Thursday June 4

Today is our last day in Tokyo. It has been such an amazing adventure and a life changing experience. I never thought that I could learn so much and make so many friends in a month’s time. I enjoyed everything about the country, people, and culture. I went into the program with the expectation that we would be helped by some students from Meiji University but I did not know how big of a role they would play in our experience. They definitely made the experience very special and so awesome. I can’t believe that a month has gone by already. Tokyo was starting to feel like home for myself and the rest of the group. It is such a great place and very unique. Even strangers were nice and they would go out of their way to help you find whatever location you were looking for. There were many differences such as opposite direction of traffic, using chopsticks 24-7, having really tiny water glasses, and the numerous jingles around the city from the subway to convenience stores and the 5 pm end of the work day song. I will always remember the trip for the awesome people that we became good friends with.
For lunch we went to the Hawaiian restaurant where we had Mahi Mahi burgers and were with a few of the Meiji students. When we got back to the hotel most of the students we had met were there and many of the professors. As the bus pulled up we started saying our goodbyes. Everyone started crying and it was a very emotional goodbye. It is strange that a month ago we were all strangers but now we felt like we were saying goodbye to lifelong friends. I gave a Red Sox t-shirt to one of the students named Benny who found it really funny when I talked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. We had fun talking to each other like terminators. He is a really cool guy and I hope he makes it to Boston soon. As we went on the bus the students lined up on each side to wave goodbye to us. The bus ride to the airport was pretty quiet as we were all recovering from our goodbyes and thinking about all of the memories we had developed. I am happy to think that some of the students will be coming to Boston this August and September. I will miss all of the Meiji students and I hope I will see them again someday.
It has been fun keeping this blog. I know I will miss Tokyo. But it has been a good way for me to keep my thoughts about my experiences and I never thought that Japan was going to be as an incredible journey as it was. I did start to miss my friends and family but Tokyo was starting to feel like a second home to me. I never thought I could learn so much, see so many things and make connections with so many great people and it will be an experience that I will treasure forever. Sayonara

Wednesday June 3

Today we had a quiz on all of the lectures that we had throughout our stay in Japan. We were able to use the notes we took during the lectures on the quiz. We were done by 11:00 and had the rest of the day free. I arranged a lunch with Akiko Takahashi and Akiko Arai, two employees of Wellington Management that I communicated with during my last co-op. I met them at their office and we went out for Chinese food. It was nice to see Akiko T. again as I had met her in Boston during my co-op. I had a very good time talking to them about my travels around Japan and the things that I have learned about their country. They found it interesting that I would choose Japan as a foreign country to study in. I told them I wanted to learn more about the people, culture, and see the sites of Tokyo and other places. I enjoyed our lunch and was glad I was able to meet them during my trip.
The afternoon when I returned from lunch I went exploring the many guitar stores that are around the university. I have never seen so many guitars in one area and there were shops that were dedicated to only Gibson guitars. I was tempted to buy one but decided against it. The area of Jinbocho is very neat and it is known for all of their used book stores. I am glad we stayed in this area because it was pretty centrally located to take the trains.
That night we had a few events planned with the Meiji University students and professors. They had a farewell dinner on the top floor of the university tower with all the students and some of the faculty. Everyone was dressed up and there was an excellent buffet of food. Some of the students from Northeastern and Meiji gave speeches about their thoughts on the trip. This was the first point where people started to get somewhat emotional as we heard what the Meiji students had to say about spending time with us. After this dinner we went to an Izakaya which is basically a Japanese bar. We went with most of the 3rd year students and had a great time drinking, eating, and singing karaoke. The professor from Meiji is such a character, always joking around with us, and he sung a few American songs. After this even was over we were outside the izakaya and the students surprised us with a gift for each of us. They gave us these book bags that had Meiji University written on them. It was so nice of them to do that. It was funny that earlier in the day I was at their bookstore buying a t-shirt and saw one of the students and she looked really surprised to see me. I found out later that she was there to buy our gifts and didn’t want me to notice what she was doing. That night we went to karaoke and took over a whole floor of the place because we had about 30 people in the group. It was fun singing songs with the Meiji students and was a good way to end our trip. We had the rooms reserved until 5 am but some of us left around 2 am. It was such an amazing night and it was so nice of the university and students to do all of this for us.

