Hello! Last October 23 - 30, my friend, Meg and I went to Japan to join in an all expense paid study tour in Tokyo for the winners of the Nihongo Speech Contest from different ASEAN countries courtesy of JOEA. We visited factories, showrooms, different tourist sites in Tokyo and did a repeat performance of our winning pieces. We also visited Tokyo Disneylad which apparently wasn't in Tokyo. 

Our first day was basically just spent travelling to Japan which was a bit disappointing for me since we arrived very late in Japan and ended up only going to the convenience store and sleeping in the hotel. The other participants arrived earlier than us and had the chance to spend a free day in Tokyo.

On our second day, we finally get to meet with the other participants of the study tour from different ASEAN countries. There were twelve of us. In the morning of the second day, we had our orientation about the trip, the speech presentation and the like. We also took photos for the program pamphlet that was used for the speech presentation.

Filipino delegate!

 In the afternoon, we visited the Ajinomoto Umami Science Square in Kawasaki. In there, we were able to see how an Ajinomoto product, a hondashi is produced. We even had a first hand experience on how the hondashi was made in the past using this special kind of grater.




In the evening, we decided to go out and check out some places. We were battling on either we eat sushi or ramen but we ended up eating ramen. The ramen was so delicious but I did not finish mine because the serving was too big for me.


We also found a Taiyaki store along the side of the road so we decided to buy. It was very delicious and not to mention, cheap.


Okay, so allow me to say that this is one of my best things that happened to me on my second night in Japan. We went to a bookshop and one of the participants was holding this and I was like "OMG where did you find that?!" I immediately picked my own copy and bought it without doubt. This book, if you do not recognize, is a novel of the famous non-Ghibli animation "Kimi no na wa". If you still haven't watched the movie, you are missing one of life's luxuries.

On our third and fourth days, we visited different tourist spots in Tokyo like Skytree, Tokyo Tower and Asakusa via Hato Bus.

Tokyo Station

From the top of Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower

Asakusa

Tokyo Skytree

On the morning of the fifth day, the day of the speech presentation, we visited Tokyo University for a calligraphy lesson. Coming from a very small school in my city, the land area and the number of students in Tokyo University really amazed me.




After the day of the speech presentation, we went to Disneyland for a day and then we had a free day to spend which we used to go to Harajuku and Shibuya. We did sightseeing in Harajuku, did a little shopping and then went to Shiibuya to meet a friend and did karaoke which by the way was paid for us by our friend's Japanese friend. Thank you.