Day Two

Tokyo- Day Two

Today we went to Waseda University. Since we had reached early, we could roam around and enjoy the view that Waseda had to offer. The autumn leaves, yellow and brownish, looked beautiful on the trees as well as on the streets.

Then we had a short introduction session at the University after which we were shown the campus by students who had formerly visited Goa as part of the exchange programme last year. The campus is sprawling in relation to the space congestion of Tokyo, with many tall buildings housing different departments. The campus has a “Coop” just like the one in Chowgules but theirs is much bigger in comparison. Many canteens can be found in and around the campus, one even run solely by the students. The University also has a garden which acts as an evacuation safety ground in case of a natural calamity.

After all that walking, we sat down for lunch along with the select staff of Waseda, whose classes we’d be attending and the dean of International Studies who coordinates all the exchange programmes. We had interesting conversations with the professors and got to know them better. Then we attended Paul Watts’ special class on Introduction to Japan. It was a really insightful lecture which thoroughly enlightened us on the history as well as the religions of Japan.

After having such a busy day, we decided to have a stroll around Waseda just to relax a little and take pictures.

Today I was more observant as I was familiar with my surroundings and had adjusted to the temperature. I found that Japanese people are very quiet and never say “excuse me” or “pardon me” (even in Japanese) and instead wait till you clear the way for them or just go from the side, while walking on the footpaths. I’ve also not heard any car honk on the street till now and they all follow traffic rules quite adherently. Even the gap between two cars waiting for the signal to turn, is quite a lot. While there are a lot of people in Tokyo, the amount of cars is noticeably less as most of them use bicycles or prefer to walk.  Another eco friendly measure seen in Tokyo is segregation of waste at the source, which is done by keeping different bins for different types of articles and also collection of hotel/restaurant waste at night, leading to clean streets.

These little things might seem insignificant at first but on closer inspection point out to the subtle differences between the Japanese and Indian culture.

-Shubhankar Shah