Month: January 2018

SNOW DAY!!

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So what the heck?!? It SNOWED IN JAPAN?? That very rarely happens if you aren’t up North! Being Canadian, I’m used to a lot of snow. But Japan clearly isn’t. They really don’t have the infrastructure to deal with it. None of the roads were cleared, even all the schools were closed! Most workplaces had a snow-day, and the next morning people were also advised to stay home. There was about 2 inches of snow, with icy roads. Most people don’t have winter tires for their cars here, and biking on ice is pretty dangerous. But on the bright side, it was really pretty! Kids who have never experienced snow before were outside building snowmen and having snowball fights!

You can see how much it rarely snows given the flowers with snow on them. A unique combination, but the flowers are resilient and beautiful. It really wasn’t that cold, but I’m glad I brought some boots!

I wasn’t sure what to do on my day off, so I decided to go to JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and take a look around. They had a Space Dome and a Planet Cube, and various replicas of Japanese satellites that have been sent up into space. They also had a replica of the piece of the ISS (International Space Station) that they built that you could go inside! I still had time left in the day, so I decided to also go to the Science Square, which is a gallery of emerging technologies.

I even got to hold a baby seal! It is a Therapeutic Seal that was developed by AIST, to cuddle and help people de-stress. It costs about 400,000 yen, and encompasses motion and touch sensors to react to people coming near them or petting them. And omg, they were so so cute! I went back to play with them like 3 times while I was there! They remind me of a high tech version of the FurReal Friends I used to have as a kid. They had a pacifier and they got so sad when you put them down. There is a video down below if you want to see it in action!

There was some other cool stuff too, artificial intelligence, bendable display screens, and much more. Personally, after the Therapeutic Seal, my favourite new tech was the robot, Mahoro, who can do precise, repetitive, and dangerous lab work in place of humans. He can even do work under vacuum conditions! This could greatly help researchers so they don’t have to do lab work, and new experiments can be performed with higher accuracy and lower risk. Even more, you could get a personal Audio Guide so you could listen instead of having to read all the signs. It was an interesting exhibit, new technologies are always on the rise!

This is the first snow-day I’ve had since 11th grade, and I think it was a day well spent!

JUSCO is CLOSING!!

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Nooo!! I’m so sad, JUSCO is closing! JUSCO is a chain of Japanese department stores that I absolutely loveee. Not only do they have tons of shopping places, but as a kid I loved going to the arcade there! All my past trips were filled with countless trips to the massive department store, and I spent so much time there! JUSCO was like the only store in Japan I knew of as a kid (besides the Dollar Store … stay tuned for a video about those!!) so it’s so sad they are closing them all down :(. But there’s some good news! There is a JUSCO near my apartment, and it is officially closing on January 31, 2018 so EVERYTHING is on sale! So I have a pretty nice haul from my last shopping trip to JUSCO! And the grand total was less than 7,500 yen ($75), so that’s always a plus!

First things first, most JUSCOs have a Mister Donut inside, and I actually love donuts so much! I don’t like strawberries at all, but this is the only place I will eat a strawberry donut because I like it so much! Their donuts are different too, they are almost sticky or seem like they have a mochi characteristic to them. This time, the first of many, I just stuck with a classic donut though!

So I’ve been looking for a nice Denim skirt everywhere, and I ordered a really nice one from Forever 21, but it didn’t fit properly, so I was back to square one. But, I found one at JUSCO! It was so cheap too because of all the sales! I got it from Earth Music & Ecology, which is a popular Japanese clothing line. It is super cute and I found a nice sweater from Pentagon to match it! The maroon hat is a cute accessory to add a little colour to the outfit! Love it!

 

 

 

Then I found this pink sweater / sweater dress and grey hat with a pom pom on it, super cute too! I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a dress or not because it’s a large size so not sure if it’s just big on me or is supposed to be longer but I’m going to wear it as a long top! It’s a nice pastel pink (more pastel than the picture indicates) and stripes are apparently my thing right now.

So Japan is a lot colder than I thought it would be, and I only brought my thin mock Trench coat from Forever 21, so I needed a warmer jacket. I found a jacket at Earth Music & Ecology, and the sale price was 4,000 yen down from 11,600 yen, and I was going to buy it but I didn’t want to carry it around while I shopped so I just figured I would come back for it. When I finally looped back around, all the signs had changed and everything was on a 1 hour timed super sale! So I ended up buying 2 jackets, totaling to 3,000 yen!! It was such a good deal it almost seemed wrong not to buy them. So now I have 2 cute cozy jackets!

Last thing, I also bought this super soft minty sweater, and this hexagon necklace (ironically from Pentagon). I bought the necklace because I study Nanotechnology Engineering at university, and it looks like carbon rings, so I’m calling it my Nano-Necklace. (For any of you that know where I go to school you know that it is plastered across the entire building I study in. And for my fellow geeks, the first thought that came to mind when I saw the necklace was that it looks like a steroid / cholesterol molecule :P).

