6 months in Japan - Thoughts and review
March 9, 2015

Time to take a look back at what has happened so far. 

Here's a short recap - I arrived in September, which is already 6 months ago. I couldn't speak much Japanese, I still feared hits to the head due to my concussion, I had no idea what to expect and I barely knew anyone.

I arrived and was taken care of by the Iwasas, entered the International Dorm, started classes, and started practice. I got a first injury, passed my midterm with excellence. I went to Osaka with the team, made some friends, and gave some free hugs. Met my grandmother and an aunt and was able to speak with them. Made a few speeches here and there, celebrated New Years with the Iwasas, and passed my final exam again with great results. Had a few celebrations with my class, the judo club, friends and teachers, and took about three weeks to have fun. Up till the end of February, I felt as if it was still part of the first part of my story here in Japan.

Good points: 
- I studied Japanese to the best of my ability and made a lot of progress. I have now come to the point where I can have full conversations, express my opinion and feelings as well as understand those of others. I am now Skyping with my grandmother once a week, which makes one of my goals for this trip accomplished: Being able to speak with my grandmother. Due to this progress, I can also further communicate with the members of the club, which makes me more approachable. 

- I've made my way into the club up to a certain point. People now sit next to me without thinking too much about it. The practices, runs, and weight trainings, I take part in all of them and for the most part keeping up with most of it. Slowly making more friends, gaining respect as well as confidence. Sato sensei (Head Instructor) calls me at practice as if I were a normal student. I have come to understand 70% of what the coaches tell us, and take part in activities that other foreigners don't. I've given it my best as to getting used to the pace of this judo life style.

- I have now gotten used to life here in Japan. Of course, there are still slips here and there, but for the most part, I can find my way around, I can recognize many places in Tokyo and in the surrounding areas. The train is no longer a problem, I know where good stores are and asking directions comes naturally. The laundry, food making, grocery shopping, life has become stable. I can start making smarter buying decisions, wasting less time and money, and the initial excitement of being in Japan is already fading away. 

- I have a lot of friends. Close ones, some I barely know. Some who live in the same dorm as me while others live two hours away. Some who come from around the world and many Japanese. Some who do judo, some who don't. In any case, I don't feel alienated anymore.

- I've managed to get some DJ experience here in Japan. I also started a mix series, made a few songs and remixes, attracted many new fans and have gotten the attention of a few companies. I've established myself in the eyes of many, and have managed to find many new opportunities online, and maybe here in Japan.

Bad points:
- I've reached a point where the learning curve is much slower. Since I understand a lot more, I can get away with not understanding a few words here and there and just nodding them off. I can laugh at the right moments even though I don't understand. Why is this bad? I no longer have to ask for the meaning of the word, thus I don't learn their meaning. Also, I can understand a lot of grammar and words, but that doesn't mean I use it myself when I speak. I use a lot of the same sentence patterns, my mind no longer forced to really search for the right way to say things. In other words, my mind has become lazy in order to save time and trouble for the explanations.

- I've been injured twice, which has stopped me from training fully for about 4 months now. I still do weights and the runs with the guys,  but my judo is not improving. My body is also very heavy, around 73kg most of the time, and I've lost the feel of fighting. Although I push myself in everything else, I'm not making much progress, nor am I gaining much from the trainings.

- I haven't fully understood the Japanese culture and this creates problems here and there. Whether it's concerning friends, judo, teachers, or just life in general, one little slip causes a lot of problems sometimes

Goals for the next semester:

1. Keep the studies hard. But this time, I want to stay on top of things, and if possible, study even more by my own.
2. Keep track of my judo and training progress. Up until March, I didn't really write stuff down in terms of my judo and training.
3. Don't get lost in the moment. Make the moment be part of me.

(Shibuya at night.)

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Kyoto, a visit to the western side of Japan
March 9, 2015

In order to go to Kyoto, I had to make reservations for the bus to go there, and I most likely would not have been able to do so without the help of Anzu. She showed me the website, and through Skype, she led me through the different steps.

Also, the day of my departure, February 15th, she and two other friends, Arisa and Keigo, waited with me until I got on the bus! I really appreciated their presence. 

(One of my first moments in Kyoto.)

I got on the bus and slept most of the way, waking up from time to time as the bus would stop, then immediately falling back to sleep. I have to say I was exhausted. I arrived at the scheduled time, 6:05 A.M. at the Kyoto Station. I asked a few directions, then I found a Starbucks in which I could sit down and relax a bit. While I was there, I took the time to Skype my family, then once that was done, I headed off to Fushimi Inari, alone. It was only one station away by train, so I was soon out of the station, which was only 3 minutes away from the temple's entrance. 

