Travel Days and Day 1 in Japan

   Friday morning started off early. When I went to bed Thursday night my bags were packed, my outfit for traveling was set out, and my alarm was set for 6 a.m. Friday morning rolled around and my alarm never went off. I flipped out of bed and within 10 minutes I was out the door of my apartment and running to the bus. Luckily I made it in time to get on the bus at the same time as everyone else and we were on our way. We got to the airport on time and got on our plane. Our plane ride was 13 hours and 45 minutes and covered about 6,750 miles.

Flight Route

   We landed in Japan around 3:30 pm on Sunday (Japan time, it was about 1:30 am on Sunday East Coast time). Japan is 14 hours ahead of the eastern coast of America. After going through customs and taking our train ride out to our hotel we were in our rooms around 6:30, got delicious ramen at 7:30 and were back in our rooms and passed out by 10 p.m. Our rooms are very small with thin mattresses, called futons, with thick down comforters and a pillow. 

Sesame Ramen

Hotel Room

   Sleeping last night was a little rough. I woke up a couple times through out the night including one time around 3:40 a.m. when I honestly didn't think I'd be able to fall back asleep. I ended up falling back asleep and my two roommates and I were all awake and ready to get dressed and get breakfast. One of my roommates, Tracy, and a few other friends on the trip and I walked down the street to a small bakery and got baked goods for breakfast before meeting with the class at 10 a.m. to go explore.
   Today was a national holiday in Japan called Coming of Age Day where everyone in Japan who as turned 20 between the last Coming of Age Day and today got to celebrate their day by going out in flashy outfits. We mostly saw girls participating but we also saw a couple of guys who were dressed up but not nearly as dressy as the girls were. We also saw a lot of things that only happen in Japan during the New Year season.

   The first place we went today was the Meiji Shrine. As you enter the shrine you pass through Torii gates. These are large structures that look like doorways that are supposed to symbolize passing from the ordinary world into the clean and sacred world. Another typical aspect of a Shinto shrine is a cleansing basin. At this basin it is tradition to clean each of your hands and your mouth using the clean water to symbolize cleansing yourself for the kami. Kami are things that are enshrined and can range from things like wind or the moon to people such as royal family members or skilled fishermen. A kami is anything that fills one with wonder or awe.
   A big practice in Japanese Buddhism is to enshrine objects or important people. The two people enshrined at the Meiji Shrine are the Meiji emperor and empress, this was a ruling family in Japan. Buddhists here symbolize that something is a holy space by tying a straw rope (called sheminawa) and paper strands (gohei) around it. In this picture you can see that the two trees are tied together symbolizing their togetherness as members of the ruling family.
 

Two trees enshrined as the Meiji Emperor and Empress

Here are some pictures of the girls we saw dressed up and New Years traditions.

Sake Barrels decorated and stacked for New Years

Ice Sculptures for New Years

Lanterns for New Years

Ice Sculptures for New Years

 

Ice Sculptures for New Years

  Once we left Meiji Shrine we went to Harajuku which was a shopping area. I stayed with just a few people and we found a cute little restaurant off the beaten path where we killed some time and then went back into the crowd to do some people watching before we went to meet the rest of the class to do some more exploring.
   Our next destination was Shibuya and the Konnoh Hachiman Shrine. Shibuya is a subsection of Tokyo with a lot of shopping areas and restaurants and bars. We walked through Konnoh Hachiman Shrine. The main reason we went to this shrine was to see the sangaku that I talked about in my first post. There were originally thousands of sangaku but now there are only about 900 scattered all around Japan. While we were at the shrine we got to see three sangaku that were really cool. I can't understand what is written on the sangaku but from what my professor has told us that only the problem and the answer are on sangaku.

 

Fan Shaped Sangaku

  We left the Shrine once the sun started to set and headed into Shibuya which is a lot like Times Square in New York. We were given about an hour and a half to wander around and explore on our own and then had to go meet up with the class to be given instructions from our professors about what to do if we wanted to stay in Shibuya. All of the students decided they wanted to stay so we split up into our groups and got dinner. I was walking around with my group trying to decide where we wanted to eat. We ended up asking a couple we heard speaking English where we should eat and they took us to a hole in the wall Japanese restaurant that was amazing. None of us knew Japanese and the waiters didn't know very much English and the menu had no English and no pictures on the menu. Luckily we had someones friend with us who knew some Japanese and could translate for us. After dinner we went to a pub with a few other people from the class and then found our way back to the hotel for the night.

   Now it's nearly 2 a.m. and we have a long day planned for tomorrow. Sayonara!

Pre-Departure

   In 14 hours I will be leaving campus with eighteen classmates and three professors. We will be on our way to Dulles airport and then getting on a direct flight (15 hours, ouch!) straight to Tokyo, Japan.
   For those of you who don't know, I'm taking two classes for January term that will be traveling together throughout Tokyo and Kyoto for two weeks. The classes I'm taking are Japanese Mathematics and Religions in Japanese History.
   We have learned a lot in the last week in both of my classes. In Japanese Mathematics we have learned how to approach some old Japanese math problems called wasan. During the period between approximately 1600 and 1868 Japan closed off all incoming and outgoing traffic from their country. They did this because there were too many people from Spain and Portugal and some Dutch merchants coming into Japan and converting people to Christianity. Some really important math findings were occurring right as Japan cut off communication with the rest of the world, thus Japan missed out on some major discoveries. There was a popular type of math problem, called wasan, that were solved and put on wooden tablets and given as thanks to the Buddhist gods for giving them such wonderful math. These wooden tablets are called sangaku which literally translates to "math tablet". So while I'm in Japan with my classes we will be spending time looking for some of these math tablets. Here's an example of one of the problems we've been working on this week.

 

   In my Religions in Japanese History class we have learned a very summarized time line of ruling powers, wars, locations of capitals, and many different types of religion (mainly Buddhism) in Japan from 10,000 B.C. to present day. I'm not sure how we managed to learn that much in four days but it happened. 

    I will try to post something everyday that we are in Japan but if not I will be sure to sum up everything we've done that I missed.

   More tomorrow! (FROM JAPAN!)

   P.s. Nihon is Japanese for Japan. It literally means "sun origin". Our professor told us that when Japan would write letters to China they would address it as Nihon which (quoting my professor) they meant as the sun people or the people where the sun comes from since the suns rays hit Japan before they hit China.