out quite a bit… it was a very hot day. We walked all the way to Akihabara, the electronics district, partially because Jose wanted to buy an electronic dictionary and otherwise just to see the area. Akihabara is known as the “geek” district because of how many electronics and trendy things are there. It’s where all the otaku hang out, and I could see why. It was a techie’s fantasy world… The sheer number and variety of cell phones and digital cameras was enough to make me drool. One of the highlights of Akihabara was walking into an electronics store to find Shaolin Soccer (which I had been ranting and raving to everyone about) playing on one of the TV’s… so I got to show them the ending of it. The other highlight was going into the giant 7-story Sega arcade building. Wow… that’s all I can say. Wow…

It was a good thing David had been to Tokyo and knew his way around, or else we’d have been lost really quickly. We left Akihabara and took the subway to Roppongi, playing the Kanji game along the way; the way white people read kanji is by making up what the character most closely resembles in picture-terms. For example, we knew that “Man – Man on a Pogo Stick – Man with a Pogo Stick shoved up his Butt” means Roppongi, while “Hairbrush – Radioactive ‘R’” means train station… so we were able to find our way around.

In Roppongi we saw Tokyo Tower from a beautiful distance and everyone took pictures (except me, since I always forget my camera). There was a large statue of what looked like a spider near that area, and David and I began improvising a story about a giant spider attacking Roppongi, and the town was saved by Yamada-san the plastic man. The story was really stupid, in any case, but I only mention it because the rest of the people in our group were so amazed at the ability of Americans to just start talking about something, babbling and making it up as we went along, talking for hours and cracking up at it. We had the group laughing pretty hard about Yamada-san and the spider.

We walked through Roppongi for about an hour or more, talking about Yamada-san on the way, and finally we decided we were hungry. We stopped at a restaurant with an islandy theme and *very* overpriced food, and were placed on the 2nd floor where the ceiling was about 1 foot above our heads while sitting down. We were pretty laughy from the walk, and we continued to joke until we could hardly breathe. What finally tipped it over the edge was when our food came; I had ordered tomato and mozarella for about $8, so I expected it to be a decent meal. But for $8 I got the smallest half of a tomato I’d ever seen, with a slice of cheese on it, some olive oil, and a leaf of some kind. I felt pretty hungry afterwards, but it was worth it for the humor value.

After “dinner” we continued to walk around, looking for a bar. We met up with Chris, who was ready to go bar-hopping again, and walked around I-don’t-even-know-which district until we found a foreigner bar with decent prices ($4 a drink in Japan is a decent price). We drank for a while, and decided to look for a karaoke place after that. Looking for karaoke in Tokyo is like looking for cars in a parking lot. Virtually every building had karaoke on one of its dozens of stories… but unfortunately they were all booked through the night. We wandered about a bit more, since we had to be back to the train station by 11 to get the last train. The night scene in Tokyo is really crazy and fun… I wish we had more than one and a half nights there.

We got back to the hotel around 11:30 or so, exhausted from walking all day. David and I argued for a while about the meanings of bad words in different parts of the U.S., going so far as to each of us calling one of our friends to settle an argument… to no luck. Finally, we all went to bed.

Six of us went to Tokyo for two nights: David, Chris, Jose, Seul, Frances, and myself. The train ride there was fantastic. It was quite long, but also comfortable, and we got to see an amazing view of the Japanese countryside: mountains, lakes, rivers, villages, cities. Moving from country into city back into country was just amazing. I never really noticed this sort of thing travelling in the U.S., but here it was a whole new world and so I was alert to a lot more.

We got to Tokyo pretty late, since it’s about a 4 hour train ride. I was lugging around an enormous granny suitcase, and I was eager to unload it before going out, so we took a subway into Jimbocho, a district of Tokyo. We checked in at the Sakura Hotel, unloaded our stuff, and then headed out into the city for a little while.

We took the subway back to Shibuya, the most famous district of Tokyo. If you’ve ever seen photos of that huge intersection (sort of the Times Square of Japan), that’s where I was. In person, it was absolutely beautiful. People everywhere, music on the streets, giant TV screens and billboards (at that time showing an ad for the new Harry Potter movie), it was so lively.

We were really hungry, so we went to a many-story McDonalds for a bite to eat, and it really was just a bite: the portions in Japan are *so* tiny compared the the U.S., right down to the 4 oz. “small” juice drink. We wandered around the neighborhood a bit, but it was getting late so we had to catch the last train or stay out all night. Chris chose to stay out, the rest of us wanted sleep.

Sadly, I forgot to take my camera out during the day, but I did get two photos of some of us in the Sakura Hotel in Jimbocho wearing our hotel yukata, after our extremely desired showeres. (One month of non-Western showers left me dying for a good overhead faucet.)

Seul, Jose, and I give the Japanese pose in yukata at the Sakura Hotel	The four of us in yukata . Isn’t that a cute couple right there?

We watched a bit of TV, and considered buying a pizza until we saw that it would cost around $50… yikes! Tokyo has *very* cheap accomodations, but the food is amazingly expensive.

We had to rush out to catch our train to Tokyo, so I didn’t get a chance to say long goodbyes to all of my teachers…

Sakurai-sensei, me, Nakata-sensei

At least I got to say goodbye to my host parents at the Kanazawa train station. Still, it was a very sad moment.

Me and the Yamamiyas at the train station on my last Friday in Japan	This is right before I left for Tokyo… I look happy but I’m really sad to be leaving

In fact, we were so rushed for time buying tickets that we made it to the train *JUST* as it was pulling away from the station… so we ended up having a little over another hour before the next train to Tokyo. So we went to a ramen shop in the train station and had a meal, and then sat around in the train station until a businessman yelled at us for sitting on the floor (we learned this is frowned upon in Japan). Finally, our train came and we all loaded up and headed out.

At the end of each month, the Eurocentres students leaving the school must give a goodbye speech. Here is the speech I wrote (kana-only, as that’s how I wrote it to present).

いかげつ　は　はやく　すぎました。　わたし　は　もう　ろくがつ　が　しんじられません。　ながい　あいだ　みんなーさん　を　しっている　と　おもいます。　いがけつ　で　わたしたち　は　たくさん　けいけん　しました：　にんじゃーでら　で　にんじゃ　と　たたかったり、　にほん　の　はま　の　ごみ　は　かんこく　から　くる　と　ならったり　しました。　わたし　は　ユーロセンター　の　みんなーさんに　かんしゃ　したい　です、　とく　に　とり　クラッス：　ジャクーさん　の　かぶき、　ジョイーさん　の　かいもの、　レスリーさん　の　たくさん　こいびと、　シモンーさん　の　”Ｔｗｏ　Ｓｈｏｔｓ，”　フランシスーさん　の　さる　の　かお。　どうも　ありがとう　ございます。　わたし　は　ユーロセンター　の　スタッフ　に　かんしゃ　したい　です、　とく　に　わたし　の　さんにん　すばらしくて　きれいな　せんせい：　さくらいーせんせい　と　むらかみーせんせい　と　なかたーせんせい。　あなたたち　は　たくさんへんあ　しつもんに　がまん　しました。　べんりな　ことば　”べたべた　する”　と　”あるちゅ”　を　ならいました。　どうも　ありがとう　ございます。　さいご　に、　あいざわーさん　に　かんしゃ　したい　です。　あなた　は　まいにち　ばかな　がいこくじん　に　がまんしました。　どうも　ありがとう　ございます。