It's been about two weeks since my last update about living here in Japan for the semester! I wanted to have enough time for myself to adjust to the train commute, my new family, and going out. For the first few days I didn't really go anywhere special so that I could get used to all this hahah, which resulted in lack of pictures. Now I have them! As well as some new, fun memories from my little adventures! 

It was 11:00am, and my classmates and I gathered together near Shinjiku for our first class field trip! Our photography professor also teaches the Design class, so he just got the two classes together for the field trip to save time. I'm happy he did, I was able to meet a new friend!

This is the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art! We were off to see the new design exhibition that my prof has not seen: Bunny Smash! I'm not a fan of going to museums, but I'm not gonna lie, this exhibition was really, really amazing.

The other parts of the exhibition is on my Kissx2 camera in RAW files, so I'm not posting those (it takes too long to edit all those huge files ugh.) but I do have others :) This design was my favorite part of the exhibition: World Data. This design had two projectors, and it simulated data with different types of media such as sound, graphs, and images.

The data was live stock market data from all over the world. The lights flashed and the images looked like stars in space. You could also hear a small frequency along with a subtle bass which was also used to measure the stock market data! 

I wanted to stay in that room for hours. For some reason I was so inspired by the design. It must have been my inner computer scientist because I was so impressed with the use of coding in addition to the artistic design.

MY DREAM.

This design was really cool too, mostly because it reminds me of my favorite style of art which is slice of life. The design was a music video about a girl who wanted to pretend that she went into space and danced up there. People on her blog would ask her every day if she really went into space, so in her little room with the computer station she had setup (image above) she coded her own rover to make shoe marks in sand, that she also set up, to show everyone. The girl would then video tape herself dancing in the Lunar Girl costume. I really enjoyed watching this method of showcasing a design :) 

The next week, my friends from Bryn Mawr and I went out to Shibuya to have dinner and drinks! Together we found an Italian restaurant to eat at, and their food was actually pretty good! I chose the spaghetti with the most meat I couldn't help my self.

Also, let's talk about this large silverware. I am an American.

My friend Linda showed us a cheaper bar/ sit down place to have drinks at! Which helped because we were all quickly going broke. 

I love the beer here I'm not even going to lie to you. To the people here, Asahi is like shitty beer you can find anywhere or like.....idk not the best you can have? Average??? But I love it. It gets me to the perfect level of buzzed and tipsy that I want to be at. I haven't gotten drunk here yet because I haven't started early enough hahah. In the states, we all usually start at night because bars will be open late and trains stop around 1am, so you can get drunk from 9pm or 10 and still make it home. Here, the trains stop at 12am. All of the trains. And you can't get back home until 5am when they start running again. So people here usually start drinking around 5pm so that you're pretty drunk by the time you have to take the 10:30pm train back home for your 45min to hour commute hahah. 

The things that are posted on these trains I can't even. Look at the white guy. Look how devastated he is.

Last weekend, I went to Asakusa! This area is known for being a downtown, "Traditional Japan" area. There is a well known temple with the thunder and wind god statues guarding the gates. I was happy to see a temple, it brought back memories of my unforgettable time in Kyoto <3

My friend's host mother took us out for soba after we walked around the Temple and the shops! The only other time I had soba noodles was my 20th birthday in NYC. I didn't really enjoy that so I haven't eaten soba noodles since. These soba noodles were a million times better. This place made them from scratch, and the taste was unforgettable. We got to eat it with a glass of beer and the dipping sauce was cooked so that you could drink it later with soba noodle powdered water. If there's one thing that I'm going to miss when I go back to the states, its going to be the food here.

Our last destination for the day was the Tokyo Sky Tree!! To get there, we took this panda bus. we all looked at it like, "are we really getting on a panda bus right now." The seats had panda hats, and the bus WINKED AT US. I guess it was pretty cute???? I was too shocked that the bus had the ability to wink.

This is the only angle where I could get the whole tower. The sky tree is currently the tallest tower in the world!!

Next to the tower there was a mall, so obviously we all went in. Low and behold the first store we went into was a T.V. program store! All the famous studios had sections in this store, and you could find the famous shows that were currently airing! I bought my host sisters some characters that I noticed they enjoyed reading and watching.

That weekend was really fun, and by the end of it I was beat and missing my bed. ヽ(；▽；)ノ

I finally was able to go to my local ward office and register as a temporary member of the community! This allows me to use the health care provided for me as a study abroad student, as well as being able to get a library card, and get a cell phone!! This cell phone brings me back to my flip phone days when I turned 14. Oh man, those were the days. Everyone had flip phones, what were smart phones. They didn't really exist back then. I'm so old. Having this cute thing is really great. Too bad I can't text! I put a special charm there as well :) I use this mainly to call my host mom and tell her that I wont be having dinner some nights hahah. My dad uses his skype account to call me though, so its pretty convenient :) 

I went to Muji in Shibuya with a friend so that he and I could take photos for class. This ended up with me wanting to buy everything in the store because I love Muji. The store was much bigger than the Muji in NYC! They had a whole floor for kitchen ware and FOOD. That's when I found this tea!! I immediately thought of Deanna and bought it because we both love Champagne, and anything with the word champagne in it. My host sisters and I drink this tea every now and then, its delicious (｡´∀｀)ﾉ

Here are my first two prints for photography class!!! To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing (´ヮ`);;;

The theme for this set of photos was emotions, so with the help of my friend, I chose to do a bunch of them. This one is "shy" and the top one is "loved" We got to print them in class, and there's something really fufilling about printing your own work <3 My profs treat it like its no big deal, but my eyes lit up when they said we were going to print in class. I love seeing things that I do in my hands... //// <3

This was my sketch for this drawing that I posted last week! 

I used it for a computer imaging class assignment, which was to create some sort of collage type picture. Not like a collage of photos, but more of expressing the use of layers, copy and paste, and the lasso tools. Pretty simple because I'm used to those tools, but I realized I'm not that creative when it comes to copying and pasting things :) 

Regardless, I created this! This is actually a retry after I received some constructive critiques from my classmates on the first try. They were right in their critique so I added to the drawing, and I like this version a lot more! I got to print it on large, A3 paper which made me really giddy. I was so happy that what I made was in my hands ahh. 

It's currently on my wall to always look at and remember my purpose here in Japan (*⌒▽⌒*)θ～♪

That's all for the past two weeks!!! I have other photos, but like I said, their all in RAW files and super annoying to deal with on my slow laptop. I need to remember to take photos on my phone again. Now that I have this new camera I CANT STOP. 

I'm going to figure out how I can ((and what I can)) blog more frequently. These long posts take a while to write and edit about lol. 

Till next time! 

Love,

Mana<3