Japan trip: Part II - Tokyo

Time:  14.03.2015-05.04.2015
So once we arrived to Japan, we spent first 3 days in Tokyo. If I have to say my impression about Tokyo with 3 words it would be - busy, crowded and entertaining. Three days and limited budget are not good companions to have in Tokyo.

16.03.15 
We woke up in our really cool backpackers place in Asakusa, Ueno and booked it for another night. We went out around 11 am and I must say that at first I could not believe that I am actually in Japan after all these years. The weather was amazing, of course due to the fact that my own country is rather cold at the moment! Especially interesting was to buy onigiri for breakfast (~120¥) that made me understand that I should start studying Japanese again, especially kanji.. thank Gyoza that we have Yanne for that. But already on the first day I noticed something really annoying: a lot of Tokyo girls like to wear wear too big shoes so the shoe is always falling off. It made me go crazy - I am big fan of high heels, so wearing high heels and not being able to stand properly in them is unacceptable for me and definitely not cute.

For the first thing we went to Meiji shrine. Here I mention that transportation is the most expensive thing in Japan, so we ended up using most money on that. In addition, we had to make calculations about which train or subway tickets we need and which are cheaper. Basically, if you have another train line ticket for a right train line, then you do not have a ticket. Why cannot they make system where all companies use one system in one city? It is really complicated to understand what I am talking about, but once you experience it, it makes your head explode. Or maybe I am just used to system back at home where things have made really easy?

But back to Meiji shrine. Meiji shrine is built in 1920 for emperor Meiji and his wife after their death. I think I do not have to talk about the background and things more, if you want to read it - Google it! I liked it because when you are on the shrine grounds then you do not feel that you are in Tokyo.. and definitely not in Shibuya. We also took our luck there, because this is one thing that you definitely want to do. Even though they have it in English also,  I took in Japanese. The translation is "Open heart is just as inspiring as morning blue sky".

Next we went to Yoyogi park to see plum blossoms as cherries were not blooming yet. I must say that for me almost everything that blooms is beautiful so I enjoyed it much. But even cooler was to see "obaachans" with their doggies. So called "obaachans" are elderly women whose children have grown up already and now spend time dressing up their doggies and taking them everywhere. (of course there are some who prefer cats).  

After enjoying time in a bit more quiet area we decided to go to crowded Harajuku. I actually believed that it is much bigger, but in reality it is more like bunch of small narrow and crowded streets, full of small shops, purikura and Johnny's... and crepes. It was interesting to see, but I am not a person who would enjoy this - the good thing with travelling: you discover new things about yourself. In Harajuku we also had our lunch - Ramen!!  In the end ramen and curry became my favorite foods.

Suddenly it started to rain, so it was not so good anymore to go around the town. We went to Mandarake - it is Yanne's one of the favorite a manga shops. Well of course I found there a lot of things with Johnny's and I almost ended up buying Massu's uchiwa, but as it does not replace real him, then I just took a photo with it. (Notice: Doing it actually in the store is not welcomed!)
The weather got even worse so we decided to take the crowded train and go back to hostel.

17.03.15 
On the second day we took direction to Imperial Palace, but before we went to Zojoji temple and Tokyo Tower. Zojoji is Buddhist Temple, It is the Great main temple and six Tokugawa shoguns are buried there. In addition there are many Jizo statues and at the moment they were all dressed up and had wind whirls. As there was some kind of event going on, we did not stay there for long.

I did expect a little bit more from Tokyo Tower, because they had taken Eiffel Tower for example and Eiffel is amazing up close with all its details, but Tokyo Tower.. :/ sorry, but it is just a tower made of metal painted white and red. We did not go up, because we already heard that it is impossible to see Mt. Fuji, because there was this weird clouds in front of it. But we ate crepes and did not let our mood down. Crepes are one thing that Japan has done really great! French crepes are not nearly as great as Japanese. I had this crazy idea to find one viewpoint to Tokyo Tower that was used in "Hanawake no yon shimai" and believe me - IT WAS DIFFICULT TO FIND! but we more or less found it  I hope :D During that time we also met with one American who was working in Japan, but his knowledge about Japan was almost not existing at all, but we all have one weird memory to remember.

Finally after a long walk we arrived to Imperial Palace, as Yanne said to me before "we can laugh or cry how less traditions and culture is kept there". There really is not much to see, You can go and see the garden and some buildings, but nothing impressive. We decided to go to Akihabara, but as non of us is so into games and technical things we did not stay there for long. Of course we managed to see many maid cafes and middle aged men going there. Did not expect it to be so famous. AAA I forgot about AKB O.o They are everywhere.. just everywhere.. and mostly without proper clothes. I think the company should be rich enough to finally put some clothes on them!

