Week 2: Field Trips and Food in Tokyo!

During the second week of our global seminar, we had a tight schedule filled with field trips that took us all across Tokyo. Since our classes are about architecture, our field trips usually revolve around visiting a famous or significant building and doing some sketches of it, before returning to class, where we can discuss it as a group. This week, our main visits were to the Fuji Television Building in Taito City, Tokyo, and the famous Meiji Shrine, in Harajuku. Both sites were incredible, but Meiji Shrine took the cake for me. Located in a giant manmade forest, the shrine features the largest torii gates in Tokyo, and a massive inner temple area featuring austere wooden architecture. The shrine was incredibly serene, even though it was crowded, and I really enjoyed getting away from the dense urban environment of Tokyo and surrounding myself with nature for a while.

While not in class, I spent time in different neighborhoods around Tokyo that I hadn’t visited before (and enjoyed a good meal in each one!). I had amazing thai food in Asakusabashi, an incredible latte and tiramisu in Harajuku, and a great hamburger in Iidabashi! I'm enjoying seeing the unique architecture and scenery of each neighborhoods. And even with two full weeks of exploring, there's still such much more of Tokyo that I haven't seen yet!

Trying a hamburger in Japan was an especially fun experience. The seats were along a counter, where they cooked the burgers on a flat top griddle right in front of you! It was a very fun experience, and I’ll definitely be going back when I’m craving more food from home. Finally, I took another trip back to Ginza to do some souvenir shopping for friends and family back home. It was a busy week, but I’m having a lot of fun exploring the different parts of Tokyo!

But by far, the highlight of my week was visiting the teamLabs immersive art gallery experience with a few of my friends from class. The art exhibit was a completely immersive experience that saw us taking off our shoes and walking in water that went up to our knees! Rainbow colored Koi fish were projected on top of the water, creating and they reacted in real time to your body's presence in the exhibit. I'd never experience such interactive art before, and I really enjoyed it.

Each room was a completely different experience, with some featuring 360 degree projections of flowers, giant glowing orbs that you could push around, and a seemingly infinite amount of lights and mirrors. The last room in particular featured flowers hanging from the ceiling, but a series of mirrors in the room made it feel like you were sitting in the middle of an infinite curtain of flowers. I’ll definitely never forget that experience, and after that, I can’t wait to see what next week has in store!