The Awesome DAY-NIGHT

JAPANESE CLASS and HIYOSHI CAMPUS

      Finally awesome sunny days are back to Tokyo. Today is Thursday, a day that most or our CEMSies are having a Japanese class. It is a basic Japanese for beginners who never had any Japanese before. As last night I promised to go to the class too, the is morning 5 minutes before leaving the dorm Ondrej came to my room and woke me up. 

      We met other guys at the Hiyoshi station as only they knew where we were heading. We wondered around the campus for 15 minutes looking for the correct building and finally found it (a little late to class).

The teacher was really nice and friendly and spoke good English. The content of the course was quite basic: my name is, I am from etc. I remember when I had my first Japanese class back in St.Petersburg. Everything just sounded like a set of unordered sounds impossible to memorize. I guess that is how it now sounds to the guys. For me now I understand the language a little better and some things start to make much more sense than before, when I was starting with the language. 

      After the class we headed to the cafeteria to eat. Outside there were lots of students. It was the third day of recruiting for circles (extracurricular activities clubs). What it is: it is many people with leaflets, dressed up , are going around campus trying to recruit you. They give you papers and invite you to info sessions. Of course all of them want to have gaijins in the circles, that's why they try hard. In the center of the main square of the campus there is a stage where all music and dance circles are performing today. They actually play really good music sometimes. 

      We had a big lunch in canteen and relaxed a little after. On the way back from the cafeteria we heard some really great music from the stage. Mattia, our CEMS colleague, started dancing. We joined him and went to the center of the crowd. Mostly people were listening, around 20 in front near the stage were moving to the beat and jumping. We formed our small group and started dancing. Japanese people were really amazed. Suddenly people started joining our dancing circle, smiling and happily looking at us. Others started to take pictures and videos. It was really fun and the music was awesome! We have received a bunch of papers and offers to join tons of clubs... Now we have to choose. 

ROPPONGI

     The evening has started... We were supposed to meet with other CEMCies in the center, in the district called Roppongi. the plan was to meet up at 11:30 p.m.. Having approximately calculated the time needed to travel there we agreed to leave the dorm at 10:50. We came out and I realized that I forgot to take my money... As usually... Ondrej said, he could land me some, thus we went on. In a few minutes Ondrej realized that he has forgotten his phone... Lol. We returned back to the rooms.

     Somehow already in the train we realized, that we are late. No just late. Really late. We messaged the guys and it turned out they were also late, as they have taken a wrong train in a wrong direction.

To get to Ropongi we had to transfer once and go one more station. We got a little lost on the transfer station and somehow came out to the street. As we already (finally) had our Internet on phones working, we decided to take a walk. Finally we arrived at the meeting point 40 minutes late. But we were not the last ones yet, some people were still missing.

     Roppongi is very central locations with many restaurants, clubs and karaoke places. There are many foreigners (like us)wondering around at night, drinking and looking for fun. It was probably the first time I didn't feel a 100% relaxed, as the street is fool of African-Americans trying to offer any services you want. It is quite annoying. But the point is, that 90% of the "night promoters" were African-Americans, and 5% foreigners and maybe 5% were Japanese girls. 

     We were looking for a karaoke place with a all-you-can-drink option. In the end we decided not to take that option and buy drinks separately. The price for all night karaoke from 23:00-5:00 was 10 euro per person. Drinks around 4-5 euro. Really good deal. The guy at the counter didn't speak any English and seemed a little scared of a group of gaijins (there were 11 of us). But finally we got our big room and had looots of fun (as usually at karaoke). The hit of the day was Without Me by Eminem. 3 hours passed by quickly. We wanted to finish strong and as the last song have chosen Barby & Ken. Impressive performance by everyone! 

     Around 4:20 we headed out. Just a little of topic: in Japan you never leave tip, it is not polite. Back to the story. We got out of the place quite full of drunk Japanese people on high hills and in pink shirts. A police was taking care of some drunk guy in a suit who was laying down on the ground and smoking a cigarette. We split in 3 groups and got a cab, the direction: famous Tokyo fish market. 

     The ride was quite expensive, as only catching a cab costs 7 euro. We paid around 24 Euro for 10-15 minutes. Taxi driver seemed to know where we were going, however turned out he didn't. We got out somewhere and called the guys - there were already at the meeting point.

 Tokyo metro

 Love hotel

 Shibuya

 Karaoke

 Drunky1

 Drunky 2

Tokyo by night

TOKYO FISH  MARKET

      Now we had phones and Internet so finding our way to the place approximately 15 minutes. Tokyo fish market is quite a famous place for tourists. 30 people can get a guided tour every morning. We arrived before 5 and all the spots were already taken. We had a look around the market:looks like fish market. People are busy working, riding at their little cars and motorollers. Seems like they don't really like the foreigners there too much, as they always disturb them from work. 

     As we didn't get the tour, we went straight to the famous sushi place. Actually, there are 2 famous sushi restaurants, really small ones. As Larry says, the quality of the fish differs there approx 10%. Thus we queued in front of the best sushi place. There were at least 50 people in front of us, none of them Japanese. At 5 in the morning by the way. After waiting in line for around an hour (and the line wasn't moving) we decided to queue for the second best restaurant. The wait there was 20-30 minutes. We were close to the food, delicious food...

