End of International Week and Counting Down the Days
With this being the last week of International Week, you could start noticing that the students (both from Technos the Sister Schools) were getting sad. Though it’s sad to see everyone upset it’s still interesting to see how quickly everyone was able to make such strong relationships with each other. But as the week went on, there was still a lot left to do.
On Wednesday I, along with a couple other students and a teacher got to go to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. Honestly this post would’ve just been consisting of pictures of the museum but sadly you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside. But take my word for it, it was fantastic. There’s a handful of Ghibli movies that I’ve watched growing up but going to the museum just showed me how many more there are. When I get home I’m going to binge through every single one. At the museum they show an exclusive short movie that can’t be seen anywhere else and man I loved it. I bought a picture book of the movie at the shop. The second picture is of the movie admission ticket; it’s frames from a Ghibli movie. I highly recommend going there if you’re a Ghibli fan and are in Japan.
On Thursday, there was a manga class open to the Sister School students and helpers. Since I was completely free during then I asked my boss if I could join the class. Drawing can be relaxing sometimes and I like reading manga so I thought this would be really interesting. At the beginning of the class the manga teacher demonstrated how to properly use the the pens and explained what type of lines go where. After that we chose a sample page that the class had prepared and started tracing. If I had to hand draw these frames I would probably still be trying to finish it as I’m typing this post out.
Friday was the last day of International Week and each speech given at the farewell party was fantastic. There were a lot of tears but I guess that means that IW was a success. After the Sister School students left for their hotel, the SkillUp room was really quiet…
This weekend I decided to meet up with a couple of my friends back at IWU. Since they just arrived to Japan a week ago, we thought it would be great if we could hang out. With this being my last free weekend, I wanted to try and get any last souvenirs for my friends and family back home. We decided to meet at Shibuya but when we got there my friend, for some reason, immediately went to Shibuya Crossing and told me to meet there. Honestly, it took about 20 minutes finding each other but finally after we did we grabbed lunch. After roaming for a while we stopped at an arcade. This is where I grew my love-hate relationship with arcades – specifically the claw machine. The video games there are super fun but my god, nothing can get someone’s blood pressure up more than those claw machines. After wasting a bad amount of money, we saw someone going after a pair of headphones and we probably stood there watching him for about 15 minutes. He must’ve put in about $40 into that machine but once he finally got those headphones, my friend and I cheered for him so hard.
After Shibuya, we headed on over to Akihabara. It’s always so cool seeing the transition from day to night when you’re there. All the street signs illuminating the streets and having so many people still bustling around is such a cool vibe. After buying some manga for myself and some friends, we all grabbed some dinner and called it a night.
Surprisingly, since this is my last free Sunday I decided to do something. I went to go meet up with my friends again. We met up in Akihabara again and since all of us were here now, we took the one who wasn’t with us yesterday to an arcade. I witnessed a man fall prey to the claw machines right before my eyes. After (again) wasting more money there, we roamed the area more and did more souvenir shopping. Once we were done with Akihabara, I wanted to go to Asakusa. The reason being is because I wanted to buy a non-plastic fox mask. Sadly the stores that I thought would have it, didn’t, but even though that was the case there was still a lot to see there. We went to Sensō-Ji. It’s always amazing seeing these temples in person, it’s really hard to know how big it is just from a picture (8 and 9). After seeing the whole area and buying more souvenirs, we grabbed some dinner and called it a day.
I honestly cannot believe that I only have one more week left, it’s absolutely crazy.