It’s great to be back and getting into the flow of the daily Japanese life. It feels like an adjustment to get used to the train line again, but not as much as I would’ve thought. I’ve found myself trying too hard to assimilate to the unspoken cultural rules (being quiet on trains, putting coins on the coin train, etc), and over thinking a lot of my actions… But slowly letting go of the stress!
Meeting at Shibuya #
On Sunday night, we all met at the Hachiko statue in Shibuya. The goal was to make sure everyone got to town OK and knew the meeting spot for Monday morning. Navigating the scramble on a Sunday night was mayhem, I made sure I was in Shibuya 30min before the meeting time because I wasn’t sure how crazy it would be… It’s a definite culture shock to go from the relatively sleepy streets of Perth to something as crazy as Shibuya, but it amazes me how they manage to maintain order throughout the chaos!
Tokyo City University Orientation #
The following morning, we all met back at the Hachiko statue, though in a very empty Shibuya which was a starc contrast to what we’d seen on the Sunday night. From here, we took the train down to the TCU campus, travelling with the Tokyo workers on their way to work. In a similar way to maintaining order at Shibuya, people heading to work seemed to be on autopilot regardless of the number of platforms and trainlines needed to navigate to get to their destination.
It was a strange experience to be on the TCU campus. The building sizes was probably the only compariable factor with Joondalup. The density, nature, and architecture of the campus stood out to me as something I hadn’t seen before at a university.
Gotoh Museum #
Tuesday morning we visited the Gotoh museum. Keita Gotōh was the founder of Tokyo City University & the Tokyu rail group, this museum is his families private collection.
It included mostly of Japanese & Chinese ceramics and a large garden. One of the museum maintainers said that Gotoh balanced his passion, the museum collection, with his calm, the garden & tea houses. The museum artefacts had notes that were all in Japanese, making it difficult to understand what we were looking at, but it was still amazing to see the preservation efforts of artefacts going back thousands of years. Walking the gardens was a different experience as it’s designed for reflection. It was a great opportunity to take in some nature that we miss out on at home. This combined with the Autumn leaves made for a nice walk!
