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Meikai University Study Abroad Summer of 2003




This past summer I went to Japan thanks to UCF's summer abroad program. There I and several other students took part in three weeks of classroom lectures and cultural events planned for us and other foreign exchange students. We were placed into classes based upon our current knowledge of Japanese. In these classes we were able to practice conversation with our teaching assistants and learn pronunciation. Meikai University's Tea Club performed their ceremony for us and we also participated in a business class with local students. Holding a conversation was extremely difficult at times, but ultimately it was rewarding.

The culture portion of our trip included a visit to Ueno, a two day stay in the shrine town of Nikkoo, and two museums. Each time we were scheduled to go somewhere, we were assigned to a tutor or teaching assistant who helped us get around. We were also treated to a brass ensemble concert featuring Sensei Yamamoto, one of the coordinators of our program. I went to the Ueno zoo with my group, which is best known for its Giant Pandas. In Nikkoo, we went hiking, visited the shrines, carved wooden plates, and relaxed in our traditional inn's community bath. In addition to this we were also allowed to homestay with a Japanese family for two nights. I learned more about Japanese culture on that trip than on any other.

Many days after our planned activities were finished, we still had enough time to go out into the city to sightsee and shop. Overall, my experience there was the best it could have been. We were given opportunities that we could never have arranged for ourselves and were still able to have fun. I recommend this program for anyone who is serious about learning the language and the culture.

Here are most of my pictures from Japan. They are about 200k each, so keep that in mind.

Airport and Hotel

  • First airport picture! Fifteen hours away from Orlando, Buck and I arrive. I tried to take a picture of our place as it was enormous. We were in row 65 or so and it even had an upstairs.
  • Hotel Room Bathroom You're going to see a lot of toilets here. This is the bathroom in my hotel room. As you can see, it is really small. The shower head and the faucet in the sink are both connected, so you turn the faucet into the bathtub in order to fill it.
  • Hotel Room Hallway The door you see is the bathroom door. This is the view you get of the room if you are walking in through the door. The bathroom is raised up from the rest of the room by about a foot. For some reason.
  • Bed Controls Built into the bed is a switch for several lights in the room, the alarm clock, and the AC controls.
  • TV Coin Slot The television had an apparatus built into it which allowed you to watch the porn channel if you put money in. 100 yen for ten minutes.
  • Emergency Flashlight Embedded in the... bed and useful for earthquakes, I'm assuming. It turns on automatically when you pull it out.
  • Bathtub I was trying to give you an idea just how small this bathtub is. It is friggin small.
  • Bathroom Amenities Everyday you receive a new disposable toothbrush, a new handsoap, and a new packet of Rinse In Shampoo. Everyday. Even if you only used the handsoap once. Now that's efficiency!
  • A view of the sink. Good to drink!
  • Shower Notice When showering, put curtain in tub. When bathing, don't. My Japanese is so good.
  • Closet If it looks impossibly small, that's because it was.
  • Hotel Slippers Featured here inside the closet, if that helps you get the scale correct.
  • Key Holder When you enter the hotel room, there's a slot and a switch on the wall. If you don't put the key in the switch, then the electricity in your room doesn't work. Strange, but true.
  • Cheap Yukata Our hotel provided a fresh one every night. I actually did sleep in it sometimes. It's more of a representation of yukata, really.
  • The View What the buildings outside my room looked like. Yes, I took pictures of everything.

The Streets of Urayasu

  • JOMO Gas Station It was full service and basically resembled a parking lot. I took a picture. Obviously.
  • Candy Aisle The 7-11 near our hotel. Here's all of the cool candy!
  • Alcohol Aisle The booze.
  • Manga Aisle My personal favorite, the manga aisle. This is still in 7-11.
  • Pringles Some Creamy Cheese and Mexican Tacos Pringles. Also, Beer Pretz.
  • Curry House Gorilla A gorilla eating curry. Obviously a popular theme, internationally.
  • Playboy Buck holds up a Japanese Playboy. Miles Davis graces the cover. Culture Shock!
  • View near Urayasu Station An alleyway and a McDonald's. The food there was really good, I thought.
  • This is Rainbow Bridge Rainbow Bridge is kind of to Urayasu what the Sun Sphere is to Knoxville. In other words, it's this structure everyone is immensely proud of, but other people aren't quite sure why.

