Week 2: "Garden Week"

April 5th, 2026

Things don’t always go as planned.
-Me

Not many people know I was actually the first person to say that.

(Warning: There are pictures of (fake and colorful) penises at the end of this blogpost. If you don’t wanna see that, I’ve warned you here. I think you’ll survive.)

This week was supposed to be garden week. If you don’t know, I volunteer for the Rowan Arboretum, and have been enjoying learning about and looking at trees since I got to Rowan. So I figured what better way to spend peak cherry blossom bloom than going to a bunch of different arboretums and gardens? I did an afternoon of research and made a big nerd spreadsheet with information about arboretums I could find that were within 2 hours by public transport.

I picked 7 that had lots of cherry blossoms, and made a map to figure out which ones were closer together so I could plan out how to get to them in one week. It wasn't necessarily a checklist, more of things I hoped to do. I planned to go to all seven, but would be fine if I only got to see three or four.

Last week, I went to Tama Forest, which was beautiful. But by that time, I had already realized the unfortunate news, which is that it was cloudy and rainy almost every day for the near future. At least I got this one arboretum in—maybe I could fit in another 2 or 3 in the gaps between the rain! (Spoiler alert, this did not happen).

Monday’s plans were to go to the municipal building to register my residence card and get my health insurance card, and then head north to Shimizu park in Noda, Chiba. I expected the municipal building to take maybe an hour or a bit more, and then I could get home before the evening. I’m not sure why I thought that, though, because when I walked in there were one hundred thousand people in there. It was a very stressful place. As I described it in a text while waiting, “it’s like the dmv x5”.

Don’t get me wrong, everything went as smoothly as possible. I was able to register my residence card with someone who spoke English well, and the health card conversation was basic enough and he talked slow enough that I could understand him in Japanese (or at least the gist of it). But no matter how quick or smoothly things go it would be impossible to make a place like that not stressful. Luckily, I don’t ever have to do it again unless I come back to live here, and by then my Japanese will be good enough where I don’t have to wait for an English speaking worker. It ended up taking three miserable hours, putting a slight wrench in my plans to go to a park two hours away.

I ended up going to very cute cafe near the building for lunch and had an egg sandwich and some french toast with blueberry jam which was an extremely enjoyable meal. They even had apple juice! Maybe the day wasn’t so bad after all.

It was only around 1 or 2pm and I knew I wanted to do something else before going home for the night. I decided to go to Ikebukuro, because I had heard there was an Amazing Digital Circus pop-up store there. It’s a show I really like, so I thought even if I didn’t buy anything, it would be cool to see stuff from a show released on YouTube in real life. It was only a small part of a small store in a mall, so it wasn’t necessarily a spectacle, but I still enjoyed going. It was cute and had some exclusive merch, which I bought a little bit of. A short trip, but one I’m glad I did.

For dinner I made spaghetti and broccoli, and because there isn’t an oven, I tried roasting it in the air fryer for the first time. I didn’t do a great job, and ended up spilling hot oil everywhere (not on me, luckily), but I think I learned enough that I’ll do it well the second try around. At least I’m having new experiences.

Tuesday rained for the entire day. I stayed in bed most of the day because I had done a lot for multiple days in a row before it, so it was nice to have a chill day. I did some preparation for school and tried to finish everything that was due before orientation on Friday. For dinner, I ended up going back to Lumbini, the nearby Indian place. I tried their Kadai chicken which was pretty yummy.

Wednesday’s plan was to go to Jindai Botanical Gardens in Chofu, but I wasn’t feeling well so ended up staying in. I would’ve just gone out later, but it was going to rain in the afternoon, so not getting out in the morning killed those plans.

In the late morning, I experienced my first earthquake (in freshman year at Rowan I was awake during one, but somehow didn’t feel it at all in the dining hall while my roommate, who was three floors directly above me, said the entire room shook)! It was a 5.0, but the epicenter was in the prefecture North of Tokyo, so it was only about a 2.0 around here. The whole house shook, but I was in bed with nothing above me, so it was not very scary. Kind of fun, actually.

I ended up napping and chilling until dinner time, and ended up hanging out with Yoshio and Etsuko and played some games on the switch out in the living room. I also tried two flavors of Crunky (similar to a crunch bar) that I had never tried before. The cookies and cream was decent, but I didn’t really like the strawberry one. The original reigns supreme, in my opinion.

The next morning I was recovering but still not feeling amazing. I thought traveling to a different country was supposed to make your chronic illness go away! Those etsy psychics lied to me...

I registered for classes when it opened up. It says they’re supposed to be a lottery system whether you get in or not, but I don’t really understand how that works. So hopefully I just get in to every class I signed up for. The classes I’ll be taking are History of Japan, Interaction Design (UI), Acoustic Systems (sound), Japanese 2 (online, which I will be complaining about until I leave), Web design & programming (counts as a required class for my major at Rowan!), and Making effective presentations (I looked for which classes are going to take the least amount of time outside of class and this one came in first).

After registering for classes I walked over to the nearest UNIQLO to buy/try out undershirts. I have to find some way to deal with the heat because I am a sweaty guy and Tokyo will get a bit hotter and more humid than New Jersey, which I already struggle to deal with. Plus, I’ll be walking a lot more here than I do in the summer at home, so I’m trying to figure out solutions before they become necessary. I ended up passing by a river with a cute park on the way home.

