Tag: Sights

Tearful Goodbyes

Saturday was the day that most of our group was leaving. We spent the morning doing some last minute shopping and saying goodbye to people as they left. At noon, me and Jessica checked out of our hotel in Akihabara and jumped in a taxi with Jasmine to head to our hotels. Jasmine was staying in a hostel nearby so we dropped her off first and then headed to our hotel in Asakusa. The hotel was small but all of the staff were very nice and they had a lot of amenities and free drinks throughout the day that made up for my inability to leave my suitcases open for any long period of time because of the lack of space in our room.

We decided to get lunch at a pasta place across the street from our hotel, which marked the first time I’ve ever tried Carbonara before and MAN it was good!! I wanted to get french fries on the side but the waiter must have misheard me and gave me a sausage instead, which I wasn’t too happy about but I didn’t want to try to explain to him that I had asked for something else with the language barrier so I kept my peace. The pasta itself though was fantastic!!

After we ate, we headed to Shinjuku to look at the giant 3D cat billboard and a shrine nearby. The pictures for the billboard don’t look fantastic, but it did appear surprisingly real in person and made me very happy! The shrine was surreal because the grounds were tucked in amongst massive skyscrapers and office buildings, and felt like a little escape from the chaos of the city. We also stopped in at an arcade that we passed while walking back from the shrine and I managed to win two dog keychains for me and Jessica!

Once we were back from Shinjuku, we had to decide what to do with our evening. After some deliberation, we decided that it would be fun to go to an onsen. For those who aren’t familiar, an onsen is a hot spring bath (ours was in the middle of the city, so it was really just a communal hot tub) where you cannot wear a bathing suit. So yes, we sat naked in a hot tub with a bunch of strangers. And honestly, it wasn’t that bad! Once you get in and realize that nobody around you cares, and as long as you follow the rules and are respectful of everyone around you, it’s a pretty chill experience. But I’m not sure if I’d do it again, and definitely not alone!

I will likely combine Monday and Tuesday as they were less eventful than Sunday and Wednesday, but I won’t decide for sure until I write it. We’ll see! Almost there, I still have a lot more to share!!

The Way Home :)

June 3rd: Finally it’s time to go home. Liam and I were on the same flight so we planned the whole day out. We both checked out around 10:30am and left our luggage at the hotel for a bit to do some final shopping.

We went to BookOff first where Liam got a book for his Mom and I found 2 DS games ( Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers Of Time/Darkness) for like 990 yen!!! In the US these games are worth like $300. Since I’ve come home I have played them and I realized DS games don’t have language options so the whole game is in Japanese… the summer of immersion!


After BookOff we walked to 2 other stores where Liam was looking for gifts. We ended up walking to Ueno and walking through a popular street so that was cool! After shopping it was about 12 and we took the train back to Akihabara. This is where we found out our JR passes as well weren’t working through the scanner.


We also saw some ads for the new Spiderverse movie on the trains! We grabbed our luggage and headed back to the station to head to Narita airport. We took the train to Nippori then transferred to the Skyliner straight to Narita Airport. It was about an hour train ride.

Once we arrived at the airport we took a walk around. This airport is crazy it’s like a mall plus an airport. We saw a Marvel pop up store, Lego store, Gucci, Versace, Chanel, and many other high end stores plus souvenir stores. We went to McDonalds for our last meal in Japan. I got some nuggets and Liam got a shrimp burger.

After eating, we attempted to find where security and bag check was. I was nervous because of my tax free goods but it ended up not mattering in the long run. We checked out bags, saw some Pokémon, went through security ( which was very relaxed compared to the rush in the US with shoes and putting things in Bins), and looked for our gate.

On the way to our gate we saw a store with Pokémon merch, Ghibli merch, some gunpla, and souvenirs. I had some extra yen so I got some sake KitKats, a magnet for my parents, a snow globe for my grandmother, and a crystal puzzle of JiJi from KiKi’s delivery service! We also stopped by a vending machine to get so much apple juice before leaving the country.


We sat at the gate for about an hour before boarding the plane. We were lucky that the storm was south of Narita so we had no delays. I was surprised that the bathroom in the airport ( I only know the women’s room) had a little holder in the stall for a baby and a sink with handrails. It was really interesting to see that.