Other Areas of Tokyo

  • First view from the Akihabara station Akihabara is known as the electric city. It's the place in Tokyo where everyone goes to get their gadgets. Many of the shops would not let you take pictures. Being as unscrupulous as I am, you'll see a lot of pictures anyways.
  • Gamers The best anime store ever! 8 themed floors of anime related goodness.
  • McDonald's This was the first one we actually ate at. Those are actual drink cartons hanging outside the building. I first tried Qoo here, which is the awesomest soft drink ever.
  • Silent Hill 3 The hype for this game was EXTREME. It was playing on tvs everywhere. They had giant Heather cutouts, too, but I couldn't get a picture of it.
  • In our first arcade The first picture in an arcade! This is a dating sim. In an arcade. Notice the funny, two sided display. All games come in this same outer box. It's designed so that in fighting games one person sits on either side, and you can't see your opponent.
  • Harajuku Finally, one of those big crazy advertising televisions.
  • First View of Shibuya Shibuya was fun, but check this out: There's a Seven Story Poster for Bratz dolls on the right of this building. WTF?
  • Tokyo Tower, from afar This is the stupidest tower ever. We walked two hours, and when we finally got there, they wouldn't let us up.
  • Asakusa This was a really cool market area built around a famous shrine. My homestay family took me there.
  • Asakusa Clock This clock came out just as we went by. It's over the welcome center building. At least, I'm assuming that's what that place is. I got free English brochures there.
  • Kirin Beer This bizarre object is actually the Kirin Beer company building. How can such things exist?!
  • Nightlights A view from Tokyo Tower, which we eventually got into. That green splotch in the middle is actually an enormous ferris wheel. I mean, enormous. It dwarfs some skyscrapers. The actual view inside was rather amazing. So now I know why so many animes take place there, anyway.
  • Better pic of Ferris Wheel Check that thing out!

Nikkoo

  • Nikkoo Gate Our day looking at the shrines in Nikkoo was rainy and miserable. The buildings, however, were beautiful. Here's a Shinto gate.
  • NikkooShrine1One of many displays of Elephants. Elephants are a popular motif thanks to the spread of Buddhism in Japan. It does seem a little out of place, however.
  • NikkooShrine2This is where you find out how bad my Japanese history is. I don't know the names of any of these cool buildings.
  • Nikkoo Monkeys Apparently Nikkoo is really famous for its monkeys. We didn't see any, but pictured here is the origin of the Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil motif.
  • NikkooShrine3 A gold building.
  • NikkooShrine4 Another view of same gold building. Yes, my descriptions of this section are boring.
  • NikkooShrine5 Probably the same one. I must have really liked it.
  • NikkooShrine6 This one is a different building.
  • NikkooShrine7 Okay, give me a break. It was raining, my socks were wet, and we were basically miserable. These are my excuses for not having anything helpful to say about these four billion pictures of attractive Japanese buildings.
  • NikkooShrine8 This one has some lovely dragons carved into it.
  • NikkooShrine9 I think this one had a story about a kitten involved with it.
  • Sake Old whisky barrels.
  • Dragons I tried to get a close up of the dragons through the rain, but didn't succeed too well.
  • NikkooShrine10 Just to liven up this section of the pictures, another building!
  • Detail Close Up The arch above one of the doorways, carved with birds.
  • NikkooShrine11 This is surely something I'm not supposed to touch. The rain looks cool here. I don't know why I'm focusing on it, but I just thought I'd mention it.
  • Fencing It's really much to elaborate and beautiful to term a fence. I don't know what else to call it, though.
  • Awning Another interesting entrance way.
  • Far away Here's a good picture to give you an idea how tall the trees are.
  • Evil Elephant No seriously, it is! Look at the face on that thing!
  • Sacred Trees After playing so many games and watching so much anime, it's shocking to see them in real life.
  • NikkooShrine12 Kickin' it up a notch!
  • Pathway This path is so cute I could die! It looks like it's really tiny.
  • Ogre There was a little ogre sitting up here, so I took a picture.
  • The Nikkoo Waterfall This famous waterfall was actually behind Jim and I. But you can't see it and neither could we thanks to all this fog.
  • NikkooInn1 My inn room at Nikkoo.
  • NikkooInn2 See those bags on that wood area? That's God's area. You don't put bags there. Those are not my bags, but I still got yelled at for them.
  • Jim Christ Jim does his best impersonation of someone holy while blatanlty disregarding the God's Area rule.
  • Safety Instructions This is a guide for safety in case of emergency. We have our perfect safety and security systems, but please read instructions for precaution.
  • Nikkoo Banquet We were treated to this truly traditional meal four times in a row. I think I lost five pounds due to this diet.
  • Close up of meal Here it is. Some pickles, two pieces of raw fish, a broiled fish complete with eyes, some chewy meat, and in that covered bowl, not rice, but a sponge.
  • Futons All of the hotel staff secretly laid out our futons for the night.
  • Another Waterfall One we can actually see! It's really pretty, and really big.
  • Hiking in Japan In Nikkoo we went for a pleasurable walk, and it was almost entirely along these wooden planks. Weird but convenient.
  • Spout I was completely trigger happy throughout this part of the trip. Isn't this thing cool?! What's it doing in the woods?
  • Mallards I went all the way to Japan to see some mallard ducks. Hey, everyone else took pictures, too! Well, the Koreans did...
  • A mountain I totally forgot its name. It was cool to see, though.
  • Balls of... stuff These things have a specific name, too. Which I also forgot. Something balls.
  • Walking Trail Sign Scenic Walk Across Open Fields. Check it out!
  • More Waterfall This one's particularly cool. I didn't link to a lot of these pictures, but I'm sure you could figure out how to look at them since they are all uploaded onto my website.
  • More Roasted Fish I feel really bad eating eyes and heads.
  • Our Tour Bus Yes, it's the Highland Dream. Complete with cute curtains. We watched a Lupin the 3rd movie while on board. It was really funny, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Ueno

