Let me preface by saying I have been on this island for less than ten days.

That being said, I think I am beginning to get a feel for Tokyo. The best way I know how to evaluate that is to go right ahead and make wild, uneducated generalizations about this huge city, having only seen perhaps as much as one hundredth of it.

It is clean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard this. No, but really, Japan is clean. Upon entry in my apartment I was handed a friendly, non-threatening ten pages on garbage disposal here in the city. They tell me you have your bottles, plastic and otherwise, cardboard and larger, non-biodegradable items, and then you have food waste and burnables, paper and the like that can be safely burned for energy. There are two pick-ups weekly for each of the three categories.

I find myself taking pictures when I see graffiti and taking notice when I see trash on the street or gum in a urinal.

There are bicycles everywhere. Here in Tokyo they apparently hate sidewalks. Now, if you have been in Tokyo you may say I am being silly because there are certainly sidewalks in Tokyo. I would respond that you must have mistaken sidewalks for what I would consider bike paths. Let the frequent bell-ringing remind you, bicyclists own the sidewalk, as there are few street riders, as in Philly or New York, the cities I have grown up around and so with which I compare Tokyo (If you know tricks for avoiding getting run over by bicycles, please let me know).

And the only thing the city of Tokyo hates more than sidewalks are water fountains. Remember these words; I am on a mission to find a public water fountain or to at least get a reasonable answer as to why no public building has a single water fountain in this city. (If anyone reading has any information regarding all the apparently stolen water fountains in Tokyo, please let me know).

They say it’s safe, too. That, seemingly, is true. I tend to think it is shady math to compare crime statistics from Japan with the United States (which has more than double Japan’s population). But, even when you account for the population difference, Japan totals for every violent crime category put U.S. totals to shame, from robbery to rape to murder.

Just moments ago I found myself genuinely (and probably sadly) excited to hear an emergency siren for the first time here in Tokyo. It ended up being a fire engine. I don’t know how I feel about that, nor do I know how I feel about my initial excitement.

What I need to be more worried about, I suppose, are earthquakes. Yeah, whoa. I’m from freakin New Jersey. I was walking to class last week when the lights started to shake. I heard one mention of the word “earthquake” in English, and then the day resumed without any hesitation.

Apparently, this is entirely normal for “earthquake people.” Later I got a worried email from my father, a man from the east coast of the continental United States just like me. He read there had been a 4.8 magnitude earthquake in Tokyo and was wondering if I was alright. Please understand; the ground doesn’t shake in New Jersey.

I let him know I was fine and was secretly glad I wasn’t the only one worried about rocks slipping and cracking and other geologic factors I don’t quite understand.

Aside from the ‘big one’ happening during my studies here in Tokyo, my only other worry, I suppose, is getting lost like the confused jerk I am.

That is because, as I have mentioned previously, Tokyo is massive and senseless geographically, at least to me at this moment in time. (Anyone with secrets about understanding Tokyo geography let me know).

See, anyone who has ever been worried about getting lost in any of the historic east coast cities of the United States is just being silly. American cities on the east coast are basically big squares and numbered streets and avenues make it simpler still (Philadelphians know it, anyone who knows a thing about Manhattan knows it, even Boston, Washington D.C. and Baltimore flirt with sensible and simple city planning). If there is any such sense in Tokyo I don’t know about it yet.

And I am still trying to wrap my mind around this mass transit system of Tokyo. Previously, I have intoned that it is big, but... seriously, it’s big.

I have mentioned that Tokyo has a handful of train stations that have more than a million passengers daily. I have mentioned the 20 metro lines and 212 subway stations, the positively endless bus system and regional rail system, etc.

But, I haven’t even spoken to the system’s apparent efficiency. That may be because I really didn’t know about its efficiency until just last night. Again, I had heard the foreign praise of the system, but until you have your face plastered against subway Plexiglas because there is no room to move on a train at nearly midnight, you don’t know efficiency.

On Friday I went to a sake-tasting in Roppongi. Highlighted by a discussion of the cultural impact of the rice-based alcoholic drink by John Gauntner, apparently one of the world’s premiere specialists on sake, I got the chance to try seven types of ginjo (super premium) sake and hear some local musical talent.

