Where I'm At

Many of you know I'm "in Tokyo." Perhaps some of you don't know where Tokyo is in Japan. It's here:

The city of Tokyo is about 844.4 square miles. Let's narrow it down a bit. I'm in the Shinjuku ward, a very famous, popular area.

I don't live in the center of Shinjuku. The closest Yamanote Line (the train line that loops around Tokyo) to me is Takadanobaba. Here it is on a map you can interact with:

View Untitled in a larger map

As an amateur photographer, I really should set about photographing the place I live. But I'm quite busy, you see, with all these words and things.

Yesterday, I met up with a new friend from Singapore. She is doing a tour of the stations around the Yamanote loop. Takadanobaba was third on her list. In spite of knowing hardly any big attractions in the area, I offered to take her around. In exchange, I am going to post her pictures of the place. A good deal for both.

Here is the Takadanobaba station's edifice on the Waseda exit side:

There is a rotary in front of this exit where I always meet people who come to the station:

In the manga/anime Atom Boy, Mr. Boy was born in Takadanobaba. Thanks to this, there are absurdly huge murals under the elevated train tracks on the street level of Atom Boy and other famous anime characters.

Atom Boy is on your left when you exit, but on your right you can see the architectural beauty of the place I go for 100¥ stuff, called descriptively "Big Box":

To get to my dorm or the main campus of Waseda, you go straight up Waseda Dori (Waseda Street), so that is what we did next. Here is a moderately-priced second-run theater:

Here is my favorite ramen place, Oita Ramen, where you can get a big bowl for 650 yen and still order free refills of noodles:

Here is another shot taken outside Oita Ramen, looking up the street in the direction of my dorm:

Across from the Lawson, one minute from my dorm, is this amazing building that I've never been in but been thinking that it's a photography museum:

Just next to my local Lawson, a bizarrely-named restaurant:

Further down Waseda Dori, between my dorm and the campus entrance, are an excess of used bookstores.

A great Engrish name for a clothing store:

This may look like a generic shot of Waseda Dori, but the yellow and red signage highlights an amazing store. Called "Picasso," it is an offshoot of a large chain of stores called "Don Quixote." At Picasso, I can find cheap milk, yogurt, bread, instant meals, and snacks. They also sell clothes, dishes, computer stuff, games, sex toys, and novelty gifts. And they have an absurd theme song playing all the time.

Finally we come to the crossing that I turn left at, from Waseda Dori, to go down the hill to campus.

Waseda's Nishiwaseda Campus. This is one of the ways to get into it.

And here are various shots of classroom buildings and grounds.

We made our way to the center of campus, where Shigenobu Okuma the founder stands, scowling at the auditorium named for him.

The view he has of his auditorium:

The auditorium, closer:

There is a cafe and souvenir shop to the left of the auditorium.

There, they sell stuffed bears. The bear is the mascot because of the founder's name, Okuma. It's a play on the Japanese word for bear, kuma. Of course, the bear is scowling.

From campus, it is a short walk to an interesting spot: the oldest and nearly last streetcar in Tokyo.

In the other cities in Japan, streetcars are much more common. Tokyo is so well-irrigated with subways and trains, though, that the streetcars have slowly died out, except for the Toden Arakawa line. Waseda is one of the terminals. Here is the station:

And here is the little guy that services it:

And a bit more north of the tram/streetcar is the Kandagawa, the Kanda River. These cherry trees are almost ready to burst. (Expect more colorful photos of these soon.)

And here I am, on the bridge over the river. Hi!

Friday Follow-Through

Thanks for responding, you guys. Good to know who's out there. I will try and tailor some posts to your interests. Look forward to posts about poker, biking trails, art, public health, baseball, and the movie industry here. The only wild cards are the Katies from DC; not sure what they would like to hear about.

Here's a round-up of my week.

