I can hardly believe that I am writing about my final night in Japan. This semester has definitely gone by the fastest out of all of them. Being in Tokyo, going through the interview process at Goldman, meeting tons of new and fantastic people, living with my host family - the list goes on and on... It has truly been an incredible experience.

My last day in Japan was pretty hectic (hand to cancel my health insurance, close my bank account, go fulfill gift requests). Something that really surprised me was how easy it was to cancel my health insurance here in Japan. I know another TUJ study abroad student who had an awful time canceling theirs. I basically walked in, told them I was returning to the US and that was it. First, anything involving the government never goes this smoothly. Second, Japanese society loves tons of arbitrary paperwork. Both of these elements were lacking... maybe I caught them on a good day? Canceling the bank account wasn't too much of a hassle either - however I had to do the entire process in Japanese. Regarding gift requests, well.... I'll have to explain that one when I get home =p.

My last night in Japan happened to coincide with my host dad's 68th birthday! We spent the first half of the night celebrating (I even have pictures!). There was a ton of delicious sushi that we used for temaki (I will do a post about sushi after I get home explaining this). It was kind of funny because instead of the traditional green tea we had coca-cola to drink. So odd! It was absolutely delicious. The sushi was followed by a small birthday cake and green tea.

I hadn't really intended on going out last night because it was Hirao-san's birthday, and I felt like it would be nice if I spent some time with them since I am leaving in (... 6 hours as of this post). However, they both said that since it is the last night I should go to see my friends in Shibuya. This made me feel less guilty, so I let everyone know I would met them at our traditional spot - Hubs. My entire plan was to go and see everyone for an hour or so, say my goodbyes then come home and get a good nights sleep. Oh how things never turn out the way they are planned. Everyone insisted that I stay out and party all night and catch the first train home in the morning. I was actually fairly reluctant but somehow I was convinced to go to Club Camelot and spent my last night in Tokyo with my friends doing what we do best.

At about 5a.m., once we were done at Camelot we went to get Soba Udon at a place called Fuji Soba (it's right near center-makku in Shibuya if you ever want to go!). A bowl of steaming hot udon at 5 a.m. is surprisingly refreshing. After the bowl of udon Nicky was still hungry, so we went to the kabob place right around the corner.

It was very odd walking around Shibuya at 5 a.m. this time since I knew that I wouldn't be coming back any time soon. After all the nights of staying up until first train, this one was definitely different. I will really miss that part of Tokyo -- I can't wait to come back and see what kind of new and crazy fashion styles the Japanese pop culture comes up with.

Once we got to the station everyone said their goodbyes and made the walk to their respective trains. We even had some Japanese girl take a picture of us - this is an awful picture of me since my eyes are closed and I have no idea why my arm is over Cliff's shoulder, but it doesn't really matter since I'm hyaku pacento (100%) positive I'll see everyone again.

Overall this semester has been an incredible experience - regardless of my opinion of TUJ, Japan is a wonderful country with a lot of things to see/do/experience, and I'm sure I only barely scratched the surface.

Until next time Japan... sayonara.

It has been a couple weeks since my last update -- the gap was due to having all of my mid terms and projects to do. However, now that those are all taken care of the updates should start being a little more frequent (plus the weather here is starting to be very nice which means I'll be more inclined to go explore).

I think I'll start this post off with this youtube video of the club I went to last night: Club Atom



I'm pretty sure this video explains everything you want to know about the club, so here is a bit more color on my night.

Last night I found myself with two options: Option 1: Stay home and relax // watch tv. Option 2: Go to Club Atom. I left my fate in the hands of a 500 yen coin (the traditional Kevin & Keith "damn, we can't make a decision" method). As the fates would have it, the coin came up heads which was the "go to Club Atom" side. Unlike last time at Womb, I didn't get very dressed up at all. I threw on my classic Have Heart tee, some jeans, and my sambas, grabbed some cash and was off.

The train ride into Tokyo was pretty boring, but I did make a couple observations about my fellow 11:30pm passengers. It was a pretty clear split between drunk salaryman and kids going out to party. All of the salarymen were asleep while the party-goers were sending out text messages as fast as their fingers could type them. Even though I was on the last train into Shibuya it was so packed I had to stand... I guess this shouldn't be too big of a surprise since it was Saturday night. When I got off the train in Shibuya I headed straight for the club.

Shibuya is so incredibly lively that I can't really convey it into words. Once I turned down the street that Atom is on I knew it was going to be a crazy night. There were probably 60-70 people all standing outside of the club. While waiting to get inside I met an english ex-pat named Kris who is here teaching at some university. He was on his way out of the club right next to Atom, and when asked how it was he pretty explicitly stated, "It was shit mate.. definitely stick to Atom." After this brief chat I got in the que, and readied my ID and $$$ for the cover. Again, unlike the seedy clubs in Roppongi, you have to show ID at the door to get in (20 and older). Cover is $10 before 11, and goes up to $30 after that; you also get 1 free drink if you're a guy and I believe 2 if you're a girl. There are lockers on the first floor, but they get filled up pretty quick. Once you get up to the club (it's on the 4th floor) there is a guy who will check your coat for $5.

Once I checked my coat I started working my way to the dance floor. It was just as packed as the video makes it look. From the front of the dance floor all the way back to the bar it was super crowded. Since I wasn't there to get drunk I just headed straight to the dance floor.