We went back to the hostel to take our bags, but as I had neglected my university work for 2 weeks, then I still had to make at least one assignment before forgetting that I should be in university. 

This night we were going to spend CouchSurfing (I just love that site!) at Ichiro-san's place. While we were trying to reach his place we stopped in Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to see the night view of Tokyo on 45th floor. The view was truly amazing, but I did not like the fact that they had made inside of the floor as a shop with a lot of lights that all reflected on the windows and made the view less enjoyable. In addition, it is not so comfortable to be in place like that with really big bags. But while we were coming from there I saw a guy who looked like Massu - he had outstanding fashion sense, red hair, but he also wore face-mask and a cap... and a skateboard...

Ichiro is a really great Japanese guy who works in Shinjuku, owns a house and has a plan to host at least 200 couchsurfers - if I remember correctly then we were somewhere in 90ties. We made a lot of origami at his place and we found out that my sister Chris is hopelessly horrible at origami O.o Made me even think that we are not sisters at all.  

18.03.15 

It was the last day in Tokyo for us. We started the day with going to see the almighty Tokyo Sky Tree that we had seen almost everyday from far. Already when we walked out of the house, the sky was very foggy and it stayed the same when we arrived to the Sky Tree - this means that paying a lot of money to go to the viewing platform is just a waste of money as you will not see anything. We decided to take a walk and go to Asakusa.

In Asakusa we spent time in Asakusa temple where for the first time we became the "sightseeing" instead of the temple - we ended up being photographed for so many times in Japan that we even thought about making business with it. We saw a lot of plums blossoming in the park - compared to sakuras they blossom sooner and longer. This day we went back to Ichiro-san's place sooner. We went with him to Odaiba - we actually had left it out of our plans before because of lack of time, but he took us there with a car. It is awesome feeling to see Tokyo at night and especially drive in a car at night. It makes you feel that you are in sci-fi movie or in far far future.

Odaiba was wonderful. All the views, students practicing dance or just hanging around. Of course this was the first time I managed to lose everybody while I was fighting with my camera which decided to get low battery. For the first time in my life I felt really lost - exactly the right time when to mention that my phone was the only one working in Japan and I had forgot to ask Yanne's or Ichiro's Japanese phone number. Thank Gyoza that they happened to notice short after that I was missing and came to find me. We went on to see the life-sized Gundam model that made quite a show. Standing in front of it made me feel reaaallly small.  And Yanne got to kiss at least somebody..

But this was it for our days in Tokyo and  next day we headed toward Kawaguchiko to stand close to Mt. Fuji, that put a curse on us, but about it in a next post. 

Shooting Sekai no hate made ITTEQ!!!

There is one dark secret that I have not told you yet. It is that half an year ago during January 2015 I had an awesome experience with Japanese television, when I was able to help "Sekai no hate made ITTEQ" crew on shooting special in Estonia (yep, my country). I did not want to write about it before it aired and I was kinda hoping to receive photos before making a post, but I guess I will end up waiting them forever.

Who does not know, then "Sekai no hate made ITTEQ" is travel variety on Nippon TV (NTV) that airs every Sunday. There are around 10 famous people as Becky, Imouto, Kawai-san, Morisanchu (currently - Miyazaki Masayo, Kurosawa Kazuko, Kawamura Emiko, Yashiro Yu) and Tegoshi Yuya (From my favorite band - NEWS). I was able to be part of Morisanchu filming. But do not think I was just spending time with the crew without doing anything - it was a lot of work - callings, communicating, searching, few hours of sleep and full week with the crew (lucky I did not have lessons then) and even before and after that week I had to communicate with participants inside Estonia. At first I thought it might be difficult to get in contact with people, especially because there were things that I knew nothing about, but it ended up being much easier. I must say that I enjoyed every minute I spent on it. So let's go to the details by days, but there are still things that I keep for myself :P One more thing before I start: The temperature stayed between -4 to -9 Celsius every day, so it was not so cold, but cold enough if you have to stay outside most of the day.

Day 1.
This day was really short for me, because Director Nagata-san and European coordinator Paola-san were the first ones to arrive and they spent the day with other local assistant in the other part of Estonia. I only met them for a dinner to talk. I must say that we did talk a lot and also about why I love Japan etc. I understood that I am even able to understand some Japanese when somebody is talking - surprising :D

Day 2.
We met already in the morning and director assistant Funaki-san, cameraman Chiba-san and his assistant Hirose-san had arrived. When I met them everybody already knew my love for Johnny's. Embarrassing! Gomen Tegoshi for not being my ichiban, but I know a lot of personal things about you now. But also Sorry Tegoshi-fans, because I cannot tell you these things. I am a person who respects idols having personal lives, so I will bury these secrets with me. All I can say that from everything I heard, he is really really really really nice guy. Maybe next time I have possibility to work with him.
First days were location hunting - meaning that we went, checked the places and made first shootings. We went for winter windsurfing, fire-brigade and to one sushi place.
As every day was hectic and there are things you never see coming. As having a wrong location.. This happened to fire brigade as there are more than one place offering sauna in old fire-truck. What a luck that my country is small and a lot of people are really kind and are willing to go with the flow.
We finished the day at one sushi place called Sushiplaza. It is the best sushi place in Tallinn, but they serve really western and really interesting sushi. Of course we had to try the ones that seemed the most weirdest.