A lovely little night, exploring a bit of Japanese culture, but from my first week of classes I was exhausted and eager to get home. When I walked into the train station I was surprised enough to find it bustling like a busy Tokyo street in midday. My surprise was only extended when I had to fight and push to fit into my train home. Note the imprint on my right foot from a woman’s high heel which could apparently only find comfort on my big toe because of the crowds. … Now that’s efficiency.

Jaa mata,
Christopher Wink

Posted by Christopher at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I am settling in. Initially the changes are small. I had some trouble with time: a radio alarm clock that I found was moving too slowly because of a problem with wattage and a windup clock that wouldn’t wind. They have a different Google here and it’s tougher to compare prices in supermarkets.

Most signs use Kanji symbols, others spell words out with the Japanese alphabet of Hiragana or the loan words of Katakana. I speak some scattered Japanese phrases, however I cannot write and I cannot read the language. I believe that makes me illiterate in this country, and my use of the currency a dangerous one to my economic survival. That survival is already tenuous because of this expensive city that doesn’t treat our American currency very kindly.

Shopping is agonizing (rough exchange rate; expensive regardless). I managed to figure out how to tell what is on sale in the supermarket. Four liters of soon-to-be expired 100 percent apple juice, dented cans of fruit cocktail, and all the rice and noodles you can imagine. Match that with peanut butter, kasugai green peas, and four boxes of 45 percent-off frozen dumplings. This is my diet, with splashes of store-bought tonkatsu or fresh sushi rolls.

This is my first weekend here in Tokyo that ends a week of classes. It is about organization and preparation and habit forming. I have schoolwork to catch up on and future plans to make.

There are moments of hesitancy and regret, but it is my experience with travel that once you find your routine, time goes faster than one is able to count. I am awaiting that, readying myself to not miss a moment of the Japan that is around me.

A Japan made of 47 prefectures, though Tokyo, one of the 47, and others have special labels. In that sense, Tokyo may be more like a U.S. state than a U.S. city. Controversially outspoken Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara oversees 23 wards and other smaller municipalities, which could be considered cities and towns.

But my learning and reading and explaining is done for now. Food shopping (and spending) is done for a week or two, too. I need to get some school work done in the hopes I can enjoy some of the coming week beyond classes.

Jaa ne
Christopher
(Note: Changing day to day, there are about 116 yen to one U.S. dollar)

Somewhere in the exchange rate when I came into Japan, I went through a bit of a transformation myself. Here, I’m taller, quieter and more oblivious (also, as noted earlier, I am illiterate and far less educated). When it rains (as it has a lot with the humidity of Japanese late summers) I’m contemplative, and when it’s sunny I try to speak Japanese to Japanese women who patently ignore me.

It is all about finding my place and finding some sense of comfort and stability in a land so foreign to me.

Posted by Christopher at 03:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Classes have begun. It’s a funny thing about studying abroad; classes are often a condition. A tough aspect of studying abroad is overcoming that vacation feeling you might have towards your travel and find balance enough to get a grade or too.

I am actually studying at Temple University-Japan, a satellite campus of my Philadelphia home university. Here in Tokyo, it is the largest and oldest American university in the city. In classes English is required. I suppose that’s good for me. (Nihongo sukoshi wakarimasu – I speak very little Japanese.)

Though most of the students are Japanese (with populations from nearby South Korea and China and other East Asian countries) and have been schooled in English for years, I am still left in awe at those around me who voice opinions in a second language, the type of political and philosophical thought that many native speakers struggle to reign in under their language control.

These students remind me constantly of where I am, and make me think I’m wasting my time. There are classes in Philadelphia, but not controversial Yasukuni war memorials or Tokyo Towers or festivals in Yoyogi Koen. So, I sit in my classes asking questions and speaking in tempered English, wondering what I am missing outside the walls of Azabu Hall in Minato-ku, Tokyo.

I try to remind myself that while my location certainly has the most impressive and awesome instruction for my worldview, classes at universities on other continents, in foreign countries, or even different states present the opportunity to learn alongside people with different backgrounds, learn different takes on subjects and find entirely new and interesting points of view. This is all very true. The daydreaming subsists.

