Kamakura Upside Down

Sunday. Where to begin… So many things happened in Kamakura after all. For instance, Haru ate a Buddha, President Obama visited an ice cream stand, and I… Komame…

KOMAME DISAPPEARED!!!

I know I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight, but, but…

How about I just start from the beginning?

So we got off the train at Kamakura Station, and walked on the broad path, Wakamiya Oji, leading up to the famous Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. It’s a big Shinto Shrine or Jinja (神社) in the area that you can’t miss. That’s when I realized Komame was missing!

I couldn’t remember when the last time I saw him was, since I was so excited the night before when Haru told me she was taking me to Kamakura with her friends.

I looked everywhere and couldn’t find him. I didn’t want to ask Haru if she knew, because she gave me Komame when I first came to live with her. Komame was – is my responsibility.

I tried not to show Haru I was upset, since she had been looking forward to the trip since earlier in the week when her friends asked her to join them. So I just watched quietly as they had fun drawing Omikuji (おみくじ) or sacred slots.

It’s a Shinto fortune-telling method that’s really popular with visitors. You just buy a chance to draw from the bamboo box for a stick, which you exchange with the Miko (巫女), a shrine priestess, for a corresponding piece of paper with your fortune on it. Then you tie it to the Omikuji post and pray to the resident Kami (神), or resident nature god, to make it come true. If you don’t like it, you can still leave it with the Kami, and pray for it to not come true. You can also make wishes on wooden plaques and leave it there for the Kami to hear any personal wishes you’d like to make.

While Haru was taking pictures, her friend Yuan picked me up and brought her grape lollipop a little too close for comfort. It smelled really good, and was made of hardened grape syrup, glazed over a real grape. While I normally like sweets, I wasn’t in the mood to have anything since Komame was missing. I think that’s when Haru realized I wasn’t feeling well.

The next stop was visiting Kotoku-in temple, an old O-tera (お寺), or Buddhist temple to see Daibutsu-sama, Kamakura’s famous Great Buddha. He’s great, because he’s huge and super old. He’s also great because I felt cheered up seeing Daibutsu-sama’s gentle face. It was as if he was telling me everything would be okay.

And I know I’m short, but it also felt great knowing he dwarfed humans the way humans dwarfed me.

And did you know you could go INTO Daibutsu-sama? As in INSIDE of him. It was dark and crowded, but there was something about being inside that made me feel safe. Did you know he was made in 1252 AD during the Kamakura period? That’s over seven and a half centuries ago! He was cast in 30 separate stages and then slotted together using a very ingenious slotting method. Aside from reinforcing his neck with steel rods, he’s pretty much the same as he was back in the day.

Daibutsu-sama is so well loved that many little kids my age got together and created giant waraji (わらじ) for him to wear. I wish I could’ve helped!

After that visit, Haru and her friends when to a local dango stand to buy dango (団子) which is made of rice flour, related to mochi. It can be either sweet or savory, or both! Yuan bought some, but Toshi, Brittani, and Haru decided they wanted a Daibutsu-san manjyuu, which is basically soft waffle batter poured into a mold with some kind of filling inside. In Haru’s case, she got herself one with custard cream. Her expression was pure bliss as she chomped off Daibutsu-sama’s head.

And as if that weren’t enough, Haru and friends also went to get ice cream. It was a little shop they passed by earlier which caught their attention, because the sign said that President Obama had eaten there before. Yuan bought the ice cream named after Obama, while Haru bought the one that had sweet potato flavored ice cream in it.

We passed by this old red mail box, which seemed really old. It must have been somewhat important if the shop across the street had a miniature of it sitting on the windowsill.

Eventually, we meandered our way to Hasedera temple.

Toshi told us that it’s almost near impossible to visit in the spring with all the flowers blooming, because it was known for its Japanese gardens. Despite not seeing the gardens in full bloom, Hasedera is also well known for its seaside view of Kamakura… not to mention its array of cute statues. Their smiles are really contagious.

