Day 7, Navy Base

Its hard to tell by this photo, but this shower room is really spacious. Its nice to take a shower without bumping your elbow against the wall. The bathtub is also much deeper than a typical bathtub in the US.

Today Teresa took me to the Navy Base. It was just like being in America again. I didn’t know I would miss hearing a southern accent until I heard it from the taxi driver. It felt like I was home.

We made a stop at Starbucks to get a Matcha Latte (sooo good). I gotta drink as many as I can since we don’t have these in the US.

Next we go grab lunch at a Japanese Curry restaurant, Coco’s. You get to pick the level of spicy 1-10. You can’t even eat a certain level until you’ve had a level 5, I think. I get pressured to not eat more than a 3, so I order a 4. I definitely should’ve went with a 7. It was really tasty. Maybe I’ll be able to go again before I leave.

We head to the mall to look around. Check out the amount of bikes outside of the mall. This just shows how much they ride bikes here.

Next we go check out a supermarket to see how different it is from the US. The fruit is really expensive. A watermelon is about $12. They individually package all of the fruits and veggies.

As a person that doesn't read Japanese, Teresa says you just have to use pictures and guess by looks what it is you need. One example, is that they thought these fish cakes were some sort of candy. They tried them because of the One Piece ad.

One Piece is one of the longest running anime and you see it in advertising for everything, everywhere. 

One Piece seen in Coke and air freshner products. These are just a few examples.

The hot dogs they sell here are also either really small or really big. There isn't anything that compares to US hot dogs. These are accompanied by some quirky ads. One is from a video ad played in the store. And the other is showing a dish for kids where the small hot dogs are cut to look like little characters.

They also don’t sell many gallon or half gallon sized ice cream. Most of what I saw was a pint or less. They also had individually packaged soft serve cones.

Another odd size is the ice. Look at the small bags of ice they sell.

Some more interesting items:

gum that's called "watering kiss mint"

Plenty of fresh fish/seafood and packaged sushi

Wall of canned and bottled coffee

Day 6, Themed restaurant

Today was the first day that I slept in past the blazing 4am sun! It felt great to sleep in. We started the day with some canned Boss black coffee (sooo good).  Then we walked from her house to the subway.

Being in Yokosuka with Teresa helped me slow things down a little bit. I was able to chill and enjoy things a little more; aka walking slowly to the subway instead of rushing to keep up with our professor.

Fire hydrant with cool decoration

Delivery bike for a restaurant

One cool thing I discovered is the meaning of the yellow strips of dots on all the sidewalks and subway walkways. Its for the visually impaired. They use these dots to guide them along the street and to know where the platform for the subway ends. There is also a sound at the street crossing when its safe to walk. And there are sounds of birds chirping that guide people throughout the subway station.

Tonight, they took me to a place called The Lockup. They “arrest” you and then take you to a cell to dine. Everything is themed. Then when you’re almost done eating, the “show” begins. The “prisoners” are let loose and raid the jail. They are all dressed up in costumes, one of which reminded me of a hollow from the anime Bleach. This made it a lot of fun as they try to scare you by opening your cell and jumping on top of your cell with no roof. Then we played darts and did one round of karaoke.

 

Quirky advertisement for the day

Day 5, My Company Visit, “Career Woman” shoes, and The Beginning of the Weekend!

Company Visit

The company I work for in the US has many locations in the world. Today I visited one of the sites located in Japan. I can’t go into much detail here, but I’m very appreciative that they would take the time out of their day to show me the facility. It gives me a new layer of understanding for our business. Something that was cool that I can share is that I rode on an industrial elevator. It was basically a huge room that we rode to the next floor. It was a little surprising to see and unnerving at first but definitely cool to ride.

“Career Woman” Shoes = spending about $18 on some hideous crocs

And of course, in Japan, I know that they dress up for work, so I came prepared. I was gonna try to do the “Career Woman” thing which entails wearing heels. What I should’ve done was wear my walking shoes and then put on my heels when I arrived. I just thought, I see all these ladies doing it, I’ll try it. What?? Are you crazy, Andrea! That’s right, I stupidly walked from my hostel to the subway and then to school (I was late that morning) and then to the subway again to visit my company. All in all, it was probably 40min of walking. I was completely miserable by the time I got to my company. It required my utmost attention just to stay focused on what they were saying, while I was battling the heat and my feet. After it was over, I went to eat sushi with Joe, and on the way, we stopped at the closest place and got me some uber ugly black crocs. He probably has a photo of this, just ask.

I really don’t know how they do it. Next time I come back, I’ll have to survey women wearing heels.

