With photos!
So for the last week we’ve been doing school orientations. The Japanese students aren’t here yet. Well, some of them are. Everyone who’s in sports clubs seem to be here doing training and stuff like that. And we’ve seen a few other clumps of people around. But their classes don’t start until the 16th. Ours start the Monday before that, the 12th, so, Monday.
In the meantime, we’ve been here since Monday the 5th doing orientation sessions each day. Usually they’re conducted in Japanese, with someone translating into English afterwards, but today we had a library orientation and a computer use orientation that were all in only Japanese! I didn’t understand anything that was said. Good thing we got English handouts. I’ll read them later.
On Wednesday we had the option of going on a field trip to Nagoya Castle, several subway stops away from our school. I went and it was really cool because the Japanese students could also go, and a few of them served as our tour guides. In the meantime we got to chat with each other in Japanese. I got to know a few people from other study abroad programs and introduced myself to a couple of Japanese students.
The castle itself was pretty neat. It’s not all the original structures like Inuyama Castle was, and it’s not as old, but it’s still cool. It was a lot bigger.
Here’s one of the guard tours.
There were several deer in the grass in the kind-of “moat” area in front of the castle! At least two adults and a baby! But they mostly stayed in the shadows so it was hard to get a good picture.
After we walked into the inner walls, past the guard towers, we could see where the, I guess, palace would have been. See, the castle wasn’t really for living in, so much as it was to show the dignity of the guy currently living there. Who I believe was Tokugawa Ieyasu, but it’s been a few days since the tour and my Japanese history is really rocky. The palace building was currently being rebuilt and renovated, though. We could go see it, but we had to wear hard hats. Which I am rocking. By which I mean I am terribly un-photogenic, here you go.
You can kind of see from this picture what the palace would have looked like.
And get an idea of the renovation/building process.
The castle itself!
You can (kind-of) see the golden dolphins on the top of the building here. On the north side is the male, whose tail is slightly longer. He was on that side to guard the female from the cold northern wind. The dolphins were made to protect the building from fire damage.
Here’s one they had on display inside the castle.
The view from the top was incredible. I’m sorry if you’re sick of seeing Nagoya’s skyline. You can deal.
Just to really blow your mind, here’s a model from inside of what Nagoya looked like at the time the castle was built.
The giant stone blocks that make up the foundation were transported by hand, a la this:
And here’s a picture of me looking utterly ridiculous sitting on a model of the golden dolphin that they let people take pictures on.
Outside there were a few cats mosying around. It’s interesting. I’ve seen quite a few stray cats here in Japan, but no stray dogs.
So that was Wednesday, Nagoya castle!
On Thursday, it was my friend Katie’s birthday so we went to Sakae, the big shopping district, to go do karaoke. First, though, we had to find the Pokemon Center! :D
Guys I was not nearly this into cute stuff before I left for Japan. Now I can’t stop talking about how cute everything is.
We also found this pub! I just thought it was kind-of hilarious to see this English-style pub plopped down into the middle of metropolitan Japan.
After shopping and getting some take out we went to go find karaoke. There were 16 of us, which is WAY too many in my opinion. People definitely hogged the mike. And it was too hard to figure out the cost and how to split it between everybody.
This karaoke place. They’re clever. They quote you a price per half hour, and then serve you drinks, and don’t make you pay until after you’re leaving.
We didn’t really drink because it was Thursday night and we did have to be at orientations the next morning. But I can see how that could be a major problem.
This particular place seemed inordinately expensive, so I don’t know whether we’ll go back there again. Ann bought a membership card to make it cheaper per person, but that’s her choice, whatever.
It’d be more fun to go again with a smaller group of people.
Shaun, scout out karaoke places in your neighborhood of Tokyo, because when Tokyo Christmas happens, you, Kali, and I are going for karaoke. It’ll be fun because we’re all likely to know more of the same songs and we know each other well enough that it won’t be terribly embarrassing.
This weekend I’ll probably go back to Sakae again. I didn’t really have much of a chance to shop around and there are tons of things to look at, even just in the train station! There’s also a Book-Off and a department store and a manga cafe and all kinds of things I could easily spend way too long (and way too much money) at.
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