For dinner, I planned to go to Kawakami again for my chicken katsu curry, but they didn’t have room for us so we went back to (you guessed it) Lumbini for indian food. I got chicken tikka with their fried rice, which was good but so far my least favorite out of the ones I’ve tried. I’d still like to try their tikka masala, but so far the kashmiri chicken was my favorite by far and that may end up being my regular. I talked to our waitress/hostess/cashier (it’s a small restaurant, only like 4 people work there) and had a nice small conversation. I was able to get the gist of everything she was saying, and she was very nice. She even complimented my use of chopsticks which is funny because I don’t think I’m that good at using them. I’m hoping to become a regular there, it’s great food and pretty cheap compared to American Indian restaurants, a bit over half the price.

The next day was orientation, which was a lot. I got up early and was ready to leave on time but apparently my body did not agree with that. I ended up only being about 20 minutes late, which was fine because the first 2 and a half hours were just talking about things I already knew and thought had to be done before orientation. I got to meet some people in the beginning, and got to listen in on other conversations. I was expecting some Americans, some Asians, and some Europeans. It ended up being 1 (maybe 2?) other Americans, a decent amount of Brazilians, some Asians (seems like Korea and China/Taiwan mostly) and about one hundred million Europeans. I think half the people I met were French and there were so many Germans and Swedes, too. Terrifying.

I had lunch at the cafeteria and talked to the people around me. There was one Swedish guy next to me where when I said I was from New Jersey, he said that was boring and it would have been cool if I was “from Texas or something”. I will never fully understand how the world sees America. But after a bit of talking he remembered that the Sopranos was in New Jersey, and kept asking me questions about Italians and the mob and ended up thinking that New Jersey is actually pretty cool. I win, I guess?

We went to register for classes in a computer lab but I had already done that, so I just talked to the person next to me who a Finnish girl named Heini. She was very sweet and loves Pokémon so we had a nice conversation. After a bit of waiting we got a campus tour, and it’s nice but very confusing to navigate so I think it’ll take a couple weeks to understand. After the tour, though, they just put us in a room to sit for 45 minutes (I’m still not sure why), so I talked to the people around me. I met a girl named Lise from Denmark (who is taller than me!), Luiza from Brazil and Ria from Taiwan. There was also a girl from Poland but we lost her and then never saw her again. Oops.

We ended up being led to a 7/11 to buy snacks and then to Toyosu park, a nearby park on the Tokyo Bay which is beautiful. There were some cherry blossoms, but it was a bit of a stretch to call what we were doing hanami, which they said was the plan. It was still a nice late-afternoon/evening activity and I got to chat with a few people. There were more people I met and had some conversations with, but there were so many that they all meld together in my little brain. Overall it was a good time, but very exhausting and the morning was a bit of a waste of time.

I decided to leave around 5:30. The campus is around 40-50 minutes away by bus, but I realized the bus wasn’t coming for another 20 minutes, so I decided to walk some of the bus route to pass the time, and catch it at a later stop. This ended up being a terrible idea, because when the bus caught up to me nearly half an hour later, it was completely full and just kept on going. So I started to wait for the next one, but as a different bus pulled up, I realized the bus I wanted to get on wasn’t coming for a long time. So instead I decided to get on the one that just pulled up, but I waited too long and it was full too. I ended up having to wait for a third bus, which was going to take me about a 15 minute walk away from the house instead of five minutes. Oh well, at least it was better than walking home from the start. What’s that? It was actually slower than that? Who is even doing this fact checking? This is my blog, I can lie if I want to!

It ended up taking nearly an hour and a half to get home, with much more walking than I planned. On the way home, though, I did walk by a river that had a great view the Skytree and some cherries lit by lanterns. I had dinner at home and had a nice, chill evening. Although, I started playing a game at around 11 and got sucked in and didn’t end up falling asleep until past 1am. The me last week that was falling asleep at 9pm is officially dead.

After sleeping in, I was still really tired so ended up lounging and sleeping until nearly 3pm, but after such a long exhausting day yesterday it was definitely needed. I did laundry and stayed inside because it rained all day again. Boring day, but necessary chill time.

Sunday was a bit more eventful, as I got out bright and early to go to the Kanamara festival in Kawasaki, otherwise known as the penis festival. It was a tradition for sex workers to come to the festival to pray for protection against STIs, but nowadays its more of a celebration and raises money for HIV research.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to go or not but multiple people told me I had to go and I decided it was worth getting out of bed for. I wasn’t sure I was at the right park until I saw people licking penis candies, and I figured I was near. It was a fun experience and very silly. There was some live music, plenty of food and interesting people. I even got to meet a ferret!

That was about it for this week. It wasn’t what I thought or hoped it would be, but not every week will be. I definitely miss home and friends, family and pets, but I’m trying to enjoy myself as much as I can, especially while it’s not too hot outside. Hopefully next week I can get to a couple of the gardens I missed, and I have some fun musical plans as well.

Until next week. Have a lovely day.
-Dan