Tuesday June 2

Today was our last lecture at Meiji University and it was on a comparative study of Japanese and American models of government. It was a good lecture to end on because the professor talked about the public’s opinion of the government and its policies. Surprising there is an overwhelming disapproval with the government and its policies, much more than other developed nations yet Japan would not want a smaller government. In the U.S. people would rather have a smaller government and do things for themselves if their government was not effective but in Japan the local government is so important that they cannot live without it. We had some examples of some different programs that the local governments run such as bath in a bus. Each local government has at least one van that has a tub in it and it goes to houses of elderly and disabled to allow them to take baths once or twice a week. They also have a program for elderly where they would give them water thermos to make hot water for tea. If the power button is not pressed for a week then a signal is sent from the machine to the local authorities and someone is sent to the house to check up on the person. However public demands of services is growing at a faster rate than the government can provide it so they will run into trouble eventually and might have to cut services.
That afternoon we went to Kamakura. It is a place about 90 minutes outside of Tokyo near the water. It is known as a former capital of Japan and has many temples around the area. We went to look at the beach which has some resorts on it but it was not like a tropical beach. It was pretty similar to our beaches. We went to Kittain Temple which was on the side of a hill and had great views of the ocean. They are known for the gardens with many flowers and one of the largest wooden statues in Japan. It is housed inside a temple and it covered in gold and has 11 faces. It is basically one face and looks like it is wearing a hat with 10 more heads. After this temple we went to see the second largest giant Buddha in Japan. It was at an outdoor location with a pretty awesome view of hills behind it. We were able to go inside it and see all the welding they did to put the brass together.
For dinner we went to a place kind of like a buffet where you went to a cooler and got plates full of raw meat and cooked them on the stoves that were in your table. It was very delicious and we had a variety of meats like chicken, pork, beef, liver, cow’s tong, gizzards and some seafood. We went with some other people from our hotel and some students from Meiji. It was a lot of fun and the food was awesome.

Monday June 1

Today we had a lecture about Local Government in Japan: Structures, Features and Management from a professor from the school of business administration. He talked to us about how many different local governments are in Japan and the people’s views of changing policy and the role the central government has on local government. He showed us two videos during his lecture to try to get his point across. One of the videos was about a protest against combining two towns into one. There were a bunch of old men, in their 70’s that rode their motorcycles around and staged protests so that their hometown would not be combined with another town. The video was in Japanese but we could understand what was going on. The other video he showed us was about a bureaucrat from the central government who goes to a small town to learn from a supermarket. It is showing how he thinks he is better than everyone else because he is a bureaucrat. The agencies from Tokyo do send bureaucrats to work at certain towns or other cities for a few years and then reassign them to a different location. They might not be totally familiar with the locals or local process.
Our cultural site for that day was to see the Sensoji Temple in the Asakura area. The temple had two gates and a huge lantern was hung from the first gate. The area had many tourist shops that sold similar items. The shrine was housed in a huge temple that was undergoing repairs so we could not see the outside.
Later that day we went to a Japanese bar or Izakaya to meet with the professor who had given us a lecture earlier and about 8 of his students from the college of business. We had not met these students before but they were really cool and I had fun talking to them. We talked about school, our favorite types of music and other things that we had in common. We knew a lot of the same music and had a good time getting to know each other.

