7/31/2022 0 Comments WEEK 17: HOKKAIDOI highly recommend visiting Hokkaido in July! This month is when the lavender is in season, so visit Farm Tomita! It is humid in Tokyo in this month, but much cooler in Hokkaido. My friend and I visited Sapporo, Otaru, Asahikawa, Biei, and Furano while we were in Hokkaido. For this trip, we purchased the four day JR Hokkaido Sapporo-Furano Area Pass that allowed us unlimited rides on the JR trains within the New-Chitose Airport, Sapporo, Otaru, Takikawa, Asahikawa, Biei, and Furano area. With this free pass, we saved more than double of the cost on transportation. This pass can be bought at New-Chitose Aiport, Sapporo, and Asahikawa JR Information counter. Foreigner passport is required to purchase. Highly recommend this pass if you plan to visit most scenic places in northern Hokkaido. This concludes the end of my study abroad. I absolutely loved it and enjoyed it! Would encourage everyone to study abroad if they have the opportunity!
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7/17/2022 0 Comments week 15: HakoneAfter we finished our exams, my friend took me to a salon in Harajuku. She told me about the Hot Pepper app that we can use to make reservations for hair salons, nails, massages, and etc. In this app, every place have coupons that we can use to make reservations. It is so convenient, 100% recommend downloading it! During the weekend, my friend and I went on a two day, one night trip to Hakone. Hakone is known for their beautiful onsen. For this trip, we purchased the two-day Hakone Free Pass. This pass includes our round trip from and to Hakone-Yumoto Station, as well as unlimited rides on the Hakone Tozan Railway, cable car, ropeway, cruise, and bus. It is definitely worth it if you want to experience eveything in Hakone on a lower cost. You can easily purchase the ticket on the EMot app. The hotel that I stayed at had an indoor onsen. I was lucky to enjoy the onsen all to myself. I would recommend staying at a hotel with onsen, so it's convenient to access it.
I the hanging umbrellas places online and decided to visit the Moomin Park in Saitama. It was a beautiful park! However, the location is about 2 hours away by train one-way. On the train, I saw that there was a package that included the theme park ticket and the round trip train ticket for a lower price, which I was not aware of. The park is only open for two to three months in a year. It is Moomin theme, which is a korean cartoon. The atmosphere is really nice, I highly recommend visiting if you have the chance to go. I also flew to Hiroshima with one of my friend from UH to visit some of my Japanese friends that I met in high school. One of them was my host sister that lived in my house back in Hawaii for about two weeks during my senior year of high school. I have previously visited Hiroshima back in 2018 as a high school trip visiting our sister school. Thus, it was great to revisit again. One of my friend even drove us to a farm and many scenic spots that would not have been accessible without a car. It was such an amazing trip! This trip I chose the plane rather than Shinkansen because of time and cost. It costed way less and only a 1 hour 20 minutes flight ride. But the Shinkansen takes about four hours. It is important to check the different modes of transportation available when traveling across Japan.
6/19/2022 0 Comments week 11: Shibuya skyThis week I met up with one of my Japanese friend who was a Keio student that study abroad at UH TIM School. She graduated from Keio University in March, 2022 and currently works at Tokyo Disney Sea. We met together for a popular yakiniku restaurant that she recommended(middle picture). It was sooooooo goood!! Then we headed to a new popular spot in Shibuya called the Shibuya Sky. This is a 360° open-air observation deck located on the 45th, 46th floor, which is the roof of the Shibuya Scramble Square skyscraper. It's a really nice spot and I would recommend others to go check it out as well. My friend and I bought our tickets online, because it was cheaper than buying it at the counter. Something interesting I saw was that there's "local" elevators that stops at every level and there's also "express" elevators that only stops at certain levels. This is the same idea as the trains: local, express, limited express, commuter express. Thus, it is important that you ride the correct ones, or knows when to transfer trains, so you don't miss your floor or station.
6/5/2022 0 Comments WEEK 9: osaka & kyoto tripThis week I traveled from Tokyo to Osaka and Kyoto with a few UH friends. We took the two and a half hour Shinkansen for this trip. There is something called the "gakuwari" that we can apply for at Keio University to receive a 20% off shinkansen tickets that travels more than 100km. If you use this gakuwari, I would recommend to book your round trip at the shinkansen center and you can get 30% off, which is 20% more than buying one-way tickets. This is the first time I found out about this gakuwari, student discount thing, but I would definitely recommend this to future study abroad students. Japan is a country that heavily relies on cash, so it is important to bring cash with you when going to places. In addition, a lot of places with admission fees have a lower rate for students, so make sure to bring your student ID with you at all times.
