Last day

Goodbye Japan, time to fly back to the States. Hopefully I can come back again sometime

Last day in Japan

This was the saddest and happiest day of the trip. This was the last day of the trip, but Chad, Trey and I met up with the girls that went to Akihabara with. We first went to Kawegawa. Kawegawa is less modern and still has the old school feel to it. We walked around the town and took in the historical sites, ate the local food and visited a fireman's station. We ate lunch at a little restuarant in town and then visited a shrine. No one was in so we just walked around and took some pictures.
We then went to Shibuya for karaoke. Let me tell you, those girls can sing, holy crap they put us to shame. The rest of the day consisted mostly of eating at restaurants and singing. When we were done, the girls walked with us back to the train station since they all had to go home as well. It was a great night, I wish I could eleaborate more but I'm trying to beat the midnight due date.

yet another day in Japan

Today was a free day, so Trey, Chad and I went to Shinjuku to explore and maybe do some shopping. I did not care for Shinjuku. It is too crowded, and a drug addict tried to get money off of me. That is basically all I did that day.

Another day in Japan

For this day, we first visited Harley Davidson of Japan. I was looking forward to this one because my dad is big into motorcycles and I'm thinking about getting one for myself one day. I was also curious about how Japanese feel about Harleys, since they normally prefer smaller motocycles like Hondas and Susukis. The visit was fun, we met witht the usual PR team who talked abou their business model and how they stay competive. Their main selling point is that the Harley is more of a lifestyle than mode of transportation, which is pretty much the same in the states.

We next went to Sony. This trip was amazing! Sony showed us their latest technology, stuff like the newest TVs, music players, computers, video gaming systems, etc. That was definately the best part of the trip. I wish that they had let us take pictures. Afterwards, they gave us a brief presentation about the history of their company and their future plans.

Japan, day 4

Today was another relatively light day. For starters, we visited the kimono shop owned by one of the professors at Gakushuin college. This shop had kimonos ranging in prices from dirt cheap, to really expensive. I don't remember exact numbers, but the one that Megan put on was worth several thousand US dollars. Half of the class went into the kimono shop, and the other half shopped around the local town. After one was done the other would switch. I went with the first group and was fitted with a yukata (the male equivalent of a kimono) and had my picture taken with the rest of the group which was alot of fun.

After that, I walked around the department store which was nearby, it was full of stores that catered to antiques, video games, toys, porn, clothes, pretty much anything that you could think of. After wandering around and looking at all the cool stuff that I couldn't afford, I met back with the class and we left for the Edo Tokyo museum.

The museum was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I love learning and this was great, there were plenty of miniatures of old towns, relics of pottery and such, and the displays had Japanese writings as well as English so that I could read most of the history of the displays. After that, I joined the class to watch the sumo matches. Sumo is the national sport of Japan and is very popular, and interesting to watch. After awhile, I became bored though and decided to leave. Luckily, Trey and Emily also left around the same time, so we left together which reduced the amount of time I would have gotten lost had I gone alone.

Japan, day 3

Our first stop for this day was to Asakusa. This was a shrine and a tourist trap in one. From what I saw, it was mostly little stores selling mostly knick nacks and what nots. Asakusa had a rich history, but we didn't hear much about it. Yamamoto sensei was there and told us some about it, but I can't remember it so I'm kicking myself for not doing these weblogs sooner.

Sensei took us to the Emperial Palace, or the outside of it rather, a long distance away from the palace. It is only open one day a year I believe and this was not that day. But we did get to walk and talk with Sensei which was alot of fun. Yamamoto sensei is such a great person, I wish that I studied more during class because she deserves better students than myself.

After that, we ate lunch and headed back to the school for our final activity there. Half of the class got lost on the subway apparently, so that pissed off the teacher whose class they missed, which will probably have reprocussions next year.

Anyways, the class was writing our names in Kanji, so we were each paired up with two students. This was alot of fun. Since most phonics have several different kanji which all mean different things, for the most part we picked out random kanji that ended up fitting pretty well. During the whole thing, we chatted, and I later found out that I talked too fast and the girls I was paired up with couldn't understand half of what I was saying. So I eventually learned to slow down my talk and use simpler words.

