Orientation Adventures Part 2

This is incredibly late, but ever since classes started I have been indescribably busy. In any case, here is part 2. This is mostly just photos, so I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Tomorrow is Halloween, so I'll try to have a post about what I see at the Halloween party I'm going to (in Ikebukuro, so it is sure to be interesting) at some point in the future.



Friday, September 23

A day without anything to do! Finally!

I took this day to explore the stores around my area a bit, which yielded the world's most thrifty shopping spree.

First, I went to a store that was under the train tracks. I didn't buy anything, but there was quite a variety of things that I could have bought.

These are the most aggressively generic clothes I've ever seen.

Why are there so many cooking utensils??? Who is buying all of these pans???

I have no need for this, but it was extremely tempting to buy anyway.

Strawberry-scented Hello Kitty toilet paper. Sure, okay.

As you can probably gather from these pictures, I didn't exactly need anything here, so I continued on my adventure.

Next stop: Daiso.

For those who may not know, Daiso is a 100-yen store--the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store--except the stuff it sells is actually good quality, and it's not sketchy at all. It's more like a CVS or something, except almost everything is 100 yen. You can buy basically anything you could ever need there. I could live in Daiso if I had to.

Not all of these photos are from this exact day, but either way, let's see what Daiso has to offer...

Super cute pencil cases!

Chopsticks with weird English!

Notebooks with fun phrases!

Fuzzy cat ear earmuffs!

Face peeling gel!

And much, much more!

I did not buy any of that, but what I did buy:

Let me reiterate that ALL OF THIS COST ME 100 YEN APIECE.

A pencil case, a pair of chopsticks, a set of pens, a pair of scissors, super glue, a pack of wet napkins, tape, two notebooks, a third spiral notebook, two folding table things, and a bag of mini Oreos. For $13. I liked the mini folding table things so much that I bought 2 more later. I end up going to Daiso at least twice a week now, though I don't always buy something.

After a busy day of spending very little money, I went back to my dorm. Chill days are the best.

Saturday, September 24

Another chill day! I went to the bookstore right next to the station. I didn't buy anything, though.

Nothing happened that day, actually. I bought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that's about it. On to the next day!

Sunday, September 25

I went to Meiji Shrine!

The main torii gate!

This is my favorite shrine that I've ever been to, so I was really excited that I could go again.

This was just as breathtaking as the first time I came here.

I ended up paying a $5 entrance fee to go into the private gardens. Unfortunately, most of the flowers and such weren't in bloom, but it was still pretty.

A panorama I took (or rather, tried to take) of the water.

There were so many koi!!! I love koi!!!

And also a turtle with a pointy nose?!? Woah!!!

After I left the garden area, I got back to the main part of the shrine just in time to see a wedding ceremony.

Everyone was super dressed up, which is to be expected.

I know that wedding ceremonies are pretty common at Meiji shrine, but this was my first time seeing one.

After I bought a charm, I headed back to my dorm.

Since the sun was setting.

Monday, September 26

I went to Miraikan with a friend!

I've already been there once before, but we had free tickets from CIEE, so I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to go again.

Our tickets also allowed us to go into the special exhibit about ninjas, so we went there first.

The entrance to the event had walls like this. Okay, then.

A guide on how to move like a ninja.

The entire event was interactive, so there were a lot of opportunities to test out my ninja abilities. Such as: walking really quietly (I failed, surprisingly); jumping over lasers (I somehow didn't fail this); identifying things by smell and touch (Smell was hard, touch was okay); and...

Throwing shuriken!!!! Yoooo!!!!! (That's my friend in the picture, not me.)

She did incredibly well, as you can see by that tiny dark blur an inch away from hitting the smallest target.

I did not.

It was still really fun, so it's okay.

There was also a display area that showed a lot of ninja tools of the trade.

Clothes and such.

Weapons and tools of various kinds.

This guy was the ninja mascot. I love him.

After that, we went to the main part of the exhibit. I didn't take many pictures, since I've been there before, but I did take a few.

Oh?????

There was one exhibit where you had to walk around and interact with various things, and then when you were done it created a song for you. It was pretty cool.

And of course, an obligatory picture of the globe.

I thought we were going back to our respective residences after this, but no--instead, we went to Joypolis!

Joypolis is basically a combination of an amusement park and an arcade. Just about everything is virtual reality, but you get in cars like you're getting on an actual ride. Most of the rides were mini stories of some sort, sort of like Soarin' (at Disney), but hardcore. For example, I was on a runaway plane for one of them.

Because it was dark, I don't have many good photos, but I do have one shot of one of the last rides I got on.

This could probably use some explanation.

Basically, it was a ride where you and a partner stood on a giant skateboard and you tried to do stunts on it to get points. We did incredibly poorly, but it was still cool.

After that, we headed back. That was an exhausting day.

Tuesday, September 27

Today was the day that we all went to Kamakura. We were in three groups, all led by a tour guide. My group's tour guide was Eri-san, and I absolutely adored her.

We went to multiple shrines and walked through a lot of Kamakura, so it's probably easier if I just post a stream of photos instead of trying to talk about them. I took a lot of pictures.

Eri-san showing us a maneki-neko!

A torii gate and a statue!

A shrine building!

A lot of alcohol. For the gods, of course.

My fortune predicted bad luck, so I tied it to this so that I could keep the bad luck at bay.

The main point of going to Kamakura was to see the giant Buddha statue. I had seen pictures of it, of course, but I never thought that I would see it in person.

This thing is HUGE.

Like, REALLY HUGE.

So huge that--wait, what?

YOU CAN GO INSIDE???

There were even engraved plaques on the inside.

Well, that was cool.

The next place we went to had a lot of stone statues in it.

Part of the front entrance.

Some statues.

Some super cute smiling statues!!!

I meant it when I said that there were a lot of stone statues.

Inari!

A really pretty building.

We were supposed to spin these. There were about 4 of these sets built into the wall.

The last place we went to was inside of a cave, so the photos are predictably hard to see.

More statues.

The whole journey through the cave (which had very low ceilings, so we had to crouch for most of it) took us to that room, which was filled with hundreds of statues. It was pretty eerie.

Shortly after this, we all parted ways and went wherever we wanted. Some people went to the beach, and some people went back to wherever they lived. I was beyond tired, so I'm pretty sure I went straight back to my bed.

Wednesday, September 28

This was our last free day before classes began. There was an event going on at a maid cafe that my friend wanted to go to, so I went with her to that. It wasn't one of the overtly weird maid cafes, so it was actually pretty enjoyable. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I have no photos from that.

Once I got back from that, though, I organized all of the charms that I had bought so far.

I think these are just so cool.

All of them are from shrines I've mentioned in posts except for the bottom left one, which came from Miraikan. It has a piece of meteorite inside of it.

It has now been an entire month since classes started. That's pretty hard to believe! Anyway, this concludes my posts about what I did over orientation. I hope you found them at least slightly enjoyable.