Repeat after me: Explore, Explore, Explore.

So a lot has happened this week. I’m making another post about some fun things I’ve done recently. My training group had Saturday, Sunday and Monday off, which was pretty wonderful. Saturday was a day of recuperation from the exhaustion of jumping around like a five year old all week. I admit I had way too much fun pretending to be a little Japanese kid when participating in other people’s demo lessons. Perhaps I got a little too into it. Let’s just say my performances were unnecessarily complete with child-like voices and Japan-ized pronunciations of vocabulary words.

Saturday night, I went out with the majority of our 15-person training group. We found some seedy bars playing American pop music in Roppongi Hills. I have never seen so many foreigners in Japan at one time before. I went home early to meet up with my boyfriend so we could hang out at the guest house and watch some movies or something. However, I had stupidly put my room key in my coat pocket, and proceeded to lose it somewhere in Roppongi. I didn’t realize it until we got to my guest house. We spent a good hour or so wandering Koganei-shi (my area, or city, whatever you’d like to call it) looking for a place for me to stay because the guest house office had been closed since 6pm. Apparently no one ever needs a place to stay out here in Koganei. At this point, the trains back to downtown Tokyo had all stopped running, that included any trains back to his home, as well. So we hailed a cab and we went to a nearby town/city called Kokobunji (sure I spelled that wrong.) After wandering and being turned away by three hotels in a row, the fourth time was the charm. The next morning I had to go buy a new key from the guest house’s office. Let’s just say that the night was a bit adventurous, shall we? I don’t like to use the word stressful if I can help it.

Sunday was much better. Wandered Shinjuku (where Tokyo’s “Times square” is located) with the boyfriend, learning about Japanese department stores that carry every product you could ever want or imagine. Amazing. Nobody does department stores better than the Japanese. He also showed me a good bookstore that carries a lot of books in English. Then we went over to an area called Ebisu that had a lot of foreign cuisines: Mexican, Italian, Indian, Chinese. We chose Mexican at this place called Zest Cantina. The interior was basically a saloon. It had balconies that would have been perfect for some cowboy to begin a duel with some of the tougher looking diners below. Lovely ambiance, great food. Extremely un-Japanese. Although, the Japanese version of Mexican food basically means American food. I’m pretty sure Chicken pot pie doesn’t count as Mexican food…not even Tex Mex.

On Monday, I went to a place called Kamakura with four other people from my training group. It was about an hour South from the center of Tokyo, towards the coast. It’s famous for it’s large number of ancient religious temples and a HUMONGOUS Buddha statue. We ended up taking a detour through a long hiking trail. We weren’t exactly prepared for this adventure, but it was pretty beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise and just being out in nature again. We probably should have had some lunch before undertaking such a trek, but we weren't that smart. After a few hours of getting lost in the woods and trying to work our way southwards towards the great big Buddha, we hopped on a train to a place called Enoshima. There’s a bridge from the mainland to an island where there are many restaurants and you can watch the sun set over the sea. You can also see Mt. Fuji across the water in the distance. It was absolutely stunning. The day ended with a very satisfying Japanese meal at an Izakaya- basically a Japanese sit down bar with really good food. One delightful discovery: REAL Japanese gyoza (dumplings) are a million times better than anything you can get from your freezer, or even a restaurant in the U.S.

Anyway, today was the first day of training for teaching classes at the adult/higher levels. So far, so good. I had to go observe a current teacher while he taught two classes this evening. I sat at the table with him and his four students and basically watched. He let the students try to ask me some questions in English, but they were pretty shy. The age range was about 20’s to 50’s I’d say. Observing the two classes, one after another, was extremely helpful though. Seeing as we don’t actually get to work with any real Japanese students until AFTER training is over, I am very glad we at least get to observe some real classes taught by real teachers to real Japanese students.

After observing the classes, I met up with Yu who invited me to a secret opening at a gallery for a show of collaborative works by Yoshitomo Nara and another Japanese artist named Sugito (I think?). Probably most of you Wash U art kids already know this, but Yoshitomo Nara is an internationally famous Japanese artist. He is represented by the gallery that Yu works for. One of the former employees at Yu’s gallery opened up her own gallery about a year or two ago and tonight she had this show for Nara and Sugito. It was very exciting to be in on this secretive opening. I even got to talk to Nara himself and have my picture taken with him. He knew a bit of English, but Yu says he’s much better at German. Well, who cares, I got to meet Yoshitomo Nara. Take that! Oh, and the art was pretty good too…