I was a long way up, but after passing what seemed to be a never ending row of red gates, I made it to the top where I found... more red gates haha! But the beauty and peace of the whole place was beyond my ability to explain. Here's some pictures of what I saw.








(I made it to the top!)

Once I was done getting lost in the red maze, I rushed down the hill since I was running late a little. After arriving at the station, I waited about 30 minutes for Kengo to arrive. I manage to find the gate from which he was going to come through (remember, the train companies are different in this part of Japan from Tokyo). He came through, limping, using one crutch, with a weird smirk on his face. He had told me he was injured, but had said it was good enough to go around, thus I was not expecting this. 

I handed him a coffee, and we walked around the station for a while, talked a little before deciding where to go firsts. Now I'm not going to go through every details of every place, you would be reading this for the next month. I'll simply let the pictures talk.

(Downtown Kyoto)

(Kengo is not letting the crutches stop him.)

(Gion District)

(The love rock!)

(Kiyomizu Temple)

Kengo also showed me around the Doshisha University's original campus! And I thought that Tokai was pretty...

(Panorama from the middle of the campus.)

(This building and the tree next to it are two symbols that represent this university.)

(Kengo's favourite place in Kyoto.)


(Speechless...)

(I also got to eat in the section of Kyoto called Ramen Town. This was my first time trying a ramen where the sauce is separate from the noodles. It was sooo good.) 

Before coming, Kengo had informed me that I would be able to sleep at his place that evening. So we made our way back to his apartment, brushed our teeth, took showers, and got ready to sleep. I must say I was quite tired after that long day.
 
(Kengo misses Canada *he's wearing a U of M hoody*)

Next day, we woke up, got ready, and left for the second campus of Doshisha University. Since space is a big problem in Japan, the university had to split the sport campus, which needs a lot more space, from the main campus. It's about one hour away from the main campus. This is what I saw:

(The main gym building. This is where the dojo is located as well as the work out gym and other facilities.)

(Map of the campus.)

(Their softball practice.)

(Their tennis courts.)


(The beauty of the campus is... unbelievable.)


(Kengo's department study room.)

(The station in front of the university. Just like Tokai, you have to go up a hill to get to the university.)

I also got the chance to watch part of the Doshisa University's Judo Club's practice. In that moment, I came to realize a lot of this about my current situation. First, I must say I feel very fortunate to be able to practice with the Tokai team. Second, I kind of felt pride coming from Tokai, especially after watching Doshisha's practice. I understood a little bit why Tokai is so strict. I also had the thought of "What would have happened had I had come here?". After talking with Kengo, I also realized that Tokai has a lot more fighters than normal clubs do, while before that, I thought almost every university club in Japan had at least 80 fighters. There was nothing wrong with Doshisha University's Judo Club, I believe I just have come to see this in a different way. As my father warned me, going back to Manitoba is going to be a shock. 

(The line-up.)

(The Dojo.)

After seeing the practice, I came to understand Kengo's behaviour back in Canada. I came to understand Japanese behaviour in general, and I can see now there is most than what the eye sees about the judo club, and how it's run.

After that, Kengo decided to come with me again today and visit the following places:

(From the University it was interesting to see no one on the train.)

(I don't know what kind of food this was, but it was soooo gooood!)


(Kinkaku-ji, The Golden Temple.)

(Selfie with Kinkaku-ji, just cause we can!)

(Is it really all gold?)

(Ryoan-ji, The Temple of Dragon at Peace.)



(The famous Zen garden.)

(I really considered moving here.)

(Peace)

After the long day, Kengo took me to a sento, which is a smaller version of the big hot springs they have in Japan.

The whole trip ended in the reverse order. Kengo brought me to the same place where I got off the bus, I rode the bus and slept most of the way, woke up in Yokohama, and took the fastest train back to Tokai.

Thoughts? Can't wait to go back and see the rest of it.


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A date with Nishiyama sensei
March 3rd, 2015

When my sister was here three years ago, she was taught during her second semester by this woman, Nishiyama sensei. Thanks to her kindness, Nishiyama sensei soon became my sister's favourite teacher. When I went over to visit my sister in 2012, I got the chance to meet her. We met her once quickly while she was working, then again one more time and she had bought me a gift. It's not the gift that really mattered, but the fact that she was thinking of me, having barely met me. I was really looking forward to meeting her again three years later during my stay in Japan, and I was hoping she would also be my teacher for one semester.

When I arrived at Tokai, we had to go multiple times to the Building #8 (where all the international students study Japanese) and I remember meeting her every time, smiling, speaking in slow Japanese to make it easy for me to understand. She had introduced me to a few people to make sure I had friends right off the bat.