I have a forty-minute bus ride from my apartment in the Jiyugaoka section of Meguro-ku to my classes in the Azabu section of Minato-ku. I haven’t yet found a particularly efficient use of that time. For now I offer seats to older men and women and bow deeply, as per my sense of Japanese bus customs. I rest my head on the window and absorb the 100 yen stores, ramen shops, and Pachinko parlors.

I tend to enjoy classes, as in the past year or so I have begun to take my education very seriously. In that sense, I am eager to attack the semester of Asian history and politics. I’ll just have to find a way to cram hundreds of pages of reading and my own original content of academic thought into each week, when I’d like to be exploring this strange world that encircles me.

Jaa ne
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 03:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

SEE EPISODE THREE (Which will be released on my J.Y.A. site October 2, 2006. In the meantime, check out my photos of this experience in the album titled "Mount Fuji".)

In the dark, the terrain was uneven and a bit rocky for the beginning of one of the more trafficked nature trails in the world. Regularly, either my chance at night-hiking was ruined or my idiocy was saved by other groups of hikers with miner’s helmets, headlamps and the occasional flashlight.

My stretches of lone connection and attempts at mystifying my Fuji adventure were shortened increasingly the further I climbed and the faster I went. Moreover, the narrower the path got, the more often I was stuck behind slow-moving hiking groups.

Stuck in that uninspired pace, I must have fell into a trance of sorts as I forget passing most of the stations that occasionally interrupt the trail. When I did get a chance to leave the apparent queue to the top, I would sometimes turn and watch the thousands of headlamps lining the trail into the mist below. It was one of the views that my little camera couldn’t capture and my words can’t describe. Above me I would lose the trail into the darkness of rock and sky meshing together, save for a glow of a far off pack of light and noise.

At around one AM I was pushing the summit, far too early I felt. I took a seat overlooking what, I could only assume, would be a remarkable view if the clouds and the sky and the sun could cooperate. I met two French physicists who were breaking from a series of conferences in Tokyo by scaling Fuji. At that point they too refused to pay the thousands of yen the stations charge for an hour or so of warmth, and instead took refuge under an overhanging rock. I stood alternating which bare hand held my broken umbrella up to protect my already frozen and drenched clothing from the piercingly cold rain.

We stayed there for an hour or more. I tried my French; they laughed and asked me questions about English. In time, we decided to climb together. The crowds had grown, as those that had hiked in the day and paid for a night’s stay in one of the stations added to the number of hikers aiming to see the sunrise from Fuji’s oft-cloud shrouded top.

It was then that I began to feel the cold and notice the change in altitude play tricks on my breathing rhythm. Nevertheless, after a few stops to finish off my first liter of water, we found the wooden archway that welcomes hikers to the summit of Fuji. My new French physicist friends and I parted ways and I moved through the top.

The cold and sweat played their role as an efficient anticlimax as the extent of my self-congratulation for completion was to sit down on a wet log. There, at the top of a medium-sized peak in late August, it was hovering above 32 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), yet with more than an hour before a sign of a sunrise would appear, I fell asleep, my head in my hands and broken pink-handled umbrella fixed partially over my frosty back.

I woke just half an hour later and pushed my way through the growing crowd and entered one of the well-stocked stations there 13,000 feet in the sky. Full with dark-skinned Asian faces, I took the only bench seat available in the heated shack. The smell of miso soup and more exotic, just-as-warm Japanese dishes was treat enough for me and I watched the tick of an off-centered wall clock.

It was nearing five AM when I stopped my freeloading and reentered the chilling mountain arena, seeing the first trickles of light over the horizon. I made my way towards the descending trail, away from the crowds. Before me, still disguised in dark, the clouds that brought the rain that had tortured me throughout my climb taunted me still, convincing me that I would be granted the same end so many who have climbed Mount Fuji have found.

Fuji is notorious for obstructing what is, those who have managed to see it have said, a nearly unequaled view. I have heard that Fuji can be seen from Tokyo, if not for the clouds and mist and smog and fog and other unscientific words we use for “naturally” disrupted views. The reality is that that view, like the one on top of Fuji, is almost always unable to be seen.

I had navigated a complex subway system for the first time alone, found a bus terminal in a foreign city, bought a ticket in a foreign language, traveled three hours from the city that was supposed to be my very new temporary home, spent some eight hours on Japan’s highest peak in the freezing rain unprepared and ill-equipped, yet that was the first moment I thought my Fuji trip was ill-advised. I slowly descended in the early morning light until something stunning happened.