I have to say that the DJs here absolutely fantastic. There were 4 that rotated throughout the night. I think they did 30ish minute sets 3x each. I believe it is these same 4 DJs every weekend, which is not a bad thing at all as they were freaking fantastic; they got the crowd involved, had a huge variety of trance/house/hardstyle/etc., and did an overall great job adding to the experience. DJ Hosaka is probably my favorite as he played a lot of vocal trance + house mixes of rock n'roll. During his first set, he opened up with a crazy mix of Nirvana's "Smells like teen spirit" which caused the crowed to go nuts. This was followed by "Sweet Child O'Mine" which I had never heard turned into a trance tune before, but damn was it awesome. I ended up singing the song to this Japanese girl I was dancing with. There were probably another 15 rock songs that I sang along to as well. The Japanese got a kick out of watching me rock out - I even encouraged this group of Japanese to sing along with me -- hilariousness. I should also note that out of probably 1,500 people I was 1 of 4 foreigners, which is great.

At the end of the night all four DJs came out and autographed some CDs and tossed them out into the crowd  which I thought was pretty cool. Definitely going back.

This Shibuya adventure is a bit more wild than the last one was. I went to Club WOMB, which is one of Tokyo's best known clubs, from about midnight until they closed at 6am. 

I'd like to start off by saying that I must have jinxed myself regarding the weather --- there is now about 3" of snow on the ground! When I got home tonight the first thing I said to my host family was ”オハイよ州みたいよ" which translates into something along the lines of "this is just like Ohio." They got a kick out of that and laughed.

I spent most of the day in Shibuya with my friends Cliff, Chinami, and Yuka. Cliff is a study abroad student here at TUJ, and also has aspirations to be an investment banker after he graduates. Chinami and Yuka both attend Musashi University in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Cliff and I met them through Temple's culture exchange program; and we figured going and hanging out in Shibuya would be a good way to get to know each other.

First, a bit about Shibuya. This is the place to be if you are into fashion, nightlife, or Japan's youth culture. Shibuya station is just as huge as Tokyo Station, and sees something like 3 million people per day. The streets are lined with fashionable places to shop, karaoke buildings, and places to eat. It's super lively, and a ton of fun. It can also get expensive if you aren't careful. Now, on to my adventure...

We started out by going to this 6 story "game" building. One floor was similar to an arcade, the next floor was a bowling alley, then a billiards floor, etc.. We played 2 games of pool first: The teams were Chinami and myself vs. Cliff and Yuka. Neither Chinami or Yuka had played pool before, so Cliff and I had to use our awesome (read: poor) Japanese to explain the rules. I have a feeling that something around 80% of communication is from body language may have played a part in this, but we managed to finally get all the rules explained and taught them how to use the pool que. By some stroke of luck, Chinami and I managed to win both games (she played better than me the second game, actually haha) - but if you know me, you know I'm terrible at any kind of pool other than speed pool (Kev and Conor - I'm not sure they would enjoy speed pool here. It is way too rowdy).

We then headed downstairs to bowl. The bowling alley was pretty cool; it was light by black lights, and had glow in the dark wallpaper, and lights all over the place. It reminded me of a birthday party I had way back in the past. We switched up the teams for bowling, so it was Yuka and myself vs. Cliff and Chinami. I am glad that I decided to go into finance instead of professional bowling, because I would be one poor bowler! My score was the highest at 96, then Chinami, Cliff, and Yuka. All the scores were actually in the 90s, which to me is pretty damn good - until you compare those scores with the 150+s grandma puts up... shyoganai ne (It can't be helped). Bowling was a ton of fun though - and cheap!

After bowling we decided to go get something eat. Cliff knew about a certain style of Japanese resturaunt, and after about 5 minutes we figured out that it is an ikezaya. So we went to the nearest one to eat. Basically at an ikezaya (it might be ikizaya, I forget) you get your own little room, and have a little lcd screen where you can order food from, and they bring it out for you. The particular one we went to was 290yen for everything (around $3). The best way to describe how the food comes out is family style. They just bring a plate of what ever your ordered, and everyone shares. We bought kimchi (Korean dish - don't ask what it's made out of), Sushi, Salad, Tamago (egg), chicken, and some other stuff.

The topic of conversation was pretty random. It is a very unique experience talking with people your own age in a foreign language, and have them speak to you in your native language. Basically Cliff and I would say stuff in Japanese, and they would respond in English. You definitely start to appreciate being able to express the same idea in multiple ways though. We ended up talking about movies, and in order to figure out movie we were talking about we had to describe what happened in the movie. One of the funnier examples was probably the explanation & acting out of various horror movies. I also mentioned that I had seen the move "Black Rain" by Kurosawa, which is "kuroi ame" in Japanese - which is what I said. For some reason that I still don't know this was hilarious to Chinami and Yuka. They said it was a funny combination of words - but it makes me wonder!

Following dinner, we went to karaoke... I was half-way skeptical about it since I can't sing to save my life, but it ended up being really fun. It was really funny because we kept trying to pick songs everyone else would know, however the other people ended up not knowing the songs. We managed to find some common ground with Michael Jackson and the Beatles. I think one of the funniest songs we sang was Thriller, since it was accompanied by a few of the dance moves. The most difficult was definitely ABC by the Jackson 5 -- we all kind of gave up on it about half way through.

The karaoke room was probably 12'x15, and the outer wall was lined with booth-style seating, and then there was a table in the middle for drinks and the mics. In the front of the room is the tv where the lyrics are displayed (it was like a 40" LCD - legit). There was also a phone so you could order stuff, and two tablet-pc esq things where you chose the songs from. Along with my bowling career, I will forgo singing - however karaoke is a lot of fun.

The entire day which started at around 2 and ended at 10ish cost only $30, which is not bad considering the variety and amount of things we did.

I will post pictures tomorrow, but for now I'm going to go get some much needed sleep!