April 30th - May 6th

This week, we finally started up our MMS sessions and team meetings again. While the team meetings still have the same people, we got new partners for our MMS meetings. This time, instead of having 8 partners like I did the first half of the semester, I have 4 MMS meetings throughout the week. I have 2 of the same partners, which are Seo-Jin and Sally (Ju-Young). The 2 new partners that I have are So-Ui and Yu-Seok (who also goes by Leo). The two new people that I have are also a part of my team meetings. During my first meeting with So-Ui, it was brought up that I'm a graphic design major and she told me that she has to make a poster for one of her clubs and asked if I could help her. So I'm looking forward to helping her with that. This week I also went on a trip to Japan! On Wednesday night, I went to The Incheon airport since our flight was at t 7:30 in the morning on Thursday, so we wanted to make sure that we didn't miss our flight. I've never spent the night in an airport before, so that was definitely an interesting experience. I went with Eevie and Marie. We found a nice quiet spot in the basement where we could sleep, but even though I was tired, it's hard for me to sleep in public places so I just stayed up the entire night. The flight to the Kansai airport only took about an hour and a half so I tried to sleep as much as I could on the plane, but even there, I didn't get much sleep. Once we got there we had to find our way to a certain market that would give us our day passes for Osaka. The trouble though was that none of us can read Japanese like we can Korean, so getting around was a little harder than it is in Korea. We stopped at an Udon place and got some before we started to try and find the place. What made it even harder was that since our check in time for the place we were staying wasn't until later that day, so we had to drag all of our luggage around with us. We eventually found it in a very crowded street market. The pass was really nice because we could use it to get onto almost all the subway lines, so it made transportation a lot easier. It also gave us free or reduced admission to a bunch of tourist spots. After we got our passes, we then decided we should try to find the place that we were staying. We could have gotten there pretty quick by train, but it was also just a 40 minute walk from where we were at so we decided it would be a better experience if we just walked there instead. I'm not exactly sure what part of Osaka we were in, but we passed through a street that was everything you would think Japan would be. There were a bunch of anime shops on both sides of the street, lots of posters promoting different video games, maid cafes, and even people dressed in different uniforms handing out pamphlets. I wish we could have explored around there a little more, but we were all tired and still needed to find our place. After going going through a bunch of narrow, back allies, we eventually found it. After we got all settled in, we decided to explore a little bit. We were really close to another street market like the one where we got our passes from and there was a store that had bright, neon lights everywhere, so we looked around in there for a little bit. After we got hungry we went to a place that served okonomiyaki, which is a sort of Japanese pancake that has a bunch of different ingredients in it. However, the place was closed so we had to find something else. We found this small shop, and it wasn't until after we ordered, that we realized that we had accidentally gone to a Korean restaurant. After we were done eating, we went back to our room since we were all still tired from the trip. The next day, we got up around 9 so we would have the day to do as we pleased. We first got breakfast, and we managed to find a place that okonomiyaki, so we got that. After we were finished, we went to the train and made our way to the Osaka Museum of History. The museum was in a 10 story building, and the exhibits took up the 6th through the 10th floor. The way that they had it set up was that we started on the 10th floor and made your way down. They also had 2 stations on each of those floors where you could answer questions and get a stamp on a little pamphlet that they provided. The best part of the museum was on the last floor where they had a traditional family board game set up and the staff would play it with you. The game was fairly simple, you had to roll a dice and then move your piece forward until you made it to the end. There were two types of squares that you could land on, one was just a regular square, but if there was a number in the corner, then you had to answer a question about what was pictured in the box. If you got it right, you could move forward 3 spaces, but if you got it wrong, you had to move back 1. I hate to admit it, but we got almost all of them wrong even thought there was only 3 answers to choose from. Then in order to win, all the players had to make it to the last box and answer the question together, so it wasn't really a competitive game, but it was still really fun. Once we got out of the museum we stopped to get a quick lunch where I got pork cutlet. The museum was right next to Osaka Castle, so that was our next stop. It was super pretty there and the castle grounds were surrounded by a moat. The castle itself was set up like a museum so it had a bunch of displays for people to look at and there was also a souvenir shop on the top floor. Once we had explored around for a little while, we then walked to a river where were were able to get a little boat tour of the surrounding area. After that we went to Dotonbori, which is another big tourist destination in Japan. It was originally a theater district, but now it has a lot of popular nightlife and entertainment activities. Once we were there, we met up with Josue and KJ, who were also visiting Japan, we walked around a little while and then went to different places for dinner (we got ramen). Afterward, we went to an arcade for a little bit before heading back. On Saturday, we went to Kyoto. It took us about 2 hours to get there so we tried to leave as early as we could and we were really hungry when we got there, but we also had ordered passes for Kyoto so we had to go pick them up first. The place that we had to pick them up from was actually in Kyoto Tower, so we got to see that up close. When we got to the desk, they needed to see our passports in order to give us the passes, but I realized that I forgot mine so we had to wait while the lady helping us was on the phone with her boss to see if there was a way around it. After she got off the phone she told us that they couldn't even find our passes in the system and we had to go to a different place to get them, but she wasn't sure if they would ask for our passports or not. So, we just went and got some food, and did a little shopping before we tried to find the place. We ended up taking a bus to a place in Kyoto that had a bunch of shrines and temples. We decided to just skip the passes altogether and just explore. The only temple that we had time for was Kiyomizudera Temple, which is one of the bigger temple destinations in Kyoto. The roads leading up to it were really cool because they were a bunch of souvenir shops that sold many different items, so we spent a lot of time looking at them. The temple itself was incredible. It was up on a mountain and there were many different buildings that were very brightly colored. We spent a lot of time just looking at the buildings and the view of Kyoto from up high. We weren't sure when the trains stopped running from Kyoto to Osaka so we decided to head back to the train station. It took us about an hour and a half to walk there so we were able to explore the city even more. The station was right next to Kyoto Tower, so we basically just went in that direction. Once we got back to Osaka, we went to a restaurant to get something to eat. I got 3 different types of beef, but I'm not sure what they were exactly because the menu was in Japanese and Google Translate wasn't working the greatest. After that we went back to our Airbnb. Since our flight was at 7:40 in the morning, we had to get up at 3 just to make sure we had enough time to get there. We made it there just fine, but Josue and KJ, who were also taking the same flight, missed it! So they ended up having to buy new tickets and weren't refunded for the one they missed. Also, Josue got the last ticket for the next flight back, so KJ had to wait even longer by himself. It all worked our okay though, and they are back in Korea now.