Photos from when my study abroad program stayed at Ryokan Tanigawa in Minakami

Room at Ryokan Tanigawa

On the table: a leaf that says "Waseda School of International Liberal Studies: Thank you for your stay!"

Outside the ryokan window

Dinner (sideways)

Me in my yukata

Terrifying-looking yet delicious grilled fish

Breakfast

Going strawberry picking

Strawberry picking in Japan actually means all-you-can-eat strawberries for 30min

Eating Minakami gelato

In Harajuku waiting outside Ben and Jerry's

Cherry Garcia and some kind of ginger flavor

My host mom's friend, my host mom, and me in Yokohama before my host sister's marching band concert

Chocolate-banana pancakes at Pancake Days in Harajuku

There was a smiley face inside too!

A blimp flies over Waseda

Sakura near Waseda

O-hanami at Naka-Meguro

Yesterday I climbed a mountain, went to an izakaya (Japanese pub), and did karaoke. And somehow managed to come home with a massive headache without drinking any alcohol.

How I managed to do all that is a bit of a complicated story.

I posted on Facebook on my birthday, "Hey, is anyone doing anything interesting tomorrow?" and the only person who responded was Kaori-san, one of the adult members of the English conversation circle I'm in. She said some people she knew from UCLA were going to climb Mt. Takao (referred to as Takao-san from now on) so I should see if I wanted to go with them.

The more the conversation developed, the more it seemed like she was trying to set me up with this friend of hers, but that was pretty much impossible from the moment I met him, since he's like 7 or 8 years older than me and I'm sorry, Kaori-san, but that still matters when you're barely 21.

So, I spent my morning and afternoon chatting with the group, mostly men, from America, Canada, and Scotland, and the Scottish guy's Japanese girlfriend. And, oh yeah, we climbed a mountain. They were all really nice and welcoming and funny, but they're not really the sort of social group I'd want to get stuck in if I were to somehow end up working in Tokyo. I'm not too into bars and joking with high school girls and goofing off in public places...

After we got back to Shibuya from Takao-san, me and the two American guys went to an izakaya and were joined by Kaori-san later. I got interrogated by Kaori-san about what I wanted in a boyfriend and then the guy I'd originally been introduced to decided to turn the tables on her and ask her about her love life, but she kept dodging the question and turning it back on me. I also found out that I prefer non-alcohol cocktails and I like kimchi cucumbers. I also got teased by Kaori-san for acting like I was the exasperated older sister of the two guys.

After we ate our fill of yakitori and kimchi and stuff, the boys couldn't stop singing but one of them had to go home to his fiance, so Kaori-san and the remaining guy and I went to do karaoke. So I got to spend the last of the money in my wallet (going out with people with jobs is expensive!) on a higher-tier karaoke joint than I usually go to.

It was a fun night, but I was so ready to just crash into the pavement when I got home at 11:30 after waking up at 8:30 am, and my muscles still hurt like crazy. Which is why I didn't do anything except update my blog today.

Pictures:

Inside the karaoke place

Club Kitty, where Hello Kitty is the DJ?

 Random out of order pictures from Takao-san

Tengu, a crow spirit that I know next to nothing about

There will be more on my Facebook. I figure this is enough for here. The photo uploader isn't cooperating today.

For the birthday party I had with friends, I decided to make a reservation at a butler cafe. I was originally thinking about the butler cafe where all the employees are cute foreigners, but that dream was killed when I found out that they don't really speak Japanese. I wanted to be called お嬢様, darn it (o-jousama is a term for a daughter of a wealthy family. I got kinda obsessed with a drama about a butler and an お嬢様 detective so you can't really blame me, right?).

So I decided on Swallowtail in Ikebukuro, which is, I'm pretty sure, the first butler cafe in Japan. Might as well go for the cream of the crop.

The basic concept of a butler cafe is that you are extraordinarily wealthy and you're returning to your mansion for dinner/afternoon tea. The butlers great you with 「お帰りなさいませ、お嬢様！」"Welcome home, my lady!" and take your coat and carry your bag to your table and make small talk with you and serve you tea and generally make you feel like a fantastic person. It's not cheap, but you get really good tea, really good service (where else can you ring a little bell and have someone actually respond to you?), good food, and you can drink out of fancy tea cups in a place that basically looks like a ballroom but is somehow under a Family Mart convenience store.

You aren't allowed to take pictures inside, but luckily I got a flyer when I bought manga at K-Books that had a lot of pictures in it, so you'll get to see those.

Pretty sure our butler is not pictured here but it gives you an idea of the staff.

Inside the dining room. We sat at tables like this.

On the left is little curtained off two person tables. I'm not sure how you get the ability to sit at one of those. And on the right is the set of tea snacks that I ordered. It was way more filling than I expected it to be. It comes with a pot of tea and I ordered a strawberry tea on a whim, ("Hephaistos," I think... the birthday tea for April) and it was amazingly delicious.

Here we all are outside of the entrance, where we were allowed to take pictures. Me in the middle in the blue dress and the 5 friends I could convince to come with me.

