Day J1

I woke up this morning and needed to go to the bathroom, so I did. I walked into the stall that contained the dorm's super-toilet, complete with electronic controls and bidet.
Anyways, the bed in my dorm is significantly more comfortable than the one in China. A major part of today was figuring out the public transoprtation system. After class and lunch (I went to the nearby 100yen plaza and bought a counter), we went to the Meiji Shrine, which I liked very much.
BTW, I forgot my camera in my room this morning, so all photos are credited to Kong.

After that we did a repeat of the Mystery Beijing trip, but instead with various locations around Tokyo. Kong and I were a two man group and we were given a slip of paper that only said アメ横.
With a city atlas and train map it was relatively easy to find (we could look it up easily because we knew off the bat how to pronounce アメ (ame), other groups weren't as lucky (they got locations beginning with weird stuff)).

It turns out that アメ横　(ameyoko) was just an abbreviation for アメヤ横丁　(ameyayokochou), which is the last remnant of the black market, open air markets that formed in early post war Japan (the ame stands for America). Most of the stores were relatively cheap, though we didn't buy anything, and it is apparently one of the only places you can haggle over prices in Tokyo. The inside of the center building (you can't see it in the picture) has much more high-class expentive shops (jewelry, etc...). One good that could be found at any part of アメ横 was shoes. I have never seen more shoe shops in one place than there.
After that, we went back to the shrine to meet up with everyone else for dinner. We went to an Okonomiyaki place in Harajuku which was oddly decorated, but really good. We had an all you can eat meal, so I had three courses, two okonomiyaki (one with beef, one with salami) and one yakisoba (with bacon). I also was drinking large amounts of water. I believe the waiters got fed up with me because they eventually just left a full pitcher next to me. After dinner we went back to the dorm.
SIDE NOTE!
WHILEWEWEREONTHEWAYTOAMEYOKOWEWEREINAKIHABARASTATIONANDICANTWAITTOGOTOAKIHABARAIMSOEXCITEDOMGOMGOMG.
I have a trip to Akihabara planned for saturday. For those of you who don't know, it's kinda lika an anime/videogame nerd Mecca.
Just thought you ought to know.
*collapse*

JAPAN!!! (Day J0)

We just flew into Japan tonight, and I am already pleased. So, far everything from the accommodations to the people seem much more friendly, not to mention less dingy. I'm tired and need sleep now, so I'll update tomorrow, maybe with pictures.

Day 5 & 6

We didn't have class this morning so that we could prepare for our trip to the Great Wall. Then we went, by bus. The ride was somewhat long, but it was made better by sleep, music, and an on-board lunch. we got to the wall and it was still cold. I wore two t-shirts, a long sleeved shirt, sweat pants, cargo pants over them, three pairs of socks, a balacalava, the nuclear winter hat, a sweater, my ski jacket, mittens, and shoes. Parts of me still managed to become cold. There were two portions of the wall which we could choose to climb, I went with the group that chose the steeper, more manly route. It was steep. It was the most tiring hike I have ever made, and going back down was an even more difficult task. The entire time we were being followed by "tour guides" who would forcibly help you down the slope, then try to guilt you into buying overpriced souvenirs. While it was tiring, and the vulturous salespeople were annoying, the views were spectacular. I really hadn't realized how freaking long the great wall was until I saw it. You could see the wall towers on nearly every visible mountain. The music I had stuck in my head was "The Lighting of the Beacons" from Lord of the Rings.
Some of those mountains with towers were really tall.



We walked back down the wall a different way from which we came to get to a small farming village with an excellent view of the wall. The village was extremely non-high-tech (see chicken for details) and had the single most classy restroom facilities I have ever seen, you'll have to wait for the elaboration on that until the end of the post though. Anyways, we were made a dinner which was very good. The sleeping accommodations were something of a nightmare. We were told that there would be heated beds. We were told the truth, but were not informed that these "beds" were pretty much just raised sections of floor covered in blankets. The "beds" were large enough to accommodate about four people without being too cramped. We slept with six people to our bed. In summary, I got to sleep on a gigantic warm brick with five other guys. It was not the best night's sleep I have ever had.
The high-tech toiled was a pretty impressive device.

Inside of this eloquent structure was a gap in the floorboards which opened to the small ravine below. There was also a bucket in which to put your used toilet paper. by the way, the streetlights on the road leading to this village and to the wall are all solar powered. There is something wrong with this government's priorities.
We took the bus back to the dorms and I now sit here typing. I leave for Japan tomorrow. I look forward to being in a country where I can drink the water.