As the light grew and the rain subsided, the clouds that I surmised would ruin my view replaced the traditional view of a mountain vista and created something I had never seen before.

It appeared to me that the cloud system consolidated into a floor of white cotton below me as the Japanese sun cast a golden tinge to everything, including myself and the equally dazed climbers around me. I sat on a rock off the trail and watched, completely and totally awestruck at what was unfolding before me.

When I think critically of that hour I sat on that rock, I see it is silly. They were the clouds, that was the sun and there was I. In words, there was nothing particularly notable about anything. Yet to my young eyes, this climb brought me somewhere I would likely never be, something I likely would never see, ever again. That floor of clouds, one that no one can convince me wasn’t able to be walked upon, with the sun making it seem as if I, alone, was watching the calm backstage of the rainy storm thousands of feet below, was extraordinary to me at that very moment, at the very place in time.

See, as Japanese climbing clichés go, the king is this beauty: “one who never climbs Mount Fuji is a fool, and one who climbs Mount Fuji twice is twice the fool.” It makes even more sense once you contemplate it on your way down from its peak. I would trade nothing for that view I found, but as an eager American outdoors person the climb was too crowded and the trail offered nothing originally challenging or breathtaking. For those that want to climb Fuji just as an accomplishment, the four to six hour climb is strenuous and yields nothing you can’t find on a postcard or on a plane or even at the top of some elevator shaft in a tower somewhere.

I climbed Mount Fuji once. Once is just enough for now.

Jaa mata,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

SEE EPISODE THREE (Which will be released on my J.Y.A. site October 2, 2006. In the meantime, check out my photos of this experience in the album titled "Mount Fuji".)

To review, I left off last time entering a bus station in the hopes of booking a ticket three hours southwest to climb Japan’s highest peak, the 13,000 foot dormant stratovolcano Mount Fuji.

I went to a ticket booth and after getting a dismissive smile when I asked if the teller spoke English (Eigo ga wakarimasu ka?), I threw at her the only two Japanese words I knew that I felt could help: climb Fuji-san. Then, I added a circling finger, trying to convey that I wanted a round trip ticket. This prompted a flurry of keyboard activity. Moments later I traded 5,200 yen (nearly $45 U.S.) for a piece of paper apparently reserving a seat on a bus departing two hours later.

I wandered Shinjuku for the next few hours, the broken umbrella I had found earlier acting as shelter and companion. The hustle of Tokyo knows no bounds, and the markets and streets surrounding Shinjuku, even in the rain, were full.

Time passed and I lined up, unsure about my ticket. For a moment my worries about being on a bus that would bring me to Fuji were subdued for the same reason they rose again. Around me were some twenty men and women with hiking packs and boots and supplies. If I had a mirror I would see my eyes, refusing to admit being overwhelmed, above a body dressed in a tee-shirt and khakis shorts, clinging to a broken pink umbrella and a bag with nothing but a Temple University sweatshirt, black sweatpants, a winter hat and a camera. If I had been prepared, I would have looked at someone like me and labeled me disrespectful and unprepared and foolish and stupid and immature. I got on the bus, found my seat and closed my eyes.

When I opened them to evaluate the passing Japanese scenery upon the bus’s departure, I was taken by the real example of Tokyo’s international appeal around me. I sat next to a man from an African country my American schooling has left me incapable of knowing, who sat next to a Asian man who was trying to ignore the pestering questions of a particularly talkative European.

I turned and watched the rain darken the skies outside, which was quickly losing the sprawl of Tokyo and gaining a decidedly greener dynamic. In time, the road was fighting elevation changes and there were signs of a war with trees, one in which nature lost. The bus did soon rise upward as the last of the day’s sun evaporated into a coal black sky. Around me the hills couldn’t decide which direction to fall and their lack of grace was only revealed when the various angles of green canopy crashed. This was Mount Fuji.