The whole experience was really enjoyable, and I can understand how people could get kinda addicted to it. The butlers are super polite and friendly and complimentary. Like, they told us our Japanese was so good that we didn't really need to study, and when our butler told Matt that he was very nice for something he said, I teased him about being so late that we had to run there in order to make it on time, and the butler said that because 旦那様 "danna-sama" the master is so kind, certainly he must have all sorts of errands to run and people he needs to talk to, or something like that.
Like, I wish I had that kind of class, to respond to everything with flattery. Though the butlers do get trained for a month before they can even start work.


My friend commented that in the US the place would be a black tie restaurant, but it manages to not seem that uncomfortable. I think maybe it's the idea that the butlers keep telling you that this is your mansion. That way you don't feel too weird if you eat with the wrong fork or something.

Please ask if you have any questions about specifics. I'm not sure what I should be writing about here exactly, but Swallowtail was a lot of fun, and I recommend it.

Warning you all, things are going to be really out of order here in the next few posts because I'm going to blog about what I feel like while I feel like it.

I'm sorry I haven't had a lot I want to blog about lately. I've been busy with school starting up again and I've been wanting to read my Japanese books instead of squirrel around on the computer in English. Because suddenly it's May and I only have 3 months of Japan left and I don't know when or if I'll be coming back.

So forgive me for being out of touch with America and the internet for a while.

I'm currently enjoying my Golden Week break from school. Golden Week is a series of national holidays in late April and early May which means lots of free time. My birthday happened to fall on the Showa Emperor's birthday so even though I didn't exactly take advantage of it, I had a whole national holiday at my disposal when I turned 21.

So, on my 21st birthday I slept till 11am and then cleaned my room and wrote a short essay about marriage for my Japanese class. And then I went to dinner with my host family. It was awkward because my host brother and oldest host sister are apparently in such a big fight right now that they can't stand to look at each other but they both wanted to go. And I ate way too much but drank no alcohol and ended up going to sleep at 10:30 because I had a headache.

But my host family gave me a hanko name stamp for my birthday! If I were to live in Japan I could probably get it registered and use it for official purposes like signing things but for now it's just fun to stamp random things, even though I have yet to figure out how to make it look good.

Hanko case

The stamp and stamp pad part

Test stamping in my planner. It says my name in katakana written from top to bottom.

The day before my birthday, my oldest host sister invited me to go out to dinner with her and a friend of her's, so we went to this place in Shibuya called the Garden Farm and had cheese fondue in this classy little restaurant where each party was seated in their own individual rooms (Is there a word for this in English? In Japanese it's 個室...). Since it was my birthday the next day, we all got a free cake.

The courses are out of order, but:

Steamed pork and stuff (the steam got in the way of the picture)

Cheese fondue and veggies and bread

My cake!

Arisa and me and the cake

I forgot what this was called.

First course: ebi sembei, edamame, and some sweet nuts

Salad

It was tasty and I appreciated that Arisa wanted to hang out with me. So that was my 2nd birthday party. No one sang happy birthday to me in Japan though... my parents and my little sister were sweet enough to record themselves singing to me and my grandparents wrote the lyrics in an email, and okay, I'm lying, everyone in Japan Study sang to me during our Minakami retreat (more on that eventually) but no one sang on my birthday.

So my 21st birthday wasn't wild and crazy, but wild and crazy isn't really me anyway. Plus all the people I want to drink with are back at Knox. So look out, Galesburg. I might go to McGillacuddys and have one cocktail during Jazz Night or something.

There was one sorta crazy thing I did though, the Friday before my birthday. I made a reservation at a butler cafe. Specifically, Swallowtail in Ikebukuro.
More on that in the next post.

I apologize for the lack of updates. I haven't had a lot to say, and I haven't felt like sitting in front of my computer pounding out a boring list of what I've done lately. It ends up taking up a whole day that I could have spent exploring Tokyo, and the thing is, I'm really starting to feel how little time I have left before I return home at the end of July.

One of the big things I've done recently was o-hanami (flower viewing). The sakura have come and gone in Tokyo, and when they were in full bloom, everyone went out to have picnics under the trees. Don't let anime fool you, cherry blossoms are white, not pink. But no matter what color they are, they're definitely beautiful.

It's midway through April and it's still not quite warm yet. I'm worried we'll skip comfortable weather and go straight back into the awful humidity we had when I arrived in September.

I'm trying to seize my remaining opportunities here, which means less time spent on the internet. Sorry for neglecting this blog for so long.

My study abroad program also took an overnight trip to Minakami, where we stayed at the ryokan where Matt worked I got to see my host family again. It was nice, but it was confusing in light of my recent uncertainty about whether I'll come back to Japan after I graduate. A joke about Matt and me coming back to work caused Suzuki-san to reveal that the city office was actually in the process of making a foreign-tourism-relations sort of job.

I'll have a lot more to say and hopefully a lot less ennui after next week. It's my birthday next Sunday, and on Friday I'm going to a butler cafe to celebrate. Gotta try these things that only exist in Japan.