We got on the plane and while Liam and I weren’t next to each other, we were the same row at least. The flight was about 12 hours so we got a couple meals. Most of the flight I watched movies like Le Mis, Soul, and Spiderverse. Meal 1 was some chicken and rice with chocolate chip mochi as a dessert. I skipped the middle meal as I was trying to nap, and breakfast was an omelet with tomato sauce, a sausage, and hashbrown. Meals were overall ok.

We landed in the states to see Newark NJ, what a grey city. We deplaned and headed to customs with took FOREVER. I don’t understand how you can have 9 booths to move people through and only have 3 open for a couple planes worth of people. It took probably an hour to get through customs and to get our bags. It was about 5pm EST and we left Japan at 5pm JST which was fun.

Liam and I split at baggage check as my parents were in the airport looking for me. I grabbed my bags ( all safe and sound ) and headed to meet my parents. I gave them a hug and we headed back to my hometown.

I got home, had a pork roll and egg on an English muffin, took a quick shower, and passed out. Since then my sleep schedule has been messed up and I’ve been trying to fix it. I’ve also been telling stories of my trip to my friends and parents.

Overall this trip has been a life changing experience for me and I’m so happy to have been able to experience everything with a fantastic group of people. I will always look back on this trip with pride, joy, and happiness. It has even inspired me to apply to the Fullbright program and have to chance to live in Japan for 10 months for research.

Thank you everyone for making this trip amazing. Love you all!!!

Instagram Day

This day was special: it was where most of my pictures were taken. Our first destination was the Diver City Mall where we saw the large gundam statue. After some lunch, a minute amount of shopping, and a slightly underwhelming gundam transformation, we found our way towards the Museum of Science and Technology.

Fabian and I at the Gundam statue

The Museum of Science and Technology had some fascinating exhibits, like a robot that replicated your facial and arm movements, a depressing and interactive viewing of our world in the future, and a guided learning experience about iPS cells and stealing kidneys from pigs. A lot of it was actually really interesting and I enjoyed walking around the various exhibits.

Next, we made our way to teamLabs, which was an artistic experience based on room-to-room art exhibits. Unfortunately, we were split in two. But, It was truly insanity some of the sights I saw.

One of the many pictures at teamLabs I took

After teamLabs, Maddy and I went back to Akhihabara to get some Chinese food. I had mapo tofu for the first time and it was one of the most delicious dishes I had during the trip. However, it was a rough realization when I started thinking about how it was one of my last in these remaining days of the trip.

Instagram Food

Soooo I might have fallen behind on my blogs a little bit… oops. I would rather wait and put out a good blog making sure that I cover everything rather than skipping things to get them out on time, but I promise that I’ll still be covering every day until I leave! I’ve done sooo much since my last post and I’m so excited to share everything!!

To start the day, I woke up early and explored Akihabara with Fabian to see if we could find any more merchandise that we could snatch up as we were preparing to pack all our things again. I personally was looking to find some Pokemon cards as they’re basically sold out of everything in stores, and I stumbled across a card shop that had what I considered to be a LOT of good deals. I only bought some single cards because I didn’t want to chance my luck with the packs, and I’m really happy with the few that I got! We also went to a figure store called Tamashii Nations so Fabian could look at their Gunpla (a term for model kits… i think?) and he got a cool exclusive Iron Man figure.

We met up with the rest of the class at noon to head to Diver City, a place well known for its giant mall and giant Unicorn Gundam statue. While I don’t know much about the anime or the model kit community surrounding Gundam, the giant statue was really awesome and we even got to see it change forms (it basically just played some lights and music for 30 seconds and it’s horns closed together to become a single horn, like a unicorn). I don’t think I picked up anything from this mall, but there was a Mister Donut that I was finally able to try and MAN are those donuts good!!

Once we were finished at Diver City around 3, we went to the Miraikan Museum (“Mirai” means future) which had a lot of cool interactive exhibits that ended up being super depressing and existential. The entire thing was basically just “humanity is ruining Earth, we should fix it” and while I enjoyed seeing a lot of the exhibits they had it was kind of a mood killer. They did have this giant spherical Earth display that you could walk around that was really cool though!