Me - totally not ready to be also in front of cameras

Day 3.
It was actually my birthday and a day when I had exam. Still I went to meet them at 9:30 and we had another day of location hunt and some shooting.
First we spent time in the Old Town which meant of course shooting. This morning I was actually revising my exam questions a bit too, because I had to remember just 90 questions and answers. If you wonder what exam I had then it was psychology.. Why interior architect learns psychology? it is important to understand the client, the work relationship etc.  Anyways, I had to leave for some hours to make my exam and everybody wished me luck. It feels great to hear "Ganbatte kudasai!" in real life. Of course I ended up getting perfect score. Sorry for being out of ItteQ-topic for a moment, but I just wanted to share my thoughts that I discovered during the exam. My exam-question was about motivation, goal-keeping and achievements. As it was oral exam then professor had the chance to ask extra questions in addition and then she asked about me - if I am motivated and do I feel that I accomplished something already in my life? And then during that 5 seconds I had before answering I thought "Today is my birthday. I am 22 now. I am helping to film ItteQ. I have blog that has troubles, but there still are people who read it. I have seen the world. I am going to Japan in spring. I am studying the one thing that my heart wants. I have friends and family that I love. I know who I am and what I want and I am willing to grow everyday" and I answered "Yes, I do believe that I have accomplished some of my life goals already". I think that understanding this knowledge was the best birthday present for me this year.  So my readers too. please from time to time think about what great things have you succeeded in :)
But back to the topic. After exam I joined the crew again and we went to other places in Tallinn to shoot the beauty of the city. Then we went to Snowpark to check if the slope is good enough for filming. It ended up being higher than we expected, but other slopes were not high enough. But our logistics were a bit off, as usually with filming you cannot predict if some place takes more time than first expected. For the final thing for the day was sumo club where Baruto basically started out. At the moment it is a sumo club which students are European champions and one even World Bronze. I think that there will be a lot of talk in the future about them too. As you see, then Estonians are really good at sumo. Sadly we did not meet Kaido Höövelson (real name of Baruto) this time, but I have met him already before.
During the drive crew got to know that I have birthday. Everybody were surprised that that I am so young and despite having a birthday I had an exam without being nervous and spent the whole day with the crew. Well, in the end birthday is just a day when you add up one number on your age, but the life goes on as day before.

Day 4.
This was the day when  actresses Miyazaki-san, Kurosawa-san, Yashiro-san and assistant Sugihara-san arrived. Of course me being a fan of Massu was the first thing they got to know about me and then I learned that Kurasawa is a friend of him... KYAAAA!! For some reason this seemed to be most important or the funniest fact about me to share. They all the time managed to talk about it right as soon as I arrived. My little heart hopes that this small talk reached him too.
But Morisanchu is truly amazing. They are all so nice and friendly and even though their English is not so good, it was really enjoyable to be with them. I had to drive all day in their car and they gave me Japanese snacks.
We started with shootings at winter windsurf and spent a lot of time there. This was one thing that never aired in the episode. This was the day when I had to bring lunch from a close food place and I think I never forget the waitress face when I entered only and placed a order for 12. In Estonian language 2 and 12 start the same, so at first he typed in only 2 and I had to correct: No, I said 12, not 2. Well, the 2 workers had at least something to do for a while.
After half day there we rode out of town to shoot fire-brigade sauna. It was so funny that I hurt my stomach. In addition there are the only scenes where you can actually see me O.o Thank gyoza that I had good camouflage in really light-color winter jacket (The only blonde on the photo).  I also had my 15-minute fame in Estonia as there were 2 TV-channels, newspaper and local radio who wanted interviews. Already few hours later when we were back in the city, eating dinner at one Korean restaurant, I got calls and messages "How the hell did you end up doing these kind of projects?!" from my friends. Well, what to say - I am a girl with many projects and sometimes I forgot to make public announcement about them.

Day 5. 
It was the last day for me, because on their last day they did not need me as the shooting took place on the other side of my country and they had another local assistant there.
This day also Kawamura-san also joined us, but in on camera only in Snowpark.
On this day we filmed the opening in the Old Town. It is so funny how during winter there are not so many people, especially so early in the morning. but the few people how were there were so curious and came to talk - the moment when I had a lot of explanation to do in Estonian and Russian and translate it into English/Japanese. In addition, we had a bit of time to make souvenir shopping and take photos together. Sadly I do not have the photos and I have not seen them.