Anyways that’s my final JUSCO haul for ever I guess! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

All About Bicycles

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So as I mentioned in my Instagram post,  bicycle is the best method of getting around in Japan. The streets are narrow but nothing is further than a short bike ride away. Japan is convenient, and not just because they have a convenience store around every corner, but because anything you could ever need is accessible and close by. A car can be hard to navigate through the tiny streets, so everybody here bikes, including kids and the elderly. Not only is it great for the environment, but it’s good for your health too. It allows you to get in some of your required daily exercise without even thinking about it. Many people ride their bikes to work, so it adds a little movement to their static desk jobs. Did you know, Japan is one of the oldest nations in the world? And by that I mean it has one of the largest, if not The largest, elderly population in the world and one of the highest rates of reaching over 100 years old. In my opinion, riding bikes throughout their lives helped contribute to their ability to reach such high levels of old age.

One interesting thing about bicycles in Japan is that they are treated like any other vehicle. You must follow the rules of the road, and there are hefty fines if you break the law. Also, did you know it’s illegal to bike with an umbrella opened? I see people doing it all the time! But nope, not legal. You cannot bike in designated pedestrian areas (aka the sidewalk), unless you are a small child or an elderly person. I’m so used to driving on the right side of the road that when I went biking for the first time a couple days ago, instinctively I started biking on the right, and someone literally honked at me from their car!

Another thing that I don’t know why North America hasn’t adopted yet is the bike locking mechanism on Japanese bikes. There’s a key lock attached directly to the bike that doesn’t allow the tires to turn unless the key remains inserted. Also, it’s a steel rod which is waaay harder to cut than a regular bike lock. Now you might be thinking okay well someone could just pick up the bike and take it. Well at a lot of stores they have bike racks that clamp onto the front tires so you can’t just steal the bike without taking off the font tire, and even if you took the back part the back wheel still wouldn’t turn because of the built in lock. Like why can’t we have those? It’s so smart!

To be honest, I didn’t really think I would have this much to say about bikes, but I have one more awesome thing to add about Japanese bikes … Their Kickstands!! They go under the bike and hold the back tire completely off the ground to stabilize the bike upright instead of leaning it on a side kickstand! It is so much better and keeps your bike from falling over. And you can lock the kickstand too, so not only does the back tire not spin when locked, but the tire itself isn’t even touching the ground! Would make a bike either difficult or pointless to steal, right? Not sure why this “technology” hasn’t made it’s way to Canada and the United States yet, but we really need to get on it.

Anyways that’s my not so short spiel about bicycles in Japan! If anyone is really curious, leave a comment and I will upload pictures of all the different mechanisms I talked about or list all the rules about biking in Japan.

Hope you learned something!

First Time Posting a Video!

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So I just posted my very first Youtube video ever! AHHH!! You can watch it down below!! That was such a scary thing to do, I’ve always disliked being video taped so filming myself and putting it out on the internet for the world to see was a scary thing for me to do! But I am super excited for this Youtube adventure and I hope it goes well!

It was a lot of work to put a video together and there were just so many things I had to consider that I didn’t even think about before starting filming. Like the lighting had to be right and there couldn’t be too much background noise and this that and the other thing that I didn’t consider until I actually started filming! Kudos to all the Youtubers out there, it’s a lot of work. I probably should have written a script at least … lesson learned!

I hope you enjoy the video and don’t forget to Subscribe to my channel!

 

Going to Japan!

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Welcome to my first Blog Post! Today was a big day … moving to Japan!

Actually it was more like 2 days, because of the travel time. Anyways, after finally finishing packing my bags at like 5 in the morning I started heading to the airport, where I was set to catch my 1 pm flight to Tokyo! The airport was pretty empty since it was a Wednesday morning, so I had tons of time to relax and prepare for the long flight ahead of me.

So I really don’t like airplane food, so usually before going on long flights I will buy some food, and at the Toronto Airport I usually get some Tim Hortons before the flight takes off. But they changed it all around since the last time I had been there! Which was in April by the way, it wasn’t even that long ago! So I had to scramble to find something else, but eventually found where the Tims had moved to so I got a bagel. Airport food is so expensive omg.

The flight left on-time surprisingly, and the airplane itself was virtually empty. It was a massive Boeing 747 and my entire row (like all 10 seats across) was completely empty! So I was able to lay down and sleep since the flight was over 12 hours long. I also got a whole bunch of pillows since the Air Canada pillows are so thin otherwise. The mini TV screens were also lacking in entertainment, which was unusual since it’s normally pretty good. Good thing I brought a bunch of my own shows! I binge watched like half a season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which was nice since I usually don’t have much time to watch TV.

So our flight was set to land at 5 pm in Tokyo on Thursday, and the time change kind of messed me up (Japan is 14 hours ahead of Toronto) and I totally thought that the sunset was sunrise looking out the plane’s window. We safely landed, but then I needed to get on a bus to get to the right town, and I missed the bus by like 5 minutes! It sucked because I had to wait like 2 hours for the next bus to leave. So I decided to go get some dinner at the convenience store in the Airport (btw Japanese convenience stores are exactly that, convenient), and the food was actually really good! Eventually I got on the bus and the jet lag was starting to get to me so I kept falling asleep on the bus.

After a long walk from the station (after stopping at the grocery store), I finally made it to my apartment that I will be staying in while I’m in Japan! And somehow I got really lucky by getting a double room, but with no roommate! I was exhausted after all that travelling, but I knew I needed to unpack and shower since I had to go straight to orientation in the morning!

Overall, the travel was one of the smoothest trips I’ve been on, minus the 4 crying babies the whole plane ride to Japan. That was super annoying. When one of them finally stopped crying, the next one would start for the entire. 13. hours. But I made it here safely and that’s what’s important.

You can see the video about the trip so far here.