Afterwards, some more of the girls, Trey, Chad, Emily and I left for Akihabara. Akihabara turned out to be nerd central, which made me very happy ^_^. This place had all things anime and manga related, as well as a plethora of video games, arcades, computer stores, anything electionic, and that is just the stores that we did see. The girls took us to a maid cafe, which I personally didn't like. We were being served by 18 year olds dressed up as maids. It just made me feel weird. Oh well, it was still fun. We then ate dinner at a sit down restaurant and ate the local foods and chatted for a long time. It was a really great day.

Japan, Day 3

On this day, we went back to Gakushuin college to have a class with the students there, taught by our own lovely Dr. Fox. For this class, we split into groups of American men, American women, and Japanese women, and disscussed our opinions on certain issues. Being a Sociology major, I found this to be fun and interesting to see how we have similar opinions on some issues, and differing ones on others. We later WATCHED a tea ceremony class. We couldn't participate because of the Swine flu, which annoyed me. Japan has treated me very well so far, but interactions with the students is limited because of the swine flu. Oh well, I suppose that worse things could happen.

After this, we had a break, so Chad and I checked out the high school which was next door to the college. One of the teachers made us leave because we couldn't be there without an escort since it is an all female high school, which is totally understandable. At least the teacher was nice.

We then went to visit Ernst and Young and talk to some of the employees there. I was not impressed by this, because they basically asked what we wanted to know about and went from there. It was pretty much a Q&A session about business. I personally don't care about business, and the Tom guy seemed really arrogant which turns me off, so I didn't mind falling asleep during the talks.
After that, we went to a really famous restuarant. It was the one that the fight scene in Kill Bill vol.1 witht the Crazy 88's was filmed. It was awsome. I'll give this to Tom, he is generous. He paid for all of our food and all the beers. After the food, he took alot of students to go to a bar and paid for all of their drinks. At the end of the day, the guy dropped at least 20 grand American. I wish I wasn't so tired, or I would have joined them. Instead, I went back to the Olympic Center and went to sleep.

Taiwan, day 8

This was the last day that we were to spend in Taiwan, which made me sad. I didn't know anything about Taiwan when I arrived, but I fell in love with the country. The friendly people, the great food, and the cheap everything made the trip all worth it.
To get the day started, I slept in fairly late. By that I mean around 9:30 am because that is when Trey woke up. Trey and I went to the local laundry facility where we met up with Danny and Chad and cleaned our dirty laundry.
After that, it was off to get our massage, and let me tell you, it was the only massage that I have ever gotten, but I'm sure that it was the best that money could buy. The massages consisted of various stretches and the massaging of every muscle and joint in my body. The actual massage lasted two hours, but it felt more like 45 minutes. I had never been so relaxed throught the whole trip.
After the massage, I went back to my room to take a nap while Trey went out shopping. I packed up my stuff and watched some tv until we all went out to eat dinner. The dinner was amazing, it was four stars at the least! It was a huge buffet style and was all you could eat and drink. I took advantage of the all you can drink part mostly.
I ducked out early, since I wasn't very hungry to begin with, and wandered around on my own. I went to the subway station and noticed that there was an underground mall off to the side. So I walked into the mall and then walked from one end to the other several times. This thing was huge! After I became bored/tired of looking at all the things I couldn't afford, I made my way back to the hotel and went to sleep since we had to wake up early to fly to Tokyo.

Taiwan, day 7

For this leg of the journey, we went on a tour of TBI Industries, which is one of the largest drink manufacturers in Taiwan. This company makes drinks such as a weight reducing coffee drink, tomato drink with honey, barley tea, etc. All the drinks they make are designed to promote a healthy lifestyle which is pretty cool. They also make their drinks with something called Cold Aseptic production in their drinks. I don't remember what that means, but it is nothing new in the West, but in Taiwan it is pretty new. Also, they automate most of their production and shipping, which creates a sterile environment, and also speeds up the shipping process. They took us on a tour of how the drinks were made, but they wouldn't let us take any pictures which was a shame because some of it was pretty cool.

Our next trip was to Chung Cheng University. This was a basic get to know the other students session. I can't remember who I was paired up with because I'm a jerk, but I do have a picture of one of them here, she is the one on the left, her friend joined us later. When we first got there, we got some food and went outside to eat our food and talk. Most of our descussions revolved around the weather in Taiwan and NC. After about 20 minutes, we were told to come inside for an activity. The activity turned out to be a crafts activity that elementary school kids normally do. I didn't mind since we were able to spend some more time together and chat.

