drupagliassotti @ May 26, 2010 # No Comment Yet
Day 8 (Wednesday): More photos here. Of course my hotel room’s internet line isn’t working, whereas everyone else who didn’t bring a laptop is in a room where it works great. I begged one of the students to use her line while she’s downstairs…. One week in Japan, and I’ve spent about $300 on meals [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 25, 2010 # No Comment Yet
Day 6-7 (Monday & Tuesday): Monday morning was early, rousting us all up and out at 6 a.m. to catch the bus to Takayama (photos here). What should have been a five-hour drive stretched to seven due to the rain, which closed the usual road into the mountain-locked town and sent us on a more [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 23, 2010 # No Comment Yet
Day 5 (Sunday): I was very eager to get to the famous Harajuku to see the cosplayers, so it was with considerable disappointment that I woke up to heavy rain. We went outside the Imperial Palace to take a few photos, then to Meiji Shrine, all in the rain. At the shrine, we learned the [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 22, 2010 # One Comment
Day 4 (Saturday): One out of 57 people in Japan is a registered foreign resident; they tend to congregate in Tokyo, where 1 out of 31 is foreign. In order, Koreans and Chinese are the most numerous foreign groups, followed by citizens of Brazil, the Philippines, Peru, and Other. Children born to foreign residents, whether [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 21, 2010 # 2 Comments
Day 3 (Friday): (New photos added here.) On the way out of the train station to the Edo-Tokyo Museum we spotted several sumo wrestlers in their topknots and bright yukata heading off to a sumo championship; they were the beginning-level wrestlers, as the higher-ranking wrestlers compete later in the day. I love the fact that [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 20, 2010 # 2 Comments
Day 2 (Thursday): (New photos added here.) We set off for the fish market in a light drizzle, meeting Brad along the way, and took our pre-breakfast constitutional within the vast, industrial expanse that is the marketplace, dodging racing trucks and busy apron-clad workers and admiring the incredible variety of seafood being cleaned and laid [...]
drupagliassotti @ May 19, 2010 # One Comment
Day 1 (Tue/Wed): Photos here. It seems silly to have left SoCal in the rain only to arrive in Tokyo in the rain! This is more water than I usually see all year…. The over-11-hour plane trip was quiet; I read three novels on my iPad. Our group numbers eight: Akiko and I are [...]