For those who have been inquiring, this is what I’ve been up to, and why I' ve been traveling so much…(check out the name of my blog...I am trying to be international)
August 13th – 26th (well, 27th because of weak ass KLM messing up my ticket)
I was volunteering with Camp Amelia, a non profit org started by a friend of mine at school. Check out the link: www.CampAmelia.org. Check out the posts below for more info…
August 29th – Sept 17th Tokyo Overseas Studies Seminar: Tokyo since 1945: Rising from the Ruins. Check out the link for more info. Tokyo is so cool.
Sept 17th – 22nd I’m in Kyoto now, finally on vacation. I have a rail pass, so I’ll be traveling the next few days, just seeing the local area, visiting the famous sights, and chilling out!
Sept 22nd – 26th Hong Kong. Figured I should see another city in Asia before I went home, and why not go somewhere where I can spend the last of my life savings wisely on bootleg purses and cheap, high tech electronics!
I’ll be home on September 26th, the first day of class…
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Made it to Kyoto
So, finally the seminar is over with and I have some extra time on my hands! The past 3 weeks have gone by in a whirlwind. The schedule for the seminar was grueling, with a 2 hour lecture every morning, Monday through Saturday, and walking tours in either a bright shining sun, 85 + degree weather and high humidity, or pouring rain in 80+ degree weather, still high humidity. The tours were for the most part really good, but would have been so much better if we’d simply been able to breathe or not almost melt in the hot sun.
This seminar has really made me fall in love with Tokyo. It is such an amazing city (more like a collection of cities) and I wish I had the opportunity to study abroad here. Living in Yokohama for that one summer was great for my initial exposure to Tokyo, but I really feel like I could almost live here. The only thing I forsee being negative is getting lonely…It’s hard to be a foreigner in Japan, even harder if you don’t have any friends!
Back to recapping the seminar, we basically studied almost every major borough of Tokyo, traveled to each place by subway or train, and learned the history of its development or some of the key defining issues surrounding the area. This was my first real sort of urban studies class, and first time examining a space or a culture through the topography of the city, or the history of its built environment, so it was interesting just to learn things from an alternate point of view. One of the coolest things we did was got a personal tour and introduction to a new complex being built in Roppongi, called Tokyo Midtown. They’re currently building the highest building in Japan, and a huge living/shopping/business complex. Its so high tech, incorporating all kinds of environmentally conscious techniques, such as using “grey” water to flush the toilets. Grey water is water that’s collected from rainwater runoff, etc. It’s not clean enough to drink, but not exactly dirty either. Another cool thing we did was visit Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho, the sex district of Tokyo. We went in the daytime, while there wasn’t that much excitement happening, but it was cool seeing the kind of sanctioned underbelly of the city. Also this week we visitied Odaiba, the new waterfront-Bay area of Tokyo. I got some cool footage of that area as well. .
My complaint about the seminar is that we didn’t have nearly enough time for ourselves. We only had like 2 Saturdays there, and one was spent hearing a lecture, the other moving from our dorm to the Japanese style hotel we stayed at for the last week, and getting a tour. So, it was annoying not being able to have enough time to do what we wanted to do in addition to the little bit of homework and couple of projects we had. But all in all it was a great experience, especially considering it worked out to basically only cost the price of the ticket to get here.
I’ll try to put up another post with pictures from some of the cool stuff I’ve seen, but that will depend on the internet access I can get. I’m currently staying with my host family from when I studied abroad here in Kyoto, and I can’t believe how small their house is! It’s hard to imagine how I lived here for 3 months!!
I stayed up all night last night clubbing on my last night in Tokyo, so I’m exhausted…gonna plan my day for tomorrow and go to bed early on a Saturday night. Leave me a message on my cell phone if you miss me!
Peace.
This seminar has really made me fall in love with Tokyo. It is such an amazing city (more like a collection of cities) and I wish I had the opportunity to study abroad here. Living in Yokohama for that one summer was great for my initial exposure to Tokyo, but I really feel like I could almost live here. The only thing I forsee being negative is getting lonely…It’s hard to be a foreigner in Japan, even harder if you don’t have any friends!
Back to recapping the seminar, we basically studied almost every major borough of Tokyo, traveled to each place by subway or train, and learned the history of its development or some of the key defining issues surrounding the area. This was my first real sort of urban studies class, and first time examining a space or a culture through the topography of the city, or the history of its built environment, so it was interesting just to learn things from an alternate point of view. One of the coolest things we did was got a personal tour and introduction to a new complex being built in Roppongi, called Tokyo Midtown. They’re currently building the highest building in Japan, and a huge living/shopping/business complex. Its so high tech, incorporating all kinds of environmentally conscious techniques, such as using “grey” water to flush the toilets. Grey water is water that’s collected from rainwater runoff, etc. It’s not clean enough to drink, but not exactly dirty either. Another cool thing we did was visit Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho, the sex district of Tokyo. We went in the daytime, while there wasn’t that much excitement happening, but it was cool seeing the kind of sanctioned underbelly of the city. Also this week we visitied Odaiba, the new waterfront-Bay area of Tokyo. I got some cool footage of that area as well. .
My complaint about the seminar is that we didn’t have nearly enough time for ourselves. We only had like 2 Saturdays there, and one was spent hearing a lecture, the other moving from our dorm to the Japanese style hotel we stayed at for the last week, and getting a tour. So, it was annoying not being able to have enough time to do what we wanted to do in addition to the little bit of homework and couple of projects we had. But all in all it was a great experience, especially considering it worked out to basically only cost the price of the ticket to get here.
I’ll try to put up another post with pictures from some of the cool stuff I’ve seen, but that will depend on the internet access I can get. I’m currently staying with my host family from when I studied abroad here in Kyoto, and I can’t believe how small their house is! It’s hard to imagine how I lived here for 3 months!!
I stayed up all night last night clubbing on my last night in Tokyo, so I’m exhausted…gonna plan my day for tomorrow and go to bed early on a Saturday night. Leave me a message on my cell phone if you miss me!
Peace.
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