The Last Few (Unneventful) Days

Okay, so I guess the last three days weren't completely unneventful if I am writing about them in the first place.  Living and learning in the same city for so over a week now, it starts to feel a bit like a home.  At first, everything was so exciting and new but now things have quieted down a little and I don't feel like I need to take a picture every five seconds.  The last few days have been school days, so that has taken up most of our time.  Things have happened, but few enough to clump them together into one post.

25 May '16

Four and a half hours of Japanese... three hours of our beginner course, and another one & a half of preparation for the Green Forest Museum which we will be visiting later in the trip.  We were told what we would need to bring, all in Japanese, for when we go to the Museum to plant, weed, and rake.  Fun, right?

Broke away from the group during lunch.  It was nice to have some time to myself after being with people for four hours.  I ate under a little covered area with benches at TIU which overlooked their equivalent of the quad (the big green area in the middle of campus at Willamette).  It was breezy and not too hot, and I got to be in nature for a bit.

Went to the Tobu store (supermarket) by the train station to buy some fruit.  When you get to the register, they take your items out of the cart or basket one by one, scan them, and place them in another cart/basket.  Once all items are scanned, transfered, and paid for, they place a plastic bag in your cart/basket and you take it to the area pictured below, right past the registers, and bag your own items.  Efficient and, my mom would like this, no dingbats putting a watermellon on top of eggs or frozen items with non-frozen items.

Dinner was at a sushi train in the train station.  I didn't get any pictures of the sushi because I was too busy consuming them and I assume you, the reader, already knows what sushi looks like.  Here is dessert at the restaurant though (Japanese pudding with caramel on top... super yummy).

26 May '16

Back to the waste incinerator (Tsubasa-kan).  First we got to listen to a short presentation on environmental policy in Kawagoe.  The city, just like the rest of the world, is experiencing warmer average temperatures.  Climate change is affecting culture as well as nature and human wellbeing; in Japan, the sakura (cherry blossom) is blooming earlier and due to the warmer winters (they need "good sleep" in the cold winter), not producing quality blooms.  Sakura festivals are a large part of Japanese culture and are being affected by global warming, which is pretty crappy, to say the least.

After the big earthquake in Japan in 2011, renewable energy has been on the rise.  It is not only good for the environment, but it is also a reliable source of emergency energy.  Saitama prefecture, where Kawagoe is situated, has the third longest hours of sunshine among the 147 prefecctures in Japan.  This makes solar energy extremely profitable.  The city of Kawagoe rents out part of the pond pictured below to Tsubasa-kan to use for floating solar panels.  The energy produced is then sold to power over 200 homes in the area.

We got to see a green wall in action at a local elementary school!  This wall was planted ten years ago, and took about six years to reach the top of the four-story building.  It has seven different types of vines.  Some species on the wall do not fare well in winter weather, and depending on the type, it grows faster or wider (also different species means different blooms and at different points in the year).  The green wall not only helps keep heat out during the summer, but also helps keep heat in during the winter.

There were also green curtains at the elementary school.  They are made from a net that reaches up along the side of the building, and a fast growing vine that will die at the end of summer.  Fall, and especially winter, are very cool here so the curtain is not needed then.  In the summer, however, the hot sun can heat the classrooms to uncomfortable temperatures.  Establishing green curtains can reduce the temperature of the classroom by 5°C.

We got to help the school out and plant our own green curtain!

After the elementary school, we visited a green roof/garden in a community center building that housed a library, daycare, senior center, and other facilities.  This garden was on the fourth floor and untilized man made soil, which was lighter in weight, and plants with shallow roots so they could be sustained with a relatively low amount of soil.  There were somewhere around 70 different species of plants in this little garden, all blooming at different times in the year.

Earthquake springs on the existing infrastructure at city hall.

Thank you, Kawagoe, for being such wonderful hosts and sharing your green city with us!  They even gave us little goody bags at the end of the tour with a pen, Tshirt (picture of design below... it says "Kawagoe" in kanji), and a folder with the famous shopping street pictured on it (not shown below)!  (It was people who worked for the city of Kawagoe that showed us the solar panels at Tsubasa-kan, the green wall, green curtains, and green roof.)

27 May '16

A very relaxed day.  We didn't have class until 1:10pm (usually we start at 9am) so in the morning, I got all my stuff together and went over to the Starbucks at the train station (it's becoming my favorite hagout place... partly because all the stores take Pasmo).  I stayed there for four hours until I had to leave for class, which was easy since I was already at the station I needed to go to to get to school.  I did some reading and research for class, drank a matcha frapp (Sam got a brownie/matcha frapp!).  I got a shrimp and avocado sandwich for lunch which was awesome.

I thought the group was getting dinner at 6:30pm but when I got down to the lobby nobody was there.  Apparently everyone went at 6pm!  My mistake ended up doing me some good though, as I got to go to the Italian resteraunt in the train station I had been wanting to go to!  I had a lovely date with myself and got lots of yummy food.

For now,

 アナ