We went on with shooting at Snowpark where we made Shovel Racing. We asked "one guy" to show us how to do it and say some words about it. Now half years later I can thank ItteQ for making me now one awesome guy who is good friend of mine. In secret I can say that we happened to meet again few weeks later in a club and I hope he likes also to have a friend like me. In addition, I can say that for some reason in the final production his name seems to be Paul, but in reality they referred to him by his surname that sounds the same as Paul in Japanese. His real first name means something very valuable. If any of the readers and ItteQ watchers happen to get a crush on him then write me and I will give his real name and you can contact him on Facebook :P To give some good words about him - he is snowboarder, football player, loves to travel, open to adventures and single! Oh, I just love to mess with him :D

The last place to film was in Sushi Plaza, but this also never made the cut in the episode. From that filming I understood that Estonia is full of young successful people. That gives me hope for the future of my country.. forgive me for not staying here!
After we finished we went back to the hotel and went to eat at restaurant next to hotel and then was my time to say goodbye to them. Even though I was sad that it was over, I felt really happy and satisfied. I definitely got more than just an experience to help filming crew - meeting those amazing extraordinary people, getting to know behind-camera actions and getting memories for a life time. In addition, if you think that it is easy to be spend time with world famous actresses and official filming crew and be 100% professional without any fan-girl feelings, then you are wrong! I was fighting with my inner fan-girl all the time and every night when I went home I was jumping up and down from happiness and screaming like 4-years-old girl over fluffy pony toy! My year had a perfect start and I will not forget it.

If you want to know the outcome of the shooting then this episode aired on 15.02.2015. Sadly I was not able to see the it on time, but I found it online some time late. As you all can see, there where parts that were cut out of the real thing as winter wind-surfing and eating sushi and more scenes were from the last day when I was not there, but it all makes me really really happy.
Even though I have watched it over and over again, I still get butterflies when I watch the episode :D
If you really want to see the episode then here is the link (NO ENGLISH SUBS! and Morisanchu part starts somewhere around 20+ few minutes)

If you ask me, how did I first got to this opportunity at all, then I can only answer that sometimes luck smiles to me :D KIDDING! Just my country is really small and right people happened to know me and Yanne with our knowledge of Japan and Japanese (but she is in Japan, so unfortunately she was not able to participate). But how ItteQ found these people who contacted me? Easy - all mighty Youtube and crazy videos are all that they need :)

This is my "Short" story about ItteQ. Once again: ItteQ crew, HONTONI ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU~~!! 

Japan trip: Part I - the start

Time: 14.03.2015 - 05.04.2015
So the ones who are following me on facebook know that I had a trip to Japan to visit Yanne. I thought that I might write a bit about it.

The planning started already in September 2014 when I talked with my older sister and friend when we should go (lets call them Chris and Star). The final decision was from the middle of March until the first week of April, because then in Japan will be holidays between school years and Yanne can travel too, in addition Kris and Star can get vacation from work for a bit longer and I have one week holidays from university so I would not miss out much.

how to save money for Japan? not the fastest way..

Anyways here is the short over view how things went before getting on the plane with some money calculations in euro or yen..

September 2014 - bought both-way plane tickets (~600 euro)
February 2015 - bought both-way plane tickets to Okinawa (~113 euro) because why not??
2 weeks before - making final plans - Yanne went crazy with planning, so in the end I printed out 30 pages..
1 day before - packed my bag because my personal life took too much time to have time to pack.
Morning of 14.03 - arrived home around 9am because personal life is great and sleep is overrated (Not true!), so I put final things into bag, waited mom to arrive (she was basically keeping an eye on apartment for some time) and went to airport to have my flight at 15:10. The flight was Tallinn-Paris and then Paris-Tokyo for 11,5 hours. In Paris airport I found out that in Tallinn they made a small mistake and my tickets between Paris-Tokyo where almost cancelled. Thank Gyoza that we had time in Paris so they could fix it.

Finally at 23:35 the plane took off and I was flying toward the country of my dreams :)
I have a bad/awesome habit that on plane (and bus) I fall a sleep really easily, so I ended up sleeping in total 7 hours and from 4,5 hours that I was awake 2 hours I spent watching "Tazza 2 ~ Hidden card" ( TOP is soooo amazing - review coming when I am back from trip) and 1 hour on eating as we were given food twice.

So when we reached Haneda airport the time was around 20:00 on 15.04.15  and after almost half year I was seeing face to face my little sis again - yeah.. some tears were shred..

So we went on and found our hostel (around 16 euro) and as it turned out to be one of the greatest backpackers place we ended up staying there for another night, but about that in next post ;)

Greetings from Okinawa :P