Sensoji Temple (浅草寺)

Friday night a snowstorm hit Tokyo that nearly shut down a number of train lines the the greater Tokyo area.  I was actually in Saitama late that night, trying to the make it to my hotel in downtown Tokyo.  I was in genuine fear of not making it home, as many trains were delayed by an hour or more due to heavy snow and it was late at night.  After all, if they made an announcement that they were stopping the trains for the night, I likely wouldn't understand it.  Thankfully, the train did come and it did take me to the downtown Tokyo station (after stopping mid-way outside of a station for quite a while).  I now have a newfound understanding and appreciation for the anime scenes depicting nearly abandoned train stations in snowy weather.

Waiting at the train station.

Walking the streets of Tokyo back to my hotel.

The next morning was cold and wet, so I stayed inside.  But, by late morning the sun had come out and it had warmed significantly, so I decided to visit Sensoji Template, which had been recommended by my friend, Ayumi.  The trip to the Sensoji Temple was totally worth it.  I'd already visited one temple, so I thought this trip might be redundant.  But, this temple had a lot more to see, and was surrounded by a vibrant, old-fashioned market (where I tried dango for the first time!).  The melting snow even accentuated the pictures in a nice way.

Asimo, The Robot

Asimo is old news. I imagine almost everyone has seen a clip or two of him (ahem...it). However, seeing it in person is another matter altogether. The lifelike movements are impressive, and a bit erie. I'd swear that if I didn't know any better there it was a kid running around in a robot suit.

Asimo Robot

Winter Camp Videos

For my winter camp out students had to present a an invention to the class in English, which would then be evaluated by the other students based on creativity and practicality of the invention.  Part of their assignment was to create a commercial for their invention.  I've uploaded most of the videos on a separate blog dedicated to that purpose (I withheld two videos, because I didn't feel comfortable posting videos with student's faces).  A few are a little hard to understand from the spoken dialogue, but overall they're quite entertaining.

http://taeangirlshs.blogspot.com

The Walkway Of Relationship Doom

There's a lot of superstitions related to couples in Korea.  Indeed, Korea seems to be a somewhat superstitious culture (though like in the US, most people don't seem to take and seriously), and one could easily write a whole book about all the idiosyncrasies Korean culture has about couples in general.  I learned a new superstition this week, though, that I wanted to share.

I was walking with a group of college students along the덕수궁 (Deoksugung) Palace Wall.  I was on a Seoul-Mate Tour, which is basically a student organization that gives free cultural tours to foreigners in Seoul.  As we were walking, they told me that there is a belief that if a couple walks down this road that it means they will break up.  Apparently, there is a family court at the end of the pathway where married couples have to go to get a divorce.  So, it's thought that if an unmarried couple walks down that path, it means that they will break up at some point in the near future.  In fact, they said there's a story that sometimes people take their girlfriends or boyfriends down this road to tell them they want to break up (in lieu of telling them verbally).  I said "that horrible!"  They just laughed and said that it doesn't actually happen (that we know of, at least).

Photo by Gwonie S. Nam