  • Girls at Ueno I went to the Ueno Zoo with some Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese girls. I escaped having taken only five pictures like this. But they took pictures like this literally everywhere. I would say each girl went home with at least twenty pictures.
  • Some birds This has little or nothing to do with Japan.
  • A red panda Red pandas are really, really cool.
  • Trying to Escape A bunch of Japanese children drove this elephant to attempt a closer encounter.
  • Comedy Act A picture of me and my Japanese guide, Yuko. She said we had to take a picture with this stuffed gorilla, so lo and behold, here we are. When she wrapped its arm around me she explained, in English, "Comedy Act." Oh, I see.
  • Gorilla Cutout They made me do it.
  • Bear in Tree This is the most hilarious bear ever.
  • Entrance to Ueno market This is where all of the really fresh meat can be bought. It's very traditional looking to me; fish and octopii just lying out on sheets.
  • For Example Here are some of the afore-mentioned fish.
  • Sho and I Sho was this really cool girl I met who spoke like four languages. Also pictured is an insane man who sells chestnuts. He told me Florida was where the famous oranges are.
  • Decorations This street was decorated for a Festival of the Stars, which I'm sure is an inaccurate name for the holiday. People tie wishes onto trees.
  • Brass Ensemble Our main advisor, Yamamoto-Sensei sings onstage.

Tokyo Disney

Cultural Events

  • The Outside of Meikai Looks like a University, doesn't it?
  • Tea Ceremony1 The Meikai Tea Club performed for us.
  • Tea Ceremony2 The moochi we were given to eat with our tea.
  • Outside of Restaurant This is actually on the fourth floor of the local department store.
  • Same Restaurant A... something... on top...
  • Front of Restaurant I never even ate here. But I thought it looked really cool.
  • Edo Museum This is the outside of the Edo Tokyo museum. It's enormous. And the actual museum is floating above this platform.
  • Miniatures One of many detailed historical models in the museum.
  • Another house Well, another house model, anyway.
  • Detailed doorway I have nothing to say about this. Perhaps I should have read the card better.
  • Miniatures continued This is another case of having many cool pictures, but probably no one but me will care about them.
  • Edo Cuisine I'm slick. Here's an English plaque I took a picture of.
  • Toothbrush An ancient Japanese toothbrush.
  • Bell According to the sign, this thing was used to help find lost children.
  • That "heavy" thing This is a horrible picture of me, but it has a story behind it. Essentially, no one could lift this thing except the strongest of the guys. But it wasn't heavy at all, because I picked it up like it wasn't anything. So I can only assume that I broke some unspoken taboo that stated "girls don't lift heavy things" or something. Either way, all the girls told me I was really cool because I could pick up, but maybe what they really meant was that I didn't stop myself from doing so.
  • Block Prints Detailing the process.
  • Block Print ShopActually, a light fiction shop according to the english plaque next to it.
  • BPS Plaque Here is the aforementioned plaque.
  • Model Boat This was a really cool model of a boat.
  • Luminescence The sign said that the backgrounds to this thing had two different pictures depending on how they were lit. Then these puppets came out of here, and started talking and stuff. Mysteries.
  • Portable Shrine Things like this are too pretty to not mention. Which is why this website took me three times as long as I thought it would.
  • Portable Pillow I think that's all I need to say.
  • The Theater Ha ha... slightly inappropriate English.
  • Pachinko A little girl plays an ancestor to Pachinko. This version of the game was much more fun than real Pachinko.
  • First Subaru Here's the Plaque...
  • First Subaru! And here's the car! Viva la Subaru!
  • Twelve Stories I've never heard of this structure before, but it must have been pretty important
  • The building Here's the actual Twelve Stories replica.
  • Japanese Torture Device This thing confused the hell out of me.
  • Oh, that's what it's for In reality, it was just used for hair, but how was I supposed to know that? I mean, look at that thing!
  • Badge for Wives Interesting choice of words.
  • Urayasu Museum This part of the museum was made to look just like Urayasu of a few decades ago.
  • Paper Dolls Aaron and I with the dolls we made at the museum.
  • Boats These old guys let you ride in their boats for a bit.

