I just returned from a brief trip to the Fulbright office in Tokyo to meet the new Fulbright Fellows to Japan for this year. Congratulations to those who received the grant!! It was a happy and sad time for me. It was wonderful to meet all the new grantees and see the director, Sam Shepherd, and my liaison person, Mizuho Iwata. I was also able to attend a reception at the ambassador's house. Everything was very lovely and slightly nostalgic of last year when I first arrived in Japan and met all my fellow Fulbrighters. The year sure passed quickly!
I also had intended to do some serious photography in Tokyo and ended up taking only 2 lousy pictures. I can't really explain why this happened except that my mind seemed to be out of creative mode. I went wandering around Shinjuku, the heart of the night scene in Tokyo, and wound up disturbed by the carnality, consumerism and superficiality of it all. Besides, it was a major distraction to my photography to have to constantly be aware of who was around me and to have to avoid the guys at the street corners trying to convince me to go to whatever bar or club was paying them peas to harass anyone who passes by. After about 2 hours of wandering around, I decided to head back to my hotel and read some of the Harry Potter novel I was working on. The whole stint had just depressed me too much to do anything else. I never have liked Tokyo, and if Fulbright wasn't there, I would probably never go. Kansai seems to be my favorite place thus far, but even outside of that there are so many more quality areas to see in Japan that over-crowded, over-commercialized Tokyo.
Posted by Kristen at September 21, 2003 01:52 PM
| TrackBack
sweet blog! Thanks for coming to Tokyo to help us! At the moment, I'm still apartment hunting in Kobe, and trying to convince the other two Kobe fbers to join me in renting an ikkodate, but we'll see. If they finally submit, we'd love to have you and your husband over for a houswarming/party, but that might be jumping the gun a bit at this point.
btw, you're description of tokyo was basically right on, although, like Kansai, it has its moments/places as well. its sometimes difficult to escape the feeling in japan that everyone & thing is on something...
jaa nee
Posted by: doug on September 29, 2003 04:00 PMHey Kristen, I agree with Doug--your blog is awesome. ^_^ Tokyo often made me feel cynical as well, which may be why I visited Kansai so often. People seemed more real and less frigid in the southern latitudes.
Side note: Simon and I had dinner last night, and he asked how you were, so I told him about your website.
Posted by: jocelyn on October 4, 2003 05:36 PMjust found this site. I looked for the Tokyo fulbright contact info for five minutes & found your spiel. going into tokyo next week as an fber and can't seem to get my act together. thinking of getting an apartment in shinjuku for the heck of it but after your spiel, am having second thoughts. . . anyway, glad to have found your comments.
Miki
Posted by: C. Miki Wheeler on July 9, 2004 10:09 AM