 I will say that I have observed that most of the “career woman” shoes are low heels and they let the heel slip giving that cobble sound. Someone said this was for air ventilation, but I believe its for comfort.

Off to Yokosuka! Weekend with family.

I’ve been in Japan a week, and I can’t believe that I haven’t seen my family yet! So now, after putting on some better shoes, its off to Yokosuka (1hr 30min by subway). Unfortunately, my brother is out to sea, but I do get to spend time with my lovely sister-n-law, Teresa. It is also nice to get away from the dorm room life for the weekend! We take the subway and then ride in a friend’s car which was really cool. We have dinner at a place that reminds me of Waffle House inside. They bring your order out on a super hot plate that cooks your meat. I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture. We hit a few more spots and then its off to bed for this exhausted girl!

Quirky advertisements for the day

Quirky ad for 0% alcohol drink. That piece of chicken is ridiculously big.

Travles back to the land of the free entry 21

On Sunday we woke up in the morning and went to the train station to get ready for our departure from Tokyo. We got all our bags packed up and went to meet Dr.V in front of our hostel. We then followed him all the way to the subway line. Lucky for me I packed super light Which lightened the load big time for the journey back. It might have been the heat or the fact that we were carrying a lot of stuff but everyone seemed somewhat irritable on this little adventure. After several train stops we arrived at the Tokyo airport. We waited around for a little bit, grabbed some food and got on the plain. Lucky for me I slept for about 12 hours on the light so I was only up for about 3 hours before we landed in LA. So began the terrifying 12 hour lay over we were subjected to in the LA Airport. The best thing about friends and sleep is that they both have a way of making the time go by quicker. I slept for another 2 hours in the airport and also played some really fun card games with some of the coolest people I have met in a while, good memories. It was also really nice to eat a dish that didn't have a bunch of rice in it. I have so many memories that i will never forget from this trip, i also learned a lot about Japanese culture and marketing from Dr.V. I would not trade this trip for anything I have had so many unique experiences and made a lot of awesome new friends. Good by Japan see you again in 5 years!!!

Ikebukuro adventure and last day in Tokyo :'( entry 20

Saturday was a wonderful day filled with new discoveries and many adventures. We woke up and went to this huge all you can eat buffet in Asakusa. There were all kinds of foods and drinks that I had never seen before. It started with some green vegetable juice that was somehow sweet and a crazy looking fruit that I later found out was a lychee, it was super good. After that I just went around and grabbed one of everything because there were way to many options. After my stomach felt like it was about to pop. I went back to the hostel for a bit and then went out on my grand Ikebukuro Adventure. Two of my friends and I went around the district looking for some fun and later we started searching for scenes from the anime Durara. In the process of site hunting I manged to finally make it to a Maid Cafe. It was fun, but in a way kinda made me feel awkward. I still had a really fun time and it turns out it was the same one in Durara, imagine that! I was very excited about doing this because I really enjoyed this show and was hoping to see what the artist saw when he was in the process of making it. It was somewhat like stepping into a parallel universe, seeing the show in reality was a dream come true. We went around to several sites and took pictures of us acting out the scenes in the show. Two sites took us literally all day to track down, and when we finally found them it was like a dream come true. We started celebrating when the women took us to the site and she started celebrating with us. One of the scenes was simply a parking lot, one might think it would be impossible to find a random parking lot in the largest district of Tokyo but amazingly we managed to track it down. This was such an amazing but also sad day; we lived an anime and even made it to a Maid Cafe. I would not trade the past three weeks of my life for anything.  It has truly been a life changing experience, and one day I will go back to Japan but until then I will just have to settle for the land of the free!

Thunder dolphin and last day at Chou universtity :'( entry 19

Today was a very said but still fun day in Tokyo Japan. I woke up like normal and got some breakfast then it was off to my last day at Chou university. We had an exam after a short lecture from Dr.V, After taking our test we were free for  little while before we had to go to the fair well party at the school. We grabbed a bite for lunch and headed back to the hostel. On the way back we decided we wanted to ride the thunder dolphin at Tokyo dome, which is a Roller coaster in the middle of the city. This ride was really fun! it started out with a huge vertical drop into a series of twists and turns over crazy hills one of the best coasters I have ridden here. After that we went back to the hostel and weighted for a little while to go to the party. It was a pretty fun thing but also sad because we all knew that this was our last time seeing our buddies. we exchanged gifts, ate some food and did some dancing. After that we all shared our favorite memory from the trip and called it a night. I am really going to miss my routine of going to that school every morning and seeing my buddies on the weekends, but i guess all fun things must come to an end.

