Our Japanese language school challenged us to complete four missions. The rules were to not use our phones (eg google maps) and practice our Japanese with locals. We were given an instant camera and some money .. and off we went!

Useful Phrases of the Week:

English Phrase	How to Say in Japanese	Japanese Writing
How do I get to Ueno?	Ueno made dōyatte ikeba ii desu ka.	上野までどやっていけばいいですか。
How was your weekend?	Shūmatsu wa dō deshita ka.	週末はどうでしたか。
It was fun / enjoyable.	Tanoshikatta desu.	楽しかったです。
It is delicious.	Oishii desu.	おいしいです。
I can’t eat almonds. I have an allergy.	Almonds wa chotto…. Arerugi nandesu.	アーモンドはちょっと… アレルギなんです。

Mission 1: Getting Luck at Yushima Shrine

It was a 22 minute train ride from our school to Yushima Shrine. We looked at the train map and found our station (Yushima), but Ian felt that since the mission was to practice our Japanese, so he went up to the booth and asked.. IN JAPANESE… “how do we get to Yushima?” The station employee responded in Japanese, “Oedo Line directly to Yushima.” First part of mission accomplished.

Upon arrival, we learn that this shrine is also known as the Shrine of Scholars. Many students come here to wish for successful test results. Our teacher asked us to come here, purchase a wooden plaque with the rat symbol (this year’s zodiac), and write a wish on it.

We decide to keep going with practicing our Japanese, and do our best to write, “Do Best on Japanese!” Our teacher later informed us our sentence structure gave the luck to other students and not ourselves.. oh well.. good karma will come our way for that! This mission instructed us to ask a local person to take a photo of us with the instant camera. We found a group of young guys and I went up to ask them. They happily obliged, although we had to teach them how to use the camera. Ian then hung up our wooden plaque.

We went up to the wooden boxes and each grabbed an “Omikuji” - a written fortune. Ian’s fortune overall is “small luck” and my overall was “future luck” (this is a less lucky fortunate than Ian’s as his represents immediate little luck). After you draw your omikuji, you can tie it onto a nearby fence or take it home. We took ours home so we can practice reading the japanese.

Mission 2: Shopping at Ameyoko Market

We asked one of the ladies at the shrine to direct us to Ameyoko Market. It was a great opportunity to practice understanding, “turn left”, “turn right”, and “go straight”. This was helped by her usage of hand signals! It was less than a 10 minute walk when we arrived at a street market that used to be famous for selling candy and snacks. Nowadays, there are clothing shops and many seafood markets. Our mission was to find a local vendor and buy either ほうじ茶 (roasted green tea) or せんべり (rice crackers). We wandered the streets and couldn’t find any, so decided to stop at a shop and just ask for these two items. To be honest, we had no idea what either were supposed to be… but lucky us, we stopped at a tea shop and so, they had both! We bought a bag of the roasted green tea so we could drink it at home. It is delicious.

Mission 3: Photographing at Ueno Park

Our final mission was to walk to Ueno Park. The park itself didn’t require further instruction as it is one street away from Ameyoko Market. The challenge was to find a very specific statue that we only had a photo of. Fear not! We found a park map which was very visual and showed a little photo of the exact statue we were seeking. We arrived and had two missions here: 1) Ask someone to give us the name of this statue in Kanji (Chinese Characters) and write it down in Hiragana (Japanese alphabet) and 2) Take a photo in front of the statue with a local person. Well - we killed two birds with one stone. I asked a lady and her mother to help us with the statue name. They actually had no idea and were reading the statue tablet to figure it out. I ended up showing them a picture of the park map and they then read it to me in hiragana. The elderly mom was in charge of snapping a photo of us afterwards and were so very excited by all our “missions” as japanese students in Tokyo.

Bonus Mission: Find 花園稲荷神社 (Hanazono Inari Jinja Shrine)

We could have finished at mission 3, but there was a bonus mission and of course, we are overachievers and had to find it. We still had one hour left before our deadline to return back to the school, so we raced around the park to find it. The maps were not helpful and so we decided to ask two construction workers in the park. Here is how the conversation went:

Diane: (in Japanese) We are trying to find Hanazono Shrine.

Construction Worker: (in English) Can we speak English instead?

Diane: (in English) Oh, but we are studying Japanese and need to practice.

Construction Worker: (in English) Oh.. but I am Chinese… just working here..

Diane: (in Chinese) well then, let’s speak in Chinese, do you know where Hanazono Shrine?

At some point during this exchange, Ian had already figured out where it was. We then quickly raced ourselves to the shrine to get our photo to complete this bonus mission.