The last group thing we did that day was by far my favorite. We finally got to visit TeamLab Planets, which has become really iconic online for its fantastic photoshoot potential. It’s basically an “interactive” art exhibition where you’re walking into these giant artsy scenes that make for some really good photos. I did already make my Instagram post about this because I just couldn’t wait, but I’ll put my photos here too because I’m really proud of them. The experience was really awesome and I think it’s especially fun as a couple or a group going through it together.

  • my personal favorite 🙂
  • they got mad at us after this 🙁
  • could not tell you what fabian was doing in this picture, but it’s hilarious

Once the school-sanctioned portion was over, Liam, Megan, Skyler, Fabian, Cameron and I decided to rent a karaoke room together for a couple hours because we felt like it was a quintessential Japan experience that we needed to have. Because I’m not one for singing with others (and a couple of the people I was with were MILES better than me) I didn’t sing much, but it was fun to look at all of the songs they had, both English and Japanese, and see how different the experience was compared to karaoke in America. We were in our own private room with couches, a massive screen, and two mics, and overall we had a great time! This was also, however, when the rain began.

Something interesting about our time in Tokyo is that there was actually a typhoon (Typhoon Mawar – though I’m pretty sure it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it reached us) dancing along the coast of Tokyo over the last couple days, writing this in retrospect. From Thursday night until Saturday morning, a majority of the country (including where we were staying) faced a LOT of rain and wind. While it was never too bad for us rain-wise, the wind definitely broke a good chunk of our umbrellas and left me wishing I had brought a rain coat instead. We didn’t see any damage or severe flooding though, so I don’t think it was that bad!

Tomorrow is the last school-planned day of our trip! Which makes me really sad, because everyone leaves on Saturday 🙁 but I’m happy that I have a few extra days to get some final bucket list items out of the way!

Diver City and Team Labs!!!

June 1st: Today we’re going to Diver City! Diver City is an area near the center of Tokyo on and island. It’s very popular as it has the Gundam base ( gundam is a very popular robot franchise). Diver City is also home to the museum of Science and the future which we also went to. It was a cool train ride with some cool sights as well as the walk to the gundam base.


The gundam was really cool and we got to see it transform as well! Behind the gundam is a mall! We went around the mall for a bit, saw some poorly translated shirts in English, and a weird amount of US college merch from like Harvard, Holy Cross, Rutgers, etc.

After grabbing some donuts from Mister Donut ( 7/10 frosting was a bit hard), we all met up and headed to the museum. This museum was a small walk away and discussed the problems we face on this earth and what we should do. However, the museum would not give you any answers you had to come up with it yourself. Personally, I had a bit of a crisis walking through but the big Earth, robots, and the ISS walkthrough.


After the museums we had the very anticipated team labs!!! Team Labs is an art installment where you become part of the art. It’s like, everywhere on social media, and very pretty. The experience has two parts, the water and garden. You start with the water part. The fun thing is that you have to take off your shoes for the whole experience. I really can’t describe how amazing it was. There were so many new and pretty things to see. To make up for my lack of descriptive words, here’s a lot of photos!!

It was truly amazing and I would 100% go back. After team labs we went back to Akihabara where I took a shower and got some chicken for dinner from Lawson.

We also did Karaoke!!! Liam, Skyler, Belle, Fabian, Cam, and I went to do karaoke! It was so much fun and we got snacks while we sang and we tried to do as many Japanese songs as possible. It was rough but I’m happy with how much I’m able to read as quick as I can!!! Liam was super impressive with his fast reading and singing!!

After that a group of us started watching the dnd movie! We made it half way through before a lot of us became sleepy and ready to hit the sack. The movie started really good though!

See you tomorrow blog!!

Attack on Gundam

Giant gundam statue in Daiba City

Today was another big day for us. I started the day by getting breakfast with the gang and then shopping at this used figures store called Radio Kaiken, which was insane. They had so much cool stuff there and I really wish I had millions of dollars to buy all the figures :(. I got some stuff for me and some gifts for friends before we needed to go back to the hotel and head for Daiba City. We took a train over to Daiba to see a giant Gundam statue and do some shopping at the Daiba mall. The Gundam was so cool and we stayed for when it “transformed” into a different gundam (its head thing moved). I got some japanese manga books in a store in the mall of volumes I’ve already read, which were cool collectibles.

