5 May 2009

Once again, checkout was at 10am this morning, so I enjoyed the complimentary breakfast one last time at Toyoko Inn and met in the lobby with all of my stuff at 10am. Don said we would leave with our luggage at 1pm to head to the National Olympic Memorial Youth Center, and we were free to do whatever we wanted until that time. Since it was raining very consistently today, none of us felt like doing anything too involved, so Norio, Derrick, and I ended up just taking the train to the site of our final project for architecture studio. It was at the Shibuya Station, the area famous for having “The Scramble”. It gets the nickname of “The Scramble” since it has one of the largest and most crowded intersections where everyone scrambles to cross in every which direction when the lights turn red. It actually wasn’t too busy today, but it was still very intriguing. For our final project, we get to choose a site within a designated area, so the Shibuya area is very difficult on many levels. The three of us wandered around, and I took pictures of everything that we passed by. The buildings seemed to be a large compilation of unorganized mismatched structures, which fit with the high density and volume of the pedestrians and vehicular traffic. There were quite a few good stores in the area of our site, so we additionally did some browsing while wandering around.
Around noon, we decided we should head back to the Toyoko Inn to pick-up our luggage and head to the National Olympic Memorial Youth Center early. The number of the people on the train was slowly growing, and since it was raining, we knew it would be easier to travel in small groups. We ran into a few more people who were leaving the hotel early, so five of us ended up catching the train towards NOMYC. Upon arriving at NOMYC, we met in our reserved classroom with Don and were thoroughly disappointed with the accommodations. I don’t mind the facilities, but there is no free internet anywhere within the complex. The bathrooms are shared, similar to dorm-style, and the showers are shared as well. Luckily we get our own rooms, but they are extremely small and not as clean as I would expect. There is dust everywhere, and I’m pretty sure the place hasn’t been cleaned in quite some time. We picked-up our sheets from a different buildings and had to make the beds ourselves. The comforter on top of the bed is so filthy looking that I might throw it in the dryer for 100 yen to freshen it up. We’ll see. Overall though, I am sure I can survive here. There is an 11pm curfew, and there is no eating or drinking allowed within the buildings. That is definitely one of the rules that I will be breaking. Tonight, Shae and I showered together, and it really wasn’t that bad. If you just look your own separate ways, there is never a problem. There is also one bathtub in the bathing area, and the sign above it was too hilarious and gross not to share. It basically said that to conserve the use of water in the complex, the tub can only be filled up one time, and everyone has to share the same water if they wish to soak in the tub. Ewww!!! Oh, and we are only allowed to shower between 5pm-11:30pm. Isn’t that weird?!? So, this place is turning out to have way more rules than even Don predicted. Currently, everyone is making a huge fuss over the internet, but I think this place is totally livable. I’m sure I’ll get increasingly used to this environment as I stay here longer.
For dinner, we had to walk about 10 minutes to get to an area with food. The NOMYC is somewhat in the middle of nowhere, so we always have to walk to get food or do anything else. Shae and I watched the movie Ironman on her computer, then went to get dinner around 8pm. She felt like curry, so we ended up going to a Himalayan curry place. I ordered the potato and eggplant curry with nan for 680 yen. It was really good and also very spicy. The rest of the night, everyone complained about the lack of internet and just hung out in our lounge. We are split into a wing of girls and a wing of guys, which is also strange. We are scheduled to have class every morning from 10am-noon, so I just finished up an assignment due tomorrow and went to sleep.