"Sweather Wetter" - Kealia Haitsuka '19

Our day started off with Inaba Sensei’s soft knock at our door at 6am, but of course, Ivanni and I didn’t get out of our beds until 6:30. Breakfast at the small cafe connected to the lobby of our hotel was very oishii desu nee!! We hustled through the three bustling train stations to reach our first destintion, the Tokyo Skytree. On a side note, the train cars were overflowing with people, you would not believe how many people were packing into such a small space. Anyway, it took less than 50 seconds to go up 650 meters and the view from the top was breathtaking. We could even see Mount Fuji in the far distance.

From there, we went to the Lantern Temple (Asakusa) and walked through beautiful shopping streets. Everyone tried different flavors of soft serve and only after eating dessert, we decided to eat real lunch. We all had Japanese Curry (I highly recommend).

The next stop was the sample food making and probably my favorite part of the day! We were all talking about Peter Barakan and Japanology as we gently poured wax into the warm water and put our fake shrimp and vegetables in the wax to make imitation tenpura! The lettuce was so majestic as you slowly elongated it. The foods were very realistic and they are all over Japan. As we left, some of us started singing the TE form song, a capella style.

Our last stop was Akihabara, which Kamea wouldn’t stop repeating as he tried to imitate the voice from the announcement in the train. This was the most “stereotypical” city part of Tokyo that we have been to so far with the big flashing lights and blasting music. The weather throughout the day was pretty consistent. It was cool, but not freezing. I guess you could say it was “Sweater Weather.” Although, Josh would argue that it’s ”Sweather Wetter” only because he kept mixing up the words. Fisher and Kamea couldn’t breathe for a solid 10 minutes because they were laughing so hard as we walked the streets of Akihabara.

It’s only been a few days and I’m already convinced that I should move here. Oh look, it‘s 10:30 and time for bed. Sayounara!!