I was dumped outside, along with my far more prepared busmates, into what I can only describe as a circus. This was the Kawaguchiko 5th Station of Mount Fuji, the most popular thoroughfare leading to the summit of Mount Fuji. The station is comprised of a ranger station and some fifteen shops and food stands, hawking Fuji-related trinkets and overpriced food, water and supplies. Fed by eager-to-spend tourists and the unprepared, it is emblematic of most in-season climbs of the supposedly sacred mountain, especially on this, the final weekend of the climbing season. Being admittedly ill-equipped, I bought a few liters of water, but passed on 2,500 yen ($22 U.S.) rain ponchos.

It was already 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), a change from the high 80s of metropolitan Tokyo. I changed into the sweatshirt and sweatpants, donned the winter hat I brought and took one last disapproving look at the basketball sneakers an old college friend traded me in return for a paper I wrote for him once.

I spoke to a few Japanese climbers who looked serious enough, all of whom questioned my own preparedness. They told me four hours was the fastest the average climber peaks Fuji with good conditions. I walked outside to find a light rain meeting the nine pm hour, and I impatiently started, almost eight hours from the 5am sunrise, which is most everyone’s destination.

I found the beginning of what I assumed to be the trail (it was dark and from what I could see only marked with Kanji symbols and Japanese Hiragana). And, more confidently than was merited, I started.

I had no source of light. Admittedly always with a light source as an option, I have done night-hiking, as I find a certain power in slowly adjusting to the darkness. It is my experience that most of us never give our eyes the opportunity to show how well they can adjust to darkness. Nevertheless, in a steady, cold drizzle and moving too quickly to use the light of the hiking parties I passed, I was questioning my choice to go ahead with my climbing effort as unready as I was.

I came to a fork in the road and to my right, in an assortment of Japanese characters, was a ten foot sign pointing to an ascending trail. Below it was an English translation: “To Mount Fuji Summit.” I began.

The story continues in the next installment.

Jaa mata,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

SEE EPISODE THREE (Which will be released on my J.Y.A. site October 2, 2006. In the meantime, check out my photos of this experience in the album titled "Mount Fuji".)

I was in Shibuya: the busy entertainment district of Shibuya-ku, one of the centrally located wards of Tokyo. I had been telling a friend that climbing Mount Fuji had long been a goal of mine when he mentioned the climbing season for Fuji-san was coming to a close. (Stations, ten of which are littered along the Fuji ascending trail, and rangers are only active from July to late August). Back in the States, I (probably laughingly) consider myself a bit of an outdoor enthusiast, but was without any form of hiking or camping gear. Yet, I knew, there walking alongside a train station in Asia’s busiest city, that that moment was so very likely my only opportunity in my entire life to try to climb Mount Fuji.

My decision was made. The new friend with whom I was walking immediately tried to convince me otherwise, certainly unsure of my ability to even reach Fuji, let alone scale the 13,000 foot dormant stratovolcano alone. It was absolutely true; I knew nothing of navigating to Fuji, hours from Tokyo, Japan’s largest city. To be honest, I had a moment of doubt, as he told me of the wind and cold and distance. Just a moment though. He gave me directions and sent me on my way.

I immediately knew it was the right decision. I saw the eyes of someone I had met questioning where I was going. In as overdramatic a voice as I could muster, I told her, “I must leave as I am climbing Mt Fuji.” She laughed. I left.

I reentered Shibuya Station, only the second time I had been in any train station outside of the continental United States. I had to find a subway to Shinjuku, boasting some two million passengers daily (New York City’s Grand Central Terminal claims just some 125,000 a day and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, despite being one of the largest train stations in the United States, lags behind even more). Anyone who has made that trip from Shibuya to Shinjuku knows it isn’t terribly difficult, larger destinations, like Shinjuku, are even written in the Latin alphabet, rather than Japanese characters (Kanji symbols or the alphabets of Hiragana and Katakana).

So I got to Shinjuku. Yeah, pretty big. Then I only had to get out.

Let me give you a bit of a novice’s description of the Tokyo mass transit system. Absurdly massive. Think nearly 20 metro lines finding 212 stations littered throughout Tokyo and beyond (Philadelphia has less than 50 stops served by two subway lines). This, of course, excludes rail lines and buses. Shinjuku must have a hundred exits alone.

If you’re purchasing an individual ride (rather than long term passes), you put money in a machine according to the trip you’re intending to take and receive a ticket. At your final destination, you slide your ticket into the turnstile as you exit, only opening the gate if you’ve paid the correct fare.

