Author: Brandy Saldana

I watched the sunrise on my last day before I decided to get ready, have my luggage packed, and ate some breakfast. My flight was scheduled to depart at 3:30,  so I stuck around to have some Nagashi Somen with the rest of the international students. Below are some pictures and videos of us enjoying the noodles.

It was too fun and I was sad to be leaving after such an enjoyable stay. I said good bye to everyone that was hanging out on the deck and then to Manager Ikera. She was the best and I thanked her for all her help and Korean Drama recommendations.

While I was sad leaving the dorm, I was a lot more depressed to be saying good bye to my sister. We are very close and after sight-seeing and experiencing everything together it was not something I was prepared for. We parted at the the train station for the Shuttle to Narita Airport. Unfortunately I was running late and almost missed my flight. I think it was the best way for me to leave because I was a lot more focused on making my flight instead of feeling sad about leaving.

After a long flight with a 5 hour layover in Canada, I made it back to the Bay Area. I slept a lot and did not get up until 1 PM. I did not enjoy the feeling of Jet Lag that resulted from the long-flight, but I still was looking up flights back to Japan for the Spring and maybe for the Holiday season. I had an amazing trip and I cannot wait to go back!

Hope you enjoyed my Travel posts. I’ll be sharing most of the outfits I wore and then returning back to my regular posts. Thanks for reading and until next time!Brandy
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Out of all my time in Japan, Day 10 was hands down my favorite day. All the students went off to campus for the day and the resident students had planned to have Nagashi Somen. It was a bit hard to translate, but roughly means “running noodles.” As you can see from my photos, pieces of bamboo are attached to each other and placed near running water like a faucet or a hose and cooked noodles are placed at the beginning of the tube and the “running” water pushes it down to the participants who gab the noodles with their chopsticks and place them in their bowl filled with sauce. The cold noodles refreshing on a hot, summer day and it is also a super fun way to eat noodles!
Yu setting up the water (above) and straightening up the tubes (below).

From left to right: Naho, Me, Yu, and Ayaka.

Striking an F-Pose!The residential students planned on holding the Nagashi Somen event again on Saturday to include the international students, so this was considered our trial run. Afterwards most of us hung out in the lounge and I mentioned I would love to have Nabe for dinner. Naho immediately offered to make Nabe for dinner that evening. I, along with Hannibal (guy pictured below in the middle), went with Naho to Seyu to buy the ingredients for dinner. I also got roped into baking cupcakes before I left for the States for the next day, and dragged Hannibal along to carry the groceries.

The Nabe was delicious! It had chicken, cabbage, fish cake, carrots, and mushrooms. The dinner was very lively and it fed a lot of people. Nabe is a great meal to eat with others and is probably even better during the winter time. I am hoping my sister can learn to make this while she is living in Japan so she can make it for me when she returns.

Baking cupcakes in Japan proved to be interesting: from buying the ingredients to using a microwave oven to bake. I was very unsure of how these cupcakes would come out not knowing the settings of the oven. I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and tasted like a Reese’s cup!

Maybe it was because it was my last night that I decided after 4 in the morning I wasn’t going to sleep. It was the start of the weekend for everyone, and someone suggested that we go buy beer. So off we went to Seyu again and luckily the first two floors are opened 24 hrs. We ended up making 2 trips to refuel for the people that stayed u late. It was fun trying different Japanese beers, but what was even more fun was playing the Japanese drinking games I stayed up drinking Japanese beers and playing some new drinking games in the lounge. 
In the end I had a great conversation with an exchange student and learned more about myself with these few days living in the dorm. I was slightly jealous that my sister would get to live in a foreign country for a year and it made me regret not taking the chance to study abroad. At least I was able to catch a glimpse of what it could have been like and who knows? Nothing is set in stone so there is always a chance I’ll go back to school and dive into a study abroad program. Or I can just visit my sister while she is living in Japan and enjoy being abroad without studying. 
Since I didn’t sleep, I just prepared for my final hours in Japan. Don’t forget to see how to see how it ended on Day 11. Brandy
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The morning of Day 9 meant me being left behind again while all the other exchange students woke up early to take their Japanese placement exams. In the meantime, I helped out my sister by taking out the garbage we had accumulated from buying stuff for her room. It felt slightly complicated at first because garbage bags were divided by flammable vs. non-flammable and it took some second guessing to figure out where things went. After all this I headed towards Seyu and picked up a small tan shelf to go in Nicole’s room and spent the morning decoding the instructions and putting it together. I completed my work as an interior designer by adding cool black decals to the walls and closet door. The room looked awesome and I am bummed I forgot to take photos to give you an idea of how it looked.