Big Earth

After the Gundam figure we went to Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was really cool and had lots of interesting exhibits, and robots. There was this giant earth ball that you could walk around on a spiral staircase which was sick. They also had a this game thing that let you create an earth to try and get to survive 50 years by giving it a path to take and hoping it wouldn’t be destroyed by bad events. I got my earth through all the bad stuff :). There were some cool AI exhibits that learned from the people that interacted with them, but they were so scary to look at. Uncanny valley was doing its work for those robots.

Then we went to teamLABs, which was another highligh of the trip. This place was so cool I was surprised. They had LED light shows in giant mirror rooms, water exhibits with interactive fish holograms, procedural flower projector domes, floating flower gardens, and a room full of giant balls. Each exhibit was unique and interesting, which made for some really cool photos.

teamLABS exhibits

Invading the (Probably) Emperor’s Home

We met at noon, but beforehand, Brody, Esther, Maddy, and I got McDonalds, which was conveniently close by. Then, we met with the rest of the group in the lobby and debriefed for the day before starting our journey towards the Imperial Palace, where I was told the Emperor lived, or at least previously lived.

We took the subway to Tokyo Station and walked to the Imperial Palace from there. The name refers to a whole plot of land instead of a singular building, and it was a large plot of land.

We first walked through the given paths, which taught us a lot about the masonry and upkeep of the Palace over time. Towards the end of the palace, however, was when the beautiful garden began to reveal itself.

One of the Imperial Palace garden paths

The garden was beautiful and had an arrangement of plants, structures, pathways, and sights, including a small waterfall and a pond.

The pond at the Imperial Palace

After our quick tour of the Imperial Palace, we made our way towards the Meji Shrine, a shrine near Shibuya and Harujuku. We got some quick lunch in Harujuku before making our way towards the shrine. After a small, civil dispute within the group, we entered the park towards the shrine, passing through the large Torii Gate.

The Torii Gate Entrance to the park nearby Meji Shrine

I learned that we had to walk on the sides of the pathway because the middle was meant for the gods to pass through, which I thought was a fascinating design based on spiritual beliefs and cultural tradition.

Eventually, we made it to the shrine and I prayed the longest prayer so far, and received a fortune that included a vague poem that I have yet to fully decipher. and realize its meaning. After the shrine, we were let go to do what we liked, so Brody, Esther, Maddy, and I went to Shibuya, where I picked up the My Neighbor Totoro vinyl from one of my new favorite shops: RECOfan. We explored some other record shops and music shops as well, eventually ending out mini-trip to Shibuya with a steak dinner where we had to cook it ourselves.

Tired and exhausted, we made it back to Akhihabara and prepared ourselves for our MAGIC meeting at 11pm (before you think anything: yeah, I know). After the meeting, it was not long before I had fallen asleep.

Shibuya, Harajuku, and Fabian’s birthday celebration!!!

May 31st: Woke up this morning around 9 and went to do my laundry. Belle and I headed out around 9:45 and walked to the coin laundry about 6 minutes away. We used this machine that had a machine that washed AND dried. That was cool. Sadly we had to do some extra drying time since our clothes were still damp after the first cycle. Overall that took about an hour in total. We headed back to our hotel and had maybe 20 minutes until the class had to meet.

Our plan for the day was to go see the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and Meiji Jingu in Harajuku. We hopped on the train and went two stops to Tokyo. The station is like grand central in NYC with a lot of art and architecture. Apparently it was designed by a French guy so it looked very European.

From there we walked to the Imperial Palace. Apparently the imperial family was there at the time so it was very busy. We weren’t able to see the Palace but we did see the gardens. They were pretty and had some history to them. There was a koi pond which was my favorite. Here’s some photos as all we did was walk and see.


Afterwards we went back to the station and took the train to Harajuku to see Meiji Jingu ( that’s a shrine btw). We got an hour for lunch so I ran over to the Sailor Moon store to get some merch. This is where I got told the rules of Tex free and I have now found out I’m gonna have to pay tax when I come home! Little frustrated by that since no one told us but whatever.

I did also get food with a third of the class. It took forever to come to us but I got a very yummy omelet.