Now, I learned later that there are signs with the Arabic numerals I can read, showing the correct fare totals and there are fare adjustment machines if you made a transfer or even a mistake. But I had only been on a train in Tokyo once before. I was on my own, and perhaps a bit overwhelmed.

Anyway, I must have paid the wrong fare and when I entered my ticket into the turnstile, a horn went off, the turnstile locked and I panicked. I hopped the turnstile and walked away as quickly yet casually as I could. This was wrong. I regret doing this, especially when I think of the potential consequences for what was probably a small 10 yen mistake. The chaos of Shinjuku saved me. I moved quickly and used the first exit I saw.

It was raining, and I began to think I had made a mistake. I was still in Tokyo, yet by many people’s standards I was lost. Those thoughts were quickly silenced. I had said I was going to climb Mount Fuji and that was what I would do.

I found a broken, pink-handled umbrella near a trash receptacle. I opened it as best as a broken, pink-handled umbrella found near a trash receptacle can be opened and started flagging people down trying to find a bus station. What Japanese I knew was not fashioned for this type of conversation, and, to my pleasant surprise (as someone who fears cultural globalization going too far might appreciate), I struggled to find someone who spoke enough English to know what I needed to find.

Finally an elderly man with a cigarette in his mouth pointed with a small, sturdy arm and I followed his outstretched hands to what was the station for which I was seeking.

With “Fuji-san” and “noboru” (to hike or climb) the only useful Japanese words I knew for this encounter, I entered the busy bus ticket center, broken pink-handled umbrella found near trash receptacle in hand. The story continues in the next installment.

Jaa ne,
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone who is in Japan raise your hand. Note: I am typing with one hand. Clever, I know. I am writing to you in my small – but expensive – two hundred thirty square foot apartment which I share with another here in the quiet residential Meguro-ku ward of Tokyo (one of 23 such municipalities). It has been quite a little adventure already, but let’s get ourselves orientated, no?

In the realm of self-evaluation, I love to consider myself the elder statesman of travel – at least for an independently traveling twenty-year-old. While most of my extended absences from my northwest New Jersey home have been wanderings throughout the continental United States, I spent the summer of 2005 in Ghana, West Africa. That was my first attempt at using education as a façade for international travel. Here in Tokyo I am keeping up that very pretext, though the time before I fall asleep is spent dreaming of travel and language, not books and tests.

I leave my homes for places I don’t know, yet I hold two very deep geographical allegiances: one for my Sussex County, NJ childhood home and another to Philadelphia, which I have grown to love through my studies at Temple University. (Of course I am equally enthralled with the country that houses both; please note there is a six foot by four foot American flag tacked up on my kitchen wall even here in Eastern Asia).

All that being said, I am here in one of the world’s largest cities, with a population exceeding eight million in the city’s 23 wards (some small surrounding islands and municipalities are considered part of the Tokyo prefecture and push the city’s population closer to 12 million). Sensibly those figures do not include the nearly 200 students from around the world studying abroad here at Temple University-Japan, including myself, and other international travelers who might label this city a temporary home.

So, like my fellow not-quite-Japanese Japan residents, I have the same seemingly ethereal effect on the country. A presence for sure, but we’re not all quite here, despite what my passport visa and Alien Registration card say.
I am playing loudly the country music of my childhood in an attempt to quiet the jack hammering of a city desperately trying to find more space for growth and usually finding it skyward. The some 620 square kilometers (roughly 385 square miles) that comprise Tokyo’s 23 wards are crammed with buildings, rarely with less than two or three floors. A friend spent the 1,000 yen (nearly $9 USD) to climb the 54 story Mori Tower in the hip international scene of the tourist district Roppongi Hills. Once he came out, all he could say with much efficiency was, “buildings forever.” He noted the playing fields that top some of the structures, to which the denizens of space-strapped cities everywhere are accustomed.

There are differences for sure, but the nascence of my stay has left me noting Tokyo’s similarities to, not its differences from, my beloved United States of America. I am working to settle into these walls which will shelter me for the next four months of my life. But that will be for another time.

Jaa mata!
Christopher

Posted by Christopher at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)