After the activity was over, I said goodbye to my new friends whose names I can't remember, and we went on a quick tour of the campus. The campus was very beautiful and came complete with lake with a sea monster inside of it, as well as a bridge that ruined relationships. This college rocks!

Taiwan, day 6

For the fun times for today, we visited Joy Enterprises. Joy is responsible for providing materials and training teachers for teaching English to the people of all ages in Taiwan. They had us participate in a demonstration as well as the standard speeches. Afterwards, we got to talk to the employees of Joy Enterprises.

After that, we headed to National Taiwan University, or NTU as it's abbreviated. NTU is the cream of the crop of college students in Taiwan. This is like an Ivy league school in America. For this, we broke off into groups and disscussed a case study about Quanta computers. Basically, Quanta tried to build a $100 computer to bridge the technological gap in poorer countries. We were tasked with disscussing whether the computer would actually work, and if it would damage sales of normal computers.

Afterwards, Trey, Emily, and I were shown around Taiwan by one of the students at NTU, Derrik. Derrik is a really cool guy. He took us out to eat some of the local foods and then took us to a five story bookstore. By that, I do in fact mean a bookstore that's five stories tall. It had everybook on everysubject in every language that you can think of. It was awsome.

Derrik then took us to Taipei 101 which is the tallest building in the world at 101 stories tall. We went up to the top floor that they would let us go to, which was the 91st floor I believe. The view was amazing, the fact that we went at night made it all the better because we could see all of the lights in the buildings. After that we parted ways and I went to bed.

Taiwan, day cinco

For this day, we went to see the White House, which was a huge building that had a lot of historical information in it. I don't remember if this is where the President of Taiwan lives or not, but we wern't allowed to have cameras or bags and they had guards stationed all over the place, so it must be important. On a funny note, half the class was hung over when we went on the guided tour, and I was doped up on Benadryl because I discovered that I have allergies in Taiwan.
The tour was boring however. Now I know I have ADD, but the tour guide spent forever on every piece of the history. Also, he would randomly break from English into German, and he would also as professor Chen to help him translate, so he would also start speaking in Chinese. This, coupled with the Benadryl made me fall asleep on my feet on more than one occation during the tour.
I believe that is all that we had to do that day, so I went back to my room when the tour was over and slept off the Benadryl. The rest of the class went out for karaoke which I would loved to have gone to, but I needed to sleep off the medicine and rest from all the walking around in the Taiwan heat all day everyday.
That evening, a group of the class and I went out to eat at TGI Fridays, because as much as I loved the local food, I was starting to miss American cuisine. Fun times were had.

Taiwan day 4

This was a busy day, so the blog will likely be long.

to start things off, we took a two and a half hour trip to Giant Bicycle inc. We toured the factory where they make all of the bikes. They showed us the materials it was made from, how they pieced it all together, the shifts that the workers worked, etc. We then went inside the corporate building where they showed us a promotional video about the company and the PR people answered questions for us. We learned that Giant Bike is the biggest manufacturer of bikes in the world, and that they are hoping to get people to integrate riding bikes in their daily lives. I think this would be a good thing due to the gas shortage and unhealthyness of most Americans. Another cool thing is that the president of the company is riding his bike across all of Taiwan and the man is in his 70s, which is really impressive.

After the Giant Bike tour, we had a traditional Chinese styled lunch, which was quite an experience. They kept on bringing out course after course of food, and they didn't stop until we stopped eating the food. Aparently, if you cleaned your plate it means that you are still hungry and so they keep brining food until you stop. The food was delicious, but for the first time I couldn't eat all of it.

After lunch, we stopped by a saxophone maker. They made saxophones that were priced in the tens of thousands of dollars, but in respect I think that it was NT money so it was probably not as much as the tag said when converting to US dollars. Either way, Megan got to play with the daughter of the owner of the shop, who along with her three other sisters are part of a saxophone quartet who are popular in Taiwan, and have even played for the president of Taiwan.

Our next stop was to a local winery. The owner of the winery showed us the equipment used to make the wine, and told us about how it was all made. Charlie did his best to translate from the Chinese, but there was alot of terminolgy used, but he was able to communicate the gyst of it. After about 10 minutes, the owner let us sample the wine that he made, and he gave us alot to sample, which was awsome.