Day 4

Hello again, it's still really cold here.
When I left for class I saw what I call the Jesus-cycle. If you get it, then you know something about Christianity.

Today in class, we learned about Beijing and about the layout of the old city. An interesting thing is that the temples dedicated to the celestial bodies were all built outside the city walls. The guest lecturer we had was very enthusiastic and well learned. He has apparently been teaching for quite a while. After this, we went to a museum containing a lot of China and Beijing's historical art and artifacts. The exhibits ranged in time period from super-ancient to the last dynasty. One of the old bronze works, a bath basin, had a small feature which I thought was cute. It needs an, "O hai der" caption. Another piece that stood out was the face of one particular wax figure. It is a near perfect representation of the racist view of a Chinese face. It wasn't supposed to be, this figure is one in a procession of somewhat realistic looking depictions of people in a wedding parade. I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or facepalm when I saw this for the fist time. Aside from these, I really enjoyed their collection of Buddhist statues.


Anywho, after the museum, in small groups, the Chinese language students led the Japanese students (hi) to a location which they had been researching. The group in which I was went to a place that started with a Y and had ming somewhere in the name. It was the ruins of the Emperor's summer palace. The group gave us a brief history lesson and brought us through a section of the park. The snow made the ruins practically invisible, but it was a nice park anyways. Myself and Adam had a picture taken of us at a tourist spot. You may call me Emperor Jeff.

Here's a statue from the place.

Day 3

Sorry, no new pictures today. It was a free day, so I spent it trying to upload pictures and update the blog, without much success. I went into town with a group for lunch and dinner, so my day was not by any means of Chinese cultural experience. Speaking of that which is quintessentially Chinese (sarcasm) we found an excellent Pizza bar near campus and we have had dinner the past two nights. You're allowed to write on the walls and their large pizza is about as big in diameter as the table is wide. I really like this place.

Day 2

Today, I woke up and went to the dumpling stand near the school. Those things are really good, it is essentially grease and pork inside bread for very cheap, since it's China.

After that, we had class, which was basically a sort of orientation of rules and regulations, etc...
Next, we took a bus to nearer the center of the city and had us some lunch at a vegetarian restaurant. None of the food was particularly good (except the rice), but it did look like somewhat convincing meat. After that we walked to the Beijing city planning museum. On the way, a lady selling things followed us almost to the museum, but I don't think anyone bought anything from her. We arrived at the museum and were lead around the exhibits regarding old Beijing by a Chinese man who looked pretty much exactly like Boris Badenov. The museum itself was pretty interesting. A prominent feature was the miniature version of the entire city. The entire time I was looking at the model city, the Godzilla music was running through my head.

After we were done with the museum, we made our way to Tienanmen Square for our next assignment. It was an exercise entitled "Mystery Beijing." For this assignment, were split into groups of two, with one Chinese and one Japanese studdent in each group. We were given the name of a place in Beijing, written in Chinese. We were only allowed to use our atlases and communication with the locals to find our way. By the atlas, I found pretty quickly that that our location was directly north of us. As were walking towards one of the nearest subway stops, we heard people talking to us in bad English from behind. There was a group of three or four Chinese people (college aged, mostly female) who apparently wanted to take a picture with us. They took the picture, and my teammate, Dereck(sp?), asked them about the location of our destination. We found out exactly how to get there using the bus system, and we did so. Our location (pronounced Gulou, or something) was an ancient tower containing many large drums. it was used for keeping track of the time in old Beijing. We got to dee people do a performance on the drums as well, it was pretty dang cool. Here's a drum.

On the way back to report our success, we stopped by an electronics store and I purchased a set of video game peripherals worth $200 US. I spend about $13 US. China is cheap. We got back without further incident.

Day 1

Hokay, so
After being on airplanes for a grand total of eighteen hours within two days, I arrived at Beijing.When we arrived, it was still light. For some obscure security reason, there was no photography allowed before we properly went through immigration and customs, so there are no pictures of the airport. It is an interesting structure and I'm sure you can find pictures of it somewhere on the internet. We took an incredibly slow and crowded tram to get to the baggage claim and after that we were on a nice bus to get to the dorms. Following is the first ever picture of me in China. I seem confused for some reason.

The dorm is a bit janky. We had to buy our own toilet paper to bring to and from the bathrooms. The plumbing is poorly behaved, so we cannot flush toilet paper. The room feels much smaller than the picture suggests, but everything at least works. Except for the internet. The wired connection won't let me connect at all and the wireless is just plain bad, not to mention a bunch of sites (facebook, youtube) are blocked by the Chinese government, so it is rather inconvenient.

Next, we had dinner. It was excellent.