TV Time!

As I was wandering around Akasaka the other day, I found out that TBS, one of the major TV networks in Japan, was holding a summer festival literally minutes away from my dorm. As you can see they had a tropical theme and there were tons of different food & desert stands serving the people who came to visit. Akasaka's Metro station lies directly under TBS's headquarters so that's the main reason they're having the festival over here.

Then I saw it. In the main plaza where they had constructed an elevated stage, a large gathering of Japanese people began. Sitting down in the seats were members of the Japanese media and major newsgroups and standing behind them were your typical Japanese citizens and myself. After waiting a little bit of time they began filming a TV panel talk show right in front of my eyes. I was about to take some pictures while they were filming but they stopped my and said photos weren't allowed to anyone except approved media.

Fortunately, there was a Japanese girl who was working as support staff there who spoke English and told me what was going on. Basically the show was a recap of a special initiative where one of Japan's most famous models (pictured above) along with a group of mentally disabled people traveled over to New York City to paint over graffiti and see the Statue of Liberty. I managed to snap a quick shot of the model on my way out but it was a pretty cool event.

Off to class...

The Second Coming

Well since things have gone a little slow with orientation and other boring stuff I'm going to go back in time a little bit. When I got into the hotel at Shinagawa back on Wednesday, they gave me a really nice room this time and I managed to take a few pictures of it.

One thing you might find interesting, are the toilets. In most of the nice hotels and high-end restaurants, they have state-of-the-art toilets waiting for you in the bathroom. As you can see the one in my hotel room had a large dial on the right which controlled the temperature of the toilet seat (yes... you can make it various degrees of warm!). Also it was equipped with a hands-free cleaning system which eliminated the need for toilet paper all-together! By using either the shower or bidet function, the toilet will automatically clean your bottom.

The Japanese love their technology, and this is just one small example of it.

More to come soon...

Arrival

We’re Back! So, I’ve landed in Japan and settled into my new dorm room (which is more of a tiny hotel room, pictures to follow) without too many hitches in the road. The flight took 12 ½ hours and I slept for 4, watched movies for 5, and read ‘the Game’ for the remainder so things went pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when I landed at the airport they gave me a little trouble; it turns out that when I went last time over New Years they forgot to give me a departure stamp so I had to wait a few minutes for them to sort things out.

Next, as I was waiting for the train to Tokyo-proper, I was subjected to two ‘random’ passport checks within about 3 minutes of each other (guess I’m not doing the best job of blending in…). I spent my first day in Shinagawa – a southern metro center of Tokyo, and also the same place I stayed last time – and all I did was walk around the surrounding area for a few minutes and grab dinner at a familiar place. They’re giving us a tour of Akasaka, which is where I’ll be living for the semester, along with orientation for classes and the program.

Sorry for the dull post, this was just one to let everyone know I made it over and moved in. I have some good material for future posts….. Stay tuned!

**That's my plane, I was seated in the upper deck!**

Can I do it...?

Coming off an awesome summer where I met a bunch of great new people and spent more time with old friends, I'm going to have to start all over again as I begin my semester abroad in Tokyo, Japan. Looking back, the "Summer of Getting Jacked" was a tremendous success and I know that this is the best, that everyone and I who participated, has ever been. But now it's time to look forward to the future...

The concept I have in my mind is for this to be more of a travel journal/picture driven memo more than a flat out blog, which I think can get boring at times, so look forward to a lot of images sprinkled with some text here and there. To go into more detail, I'll be living in the Akasaka district of Tokyo and taking 5 classes at Temple University in Japan - that's 2 Japanese culture courses, 2 Japanese Econ classes, and Japanese Elements 1 (basic language). To prepare myself for the trip I've taught myself the 2 Japanese phonetic alphabets, Hiragana & Katakana, which will hopefully help in understanding things at first.

This is actually my second time to Japan; my first trip was this past 2008 New Years from Dec 26th 07 until Jan 4th 08. During that vacation with a close friend from high school, we went to a mixed martial arts events called Yarennoka! - which leads me to the title of the blog. Yarennoka roughly translates to "Can't you do it!" as a sort of challenge to ask others, as I am a huge Japanese MMA fan I think the title fits appropriately.


Finally, to close out the inaugural address I'd like to lay out some goals for the upcoming semester:

• Begin to learn the Japanese language from hearing it everyday and studying it in class
• Learn more about Japanese culture and what makes the people tick
• Make friends with the other abroad students and hopefully some locals
• Visit nearby locales such as Seoul, S Korea; Hong Kong; and potentially Australia and Hawaii
• Train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at one of Tokyo's best academies (Paraestra, Axis, or DEEP)
• Fine tune my Squash game and finally get competitive in a tournament

**pictured: Me at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, one of my favorite excursions this summer, I went to the Final rounds of the Men's singles & doubles with a friend from Georgetown.**