Among the female population of Bunkyo Gakuin, there is an pervasive and undeniable love for Tokyo Disneyland and the neighboring territory of fun, Disney Sea. According to the brochure, both are autonomous nations under the leadership of their Czar, Mickey Mouse (it is rumored that Minnie Mouse is the one pulling the strings and wearing the royal pants but that is neither here nor there).

The Japanese female youth love it to death! There is a pricey admission at 55 dollars a person for unlimited access to the rides. Of course, the food and the souvenirs are an arm and a leg as well. Despite the prices, I have met many students who make monthly trips or every other month trips to Disneyland. What makes it that so ridiculous is that 90 percent of the people 90 percent of the time are waiting in line for a 3 minute ride. Quite possibly the greatest money making scheme I have ever seen.

I decided to give it a try myself. It couldn’t hurt to get in touch with my inner Japanese girl… er…. never mind that.

Through this day long adventure through the land of the cute and merry, I realized two dark, hidden things about my psyche. I have an unhealthy distaste for Donald Duck and I might kick kids if provoked. I can not say why I hate the duck, he is just the most inane and annoying of the Disney empire’s creations. That squaking little feather bag would have enjoyed my knuckle sandwich if he had not been surrounded by a league cute critters.

Also, through out the day little kids, as tall as my knees, bombarded me from all sides. I would be walking a normal, straight course but these rambunctious children would run into me. With a following moment of hesitation, they would turn and run away, most likely on their way into another unassuming set of legs. To the dismay of my Japanese friends, at the end of the day, I declared that the next little kid to run into me would be kicked into the upper parts of the stratosphere. Soon after, a little guy was zig-zagging right towards me.  I took a half step back in preparation to kick the field goal. Thankfully for himself and me, he took a last second side step into another direction.  I am sure he had not passed flight training (more like free-fall training) and I did not desire the inevitable lawsuits.

I also went on the “It’s a Small world” ride. Basically you sit in a boat and travel though differently themed locations where hundreds of obnoxious little dolls sing the damn song on repeat. Nothing would be more cathartic  than to walk through that ride with a baseball bat.

How can a place so cute bring out the derange in me?

Fai and Andy share a moment. Unknowingly, a Japanese man steps into that moment.

The Group in the Subway station

Andy. Take note of the Malay demons haunting him.

The Hotel Palace.

Fai and I charge up our Saiyan powers… I am not sure why I didn’t delete this picture…

Group jump picture!… Could use better timing though…

The Christmas Tree…sideways!?!?

This is where the legions of babys parked their mom-operated vehicles.

A ride I did not go on.

Interesting Fact: Fai wore his gross halloween wig for most of the day.

Spinning Cups!

Whoa!

Mickey came through in a parade to remind the proletariat who the real czar is.

A Song and Dance covering most of the Disney’s works. It was very cute.

The Castle at night.

A woman almost stepped on my camera during this final group picture! Yikes!

From the 5th Floor of Bunkyo, we have a pretty good view of Tokyo. Every so often we get a stunning sunset. Take a look.

I organized a small trip to Kamakura for myself and some other students, both international and Japanese. I wanted to see various shrines, the Daibutsu (a large statue of Buddha) and NATURE (something I am deprived of in Tokyo). Here are our exploits in photos:

We began with a walk to Nezu Station.

Ayaka and Mamoru share an (awkward) moment.

Baby?

Mikako espouses peace.

Kiomi, the Photographic Artist in action.

The Kamakura Station

Good ol’ Susumu

“This way, damnit!” Shun really wanted to see some shrines.

Beautiful backdrop.

Schuey being cute. Stop it.

馬鹿な魚。 Stupid fish.

Impressive

Jump Photo!

Defying physics, only in Kamakura.

A quick rest break for somem meditation.

A quick snapshot of the crew. At this point we were lost until…

We found this indecipherable sign map.

Thankfully there was a better one right next to it.

Team Photo!

Team Photo + Me

We finally found the shrine!

This shrine was tucked away inside a small mountainous ridge. We had to go through a dark tunnel to reach it. Cool!

This was a Money Washing Shrine. Here we washed our money for good luck.

Thousands of Origami Cranes hung from the ceiling.

Not only did we get some good luck from washing our money, Shun and I pulled out fortune-telling sticks. We pulled out “Daikuji” – the BEST Luck! Booya!

Jaselyn flashes her gang sign.

Just an all round neat place.

A great view of some of the city.

A quick Glamour Shot.

The Golden Arches of the West meets the Blazen Red arches of the East.

People!

People!

Mamoru: sexing up my camera with his eyes. Tsk tsk.

Kamakura!

Finally we reach the Daibutsu!

This thing is huge!

Jump shot! Again!

Jump Photo one more time. The Daibutsu was late again!

Group picture!

Jaselyn bought a wooden sword and stained it already.