     The sushi set there costs 3500 yen ( approx 30 Euro). 6 little maki and 7 sushi, plus tea and miso soup. The place is really small, 12-15 seats, around the sushi bar. 3 people working at the sushi bar in front of you. You can see the fish (already cut and ready) sliced behind the glass in front of you. The miso soup is delicious, with little shells inside it. The sushi are tasty! This is not possible to describe, you have to try it yourself! The sushibarmen are cooking in front of you and putting sushi to a plate in front of you one by one, smiling and telling you, what that is, in Japanese-English. Everyone gets slightly different sushi set, seems like it is completely random. When you are done enjoying, you stand up, pay, thank them and leave - so that the next customer can come in and enjoy amazing sushi experience. No cameras are allowed inside, so unfortunately no pictures and no videos. But great aftertaste! The only possible problem now is that we will not be able to enjoy sushi anymore, the quality won't be the same...

 Inside the famous sushi restaurant

Day 11: Shimoda Party

NIHONGO

     The morning I decided to start with Japanese language. I went downstairs hoping to see some Japanese people with whom I could practice some Nihongo (Japanese language). Luckily, Masa was there, and he was happy as usually to help me out. 

      I taught him Russian alphabet. Japanese language doesn't have as many sounds as Russian does. But Japanese people are really good in writing, as they have to memorize thousands of Kanji (signs). They actually have to memorize not only kanji itself, but also stroke order in kanji. For some European student I had writing Russian alphabet was not that easy, but Masa easily copied all the letters that I wrote. He was only writing it in a little strange way, but the letters looked perfect. 

     In our dorm many devices talk to residents. For example water heater tells you something, elevator tells you something. I couldn't understand what they say, thus I asked Masa to translate it for me. Turned out, that the elevator was saying something "Please be careful, doors are closing(opening). Thank you" and floor numbers. The water heater in the bathroom was telling me not to forget to plug the bath before I turn on the water so that I don't lose water. Really funny stuff. 

Shimoda party

    Shimoda students village was having a party for exchage students today. So we went there of course... Hehe. For 500 JPY (4 euro) you got a name tag, snacks and unlimited alcohol. Unlimited alcohol was quite a fun one: 5 liter plastic bottles of whiskey, some Japanese beer with fruit flavors and 3% alcohol, juices, tequila and vodka. Mostly international students were there, however few Japanese also joined. In a while some of the students-organizers from Japanese side were out sleeping on the chairs. 

      We went quite strong with many "bottom-ups". The party started at 7 and at 9:30 organizers started to kick us out. It took around half an hour but they managed it. It was really fun but short party with magic whiskey that hits straight to head.

KAROKE

        Some students headed to the center of Tokyo to a club. We decided to stay around Hiyoshi and a Japanese student purposed to take us to Karaoke. Japanese Karaoke!!! Yeahhhh

     The Karaoke place was open till 5 in the morning and we arrived there around 12. We were split into groups (6-7 people per group). We stayed in our awesome CEMS group. The deal was: 10 Euro per person for 2 hours unlimited singing and one non-alcoholic drink included. There were many songs in English. On top of English words you could see Katakana (Japanese characters used for words taken from English). The remote control for choosing songs was complex as it's menu was completely in Japanese (mostly in Kanji) and we didn't have our master of Kanji (Larry) with us... 

       Somehow we managed to figure it out and had lot's of fun, especially singing Gangnam Style and some other songs, we have never heard before. 

      When we were leaving, the place still seemed busy. Many rooms were still occupied by Japanese singers. Seemed like there was only one guy there working, doing all sorts of activities from bringing drinks to cash desk. 

RAMEN 

      Hiyoushi station is famous for its Ramen restaurants. Ramen is a soup with with noodles and often with meat or seafood. We were considering visiting Mc'Donalds, but our Japanese guide suggested to visit a ramen restaurant. 

      Imagine, 15 foreigners coming in a small ramen restaurant in the middle of the night (also drunk). To get ramen, you had to pay at a special machine at the entrance and then take a seat at a bar. The bar is built around the kitchen, so while sitting at the bar you can watch how everything is cooked. The workers seemed really friendly and happy to see us. For 600 JPY (5 Euro) we each received a huge plate of delicious Ramee soup and a bowl of rice to it. Few guys who didn't order anything also got some food for free. What a great place and great hospitality! The soup was really delicious and filling, exactly what we all needed after a drunken night. 

     I worked in a restaurant before in Russia and I know that employees and cooks are never happy, when a group of people comes in the middle of the night and orders something. I know that Japanese culture is absolutely different and based on mutual respect. Japanese workers of Ramen restaurant showed great hospitality, but I am still wondering, if it was on the outside only. What were they thinking? "Stupid foreigners came here, why!!!" or they didn't think this way... Hope that by the end of this Japanese journey I will be able to understand people here a lot better.