14th November visit to Meiji Jingo

14th November,Tokyo-Japan: We went to two places of great significance in Japan. One was a Robotic Museum and the other Meiji Temple. The Meiji temple is a shrine deticated to the virtues and good doings of the emperor Meiji and empress of Japan. The people have great faith and reverence to their great souls. The whole temple area is covered with trees a total of lakh trees. These trees were donated by the people in 1914 as a token of love and reverence.

The shrine is a shinto shrine. Shinto is the old Japanese religion. It has no founder or holybook but it rests on the principle of unity with nature and goodness and purity of heart.

The people show reverence to the souls of the emperor and empress in several ways i.e before entering the shrine one is supposed to cleanse one hands by pouring water with the help of a dipper on the right and then left and then wash the mouth and then the dipper. Secondly, when in the shrine one can throw coin in a wooden box and clap ones hands twice and the join ones hands and pray. People also come and put petitions on a wooden tablet available for 500¥. On this tablet one can ask for any thing.

The significance of this shrine is also that children both boys age 5 and 7 and girls age 3 and 7 are brought here for a ritual similiar to a thread ceremony in India.

We had a great experience all around this serene and peaceful place. It was indeed a spiritual experience. We clicked many pictures. I have posted some below.

Modern Japan from the rural perspective-Alysia Gomes

Today after breakfast at 'Dautor' we headed to Waseda university, wherein we attended a talk that was given to us by Prof.Tankano Takako. The talk was about " Modern Japan from perspective of rural community". In the talk she mentioned about rural and urban areas of Japan wherein she spoke about how the two are interdependent and related to each other. She also brought about the comparison between India and Japan in relation to size,population, density and so on..

Prof. Tankano told us how rural community of Japan workers and how they contributed in a great way towards the modernisation and functioning of urban areas. She also explained some of the problems faced by the rural areas of Japan, giving us extra information on how to cope up with some of those problems. She also mentioned some of the positive changes seen in rural areas. She gave us a brief explanation on how Tokyo gets water suppy and electricity.

My personal view on the over all session was good. It was realy fun and interesting to know lots about the rural areas of Japan. I was realy fascinated by the volunter work done by the rural people for all the problems faced by them. I liked the way she showed us how the rural areas look during the different seasons of Japan. I really hope that India too one day would work towards such a volunteering work and do some development like seen in Japan rural community.

By Alysia Gomes

Train Ticketing system in Japan by Joanna Valadares

As we all know ,Japan, in rvery small way, is technologically advanced. One pf the most important aspects of Japan are its super fast metro trains. The metro trains, which we have been using for our travelling within the city, is very organized and systematic. To travel by the metro trains one needs to have a ticket or a card.
The process of obtaining a ticket is very simple and easy. The first step is to select a language after which you put in your cash and select your ticket based on the amount which can be ¥160 and so on.  After this, select the number of persons you are buying tickets for, after which you get your ticket and your change dependimg on how much amount you have put in the machine. One has to retain the ticket till the end of the journey and then while coming out of the station, the ticket has to be inserted again in order to come out.
I must say that it is amazing to see all these machines work and contribute towards savimg time and energy.
By Joanna Valadares

First Official Day In Japan

Although we reached Tokyo on 10th November, our official program started on Monday, 11th November. the day started with heavy breakfast at Doutours after which we headed to Waseda University. we recieved a warm welcome there by Ms. Yuri, the in charge of the exchange program, followed by a short presentation on Waseda University. although for we Indians 11.30 is not the time for lunch, we did it anyway as it is the practice among the Japanese. we had our lunch with some of the Waseda University staff members. as expected it was not a formal lunch with boring talks but an informal one with informal talks. After lunch we went for a campus tour guided by some of the students from Waseda University. We all were amazed to see such a huge campus with innumerable facilities for students as well as for teachers in it. It would'nt be wrong to say that Waseda University is a city in itself. then came the most awaited moment. "shopping in Tokyo". it is known fact that the Tokyo is not the right place to shop because of its high prices, but we managed to find some places with reasonable costs. the day ended with delicious punjabi food at an indian restaurant on busy tokyo street. 

All together in front of the founder's street

Sankalp Mahale'S THIRD DAY TOKYO

So here iam!!! Good evening to one and all reading this post of myn:-)
The day begained with the temperature of 8 degree celcius(freezing cold). Sleeping late night yestrday (11nov) did not help us the next day!! Specially me could not wake up on 10minutes late and was in hurry to get ready and run to have breakfast somewer near waseda university. The place where will have breakfast was alrdy decided the previous day!
Tokyo the largest metropolitant area of the world!! We are current in idabashi-tokyo Japan in central youth hostel, being at this place I feel like m on d top of the world since our room is on 19th floor of this building! The view from our floor is just awesome! The high building seems like touching to the sky easily:-)
We left the youth hostel somwr around 8.45am,all were with their jackets, shoes and gloves to get protected frm freezing cold.
As we are not used to these metro lines over here,we got litle confused but finally following the tozai line, we got our train and for brwakfast we are in indian restaurnt near waseda university. Taking advantage of 50% we order naan and mushroom gravy. Now we were 'bharpet' like going to attend Paul watt  talk.
Paul watt lectr was all about ' histry of Japan'. His talk was kind of introduction to waseda university as we were new in dis country. Aftr his lectr of 1 and half hour we had a lunch break for 1 hour, we utilized that hour to sleep as we were too tired and sleepy(symptoms of last night beimg awake) at 2.30 we attended another talk in waseda university of prof.Masakazu Lino, enjoyed his talk a lot as it was more interactive!!
Later we visited writing centre of of waseda university, met savri maa satoshi, had heard a lot about her today personally met her!! I found that their writing center(japan) and our writing centr in (India) are similar same kind of, and these two writing centres are bigest writing centrs in asia.had a wonderful time time in their writing center, they provided us snackz and green tea, interacted with us..
The activities for today were done and we are now relaxing and comming back to hostel, temperature was also cooling down, we were freezing still our habbit of clicking pics continously was not stopping!!
Ohayo...

Kimberly dias talks of 1st day in tokyp

Konichiwa everyone! Finally in Japan. After a long 12 hours journey, we finally we made our way to our dream destination Tokyo. We landed at Narita International Airport at 7.30 am in the morning. After immigration and claiming the baggage we headed towards the Narita train station and had an hour and a half hour journey to Idabashi station. The trains in Japan are punchual, very clean and super fast. The ticket purchase in japan is very systematic. We learnt how the ticket system worked. There were no ticket collectors in the train and even on the train stations, it was all computerized and people had to manually check in and check out. With the help of technology.

At first we were unable to adjust with the extreme climate in Japan. We were tired and were wanting to jump into our beds and have a nap for some time before we could go out and explore the city.

When we reached the central youth hostel in Idabashi, we were accomodated on the  19th floor. And we could get a view of the entire Tokyo city. The people in Japan are very helpful and friendly. But most of the time they are engrossed doing their work. They are always in a hurry. They are always on their phones and do not look up.
The weather in Japan was very pleasant today. It was around 12'-14' c.
The night life in Tokyo is amazing. We had our meals at Mc Donalds today. Looking forward to have a great time in Japan for the rest of the days. Till then sayonara...
Regards to all,
Kimberley.