The following pictures are from Enoshima, an island near Kamakura.

Starting at the University of Tokyo cafeteria, four of us went on a quest. Find and buy an ironing board.

Spoiler: We bought one.

Yuri, Mikako and Peter

Every fall, Bunkyo Gakiun University holds Bunkyo-Sai: a large, all encompassing school festival. Dozens of events were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. The events included several musical performances, a short theatre performance, hip hop dances, food, bingo, a speech contest and cross dressing.

Yes. Cross dressing. One very popular event was “Mr. Beautiful and Mrs. Handsome” where various couplese indulged themselves in the opposite gender’s garments and strutted their stuff.  John and Sarah, two exchange students went all out: they became a gangster and his/her Chinese recreational mistress, all of which is clearly illustrative of typical American culture. Apparently they had planned an all out seductive dance but was cut last second due to technical difficulties with the music.

A rather neat banner at the entrance of the school.

Ayaka and Yurie were Fesitival slaves for the duration of the weekend for quite sometime before that.

A massive cake was served at the opening ceremony.

Early one was a singing performance. I think that was gospel.

All the good food ran out first.

There was a speech contest. A friend of mine, Mikako, won second place.

Brass Band makes an outing at Bunkyo Sai.

This here is Sarah, not quite a girl, not yet a man. She’s participating as Ms. Handsome in a couple for the beauty contest.

A cute/disturbing couple.

John (left) and Sarah (right) show off their explicit relationship. Thankfully my hand became a quick make-shift censor bar to block harmful sights.

They walked the red carpet.

Hip Hop Dance club also had a showing in some classroom.

Bunkyo Cheerleaders.

An interesting theatrical performance but confusing and mostly unintelligble (it was in Japanese)

Andy and Corey enjoying music.

Susumu approves.

The Pachinko Parlor

A good friend of mine is Shun, a trustworthy and energetic young gentleman with a impressive talent for English developed through intensive  study. He is one of the more mature individuals I know, probably due to the fact that he lives alone here in Tokyo. His family is from Aomori Prefecture way up in the nrthern tip of this island but decided to study down here in Tokyo.

He’s not short of money despite being a college . He works part time at what appears to be a lucrative western style restaurant in an aimed at attracting foreign customers. Not only that, he also has an interest in Pachinko, the extremely popular style of gambling in Japan. The goal of the game is to put money in the machine, receive small metal balls and then launch said balls through an obstacle of pins and levers and through a small gate. Get enough balls through the gate and you get more balls.

Shun - The Master at Work

The goal is to get more balls.

There is also some themed video game that runs on the TV screen above the tumbling balls.  There are different themes such as cliched samurai story and now is a recently released

special edition Star Wars theme. It is rather passive game that represents how well you are doing and the various bonuses the player is accumulating. More bonuses, more balls.

An isle of Pachinko machines. Note the peculiar absence of human souls here.

The Pachinko parlor is offensive to all five of your senses plus more that you don’t even know of. Every possible stimulus your body can interact with is  to the extreme. Every machine has only one volume setting : loud, plus there are maybe 40-60 some machines in the same reason plus some indistinct music playing on the overhead speakers, the experience is like an 747 landing in your ear. The parlor also gives into the infamous Japanese vice of smoking which is a particular disgust for me. And everything flashes. My God, does it flash. Lights on machine blink and flicker no matter if you are winning or losing.

Somebody has earned his fair share of small metal balls. Have you?

When you are satisfied with the balls you have won, you can take those balls and trade them in for trinkets and cigarettes and whatever worthless stuff you could want. OR you can go to a nearby black market shop that will take your (pachinko) balls and give you real, cold, hard cash in return.

Shun is not so much “interested” as much as he is obsessed. Word has it that he has Pachinko enthusiast magazines in his bathroom.

And he’s good at it too. He actually makes hundreds of dollars at a time on good days. Though I am not sure how he is not deaf.

The window reads: "Shogun Pachinko: The Goddess of Victory will Dance and Luck will Come as gotten off."

One afternoon, Shun took Jaselyn, John and myself to a Pachinko parlor to show us the ropes. I lost 1000円 (10 bucks or so) and called it quits. I was feeling nauseous so I wasn’t excited to give more money away to the Pachinko Parlor. I went over and watched the master at work. He didn’t do much really b

ut things were happening. Lights were flashing and balls were thumbling around. And more balls were depositing into his bank box. I really could not figure it out.

The three of us left him to his pachinko game. Later we heard he raked in 300 dollars or so in winnings in that afternoon. Rediculous.

For you benefit I have included a video:

A while back, I joined exchange students Penny, Lisa and Dickey on a pilgrimage to the Imperial Gardens. The Gardens is a large park in the center of Tokyo where everything spins out from like spokes on a wheel. In a land of concrete, steel, and high rises, it is refreshing to walk through a beautiful and historic park.

