Sharehouses are common across Tokyo for both foreigners and Japanese alike. They are homes in the city, housing anywhere from three or four to over ten people, with separate bedrooms and shared cooking, living, and bathroom facilities. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in Japanese culture and language but don’t want to live with a host family, a sharehouse provides you with an immediate community of like-minded (and similar-aged) university students, workers, and foreign visitors! 

All of the Come on Out interns are living in sharehouses (and a few with host families for part of their stay in Japan). I’m ecstatic to have a room in a sharehouse for the six weeks I am here- I have stayed with host families before and absolutely loved the experience, but I also wanted to try living on my own in Japan and cooking my own meals! I think that figuring out Japanese grocery stores is a learning experience about Japanese culture in and of itself. (Post coming later about Japanese grocery stores).

My sharehouse is in Jiyugaoka, a fantastic neighborhood filled with a mixture of boutique stores, custom coffee shops, bakeries, beautiful residential areas, and amazingly stylish residents. In my plain, untailored American clothes, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Beautiful square in Jiyugaoka, surrounded by designer stores and cafes. 

My house is located in a much quieter residential section, surrounded on all sides by other homes. It’s only a 30 second walk to a nearby konbini where I plan to get breakfast every morning, and only another minute to my train station, Midorigaoka Station. I live right next to the train tracks, and it’s fascinating to see the gates come down over the tracks whenever a train is passing by, momentarily stopping traffic on the thin roads of my area. 

Lots of tangled telephone wires around the train tracks. 

Rows of homes along tree-lined streets. 

Five minutes west on foot is Okayama, a more bustling area around Tokyo Institute of Technology. Small restaurants and snack stores abound in the thin alleyway of the area.

Bustling alley near Okayama Station.

I stopped at a Kaldi Coffee last night, an upscale coffee and specialty foods store chain common across Tokyo, and got a free cup of iced coffee and a great look into Japanese home coffee culture (so many different types of fancy coffee beans you can have ground for you!). They also carry a lot of foreign products like American chocolates and peanut butter, impossible to find in Japan elsewhere, imported cheeses, as well as many different wines. It’s the kind of store you would stop at before heading to a picnic in one of Tokyo’s many parks! Half an hour on foot (or one train stop) is the bustling center of Jiyugaoka. Either way, I have plenty in my area to explore (and eat)! 

Saturday morning, orientation programs started! Just as exciting, I finally got the melon pan I had been looking forward to. Two other interns and I woke up early to explore a konbini (Japanese version of a convenience store) near the hotel. A konbini, though it shares some similarities to the American version of a convenience store, is honestly a completely different experience. A konbini sells everything from shampoo to fully cooked, ready to eat meals, and are everywhere in Tokyo- at least on every corner. It’s hard to walk two minutes without seeing one of the brightly lit signs. The melon pan I bought there is a cross between a cheap bread and a sugar cookie, shaped like a tortoise shell, and not tasting at all like melon. I also got a CC Lemon Vitamin C drink- fizzy and lemony, it was just what I needed to wake myself up a bit. 

An example of a konbini. 

After breakfast, we had some free time to explore Asakusa. A festival was going on at the shrine at Senso-ji, the main temple complex in Asakusa that forms its largest tourist attraction. The temple was beautiful and people dressed in beautiful yukata (traditional Japanese casual summer dress) were everywhere!

Some of the beautiful yukata (along with the amazing umbrellas) seen during the festival.

The temple in the daylight. 

However, my favorite part of the festival was the amazing variety of food stalls all around the temple. You could buy every street food from yakitori (grilled meat on a stick) to takoyaki (fried octopus bread balls) to sweets like manju and dango (sticky rice balls with sweet sauces or filled with bean paste). 

Sounds delicious, right? One of the many food stands outside the temple. 

Saturday continued with a walk past Tokyo Skytree (the largest structure in Tokyo) to arrive at the Disaster Training Center. We went through four simulations in smaller groups, being trained on how to brave the force of a tsunami, how to extinguish a fire (with practice fire extinguishers), how to survive a level 7 earthquake, and how to escape a smoke-filled room during a fire. All the simulations were completely safe, but were great practice should disaster strike! We also watched a harrowing video depicting the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami, and the aftereffects around Japan. 

After the disaster training came a short boat ride to Hamamatsucho (floating past famous areas like Tsukiji Fish Market on the water) and a ride on the Yamanote Train Line to dinner in Akihabara. Dinner was at an izakaya (traditional Japanese pub) where we had our own private room! The meal included nabe (a stewpot of vegetables and meat cooked at the table on a small stove) and amazing appetizers of meat gelatin, potatoes, salads, and tuna sashimi.

Floating past other boats in the rain. 

The three hour long dinner was accompanied by loud conversations between the interns and program heads, who came to join us for long periods of time at our tables. Even though we were a bit exhausted after the day, a few interns and I ended up walking back from the dinner to the hostel (about 45 minute walk) to see more of the city before we left for our share houses the next day! The walk was the perfect ending to the day, and we passed through areas of Tokyo that we will likely not have time to come back to.  

Another boat picture: View down the boat path.

One last picture- a view of Tokyo Skytree from a shopping center in Asakusa!

Hi everyone! My name is Genevieve, a Come on Out intern and blog head for the summer. I’ll be documenting my adventures in Japan this summer in photos and words. よろしくお願いします！

After a 13 hour flight from Chicago to Tokyo, surrounded by screaming children and airplane food, I was more than ready to land in Tokyo. The first thing I wanted to do when I stepped off the plane was grab a huge melon pan (a bread that tastes like a sugar cookie) and a jasmine tea from a vending machine; however, before I could do so, I bumped into a group of three other interns who were in my terminal! We waited a bit for two more interns to show up, and then the six of us started our journey from Narita Airport to Asakusa, a distance of about 70km through Japanese countryside into the city. 

We took the Keisei Skyliner from Narita, a high-speed (and high-priced) train that travels those 70km in around 40 minutes, racing through the Japanese countryside. It’s incredibly easy to make out when the suburbs start, because the green fields that seem to span on forever in every direction suddenly stop. I unfortunately did not get any pictures of the ride because I had my face pressed against the window the entire time, but the scenery outside the window was some of the greenest I had ever seen, until you suddenly hit the concrete jungle that is Tokyo! After the Skyliner, we navigated our way from Ueno Station to Asakusa Station via the Ginza subway line. Figuring out where to exit Asakusa Station was a bit of a challenge, but we found our way down Kaminarimon Street and to the Bunka Hostel (located in a covered shopping arcade) with very little trouble.

A tonkatsu (pork cutlet) shop in Asakusa. 

From there on out began our orientation weekend over the next day and a half- staying together in a dorm-like hostel, exploring Asakuka and eating amazing street food, disaster training (in case of earthquakes and tsunamis, it’s always better to be safe than sorry) and finally onto a boat cruise in Tokyo Bay and out to our welcome dinner with the rest of the program directors and staff. Arriving on Friday was exhausting, but I was so excited to be in Tokyo that after our delicious first dinner in the hostel, I ventured out with a group to Senso-ji (the large temple complex in Asakusa) for an amazing nighttime walk. A beautiful start to my six weeks in Japan! More to follow in the next post about our orientation programs. 

Senso-ji at night. 

I took a picture of our first meal in Japan- an amazing set meal of salmon with side dishes. おいしかった (delicious) !