T

Return of the day of the chill Entry 18

Today was yet another day of playing catch up after being out of town for the past 2 day. I woke up got breakfast went to class by myself and returned to the hostel ready to get stuff done. I immediately started blogging and blogged until I was able to right about all the things I did like Disney sea the day before and some other stuff as well. After some catchup I went to go get food. later that night i was able to hang out with some friends and talk, I was able to knock out a lot of stuff I was behind on today not to bad of a day. I did manage to win a huge bottle of Pocari sweat at the 7-11 which was pretty cool.

Japan Advertising

This magazine is an example of pioneer advertising because it is promoting the idea of being active in life not just with a specific brand.

This is an example of institutional advertising because it is promoting a cetain thing which is disney sea.

This is an example of comparative advertising because it is comparing two different products.

This is an example of a product add because it is presented on a product.

This is a example of a competitive add because many brands are listed but one is preferred to the others.

Dr. Kadzys

 

We had a gentlemen by the name of Dr. Kudzys come talk to our class, I learned many things from him about Japanese culture. A big thing he hit on was the way that Japanese peoples life usually go, it was very interesting to find the many types of ways this usually goes, he said that most Japanese people are born Buddhist, merry like a Christian and die Shinto. This was a very interesting perspective on Japanese culture that I had never heard of before.

     Another interesting thing I learned about Japanese culture was the many gods that Japanese people have; I think he said something like they believe in over 3000 gods. This is just so much different from in America where there is only one God for the most part.

One thing that the Doctor mentioned that I had herd before was that people would pretend not to speak English if they don’t want to talk to you; the shyness of the Japanese people is a huge thing that surprised me when I came here. In America people are a lot more loud and outgoing then the Japanese people. Another interesting cultural point of Japanese culture would be the diversity of religion in families. In the US the children usually follow the example of what religion they are in but in Japan you can have a Buddhist, a museum and a Christian all living in the same house hold and the and no one would argue because the Japanese people believes that everyone has there old opinion and that they are entitled to it. The Japanese believe that everyone has a good opinion on what they worship.

     All in all this was a very informative and interesting brief history lesion on how Japanese people behave, I was very glad I got the opportunity to here more about the awesome animal that is Japanese culture.

An American's Japanese Dream XIX

May 28, 2015

      Today after class, a few students decide with some instructors to visit the old city of Kamakura. Kamakura is a small villages primary known for its shrines, but there is one more feature that it has that makes it stand out from the neighboring cities. Kamakura is home to one of the Sitting Buddha. There are many Buddha statues all over the world and each one has slight differences from the others. This statue was for one, about two and a half stories tall.
      We were also able to walk inside the giant Buddha and see some information about how it was made and all the certain stitching that went into the crafting of the Giant Buddha. They say that if you rub the Buddha's belly, you will be blessed with great fortune and luck.
      Not much more was done that do due to the rapid approach of the end of our study abroad program. I sacrifice any free time that I has to finishing up any work that I have not started or close to finishing.

An American's Japanese Life XIII

May 27, 2015

      Today started off like a normal day. There were no early excursions like we had in the past few days. It was our first day going back to class after about four days of solid traveling around Japan. I was kind of glad to get back to the regular schedule because I was truly tired of running around, Train riding, and walking what seemed to be like a thousand miles resulting it sore feet and complaining. I felt happy just sitting in a room or an hour and a half rather than the endless walking I had to endure the past week.
      During class, we went over the different types of advertisement and how it is used. So for our homework, we had to go out into the world and find any examples that would the specific type of ad that we were looking for. On our quest for the ad examples, a few friends and I came across this building that specializes in wood block print. I did not actually know what wood block print was, but my friend seemed pretty excited about it. We decided to take a break from the assignment and take a look at the place. It just so happened that this place was the famous Mukuhankan owned by the print master David.
      We walked into his shop and he greeted us with open arms. It was that warm type of invitation that you need once in a while to justify that there are still nice people in this world. He took us around the shop explaining what he does and how long he has been doing it. He has been working there since I was born back in 1993. Along with the tour, we were given the opportunity to actually watch how to art was done by one of his students. At the end, my friend bought a piece that resembled the characters for the famous Nintendo game "Star Fox".
      We left the shop and carried on with our previous task of finding the ads. Some of the group decided to split and leave for the hostel. We roamed several shopping areas before deciding that the best thing to do was to go to the local 7-eleven and check the magazines rack. There we found most of our assignment.
       For dinner, we decided to go a sushi place. Dr.V gave me the challenge to eat over 14 plates of sushi. I happily took on that challenge, gather a crew and headed to the sushi place. At the end of the end, I summed up a total of 15 plates while me friend exceeded and got 18 plates. Challenge accept
and exceeded.