Our last stop was to a love motel. And yes, this is the kind of love motel that people go to to have anonymous sex. It was actually a pretty cool set up, the rooms are kind of like apartments, and each of them have garage doors at the entrance so that you can close it behind you so that no one can see you as you drive in. You would never see something like this in America, but I guess that it is part of Asian culture which is why we went there.

Even though it was a love motel, there was no loving going on. But the room was perfectly suitable for a group of people hanging out. We rented out the most expensive suit, which was big enough to fit all of us comfortably. The room had a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, massage table, a huge bed, massage chair, karaoke station, and bathroom. We stayed there for a couple of hours and headed bad to our hotel in Taipei.

Taiwan day 3

For this day, we were supposed to go to a ceramics museum. However, as our plans are very apt to hit SNAFU's, the museum was closed, which is surprising considering how it was Monday. But Charlie being the master of finding solutions, found something else for us to do on the spot. We ended up going to a tourist section of a town whose name I can't remember. The place we went to had a lot of stores with homemade jewelry, statues, trinkets, as well as the standard knick nacks and what nots. Shopping at the markets was pretty cool, because most of the shops spoke some English, and if they didn't, then they would punch some numbers in a hand calculator to show how much something cost.Another fun activity that Charlie had for us was to make a piece of pottery at a potters studio. The studio had the standard potters wheel which had a block of clay put on it and then you pull a lever which makes it spin at various speeds. The potters showed us how to make the clay change shape and made it look super easy. However, when I tried it myself it always broke apart and didn't do anything that I wanted it to. Just one more thing that I'm not good at.After wandering around the town for a while and doing some shopping, we departed for our final destination which was a spa. The spa was freaking awsome. It had several pools of water with various temperatured waters which ranged from liquid ice, to molten lava. I tried to tough it out in both the extremes for a few minutes, but I decided to go with the hot bath water temperature. They also had pools with salt water, oxygenated water, and faucets that massaged various parts of your body. We wern't allowed to bring cameras with us so I can't show you what it was like, but take my word for it that it was awsome.

Taiwan again

Ok, now that I have decided to quit being a lazy #%&@ and actually detail my travels for all my friends and family to read about.So the second day of Taiwan was spent doing the touristy thing. The first stop was to an old gold mining town that was converted into a tourist attraction. The town was built on the side of the mountain and the scenery was absolutely beutiful. Taiwas has so many green trees, much like Boone but better. Although Boone doesn't smell like open sewer systems and the local delicacy: Stinky toufu. Yes, it is called stinky toufu for a reason, and they cooked it everywhere. But that is literally the worst part of Taiwan which shows you how awsome Taiwan is. I didn't take many pictures, but most of what I did take are in my gallery since facebook is being a pain and not letting me upload it to this note.This place was definately made for tourists, there were plenty of cheap childrens toys, knick knacks and whatnots, but there were also some real jems. They had plenty of shops that had jewelry, statues, hand made goods, plenty of food which I wasn't brave enough to eat, etc. I picked up a few things for the friends and family and headed back for the bus at our designated time. Unfortunately, I was 20 minutes late and arrived right as they were sending out a search party for me.The next stop was to the beach. I really wish that I had written down the names of these places because I can't remember what the names of these places. Anyways, this beach was cool because it was a man made beach and the sand was a light brownish yellow color. We had the option of going straight to the beach or go on a bike ride. Since I was still jetlagging and tired from all of the traveling I skipped the bike ride and went for the sand. I regret this because I hear that the bike ride was awsome, oh well, I'll have to keep that in mind next time I get an oportunity to go back to Taiwan.At the beach, I sunbathed and swam in the ocean a bit, and also played some vollyball with the locals. More and more of the trip joined in and the game eventually became an East vs. West game. Luckily, everyone who was playing sucked so no one was showed up by the others. The only downside was that I jacked up my shoulders for the rest of the trip because I was smacking the hell out of those balls and sending them halfway down the beach and way out of bounds. After the beach adventure, we went back to Taipei and had the evening free. The majority of the class went to a japanese styled restaurant in the middle of the shopping district. This was about a block from the hotel and the area reminded me of Times Square. It was big and crowded, but there was plenty of cool things to look at and people dressed in awsome clothes. We ate, we chatted, then I went to sleep.