Monday, March 8: It was International Women's Day, which we don't celebrate in America due to its communist roots. But it's a huge deal in Europe. It's now all about celebrating women, mothers, etc. In Italy men give women yellow mimosas (the flower, not the drink). In Russia, too, along with chocolate. My Russian friend had already given me a present for Boy's Day last month (another Russian holiday), and she told me she was upset that nobody here knew about Women's Day. So I got her flowers and Ferro Rocher chocolates, and she was overjoyed. I also picked up flowers for two other women in my dorm who were having a birthday soon. We threw a little party for them, even though one of them was feeling too sick to make it there.

Tuesday, March 9: I spent the day with one of my best friends here and her boyfriend, going around to see ume (plum) blossoms at a shrine (picture above). Then we went to karaoke. Then it was poker night, and I lost. I have to resist the temptation to be flashy with my betting. It has not worked out for me this month.

Wednesday, March 10: It was a get-things-done kind of a day. I even made a to-do list. I cleaned my room after months of neglecting to do so, sent emails I really had to send, did laundry, made up my calendar for the month, and worked on my Japanese. Then in the evening I went for dinner at Eat More Greens, a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in Azabu-Juuban.

Thursday, March 11: It was supposed to be a get-things-done kind of day, too, but I didn't cross off all the things on my list. Gym in the morning, then cleaned my bathroom (also after months of neglect), then went to the school office for info about registration, then the doctor's office to schedule another appointment, and then I met up with a classmate to play Go. Then I chatted online for 6 hours, which really ate up my plans.

Today (March 12) I'm going to a museum in Roppongi that is supposedly pretty cool, and you can go up to the top at sunset and see Tokyo in all its splendor. Then I'm going to read more of the Japanese novel I'm reading for our little book club.

By the way, is it normal to lose 6 pounds in 3 days? Because um, that's kind of what happened. I'm working out most of the week, and skipping breakfast when I do, so that means I have been eating my first meal at around 1 or 2. I'm doing this because I don't like working out right after eating and because I read somewhere that the digestive process hinders fat burn. But 6 pounds in three days is kind of shocking. It can't all be fat; it must be some muscle loss, too.

Breaking the Silence

To all those who thought I had fallen off the face of the Earth: you were right. But I've climbed back up now, with hardly anything else broken.

I'm finding that action generates more of the same action. Confusion begets more confusion. Work begets more work. Interest in Japanese begets more interest in Japanese. And writing begets more writing.

These days I am keeping a private diary on http://750words.com/. Why keep a private diary online? Well, I can access it anywhere, and it gives me points and data. It analyzes my writing speed, my topics, even if I am using more I's than he's or she's (obviously I use WAY more I's). Why keep one at all? I read somewhere that it's good to get a few pages out of you every day, and if no one sees it it doesn't have to be spectacular.

Not that I'm writing Pulitzer-prize-winning stuff at the moment here...

It's still spring break here. In the first two weeks or so in February, I mainly stayed in my room, watching anime (Utena, Skip Beat, Chobits, Bakemonogatari) and J-dramas (Liar Game, Kurosagi, Nobuta wo Produce) and Mad Men. At some point I got sick of just staying in my room, so I started going out with friends. I also started online dating again and found some really interesting people.

Eventually I started going to the school gym, too. It's super cheap: about 22 bucks for the year. Well worth it. I'm going about 5-6 days a week. I do cardio on the bike for half an hour, then either upper-body and back or legs and abs, in a Body-for-Life kind of way. I'm starting to use the bike in a High Intensity Interval Training kind of way, which is really exhausting. I feel much better. Activity begets activity. I'm much more active now, full of energy for going out in Tokyo and checking out markets, temples, plum blossoms which are blooming now (which means that cherries are on their way).

I'm still working on Japanese through the break. I'm writing a Japanese diary (writing begets more writing) on Lang-8. There's an RSS feed on there if you are interested, which Google Reader can auto-translate for you.

Today I'm going to a friend's concert. She's in an amateur orchestra. I'm very excited to see it.

That's all for this morning; I still have to eat breakfast (natto and rice and mushroom soup, for your information). If you're still aware of this blog's existence, please leave a comment, so I know who my audience is.