Also a perfect opportunity to be unsightly tourists as we make fools out of ourselves. And we would be the first to either – a short while before we went, an intoxicated European fellow decided to go skinny dipping in the moat surrounding the imperial gardens. He got a good hour or so swim in before the Japanese Navy (Japanese police officers on row boats netted him)  I am not as ambitious/stupid as that fellow but we had great fun no less.

A look across one of the 12 Moats of the Palace

A Map for the Interested

Penny and Dickey were excited!

Lisa being cute.

A remarkable structure

a Place to picnic in Tokyo!

Me performing the Schwingy 3/4ths Cartwheel spectacular

Just Chillin’ before…

the roll! Aikido Ukemi!

Dickey gives tries to Sommersault— more like Sommerfault!

Good Times Part One

Good Times Part Two…?

Fast Food Tempura for Dinner

A Quick Glamour Shot back in Korakuen

The Ferris Wheel of Korakuen

A shot from the look out of the Bunkyo Civic Center’s 25th Floor

Here at Bunkyo, Peter and I do not have any classes that we are in charge of. Our tasks are mainly participating in the chat lounge, spell checking documents, and assisting teachers in their classrooms. Some days are more busy then others. I usually have the opportunity study Japanese or keep up on the presidential campaigns.
Peter and I substituted for Tanahashi-Sensei for two periods on the second day of classes which was a pretty taunting task for the both of us. We kept it simple since the students had been out of class for all of Summer vacation. We had the students give the class introductions. We weren’t sure what to expect from their English ability so we kept it simple: their name, what they did over the break, and a question for Peter and I.

One girl stepped up to the front of the class, gave her introduction then paused. After a moment, she nervously returned to her seat but was halted by fellow students who pressed her to say something. The girl paused and turned towards us. Hesitantly she asks Peter and I have girlfriends. “Nope” says Peter and I. The swarm of girls that had encouraged the girl to speak erupted: “Chance! Chance!”

After a quick recitation exercise, we played a game of pictionary and that brought us to the end of class. A few girls treated us with Anko (a bean paste sweet) and strawberry cracker sticks. Sort of reminiscent of teachers getting apples back in the old days.

—–

On another day, Peter and I and two other gentlemen working for Bunkyo had to teach classes on a Saturday. The big plot twist was that the students were actually mothers (and some fathers) of prospective Bunkyo Gakuin students. Somehow, the school saw Peter and I fit to represent the entire school in the classroom!

One of the other two teachers, Tom, wrote up a lesson plan for us. It was pretty simple: creating yes or no questions. Is it _____? Does it _____? Can it____? This combined with a list of nouns, adjectives and colors, I lectured on the benefits of asking simple questions. The last part of the class I broke them down into small groups and let them take on 20 questions.

For the most part, the ”students” we interested and attetentive yet quiet and unassuming. I never really know if know if students understand because they usually stare blankly. I have noticed this in other classes that are taught in Japanese by Japanese professors. The students usually do not talk or offer opinions or basic affirmation of understanding. Maybe the class size is too big. Thankfully, there was a eager mother with a descent grasp of English that helped me with translation some of the time. 

—–

On a rather quiet day in the chat lounge on a Thursday afternoon, a posse of Japanese students invaded the chat lounge much to the surprise of Peter, exchange students Justin and Heather, and myself. These voracious women moved as a conscious pack barraging us with greetings. “Hello,” they chanted! “Howdy,” some girls said. “Hi,” piped in another one over and over again.

We returned the greetings… and so did they. Over and over again. One girl’s greeting caught my hear. I asked her to repeat it: “High Tension!”

“The heck?”

She confirmed it with more repetition. I gleefully returned the “Hi tension” back to her. I decided to one-up her. I boastfully greeted her with “Hijack!” The mob of girls cocked their heads to the side? “Eeeehhhh?! Hijack? what does that mean?”

“Its like when you take over an airplane…” I tried to explain.

One girl chimed in: “You mean like on the bus?”

“Yeah!” Using my body to demonstrate, “There is a bus driver and then you throw him off!” I threw my imaginary driver out the window and commandeered the steering wheel.

Another girl raised her hand with a pointed finger and thumb, ” with a gun, right!?”

“Yeah, with a gun!” I raised my “hand” gun as well. They laughed as they understood the meaning of hijack. Though, I am not sure why they thought of bus first and not plane.Then, as quickly as they had arrived, mass of girls had caught sight of a shiny object in another room. They said goodbye and ran off leaving us feeling rather violated. Tom came by later and cleared it all up. He had sent his students to the chat lounge to ask us a question about where we came from. Apparently they forgot that part.

On September 21st, the exchange students, Peter and I participated in the shrine carrying festival. The day proved to be a very wet one with intermittent rain fall.  I talked about the religious significance of the event in this blog entry. Basically, we load up the local religious deity into a golden ornate half-ton vessel and carry it through the streets.  Several other communities were carrying their deity shrines at the same time in a long parade.