After some food we met up with the rest of the class for the shrine. It was a beautiful walk with a lot of pretty trees and architecture. Once again here are some photos:


After the shrine we were let free. A lot of us wanted to go to Shibuya for the Nintendo Store, Pokémon store, and Shibuya crossing. This was a really popular area but half of us decided to walk to the mall. On our way we saw the Olympic stadium! That was cool. The Pokémon center in Shibuya had the mewtwo statue!!!! I didn’t get anything from the Pokémon center but I did get stuff from Nintendo.

So we were a bit on a time crunch cause we had reservations at the Monster Hunter cafe for Fabian’s 21st!! On our way to the train station we ran into Shibuya crossing! It was really cool to see such a populated place that we also so popular.


We made it back to Akihabara for the cafe just in time! We all got some themed food from the Monster Hunter series and had some drinks. It was very yummy. I got some strip steak with potatoes, a drink with cotton candy, and dango for dessert! For fabian’s 21st we made him pose with a big thing of beer the size of his face. It was funny.

After dinner we went back to the hotel, watched half of the new dnd movie, and went to bed.

See you later for the next days adventure soon!!


From Kyoto to Akihabara!!! (Oooo aaaaa)

After a week in Kyoto, it was time to leave our quaint and oddly artistic hotel and go back to Tokyo for the last leg of our trip. We had a decently early wake up of around 9 and loaded into the bus. We had two buses, one for our suitcases and one for the people. The guy was lifting suitcases all by himself, it was really impressive.

We got to Kyoto station with little time to spare for a real breakfast so good thing I grabbed some bread from our hotel beforehand. Our train came and we all piled on. I spent the whole 2hr ride playing Zelda. This is the first time I’ve touched Zelda in like a week so I was happy.

The Shinkansen ride is about 2 hours between Kyoto and Tokyo. So two hours passed and we got to Tokyo. When we got out of the train it was really really humid and raining. Kinda uncomfortable. To get go Akihabara we had to take 2 stops on a local train line. Toshi sensei helped us out with that.

Arriving in Akihabara was amazing, we got off the train to see anime, everywhere. Quite literally everywhere. Our hotel was right next to the station which was great for my aching shoulders. You know the deal, get the key cards and go up to your rooms. We had an hour of free time before meeting back up. Our rooms are nice, smaller than Kyoto but we have a massage chair! I tried it but the back was kinda hard for me.

Jas and I unpacked, relaxed for a bit, and headed back downstairs to meet everyone. Our classes walked around the city to see the sights and visit some old retro game stores like Mandarake. It was really expensive.


Afterwards we all split up to check out some stores and grab food. As prof Jacobs put it – “You’re free beings until Tuesday at noon”. So we all scattered with some going to animate, book off, and other second hand stores for games. There were a lot of really cool items in all the stores but my wallet was to be saved for the next day. Except for 1 event.

After Belle and I got dinner at this Karaage place ( karaage is like fried chicken) we headed to an arcade. Skyler ended up joining us later on. This was a 7 floor arcade with crane machines, video games, rhythm games, etc,etc. We spent ALOT of time there trying to win prizes but only Skyler came out with 2 prizes. We did, however, okay a lot of video games as well. The atmosphere for those floors were no windows only game. So it was lit up with LEDs.


I also ended up getting a really good score on one of the games. It was very fun.


After spending too much money there we went home for the night. I was able to get some really cool photos of the city at night. It was raining so things are a bit blurry but it was really pretty.

After getting home we basically went to sleep, I literally was out cold 2 minutes into laying on my bed. So I’ll catch ya later for tomorrrow, it’s gonna be a big one.

Day 4

We started the day early to catch the bullet train headed for Hiroshima. After getting off the bullet train, we stopped at the dome – the last remaining building from the bombing. I’ve seen so many pictures of this building and appreciated the opportunity to see it in person. It was fascinating how this building still stands when it was just over 500 feet from where the bomb fell.

We also saw the origami monument, which I had never heard of until this day. A young girl died of cancer 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima, and she folded paper cranes everyday believing they would help her recover before she eventually passed away. This started a movement to pray for world peace and up to 10 million cranes are offered every year before this monument.

We got to walk through the museum which was a very emotional experience. Although the topic was incredibly serious, I was happy I got to go. Not just for myself. One of the things on my dad’s bucket list was to go to Hiroshima, something he never got to do, and I’m glad I was able to go.