Pre-trip butterflies!

Our adventure to Tokyo begins in just four days! We're going to study beginning Japanese in a language program near Shinjuku Station, the heart of Tokyo, during the entire month of July. We've secured an apartment (tiny!) with a small bed, rental futon, kitchen, and bath, about 20 min metro from our school. During the week, we'll attend five hours of class each day and then experience the language in action by touring the city and enjoying the Japanese language, food, and culture.

These last few weeks, we've poured over six guidebooks, watched youtube videos about sushi-making, and then even made our own sushi! (practice still needs to be done on that one :)). We plan on trying all kinds of food, like takoyaki (street food favorite of octopus dumplings), and okonomiyaki (savory pancakes where customers choose their ingredients and cook the pancakes themselves at the table), and of course, sushi and sashimi. We'll be discovering Tokyo not just in the museums but in the aisles of combini (24/7 convenience stores or 7-Eleven equivalents), the basement of 'depatos' or department stores where gourmet food and groceries are sold, the counters of sushi restaurants, to the sitting on tatami mats in specialized restaurants, like soba-only restaurants.