Day 1

The first day of the trip, I couldn't believe it was really happening. It had felt like this abstract thing for so long than when I finally got to the airport I was in kind of a haze. That could have totally been from the fact that I had just pulled an all nighter though so who honestly knows. I slept pretty much the whole time on the first plane (2.5 hours) in order to try and minimize my jet lag, which worked pretty well. I tried to spend some time to myself (as in not talking to people) because I knew that I would be surrounded by people for the foreseeable future on trip. The second plane (14 hours, while I knew it would be long, was way longer than I thought it would feel. I slept a bit more at first, trying to sync up my sleep schedule to when I would be asleep in Japan. I ended up reading half of The Great Gatsby, a book required for my English class which I've been enjoying so far. I then watched some episodes of Brooklyn 99, a show I had heard a lot of good things about, Wall-E, a movies from my childhood, and Get Out, a movie I'd wanted to watch for a while now. I watched it with Ivette, my seat neighbor. It was really really good and it kept me awake. I made the mistake on the plane however of not standing up often enough so when we landed I almost fell over. After we got off the plane, Sensei stood in line for about an hour to get our rail passes while all the trippers waited and got dinner at a small コンビニ (convinced store)

Day 2

After waking up and eating a good breakfast at the hostel, we went to the train station. We had to make multiple different stops before we could enter to buy tickets and subway passes, finally getting on the train about 30 minutes after we left the hostel. We ended up taking 2 different trains, one below ground and one above ground. It was a long commute but it was worth it when we got to the teamLab borderless exhibit. The museum featured hundreds of projectors and lights that made interactive images along with things to climb. First, my group went to the flower room. This room was covered in images of different colored flowers, ranging from sunflowers to roses. Next, we went to the borderless forrest, a room full of LED lights strung from the ceiling and featured a mirror maze. The LED lights flashed in different patterns with ghibli-esque music in the background. We then went to the wave room, a room featuring holographic waves crashing against the wall and bean bags to relax in in the center. Finally, we went to the athletic forrest, a series of rooms that had a slide, a trampoline, a room filled with balloons taller than people, and multiple climbing areas. This room was personally my favorite as it was the perfect way to burn up pent up energy from the previous day’s flight. After we finished at the museum, everyone went to lunch: a pancake shop. I got lemon pancakes with the mysteriously described “salt gelato” which turned out to be salted caramel iced dessert (it didn’t melt so I don’t think I can classify it as a gelato). After a filling lunch of pancakes, went to Toshyogu temple which had beautiful winter peony gardens along with an amazing gold gilded temple. I wrote a haiku and bought a small good luck charm while taking lots of photos on my camera which I will upload when I can. I really loved the temple and even though it was chilly it was a really rewarding experience and I’m very excited for tomorrow’s shrine! We then went to Amayoko market, an outdoor market with food and shopping. We split up and went shopping on our own. I managed to find some cute earrings and a gift for a friend! We then had dinner which was a really amazing opportunity to practice out Japanese in a real world setting. The food was really really good and I managed to find something I could eat. We then took what felt like our 100th train for the day to the Tokyo Skytree. I was very tired by this point but the view up on the observation deck was very cool. The elevator turned out to be one of the fastest in the world, going over 300 meters / minute.

Today was really rewarding. While we did walk from 8 am to 10 pm and I’m absolutely exhausted, I learned so much today and had so much fun. I feel like I bonded a lot with the group and I can’t wait for what we experience tomorrow.

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5