The day is best understood in pictures:

Four Esteemed Gentlemen

Group Photo! Everyone suited up and ready to carry.

Corey: Simply. Stunning.

Susumu suddenly became popular with the ladies.

Nick and Yuta showed up for moral support and were capable gawkers.

The Festivities were temporarily halted as a raging school boy terrorist came through with a shotgun. He demanded candy… and alot of it.

Another shrine carrying group march in on our territory.

Nick attempts to tame the savage school hooligan but takes a shotgun shell for the team

The other group shows us how itss done.

A close up.

The crew takes to the streets, Kami in hand.

Students from another University were there to film the festival. I asked if they would give me the camera for keeps. They nervously laughed then ran away.

Leading the Charge

An already tuckered out team is happy to put the half ton shrine down. A few minutes later we tell them they only did the warm up…

Doing my best to bolster morale.

Nearing completion.

At the end of the Kami Parade tour, the rain became ever more intense. An all out downpour. Actually. A torrential downpour. We put the Kami aware and sought shelter under awnings in the alley. We returned our borrowed uniforms and and received a gift of treats and snacks from the community for participating.

Most students ran back to the dormitory to dry off and enjoy a prepared meal from the President of the School, Shimada-San. I however took foot to the shrine grounds where dozens of shops were set up selling food and hosting games. I picked up my old matsuri stand by: Okonomiyaki, as well as Beef Tounge on a stick, and another delicious dish that I do not recall the name of. For 1500 yen, I feasted like a King.

All and all, it was a very tiring day for everybody.

Bunkyo Gakuin University with a pinch of artistic flair

Saturday, the 20th of September, the day after first class and the day before the Matsuri festival, Nick Swanson, my friend, fellow filmmaker, and champion of curly hair paid me a visit. His neck of the woods is all the way up north in Aomori-Ken (Aomori Prefecture). This is the northern most section of Japan’s main island. It was an eight hour bus ride.

Let me remind some of you of who this gentleperson is:

Nicholas Lawrence Swanson is the director, alum extraordinaire of the St. John’s alumnus community. This is the man with whom I went with into the celluloid trenches nearly everyday for seven months to develop 90 minutes of creative and artistic motion picture. A daunting task that a lesser man would have been crushed by the power of DV professor Brother Simon’s fist. Nick is the man who pulled together the efforts of over two dozen individuals into a small sovereign filmic warrior nation and accomplished the digital video movie: The Sunday Paper. I served as the Director of Photography, assistant to the director, visual effects lead and morale booster.

The experience was damn near 6 months long of prolonged effort and artistic vision. Kudos to the participants. If you want a dvd, maybe I can get one to you! Just ask.

—

Get to know your film tyrant! Little known fact #47: Nick's most debilitating weakness is his insatiable sweet tooth.

—

Arriving at 8 in the morning on a Saturday morning, Nick was already putting me to task: I escorted him from the subway to the dormitory, a brisk 4 minute walk. We proceded to shoot the breeze for some time since most people were still asleep.

Soon enough people were on their feet and Nick and I assemble a posse and took to the Subway. I thought to myself, where should I take a foreigner in Tokyo? Where else but Shibuya. A great way to get a taste of the scale of Tokyo.

English: surprisingly a verb.

At Shibuya, we enjoyed some food at a Katsuya (breaded pork resturant) and then gave Nick his first view of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing, briefly mentioned here before. I think we blew Nick’s mind. We also saw some people with the most amazing engrish on their t-shirts like this in bold black letters:

NO

BITCH

ASS

NESS

Wow. When I saw the man approaching, I immeadiately turned around to the opposite direction and briskly walked away to makes sometime to get my camera out for covert picture taking. Unfortunately the man was booking it and got away before I could manage a picture.

After having enough of Shibuya, we trekked onward to the north in search of Harajuku. The cos-players were once again absent but that didn’t matter, we went to the nearby shrine Meijijingu, a large park with a temple. It is a rather beautiful place with interesting aesthetics. Two years ago, I visited this place and was able to witness a traditional Japanese wedding. It is quite the sight with their beautiful and very traditional garmets.

In the park we took plenty of pictures and got plenty of odd stares in the process.

Probably because we looked like complete idiots leaning on this gate and this tree. You decide:

We also went for some glamor shots:

Staring gallantly into the heavens

A hint of かっこういい

Yuta and Nick - East and West - Cool and Stylish

Afterwards we parted ways for our homes. The next day would be a big day for us (soon to be posted….suspenseful!).

Bonus Randomness!For what ever reason, we marveled at the disproportionate sizes of soda cans here Japan. No matter the size, the price is usually the same though.

A rather concerned Shuey

An elated Jaselyn