Sunday May 31

Today was one of our few free days on the trip that we did not have any lectures or sights that we had to go see. I left the club earlier that night around 2 am so I didn’t waste our last free day. Around noon that day there were six of us who headed off to visit Tokyo Disney Sea. It was pretty close and took less than an hour to get to on the train. When we got there we were so excited to be at Disney. The monorail we took had windows and handles that were shaped like Mickey’s face. We decided to go to Disney Sea because it is different from the parks in the U.S. They did have a Disneyland but it had similar attractions to Disneyworld. When we got to the park there is a huge globe in the entrance that looks like it is suspended in the air by a fountain under it. There were many of the characters at the entrance to greet everyone. The first section we walked through was the Mediterranean area which has a hotel and an area where you can take gondola rides. They have many different area of the park such as an old fashion New York area, Cape Cod, Future land, a Mayan pyramid, Middle Eastern buildings, and a huge volcano in the middle of the park that steams. We went on the Tower of Terror, some weather controlling flight simulator, Indiana Jones ride, Journey to the Center of the Earth, a roller coaster and a few other rides. The park is pretty new and it is so clean, I don’t think I saw one piece of trash the entire time I was there. There were also very few foreigners and all of the rides were in Japanese but we could pretty much understand what they were saying. I am so glad I went because it was such a fun experience.

Saturday May 30

Today we went to Odaiba which is a very new business and entertainment development in Tokyo. It is one of a few islands that were built in the mid 1800’s to protect the city of Tokyo from naval attacks. When the economy was booming in the late 80’s development of office building occurred and the area started to grow. When the recession hit the area was desolate until the late 90’s when construction started again. The island is known for the futuristic architecture of the buildings. Fuji TV has their headquarters on the island and has a pretty modern looking building. Our first stop on the island was to the National Museum of Emerging Science which was like the Boston Museum of Science but way cooler. They had an area on robotics, where they had a show with the Honda robot Asimo; however we didn’t get to see it. They also have areas about space flight and have a space capsule, the human body, and communications and exploration. The museum was in a very modern looking building. After the museum we were free to explore so we went to a shopping center called Decks Tokyo Beach which has a huge boardwalk overlooking the harbor. They also have the top two floors modeled after the street of Hong Kong. We ate at a Chinese restaurant inside this area. After this mall we went to another mall where the inside is modeled after an 18th century Italian town. They had a huge fountain and the ceiling of the mall would change colors from dawn to dusk. Walking through was like walking through a small village. They also had the façade of a church where you could eat at a restaurant in the “courtyard”. The island was pretty cool and I was amazed at effort that went into developing this area and each of the buildings.
That night we went to a club in Ropponggi. We got there by 11:00 so it was not too busy. I don’t like the fact that people can smoke in the club because it gets to be a lot of smoke after awhile. It was a pretty good club but I left early so I would not be up all night.

Friday May 29

Today we had a lecture on the Japanese economy and financial system. The professor formally worked at the bank of Japan. She taught us about the history of the Japanese economy since WWII and how it is experience a significant decrease in growth this year due to the global recession. The government is trying to stimulate the economy just like the U.S. government is currently doing. The Japanese government is issuing over $1 trillion in bonds this year to make up for their deficit. I am not sure how Japan will come out of this because they are spending almost as much as the U.S. yet their population is much smaller and is only getting older. She also talked about the booming economy of the 80’s and how the bubble burst and sent land prices way down and created a credit crunch. The post office which has about $2 trillion in assets was recently privatized to help reduce the cost to the government. It is much more than a mail delivery system; they have a bank and insurance group.
In the afternoon we went to visit the Bank of Japan (pictured). I did not really know exactly what their role was before I came here but we learned all about it on our visit. They are the only group in the country that can produce and distribute new currency. They make sure there is financial stability at banks and is an intermediary to send funds to different banks. They also create a monetary policy to keep the yen’s exchange rate within a target zone. They are not affiliated with the government which surprised me. They do work with the government but they have their own board that decides certain policies to implement. We saw the old vault where they used to keep money and other valuables. The door was over three feet thick, it was huge. After our tour we were given a lecture by one of the directors there about their policies.
After visiting the bank I was told by one of the students who went last year that I should check out the Mandarin hotel in the area. A group of us went to see it and it was pretty impressive. It was on the 37th and other upper floors of a building and had a very modern design. We decided to get drinks and I got a Lychee Saketini which was pretty good and had a very different flavor. We had a good time but it was very expensive so we only got a drink each.