I was hungry after all that work, so afterwords I headed to the convenience store to pick up some food for lunch. I had Karage chicken, Inari Rolls, and a Dr.Pepper. I was so full I wouldn’t eat the rice ball I bought, so I saved it for later.
My sister came back and wasn’t hungry but I made her come out and get some food with me for dinner. We had seen a bunch of advertisements at the train stations for Kirin Strong drinks, which we found out were alcoholic drinks. We bought some to try and I decided to try the Takoyaki from the convenience store. It was ok, but not the same as Takoyaki made fresh. 

 After our dinner, my sister and I with a couple of other students went out to buy ice cream from Seyu, once again due to effective advertising, and came back to a bunch of people hanging out in the lounge. It seemed silly that we bought ice cream because everyone brought their stash of sweets to share with everyone else.

Despite all these sweets, more were planned for later since it was the time of the Moon Festival and a Mochi Party had been planned for later that night. The process of making mochi is just as fun as eating it. I am not too big of a fan of mochi unless it is mochi ice cream, but there was something about the way this was made that was delicious!

Once it was done, we went outside to the deck to eat under the full moon. There were three types of toppings for the the mochi and I actually enjoyed the Dango sauce. There was red bean paste (which you discovered I am not a fan of on Day 2) and the typical Mochi powder which looks like a brown sugar and I cannot remember the name of it.

It was such a fun night and I thought Nicole is very lucky to be living here with such a great group of people. The fun doesn’t occur only on the night of a full moon. For Day 10 I am introduced to the meaning of Nagashi Somen, so make sure to check back for that!
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I had one goal for Day and that was get some of my money exchanged. Between all the vending machines, train tickets, and major shopping damage in Harajuku, I was running out of Yen! So I went to the bank and attempted to exchange money. At a Japanese bank you have to provide your address and it totally slipped my mind as to where I was staying at, so I walked back to the dorm and asked for Manager Ikera’s assistance with the form. I returned to the bank and was finally able to exchange my US dollars for yen. Since I had money, I stopped by a bakery and bought Ikera a manjyu bun in the shape of a bunny as a small token of appreciation for her help. She loved it and coincidentally was born during the year of the rabbit!

My next task was Skyping with Armando since the lack of wi-fi (and amount of sight-seeing) had prevented us from communicating a lot. In an effort to show him what my sister’s new living situation looked like I took some photos of her actual “apartment.” At the entrance of her building there is a place to remove shoes and put on house slippers. The first floor has the lounge/kitchen as well as the shower rooms. When you enter my sister’s apartment it has a hallway that has a place for more shoes as well. There are 3 private rooms, and a shared toilet and kitchen/sink area. I took photos of her room while it was in a disaster stage so please forgive the mess!

One of the cool features about her room is the lock is electronic. She can use her key card or she can enter a pin to be let in. It is so cool and convenient since it allowed for me to access her room while she was off at school for orientation. After the Skype session I noticed I was hungry, so I headed to see what other restaurants I could try near the station. I found a place called Sukiya where I ordered a bowl of Yakitori and rice.

On my way home I stopped by a bakery and browsed all the cute goodies. The coolest looking desserts were these lions made out of what looked like yellow snowballs with a cookie for the mane and frosting for the face. I bought a cake to celebrate Nicole’s first day on campus with her new friends. It looked and tasted so yummy, but was extremely expensive! I later discover why cakes are expensive, but I think the taste made me okay with the price.

Nicole arrived and we shared cake with everyone who was downstairs in the lounge at the time. Originally we had made plans to have someone make us dinner and in exchange I thought the cake would be a nice thank you. Those plans had to cancelled, unfortunately, but the good news is somebody else made us dinner so it all worked out.  
The night ended with people reviewing Japanese since the following day they would be taking their Japanese placement tests. It was great seeing people who had never spoken Japanese attempting to using Youtube videos. I shared a video of two guys from Denmark practicing how to say greetings in Japanese.