5/22/2022 0 Comments WEEK 7: NEW CUISINESInteresting how I am able to try so many different cuisines in Japan. Since I got to Japan, I was able to try Japanese, Chinese, Italian, and Korean cuisines a lot. In the past two weeks, I had the opportunity to taste Thai food, Singapore chicken rice, and Indian curry for the first time in my life! We went to Ameyayoko and was able to try some real Chinese food. I also bought cherries and strawberries to bring back to the dorm. FYI, fruits are SO expensive in Japan! As a fruit addict, I had to satisfy my fruit cravings somehow. We went to Shin-Okubo for 3 days in a row. Shin-Okubo is known as the korean town with a lot of korean food restaurants and cosmetics stores. Of course, I had to do some skincare shopping, but we were also able to try some really tasty korean food. We went to Asakusa on another day and tried the Asakusa Ramen and sat at a cafe afterwards while enjoying the matcha mouse cake and hojicha latte. We also did mikuji in Asakusa and my fortune draw was BAD! I followed the instruction and tied it to the rack and hope for the best! We had the best pizza in Musashi Kosugi with my favorite ultra thin crust. It was my first time tasting and hearing about chicken rice. There was instructions on how to eat chicken rice in multiple ways with the three type of sauces. Nevertheless, it was surprisingly really good! I had the most interesting lemonade here. There was cream cheese added to the lemonade!! WOW! It was a surprise because I thought it was whipped cream. Thai food was another interesting taste. The tom yang soup here was extremely strong, the flavor was dense! Another cuisine added to my favorite list! We travelled all the way to Shin-Maruko to try a high star review Indian curry restaurant. The curry portion was smaller than I thought, but I was told that's the normal size for Indian curry. Unlike Japanese curry where we eat it with rice, Indian curry goes with naan. It was a really interesting combination. We got to try SIX different flavors of Indian curry! Totally unexpected! I love and enjoy the many different cuisines I was able to try and I look forward to more!
5/8/2022 0 Comments WEEK 5: HOURS ON TRAINAnother exciting 2 weeks went by so fast!! Me and my friend went on an hour train ride to go visit the beautiful Asukayama Park. There's a short monorail that we can experience at the entrance of the park. The ride was short, but the view was incredible! On our way back, we stopped at Ikebukuro and visited the pop-up Pokemon stores. The entire floor was filled with Pokemon themed items and food. We hopped on a half an hour train to Yokohama on another day and had the best gyoza. Yokohama is a big city and we did a lot of shopping there, which means a lot of walking as well. We jumped on another one hour train to Shinyokohama to visit the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum. The first floor of the museum was like a typical museum. However, the under ground floor was the fascinating part! It was designed like the old Japan with old buildings, signs, lighting, and aroma. There's restaurants on this floor to try the old Japan flavors. Overall, it was a really cool experience. On another rainy, stormy day, our friend invited us to her grandma's house, so we took another hour train to Yokosuka. Her grandma made us some delicious paella and showed us the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. Time went by so fast because we are having a lot of fun! Looking forward for the upcoming weeks!
4/24/2022 0 Comments Week 3: EXPLORING TOKYOAs we try to catch the end of the cherry blossom season, we went to many places including Nakameguro to take pictures. One of our friend got us addicted to playing Mai Mai, so we keep on going to various Taito game stations to play. Since my dorm is in Kanagawa, which is right outside of Tokyo, it is fairly easy for us to travel by train to places in Tokyo. Of course, Google Maps has been a huge help in helping us getting to places, especially with checking train times and routes. In the past two weeks, we've been going to school in-person at Mita campus, as well as online through Zoom. I really enjoy my in-person classes as it is more engaging between the professor and students. All my courses are taught in English, so there is no need to worry about not understanding the course material. Outside of class time, we went to Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Motomachi Chuukagai to explore everything that's there. We had some yummy chinese food at Chuukagai and I look forward to going back for more! We love going to cafes to talk stories and McDonalds after dinner to chill since group gathering is not allow at my dorm. We did picnic on a Saturday at a park and it was definitely enjoyable with everyone there. So far it's been amazing and I'm still shocked at the fact that I made it to Japan!!
4/10/2022 0 Comments Week 1: HNL -> JPNOn April 2nd, 2022 at 11:55 AM HST, I departed from Honolulu, Hawaii. On April 3rd, 2022 at 15:55 PM JST, I arrived in Tokyo, Japan, Haneda Airport. Preparing all the documents and PCR testing before take off was time consuming. After arriving at Haneda airport, the process of going through all the document check, covid test, immigrations, and customs was also time consuming. However, it is when I left the airport and checked into my hotel room at Ginza Ibis Styles Hotel, then I finally got to relax and realize I finally made it to Japan! The first couple days in Japan, the weather was not what I have expected, raining and windy. Knowing minimal Japanese and the cold weather did not stop my steps into exploring Japan. The next day after arrival, I went to explore Asakusa with a few of my friends. We were amazed by all the cherry blossoms that was there and had a great time. On April 5th, 2022, I moved into my dorm in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, called Motosumiyoshi International Dormitory. My dorm room was smaller than expected, but it looked really nice and refreshed. Dorm breakfast and dinner are served on weekdays and is available for purchase. So far, the dorm meals have been tasting great. For the first week in Japan, I explored Shibuya, Keio Mita campus, Musashi Kosugi, Asakusa, and finally Motosumiyoshi with some Freeman Scholars and other scholarship recipients. We were able to see many beautiful sceneries and taste different amazing cuisines. I look forward to the upcoming four months in Japan!
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