Schools, Tourist Attractions, and a Chance Meeting

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Jono Ori

On this day we visited Waseda University, Marina's school. It was a pretty nice place, we went to the international student's building where Marina will spend a lot of her time because she's an International Business major. It pretty much just seemed like a college campus. There were enough Americans on exchange there that Marina won't feel like her life is totally lacking an American feel when she's there, but also a lot of nice college type Japanese people that seem like they're looking to have a good time too. I'm sure she'll have no trouble partying or raising hell around here... there's so much to do so safely in this city that it'd be hard not to go out and rustle up a little bit of trouble for yourself. Anyway, that was Marina's school... nice place.

After the school we went to Asakusa to see the infamous Senso-Ji temple. I took a lot of pictures here. The story behind this place is that it is the Temple that houses the golden statue of Kannon (I believe she's displayed in the feminine form in this particular statue - it varies, from what I've read). The statue is said to have been discovered by a couple fishermen in 628 A.D. at the bottom of Tokyo's main river, the Sumidagawa. This is a huge tourist attraction and its surroundings have become something of a shopping mall - many shops with tourist type gifts and toys all around. You want a Kimono? This is the place. You want a t-shirt that says "Samurai" on it? Yeah, 1800 yen. Get it here.

Google for more images! It's definitely worth seeing, although if you've researched Japan at all, this is probably one of the most famous images you'll see.

I get the idea that the gods would be pretty pissed at me for trying to take pictures of the shrine... but they're available on my picture site.

Marina was being a good sport on this day, because she's probably seen this shrine about a thousand times, and she put up with it one more time for my sake. It was totally worth it.

There was a big burning pot of incense. People take the smoke as it comes up and rub it on their ailments. I rubbed some on myself because my throat hurt and I had sinus pressure, and I rubbed some on Marina because she was being a little bit of a jerk that day. It didn't help much, but... maybe her mood will improve because of it.

I'll try my best to describe the entrance to the shrine: On the left and right you can see statues in the gate.. these are protective deities called Fuujin and Raijin - the gods of wind and thunder respectively. Basically they're there so you don't mess with the statue/spirit of Kannon. Nobody has in a real long time, so... I guess they're doing a good job.

After the shrines we went to see Lisa's school, Sophia University. Nothing too special about this place, again just a college campus in Tokyo... and then the most unbelievable thing possible happened. I saw someone from my high school in Philadelphia in Japan. Max Kretchmer is studying at Sophia for this semester... and we happened to be in the same place at the same time on the campus and I spotted him in a crowd. We each did about five double takes and ran over to each other and shook hands and started talking. That was unbelievable. We haven't seen each other since the day he graduated (three years ahead of me), and it's just weird that the timing was so good. But there he was. And i didn't take a picture. Oh well.

After Sophia we jumped on the train and headed back to Saitama. We visited with a family that used to live in New York.. the little girl had pictures of Derek Jeter all over the place, which was kind of upsetting.. but didn't feel exactly different from being at Hofstra (my University in America) all the time. After speaking a little bit of English to her we went to Eri's (Marina's Aunt) place to go see Keigo (Marina's younger cousin) and his friends from school - they're in third grade . They were all giving me these eyes like "What's this big white dude doing in our house?" but Keigo seemed to tell them it was alright so they let me in without too much trouble.

So after this we went back to the house for a while, and after hearing that Nori and Lisa were both busy for dinner Yuko, Marina and I went out to Marina's favorite restaurant. Kind of an Italian place that has some Japanese kick to it. Very tasty. Afterwards, Marina and I walked from the restaurant to the big shopping place near her house to take some more of the sticker pictures, then settled in for what has become our nightly ritual, laying on the floor and watching Nip/Tuck DVDs on my laptop.