However, at the end of the day, I was so tired that all I could do was huddle into Haru’s scarf and fall asleep. I never did find Komame even after looking everywhere for him and turning the places we went to upside down. Perhaps he’ll show up one of these days when I least expect it… maybe that’s what Daibutsu-sama was telling me anyway.

Let’s hope,

Rowan

Raw Eggs & Fish Fins

What's on the menu today? Raw eggs and fish fins. I know it's enough to make most people want to hurl.

I wouldn't blame them. It doesn't sound very appetizing, but this little entry will be about how delicious food is here anyway. Just wait.

Haru took me to school again, and I have to say I wish she would invest in a more comfortable form of transportation for me. Being wrapped up in a purple scarf and stuffed into her backpack is not the best way to go anywhere, especially during rush hour! If she thinks she feels suffocated, imagine being wrapped like a mummy and trying to battle her water bottle for space in her bag at the same time! Luckily, today was pretty sedate as far as traveling goes, but boy, was lunch not.

So here we are somewhere between TUJ and Tamachi Station with the Tokyo Tower in sight down the road.

Here, we found a restaurant on the corner called Sukiya (すき家). It's a fast food chain store of sorts. But when I say fast food, I don't mean hamburgers and fries like at McDonald's. This place has more traditional food like various gyuudon (beef and rice) and curry dishes, among other selections.

It's pretty cheap too! Only 380 yen for a big bowl of beef and other ingredients – including a raw egg. I was shocked that Haru chose it, but she told me it was because she liked the name, Negitama gyuudon (ネギ玉牛丼). It had chopped up leek, beef, and some special sauce drizzled over a bowl of sweet, short-grained rice. But the best part was the raw egg, according to Haru here. The egg should be strained for the yolk with the little strainer… but the way Haru did it was dump yolk and egg guts alike onto her beef, then churn it up together with her chopsticks like she was making cookie dough. Unfortunately, she felled the huge bowl of rice so quickly that she didn't even get to take a picture of it because it was gone so fast.

Komame and I barely had enough time to dodge her chopsticks and get out of her way! I could only watch our human friend in disbelief as she mauled her food.

After lunch, it was back to school again, but not before Haru snapped a photo of her two victims who were (willingly) dragged to the restaurant. V for Vive - lucky to be alive!

On the way, we passed by this cool little restaurant. Judging the fish fins displayed by the front door, I'm thinking there's a lot of raw fish inside.

I asked Haru, Nina, and Casey if those fins happened to be what's on the menu, but they didn't know either. I would have stopped to ask, but Haru put me back into her bag before I could go anywhere.

I WILL have my chance to do something more interesting than going on lunch dates and watching Haru stuff her face. However, I have to say I wasn't expecting to see her eat raw egg and pass by a restaurant selling fish fins in a span of one hour. There's always something new to see here in Tokyo, no matter if it’s a sky-scraping tower or a little restaurant nestled in between.

Till next time,

Rowan

Skyline View

Hey everyone! It’s Rowan here again. I wanted to show you what I did this past weekend… I almost got to go bungee jumping off a 781’ tall skyscraper in the Roppongi Hills on Saturday!

Haru had to go on a fieldtrip for her art history class, so she and her friend, Nina, took me to the Mori Art Museum on the 55th floor of the Mori Tower. And when I say tower, I mean the kind where you can’t tell where it touches the sky! I asked Haru if I could go bungee jumping, but she said I wasn’t tall enough for the ride. So I asked her to go bungee jump for me, but then she said she was too short as well. If you ask me though, 5’1” doesn’t seem short at all!

When we got there to see the exhibit, Haru had to put me away so I didn’t get to see anything… But I’ve been to the Metropolitan Museum in New York before, and I always fall asleep. Haru says it’s because I’m a little kid though. And she told me the Meta…Me-metalbowl…ism… show didn’t allow people to touch anything, so I would have been really bored anyway. But Haru and Nina took me to see the observatory at the very top of the tower after they were done taking notes!

