Week 2 in Japan!

Wow. Another week has just flown past me once again. This week’s trips and classes were definitely some of the most fun I’ve had on the trip, as well as learned some really cool new things. We spent much of class this week discussing the history and formation of the Japanese written language as well as took trips to places like the Kanji Museum, a calligraphy studio and elsewhere. During the weekend we spent a few days exploring the city of Tokyo, something that was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

This week’s classes focused heavily on the history of Japanese Kanji, as well as the development of Kana throughout multiple centuries. For many centuries the Japanese didn’t have any written scripts or languages, everything was oral. But in the 6th century Korean scholars brought Buddhism over to Japan, and many of the teachings were written in Chinese Kanji characters. This led to many of the first Japanese writings to be written in Chinese, however quickly scholars ran into problems trying to decide whether the image of the Kanji should give the word its meaning or the sound the Kanji made when spoken out loud. This led the Japanese to develop an interesting writing system that involved 3 scripts, rather than a single one. On Monday we visited a calligraphy studio where we were taught some of the history of Kanji and the proper ways to write it, a fun tie-in to the week’s classes. On Tuesday we got into a deeper dive about the history of Kanji and visited the Kanji museum. On Wednesday, our focus shifted a bit from Kanji and we began to explore the other types of scripts. We learned about the origins of Hiragana, which developed as a cursive or shorthand form of Kanji, that the government had to then go and standardize in the early 1900s. Using a similar method of short handing Kanji, the Japanese developed Katakana for borrowing foreign words, as a way to translate them for the population to understand and use. Our assignment over the weekend in Tokyo was to observe the different ways each of the 3 scripts were used and it was really interesting to observe where Japanese advertisers would use each script, especially considering that they all can make the same sounds, or portray the same meaning.

We spent the weekend exploring Tokyo! For one, I had no idea Tokyo was the world’s largest city but once you’re there you can definitely feel it. Every single subway we got on I felt like a sardine and the sheer number of places to explore is endless. I started off the first day by visiting a popular skatepark by the water, which was absolutely beautiful and unlike any park I’d ever skateboarded. The second day we got up nice and early and visited Meiji shrine, which was definitely one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen, in Shintoism, you can deitize people along with other things and our guide Mark, was explaining how the shrine was dedicated to Emperor Meiji, super cool and definitely one of the prettiest shrines we’ve visited. We spent the rest of the day around Harajuku, one of the fashion capitals of the world, visiting all kinds of different styles of stores and seeing all the peoples outfits was definitely amazing. The second day we visited the Emperor’s palace which was insanely impressive as well as Sensoji Temple. During the remainder of my day I spent visiting all the different prefectures like Shibuya, Akihabara, and Ginza, all unbelievably crowded but so so cool. Tokyo was an amazing experience but the number of people and chaos of the city was definitely a little overwhelming and pretty intimidating, but we took it head on!

As we move into the third week some goals I have for this week is to really try to connect and make friends with the students at Osaka University who we are getting to spend the day with on Friday! I also have a solo trip to Hiroshima planned for this coming weekend which I am very excited about. I can’t wait to visit the museums and see the ocean! Week 2 was amazing and once again I am so so excited for week 3!