Street of Tokyo

Not far from the Imperial Palace. The tower on the skyline is Tokyo Tower.

Open space

  Who said there is no big open space in Japan? At least the Emperor's palace is surrounded by vast and uncrowded park. This may be the only place of the kind, but it definitely exists.

Sinjuku

A view A view of a square in front of Sinjuku station.

On the way

Today, just a picture. Somewhere on the way from Sibuya to Sinjuku.

Train

Japanese train. It has no easy analogy in Russian transportation system. It is as convenient as Moscow metro, and almost as expensive, as Moscow taxi, and more ubiquitous than any transportation system of Moscow. It mostly runs on the ground, sometimes climbs to the concrete overpasses, or descends under ground. Almost each car has a writing, which is also repeated on an electronic monitor: "please use seats in a way that allows more people to sit". Amazingly, japanese people never try to use all available space, and even in an empty train they sit in corners or stand by the walls, thus minimizing the space they take. So much different from russians...

Back to school

Sakura season is over, petals are on the ground, and new green leaves sprouting on the tree branches. This is how the nature greets students as they hurry to attend their first day of true studies.

I've also taken three lectures today. Two of them were in japanese, and I struggled through it, trying to catch every word of the professors. For the lost ones, dictophone was set ready. Fortunately, there wasn't any new material in today's lectures, and the only thing I had to fight through were missing words in my vocabulary. I used side fields to write unknown words down, and got a whopping list of a hundred or so words.

Some of the words became clear as they were used repeatedly to describe other things I understood. The particular ones are "function" and "variable". For the record, those are 関数【かんすう】and 値【あたい】.

Anyway, it was fun, and I hope it will help to improve my japanese quickly. Anyway, japanese classes start only next week, and I have nothing to lose.

Rain in Shibuya

Suprisingly, the shower rain had no impact on the number of people in Shibuya, a popular area in Tokyo. It still is completely crowded with people, however, each person takes a little bit more of space for an umbrella.

Imagine this place without a rain, and people without umbrellas, so as to fill all available space, and you will get a plausible extrapolation of how this place looks when there is no rain.

Yamate avenue

Ночной Токио , улица Подгорная (山手通り). Сверху -- скоростное шоссе, проложенное прямиком через густонаселённый район на высоте, наверное, этажа седьмого-восьмого. По крайней мере, девятиэтажки рядом с этим шоссе не сильно его выше.

Night Tokyo, Yamate avenue. The highway on the right is as high as an 8-store building next to it.

Harajuku people

Have you ever been to Harajuku? It is an area in Tokyo, notorious for the variety of clothes stores, popular among young people. It definitely attracts a lot of youth, and some of them wear very noticable outfit. Last time I was there, I was amazed. This time, too.

Hanami party

Hanami season is not over yet, no matter that the sakura seen from my window lost its last petals overnight.

Today I have participated in a real Hanami party (花見パーティ) for the first time in my life, and in the first-hand experience found out that it has nothing to do with looking at the beauty of the sakura flowers.





Rather, it is a tradition of having picnics with friends, colleagues and other groups, eating and drinking together, and talking as much as one wants. In fact, the distinguishing feature of hanami parties I have heard about is its noisiness, when everyone, or at least half of the people talk at once.

Eco-change (халява)

Today I participated in a "Eco-change" event, organized by some local old people club member that happens to be an officer of university at the same time. The donators got rid of the clutter of unneeded things in their homes, international students got something to get a household started for free. I've got the remaining essentials like knifes, forks and chopsticks at the 100-yen-shop, which is a kind of shop where everything is sold for 100 yen (~ 23 roubles or $0.9), and thus was able to get a fairly complete kitchen utensils kit for next to nothing.

University

University grounds were pleasant as I have seen never before. And this was the the third time I visited these grounds. With sakura leaves flowing gracefully to the ground, and Totoro music sounds flowing in the air, life was appearing to be perfect.

Campus

Unlike yesterday, today was warm and sunny day, very relaxing and peaceful. It would be a big mistake to think that I was running around with a camera looking for the interesting spots to take pictures of. In fact, this picture was taken after minutes of hesitation to stand up, because lying in the grass under the warm sun feels so much better.

It sounds like I am getting lazy. As if there is chance to be more lazy than I already am.