Hello friends! :) This has been a really busy week. Not only with seminars and studying, but also with other exciting things! Be prepared for another looong post ;)

Welcome to Hogw... ahem, Keio

Last Friday, Keio was holding a welcome party for exchange students. It was a rather short event, but full of speeches with warm welcome words and delicious food. They even have cute mascot in the form of a unicorn (that looks like a cat to me) and an epic hymn they sang for us! Especially when they said they wanted us to feel as a part of the Keio family, somehow, we truly got the feeling that we are in Hogwarts now. :) An upcoming baseball match against Waseda University, which is an important event everyone is already looking forward to, is only adding to the impression.

All the treats were completely gone after half an hour

Between the speeches, we had a good time just talking to everyone we knew and meeting new people, before at 19:40 they said: "Okay, the party is over, please go outside". I mean, isn't this cute?

Before the party, Tharshi, Brianne, Jess and I discovered this fantastic view from the seventh floor of a university building:

On our way home - view from the bridge to Tamachi train station

Funky Saturday

On Saturday, Essi and I visited a Japanese club for the first time. It was a concert where one of our resident assistants, Shogo, was playing drums for his band Sideburning Gorilla! The club named LOOP was in the Daikanyama area next to Shibuya, a rather expensive quarter with lots of fancy shops, cafés and restaurants (all of which were foreign, we did not spot a single Japanese restaurant or konbini). Because we had yet to satisfy our hunger, we visited a Vietnamese restaurant called Monsoon. It was the first time we had to wait long for our food, but it was a stylish place and the food was worth the wait.

Vietnamese fried rice

Monsoon restaurant from the second floor - looks expensive, but has surprisingly reasonable prices

Beautiful Daikanyama

Fortunately, we made it just in time for Shogo's band's performance. It was part of an event dedicated to funk music, and the band was covering Parliament Funkadelic. We had never listened to funk before, therefore we were excited to see what was to come. Being the only foreigners in the club, we mixed in the Japanese crowd in anticipation...

At the beginning, the audience was standing still, attentively listening to the music. However, as soon as it gained speed, the people suddenly went wild! They danced and jumped like crazy, and we got carried away by the enthusiastic spirit. The band put on an amazing show and we did not expect the music to be so powerful and engaging. In addition to this, the singers were wearing creative costumes and - for some reason - used long noses and modified, squeaky voices, making it all even more surreal and funny. The performance lasted only half an hour, but we had an unforgettable time!

Sorry for the bad quality - my phone is not good with dark settings

Finally you can see the drummer :D

DIY food

Our first opportunity to try real okonomiyaki, a kind of Japanese pancakes, came on Sunday. This is an experience of its own kind: You get a bowl with the ingredients - in my case, raw eggs and a variety of vegetables - which you mix together and fry on a hot plate in the middle of the table. Then you eat the pancakes with special okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise. Mmmhhh...

In anticipation of the feast

Photo by Laurien

Selfmade pancakes in process

Voilà! A piece of art

Unexperienced as we were, we had been a bit scared to make a mess at the beginning, but we were lucky enough to sit next to a friendly Japanese couple, who gave us advice on the art of okonomiyaki, making sure, for example, that we used the right oils and sauces and put them in the right place. ;)

The real pain of cultural experience

Keio has a lot of different student clubs to offer, and we all had a hard time to choose which of them to join. Alizée and I both like sports, including martial arts, so we decided to try a traditional Japanese kind of sport which is called bojutsu - the art of fighting using a staff (called bo). So on Wednesday evening, we showed up to the club meeting place, encountering a group of ten Japanese students who could speak no or only little English. A good start ^^'

Despite the difficulties in communication, we received a warm welcome by the club members and were fully integrated into the practice. The training took place outside on a field, which you had to bow to before entering. Whenever working in pairs was required, the students practiced with us and were really eager to teach us the basic positions, how to hold the 1.82m staff properly, as well as the techniques of attack and defense. 

The staff part itself was not very hard once we have mastered the technique - it was the warm-up which made the training session very intense. It started with 240 kicks, or 20 per member. Standing in a circle, everyone had to perform ten kicks for each leg while counting them in Japanese. Not an easy task when you are a) out of breath and b) not very confident with your language skills... The worst part of the practice were "frog jumps". My legs still hurt from this one. Watching the others hopping happily across the field and back, we could barely do five of these jumps in a row... ^^ 

I could write a lot more about bojutsu, but if you would like to get an impression of what it looks like, you could start here. If I join the club, I will make sure to share more experiences in the future. 

Regardless of the tough parts, the two hour practice was a lot of fun and we already learned a lot. The members even invited us for dinner which they always eat together after training - but since we had no changing clothes with us and still some homework to finish, unfortunately, we could not join. I still feel a bit bad about this because they were so kind, but next time we will be prepared. It promises to be a great opportunity to make new friends and pracitce Japanese :)

Yummy, yummy, yummy

Because Tokyo has so much delicious stuff to offer, I cannot resist sharing with you my newest discoveries of the week - the best curry place (so far), my first Japanese pizza and seasonal pumpkin latte.

Tomato and asparagus curry for lunch - the standard portion is already HUGE. I get the impression Japanese people can eat a lot. Especially of this popular dish

A very cool, little standing pizza bar suggested by our arts professor, where Maria, Alex and I went after class on Thursday...

...and I had this basil and mascarpone pizza prepared right before my eyes. It exceeded my expectations - although pizza in Japan is certainly different from the European version

After having my hair cut in a very nice hair salon (Shinka) in Roppongi today, I treated myself with this Halloween pumpkin latte

Lastly, I am pleased to announce to you that I am now also busy creating posts for Oryoki - a German online shop specialized on high-quality, hand-crafted Japanese goods! I am very happy and honoured to have received this opportunity, and excited to share my fascination for Japanese culture with a broader, like-minded audience. A huge thanks to my friend Jenny for establishing contact, and to Francesca for providing valuable help with my research on tea ceremony, which is the subject of my first blog post. You can find it here (German only).

Thank you for reading and have fantastic weekend! :)