This is torture! How am I supposed to survive a month here?! (SDC part 1)

June 29 – July 11 (Day 1-13)

As you guys know, I will spend basically most of my summer in Japan and around 10 days in Indonesia. Sad that I can't spend a lot of time with family and friends here but I believe the experience in Japan will help me a lot for my college applications next year. Ughhh even thinking about next year makes me want to throw up. It's not really next year cuz my second year will start in like less than 2 weeks. It's always giving me anxiety thinking about next year in general. Either about academics, works, college, relationship, leadership, and basically everything. I rant it out a lot to all my friends and I guess it's not enough because I still talk about it here. 

I'll post 2 part of this SDC Journey and will have another post with only picture and video. It'll be a lot of works but I like documenting my life journey as it always makes me proud once I looked back on it. without further due, here's the story~

 

Day 1 already miserable. I’m waiting in the Narita Airport for the US group arrive from LAX. I wait for like 4 hrs and it was fine honestly. The one I’m pissed is that I pack a heavy backpack and one small suitcase. Yes, I’m overpacked and we had to walk a lot to get to Hostel Sakura in Asakusa, the place we’re gonna stay in Tokyo. I meet the US group and I just feel awkward all day because there’s two group and they all knew each other and talked a lot, and there’s me a totally stranger come into the group. It doesn’t feel welcoming at all but oh well I thought it will get better the next day which is true.

The next day in Tokyo it’s getting better especially the very first activity we did as a group to get to know each other. It was hard at first to not feeling awkward towards each other while we talked, but I overcome it and I become closer to basically almost everyone. The first 3 days in Tokyo, Three and Suguru brought all of us in the group (5 girls 5 boys) to visit many places. We went to a University to learn about Washoku near Waseda University, do scavenger hunt in Ueno, and visit the busiest intersection in the world in Shibuya. 

The next 2 days we spent in Nagano and stayed in a place called Shanti Kuthi. Here we learnt about Permaculture and living close to nature and become vegetarian (Vegan actually) for a day. Anyway, I enjoy my time here because it was so different compare to Tokyo. Here it’s quite and chill. The neighborhood is also pretty and tumblr-able. It was a bit uncomfortable because it’s very natural like they had compos toilet and tons of mosquitos. But again, when I looked back what’s left is all beautiful and joyful memories.

We woke up early and move to Kyoto with a 6hrs drive by bus. 6 days in Kyoto never enough to explore. The main purpose is that we came here to have a cooking class and visit famous place here. I’d say this is the second best moments after hostfam in Hokkaido. We visited Kiyomzu Temple, went to Disney Store in downtown Kyoto full of store, make bunch of authentic Japanese dish, went to Aeon Mall had my first OG Takoyaki for dinner and took kawaii Japanese style photobooth, had almost our breakfast everyday in Kyoto Station, and many other things we did. I’m not joking It was very tiring walking around everyday and it reached almost 20000 steps everyday. I wished I lost weight cuz I walked a lot but oh well I also eat a lot hahha. 

Before we move to Hokkaido, we stayed in a Temple for 2 days. In there we basically try to live Monk’s life for 2 days. We eat only Temple food, try to do the Zen Meditation, write Prayers in Kanji, and cleaning the place like what monks always do every day. It’s sad that we had to leave Kyoto and catch a flight to Hokkaido. It’s fascinating that we had the opportunity to experience Japan domestic flight from Kyoto to Hokkaido. Then we still had to catch bunch of train to get to Tobetsu, the place where we will be staying for a week. In here we meet our hostfam for the first time and spent first night In their house. I think That’s all I could tell you in this post. It’s half of our trip already and I will tell you more about my hostfam and my last day in Tokyo in my next post. Also, our time in Daisetsuzan National Park!! See yaa Algos and Thankyou for visiting my blog~~