Oddities

  • The Trough A traditional Japanese toilet. Carlos calls it a trough.
  • The Wonder Seat My favorite toilet. There are many buttons. This one warms your seat and sprays your butt in a variety of patterns, but I also used one that activated speakers behind you to play rushing music. It also had a sound button that made a flushing noise, but didn't actually flush the toilet.
  • Fake Food menu One of many restaurants' window menus.
  • Local Arcade MachinesIn Japan, DDR is dead. Pop N Music and Drummania are very much alive, however. And how I love both. It's hard to find Drummania in America, and I don't think anyone has ever brought over Pop N Music.
  • Toy Guns I have never seen such realistic model guns in my life. They just don't sell these in America. And they had everything, especially at the hobby stores.
  • Typing of the Dead This was a hilarious game. Also pictured is another Drummania machine.
  • Condomania I am NOT afraid to say, that this place rocks! All those condoms, with bad english names! Ha!
  • Goth A cool clothing store in Harajuku. People on the streets were dressed ridiculously. It was awesome.
  • Subway Map Here's everywhere you can go. Now, figure out how you're going to get there!
  • A Blue Whale Hey, I think it's cool!
  • Avril Cardboard Avril Lavigne cutout in a Japanese cd shop. Funny, isn't it?
  • One Piece fans, rejoice Here's a picture of the real pirate ship, replicated from the anime.
  • One Piece boat A more front view. The boat next to it was the one that we were taking, so I saw it extremely up close.
  • Great Video Game In this video game, you walk a golden retriever. I kid you not.
  • Jump Shop Any Shonen Jump fans?
  • Naruto Statue Sure, just cough up 15,000 yen. Go for it.
  • Dragonball Dragon This was the last picture I took in there. I got in big trouble. Whoops.
  • Statue of... Liberty? I don't know why it was there, but I took it's picture anyways.
  • Inside Fuji TV This wacky ass thing did indeed come from inside Fuji TV, where there's sort of a museum set up. You can also watch some shows in progress, but none were being filmed while we were there.
  • Fish Man Yes, this is still Fuji TV.

Engrish

  • Ride the Sausage In an arcade somewhere there was a book where gamers could draw their favorite anime characters. Most of them were big-breasted women. Then there was this.
  • That's Bargain! A sale was going on at the Daiei Depaato.
  • A Shirt The top half of this shirt had a penguin on it.
  • Some Funny Drinks These are probably well known drink in the world of Engrish.
  • Another drink Can't forget Salty Cat!
  • Extreme Close Up of My Face The reason we took this picture is for the guy's shirt behind me. It says 10 reasons to be Happy, and some of them include "Feeling Groovy", "God is a surprise", "Unconditional Love" and "Jesus Rides Shotgun".
  • Restaurant More Who doesn't want more?
  • A hotel So is that what they call it in Japan.
  • Have a Good Time Aaron lets us know that this is a ridiculous sign. Then again, it is a love hotel.
  • Wild One Carlos commented that this same sign was in America, most likely, but this version is just funnier.
  • PICK Too bad I couldn't get more of this guy's shirt.
  • Water Under Construction Thanks, that makes me feel better.
  • Keep on head crear You're almost twenty one again.

People

  • A random biker I took a picture of on accident Check out her snazzy bag.
  • UCF Students! Left to Right, this is Aaron, Carlos, Jim, and Buck at our initial luncheon on campus.
  • Had a few Leading up to the first Korean drunk party, while in Nikkoo. I look so much happier in this picture than in many others. I vividly remember telling the girl next to me (in Japanese) that Buck had a foot fetish.
  • At the party Count the beer bottles. That's approximately one third of how much alcohol was actually available.
  • Buck smashed He was almost tolerable. Just kidding, Buck.
  • Me and PenpalSohn Min Sohn (I hope I spelled it right). We still write each other! He's cute, huh?
  • Kim Su Hwan This guy was the life of the party. I'm drunk.
  • Jim and Others Jim's pimping it. That's slang for "having no idea what's going on."
  • Homestay My family, Kimura Kimiko and her son Keisuke. They were very nice, and very funny.
  • Our class The people we studied with, and some extra students from higher classes. My penpal is in here!
  • The Americans We were bombarded with pictures when the Americans decided to get together and pose. It was rather hilarious. My picture looks awful.
  • Drunk Again Can you tell? With more Korean boys.
  • Buck, annoyed One last shot of Buck at the Narita airport.
  • Sayonara And this is me, in Detroit. The last picture taken on my trip. I hope you enjoyed them!