Sticky: A Note For Visitors

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To you, the reader who’s found this blog and reading this post, greetings! My name’s Mattie, and this is my old blog chronicling my time abroad studying at Yokohama National University during the 2012-2013 school year. Just a couple of bullet points before you dive deep in:

  • This blog is hella old! Although I do hear about things I need to update from time to time, don’t expect the most timely of info! If you do have any tips/updates for me, let me know (comment on this post OR email me at mattie @ this domain), and I’ll gladly update the site to reflect the new information.
  • If you’re here to take a look at an experience in studying abroad in Japan, go right ahead and take a look at some of the posts! It’s not particularly comprehensive or anything — I definitely do that blog thing where I’m all gung-ho about updating it at first and then slowly fall off the face of the earth — but I like to think I have a couple of good anecdotes.
  • If you’re here because you’re going to YNU to study abroad, I recommend my Couple of Notes for Incoming Students series! If you have any questions, comment away, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!
  • Lastly, if you, yourself, have a study abroad blog, let me know about it — I’d love to read it, and I might link it in the sidebar too!

Thanks a lot for visiting, and I hope you find my writing informational, insightful, funny, or of worth otherwise. 😉 ◆

Piago

Ask anyone at the Gumyoji dorms back in 2012-2013 about Piago, and you’d surprisingly be met with a breadth of opinion: it’s a pretty good supermarket; the 100-yen Seria store on the top is the best; it’s okay but I like to swing by Gyoumu Super in Isezaki-cho since you get a lot more for your money; the theme song is really, really annoying and I normally try to finish my shopping there before it starts playing again; and so on, and so forth.

Zoom forward about five years since our first visits to the neighborhood supermarket, and much to the chagrin of the collective nostalgia of the ol’ Gumyoji gang, the Piago of Gumyoji is now gone (including the Seria on 3F), as of the 15th of October. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the old building, but if it’s like the other Piago that used to stand in Isezaki-cho up until 2015, it’s probably gonna be taken down and replaced with something a bit more new. Thankfully, there’s a new Yokohamaya supermarket that replaced a different building down the Kannon-dori, so it’s not like the guys living at the dorms this year have to trudge up the hill to the next closest supermarket Aoba.

In any case, thanks for the food and memories, Piago, and thanks to fellow dormmate C.M. for letting me know about its closure. ◆

Chasing The Sun, Again: An Excerpt From Mattie’s Notes App Two Years Later

Of course I went back.

This was initially going to be a complete post chronicling my back to Japan, two years later — I wrote this while on a flight heading to Tokyo to visit for over the Christmas and new year’s holidays in 2015-2016, and never actually bothered to continue it, because I was so busy. I figured, though, with the influx of people swinging on by to read the not-particularly-updated guide to Yokohama study abroad life, that I’d go ahead and publish what I had edited for consistency in tense, because why not. Here’s the first new content in three years; here’s another plane ride to Japan.

Continue reading →

Ten Things

It’s been about three months since I left Japan behind to begin my life anew back where I came from, in sunny San Jose. Although it took me a while to do so, naturally, I’m beginning to miss things. At the same time, I’m re-experiencing things I’ve missed here and I’m wondering how I could’ve left some of these behind, so I decided to make two lists: one about things I miss about Japan, and one about things I’m glad to have back in America. Continue reading →

A Couple of Remaining Notes for the Incoming Students

To you Fall 2013 guys, this is for you.

I’m gonna take a shot in the dark here and assume you guys are coming in around the same time we did: sometime in the first week of October. In which case, you’ve got less than one week of life in your home country, so go and overdose on the things you’re gonna miss most, because you won’t be seeing them for (up to) nearly a year’s time! For the people you love in your life, things like Skype exist, but being there with your family and friends in person (of course) feels far better than a face on a screen. Definitely binge on the food you like, too — especially if you’re a terrible cook like I am, but even then there are some things that just naturally aren’t available in Japanese grocery stores (for example if you’re a fan of Mexican food you’re definitely not finding tortillas by themselves; though I do remember seeing imported American hardshell taco kits at the market in Kamiooka.)

In any case, here’s a handful of last-minute tips, in no particular order. It’s certainly not comprehensive, either; I might come back to add a couple more things. In any case, bon voyage! If you plan on making a blog on your stay, do link me — I’d love to follow it. 🙂 Continue reading →