Now she didn't end up being my teacher (they can't pick which class they will teach) but she was teaching the class below mine, and their classroom was right next to mine. Whenever we saw each other in the hallways, we always had chats. We were supposed to go out to dinner but as I was busy with judo and studies, we never ended up going... until the spring vacation came around.

When we finally met up, it was on February 20th. We met at the university, since she had been finishing up work, and we walked up the hill to a small middle-eastern restaurant. The man running there could speak pretty good Japanese, and trust me, we heard a lot of it that night. He talked to us almost the whole time. But when we did manage to have conversations, it was nice. I really enjoy talking to Nishiyama sensei. She's sweet, very kind, cute of course, and she has a good perspective on things in general. The food was really good on top of that, so it made the whole thing even better. The only problem was that my stomach started hurting, but I managed to hide it.

I will be seeing her throughout the next semester, and I really do hope she becomes my teacher.

(She's too cute haha!)

(It was a good supper!)


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Yokohama all over again
March 3rd, 2015

Thanks to Anzu, I was able to book my trip to Kyoto without too much trouble, but another good thing was that the departure location was from Yokohama. Why is that a good thing? Well I already had plans to meet a few friends that day in Yokohama, thus it made it much easier.

That day, I had plans to meet with Arisa Oginuma in Yokohama in the afternoon. She would then walk me around Yokohama, showing me the famous parts of the region. I had never been with Arisa alone before and had barely talked to her before, so I was a little scared about how it was going to go.

It took us a while to find each other through the station, because just so you know, the Yokohama train station is CRAZY huge. Once we met, we walked out and headed straight to Chinatown. It's interesting how the mind works. I remembered a lot of the streets and shops from last time. But this time, Arisa gave me more explanations about the history, although I didn't remember most of it. It made it much more pleasant. We stopped and ate some nikuman, which are a kind of big white dumpling.

(Us in Chinatown!) 


Our discussion would flow nicely and I have to say I really enjoyed our time together. After the Chinatown, we walked through the city, seeing famous streets, restaurants, and finally to the sea port. For those who don't know the history of Yokohama and why it's famous, Yokohama was one of the first cities in Japan, which opened to the world for commerce in the 18th century. Thus it has a lot of commercial stuff added to the history of the city. It was a beautiful view, I must say. It was quite windy that day but man was it ever gorgeous.

We walked up on one of the touristic boat/platforms and here's the view from there.

(Yokohama port.)

(I love panoramas.)

(It was REALLY windy.)

From there, there was an entry to the undersea part of the boat in which you could enter. At that time, there happened to be the World 2015 Koma Championships. (Koma is the Japanese word for top.) Anyways, I got see how that was haha! I did not know such a thing even existed. We left, and headed back towards the station, but we made a stop at Starbucks for a Cherry Hot Latte. Arisa happens to work at another Starbucks nearby so she knew that it was the first day the cherry flavor was being sold. Since the "sakura hana-mi" (cherry blossom) was coming, Starbucks creates this product to attract customers. That's my marketing classes kicking in. Anyway, since she works at a Starbucks, we got a small discount. We sipped and talked, and ended up staying too long haha. We rushed back to the station, rode the train and ran to meet Anzu and Keigo at the determined location.

(Downtown Yokohama.)


From there, we walked all four of us together to the restaurant Anzu had picked out and made reservations for us. As we sat down, everyone laughed at the fact that I was only wearing a polo shirt. I've had this problem ever since I have arrived here, I find it much hotter than most people. Anyways, we had a great dinner. I wasn't too sure how it was going to go since I also had never spent much time with Keigo. But I have to say it was quite fun. I was really tired already by that time, but their energy kept me up and going. We ate a delicious meal, with interesting new food I had never eaten before. After that, we left and they walked me over to the station. I thought I was going to say my goodbyes there, but we still had about 4 hours until my bus arrived so they decided to go into another restaurant haha... we ordered drinks and some small appetizers and cakes. We talked about just about anything, the conversation never stopping. And we laughed a lot. Everyone was probably tired by that time. I know for a fact that I was exhausted.

After about 45 minutes there, we decided to check where the actual bus stop was. But by that time, we still had one hour till the departure. I told them they could all go back home since it was already 10:30 but to my great surprise, they stayed with me until I got onto the bus. We entered a Starbucks and got some more drinks. We sat down and chatted until the store closed at 11. My phone was dying and I was going to use my charger to charge it but Arisa forced me to use hers (portable battery charger). We took funny pictures, made jokes, and more jokes and laughed and laughed some more. It was very pleasant and I was extremely thankful they stayed the whole time for me. Soon came 11:20, we walked over to the bus, and I waved to them one last time before leaving.

Yokohama had a much better flavour from that day on. I really am a lucky guy.

(Food!)

(Cool food!)

(Drinks...)

(They waited till the end for me. I am so thankful for them.)

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