Catch-up post

Hey ya peeps!

I've missed out on so many posting opportunities, which is why today I will briefly overview the last 2 months of my Japanese experience. My blog began to unravel in November with a packed week of trips, activities and friends. Then, I got caught up with the whirl wind of Thanksgiving and midterms. By the time I got past that section of my life, Christmas came bulldozing through, followed by New Year's and my two-week winter break of travels and sightseeing. Now I am in my final week of the Fall semester. I have 3 finals this week, a research paper due next Mon (Jan 28th), then a final presentation in Japanese on the 29th.

As you can guess, I've been really exhausted from trying to keep up with life. So yeah, onwards to the catch-up post.

November!

In November, I had a school trip outside of the Tokyo Prefecture to a place called Nikko. In Nikko, we visited a shrine (whose name I shall never remember off-hand) called Toshogu. This shrine is famous for being the place where the Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who completed the unification of Japan, was enshrined.

The shrine's complex is huge, so I will definitely have a future post dedicated to Toshogu.

After visiting Toshogu, we continued our Nikko trip with a stop at Edomura, an amusment park celebrating the Edo Period of Japan. Now when I say "amusement park", I do not mean big rides and such. No, it is a place where you can enjoy the simplicity of Edo Period life and go through some haunted houses and "ninja" attractions. Think of a permanent county fair without the portable coasters. Of course, this, too, will have to be another post.

With the visit to Edomura, our Nikko trip came to the end.

Of course, the next day was our school fair. This fair, called the Waseda Sai or Wasesai for short, is a yearly event that invites people to come and visit the school. Of course, since Waseda University has three campuses, this fair was celebrated in all the campuses. Since school fairs are apart of all Japanese education, I will discuss this day in more detail in another post (see a pattern in this post?).

This was a two-day event and was insanely packed.

The day after Wasesai ended, I took a high school friend around Tokyo. She is currently teaching on the East Coast of Japan's main island and came to Tokyo to visit me. At this point, my camera had no batteries and I had lost my battery charger, so no of this outting. Anyways, we went to the historic Tokyo Station and did some shopping in the shopping center underneath it, then hit a little place called Asakusa, and finished up the day at the soon-to-be-year old tower and shopping center called Tokyo Skytree. In fact, I can see Skytree from my dorm room, though it is way on the other side of the Tokyo metropolis.

That sums up my first weekend in November.

Then, in Thanksgiving week, I went to a Thanksgiving party hosted by one of the CSU Host Families. On Thanksgiving Day itself, the CSU went to the US Navy's Thanksgiving Dinner at the New Sanno Hotel, which is an American Hotel in Tokyo. In other words, the shopping in the Hotel complex required US dollars.... (what's that again?)

And that summed up November.

In December, I was trying to just survive. It is really stressful to be out on your own and away from family in such a family-oriented season. It took me awhile to realize that a huge reason as to why I was physically worn out during this month was from internalizing my homesickness and the stress of Christmas without family. For this reason, my friend Riski (her nickname :D ) and I decided to get gifts for all of our friends. I will have a special post for this endeavor, as well, since we snuck stockings onto our CSU friends' doors who are dorming in the same complex as us.

On Christmas Eve, some of the CSU students and our CSU teachers had a buffet dinner. It wasn't exactly a "Christmas Dinner", but it was nice. :D

Christmas kicked off our two-week winter break. We traveled our Tokyo, going to cat cafes and some sight-seeing places. We also had some cultural experiences thanks to one of our school's international clubs. I crashed on New Year's, so I have no exciting tales to tell you about, but I needed the rest. :P

Then, after our break, we started our mad dash towards finals. I just had one final this past Friday, so one class is done. As I said in the beginning of this post, I have 3 finals this week, then a paper and a presentation next week. After that, I will have 2-month spring break. For Japan, Spring break marks the time between school years, much like how summer break marks the end of the academic year.

Just warning you, my spring break will be busy with trips! Two of my friends and I have booked a trip to the northern island, Hokkaido, in early February. It is during Hokkaido's Snow Festival, so expect tons of photos (I hope!!!). The week after that trip is a CSU-sponsored trip to Okinawa, which is way in the southern island chain of Ryukyu. After that, I have some opportunities to visit new and old friends. Then in late March (literally days after my birthday), we have another CSU-sponsored trip, this time to the historical cities of Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima. Again, expect photos!

So, not only have I somewhat caught up with the last couple of months, I have even given you some events to look forward to! Once finals are finished, I plan on bombarding you guys with posts and photos...hopefully I get to them this time. Just as a reminder, I will be traveling and working on my manga, as well, so please understand why I struggle to keep this blog up. T-T ---> Crying over how badly I've kept this blog....

Anyways, that's it for now. I will get back to blogging as soon as possible!

Until then, Later Peeps!

The Business of Trash Returns

Hey, hey my friends.

It has only taken a month for me to write another post...and nearly....well, too long for me to finish the trash discussion.

So, I had explained that in Japan, we have to sort trash between burnable trash, non-burnable, and PET bottles. The rules differ from place to place, but those three categories of trash remain fairly consistent.

In my ward, which is Shinjuku Ward (Shinjuku-ku), we place dirty plastic food trays that cannot be cleaned off properly into the burnable trash, rather than just tossing it with all the non-burnable trash. When I was in Japan nearly three years ago for a month-long missions trip, I was living in a different ward of Tokyo. I do not remember having to put grimy, uncleanable plastics in the burnable trash, we would just clean the trash as best as possible and dump them into the non-burnables.

Another difference in trash is with the drink bottles. Now this is a fun process. With Japan, nothing can be simple (as you can see with the trash system). Of course, one can not merely walk into Mordo....oh, I mean, one cannot merely toss a plastic bottle in the trash. You must tear off the label (which is commonly plastic with perforation on the side) and toss it into its respective trash. Then you must remove the bottle cap and collect it with other bottle caps or toss it with the non-burnable trash. My dorms have us separate the bottle caps from the other plastics, as does my school. Once the cap is off, the bottle must be rinsed and lastly, crushed and compacted.

One more annoyance is drink cartons and other boxes. To toss them, you must tear them open so they lay flat, then bind them with other like items. Of course, if there is any plastic on them, such as tissue boxes, the plastic must be removed and tossed in with the other plastics.

There are other rules regarding trash in Shinjuku Ward, which you can read at this link.

I will have to take some photos of the established trash system at school and on the various trash days, but to the right is the photo I took at my school's festival. This was pretty extreme, but we literally had thousands of people visiting our campuses that weekend. The Waseda School Festival will be explained in another post, by the way.

Anyways, this finishes up the explanation of the trash system in Japan. In the future, I will have a post with photos of the trash system.

I hope you enjoyed this long, delayed lesson.

Until next post, Later Peeps!