Nina was wondering why there were poles sticking out of the floor into the ceiling. But what got me was how the city looked as flat as a carpet rolled out under her feet! Normally, humans look like towers to me, but the humans on the streets below were so small that I couldn’t even see them!

And look at me! That red thing behind me is the Tokyo Tower. Haru found out a lot of it was made out of recycled steel from damaged US tanks used during the Korean war. I hope Haru will take me there one of these days.

The room near the observatory’s café was SO BIG. To me, at least…

I wanted to use the binoculars, but it’s hard to see through them if your head is too small to fit right.

So Haru let me sit on a stone bench to look out the window. People kept giving us weird looks, but the sun felt so good and Tokyo looked so cool, I didn’t care. Even my kitty, Komame, was straining to get closer to the view.

After leaving the tower, Nina and Haru went back to the Japanese gardens outside to take pictures. There, they saw some kids playing with a dog. I wanted to go pet him too, but Haru wouldn’t let me.

But I got to get close to the water. It looked so pretty – like the sky was living inside of it.

I almost got to jump in, but Haru grabbed me before I could. I’ve never seen someone turn so white and floppy so quickly, as if they had suddenly turned into paper. When I asked why I couldn’t go swimming, she just made a face and said I’ve never taken a swimming class before.

Anyway, I wish I could have had more freedom to do the things I wanted to do, but I don’t mind right now. This visit is far from over after all!

-Rowan

Home Base in Tokyo

Hello from Tokyo!

It's been about a week since I landed at Narita Airport and traveled to my host family's home in Kanagawa Prefecture, where I'll be staying for this Spring semester. Now everyday, I find myself making my way into the heart of the city, to Minato-ku, where Temple University Japan is located. It's an adventure everyday just to make it to school, and a bit of a heart-stopping one since it's my first time staying out of the States for so long. There's a whole different world out there, and it's all intimidating at first.

But people are built to adapt and explore, which means meeting new people and making new friends. I’m surprised by what I’ve already learned in just the first week of my stay. It's very surprising how many different points of views I've encountered while living here.

It's all very exciting and new, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. But yes, sometimes I've felt lost and a little frustrated with myself since my Japanese speaking skills are not as smooth as I want them to be yet. The simplest things, like asking for directions or how things work, has made me brain freeze on more than one occasion. Although the people living here are understanding, I can't help but feel somewhat embarrassed. That's when I just wanted a place to speak English freely without feeling awkward.

Yes, this is Temple University Japan campus. It's like home base, and I've met a lot of new friends already - Japanese, American, German, Swiss, Chinese, French, Australian, Mexican, etc. alike. It's home base to about 40% Japanese students, 40% American students, and 10% of students from over 60 different countries around the world! Impressive right?

Already I've been out eating and exploring with friends. Recently, we went to a little restaurant called Asian Kebab, located somewhere between Shirogane-Takanawa metro station and TUJ. Japan's a haven for good food, and it's hard to go wrong.

After lunch, we found ourselves leaving the cozy little restaurant and heading back to TUJ, ready to go our separate ways for our afternoon classes.

But before we parted ways, I wanted to talk a bit more with my new friend. Kristina and I hit it off really well, and talked a lot together. She's from Missouri, and she’s a Japan Campus student - not to mention the last home-stay student who lived with my host family in Yokohama last year.

Oh, and that's me - the little guy sitting next to her. I forgot to introduce myself earlier. My name's Rowan, and I'm a Volks Yo-SD boy, a Japanese BJD or “ball-jointed doll.” You'll find a lot of my resin kin wandering around the streets of Japan with their human friends. They’re all over the place, and I’m not kidding! I’ll get Haru to take me to Shinjuku or somewhere, and I’ll show you. Japan was actually where I was born... but since I don't remember anything, we'll just call this my first real visit.

Join me on more adventures! I’ll tell them to you through my human friend, Haru, as I make her type it all down for me.

Till next time,

-Rowan