The day was very relaxed, but my final days offered more excitement than I expected. Stay tuned for Day 9!Brandy| BLOGLOVIN | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM |TUMBLR | TWITTER |

Day 7 was all about getting Nicole settled in to her dorm. Our first stop was a department store called Seyu which is basically Wal-Mart with a different name over in Japan. The store had canvas bags with the Wal-Mart Logo and the logos were also on the cash registers. 
We bought some extra storage for her in her room so she wouldn’t be living out of her suitcase. We grabbed hangers for her clothes, and a bunch of other little necessities for her room like a mini dresser that she could use as a night stand. We were joined on this trip by two other students studying abroad, both from California and also were in need of some items for their dorm rooms.

We dropped off the items we had purchased and then made our way to a Daiso two stations away from Toyoda station. I did not write down the name of the city but we made it and located the train that took us to Daiso.

After finishing up our shopping, we stopped near a 7-Eleven and Peter (on the left) had lunch. Tessa and my sister were craving some noodles so we decided to search for a restaurant after we dropped off our purchases in our rooms.

While we waited for our train, there was a vending machine that sold ice cream, and it was what we needed to beat the summer heat! They were so cool because it was like eating a bit of the cone with your ice cream with every bite!

We experienced a bit of a culture shock since we entered a restaurant where their menus didn’t have photos. It was almost difficult ordering especially when we didn’t know what else was coming with the noodles. I thought I had photos of our meal, but I cannot find them! I had delicious tempura soba.

We spent most of the afternoon fixing up Nicole’s room and most people were recovering from the jet lag, but after we were done we made our way to the lounge. It turns out a group of the Japanese students were inviting the newcomers out for a drink, so we made our way to a Yakitori bar with drinks and most food under 300 yen. (Yakitori is grilled meat, usually chicken, on a skewer.) We had a blast mingling with more people and trying Japanese liquor for cheap!
We cheated and asked for a drink menu in English.

It was such a fun day and a nice change of pace from all the walking we did while we were sight-seeing in Tokyo. I can’t wait to share more of the adventure we had while at the dorm! See you for Day 8!
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What are the odds that the day we checked out of our hotel to move our stuff to Nicole’s Dorm that there would be a typhoon. We stayed in our room in the morning packing up until we were ready to go. My camera was all packed up and I was managing 2 suitcases so it was impossible for me to take photos of the weather or me and Nicole lugging our suitcases down the streets of Tokyo. Just imagine us walking against the wind and taking up a whole corner in a subway cart.
We almost didn’t make it Toyoda Station due to the typhoon and we had a nice business man give us advice regarding alternative stations to get off at. We boarded our train and luckily it made it all the way to our stop by inching its way along the tracks.
When we arrived at the dorms and immediately were met by the building manager Ikera. It all happened so fast: we had our luggage taken upstairs, Nicole signed some paperwork, we met a few of the students living in the dorm, and after some tea, we headed back to the station to catch a bus towards the university.

The security at the university was very helpful and directed us to where the International Center was.

We arrived to the campus, and it looked there had not been a typhoon earlier that day! It was empty since classes had not started yet and Nicole needed to check in at the International Center on campus to review some more paperwork. We met Sakuya who reviewed Nicole’s paperwork and then gave us a tour of the campus.

The campus is extremely beautiful. I was envious with how lovely the school looked and how different the area felt from the center of Tokyo. Chou is about an 1 hour away from most places in Tokyo which allows Nicole to visit if she wants to but also gives her time to really focus on her studies there by being so removed from the city.

After thanking Sakuya for the tour, we bused back to the Toyoda Station and looked for some place to eat. We found this little restaurant that specialized making tempura donburi (rice bowls). The food is delicious and we had been so busy/worried trying to get to the dorm that we didn’t  really think about food too much. Needless to say we ate everything that was served to us.

We spent the the evening meeting more people as more international students trickled in to the dorms. We went to bed to prepare ourselves for the task of fixing up Nicole’s room and getting her what she needed to settle in. (This gives you a preview of what we did on Day 7!)
Thanks for reading and until next time!
Brandy | BLOGLOVIN | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM |TUMBLR | TWITTER |