First trip to Tokyo, for a Meetup

Today, I've finally stepped out of Tsukuba for the first time since coming here. Wanting to meet and talk to other locals, I've turned to Meetup for help. Meetup is a site dedicated to helping local people with similar interests meet each other. Today, I've joiend the Tokyo Culture Complex Meetup, which consists of Japanese and foreigners wanting to practice languages (mostly English) with each other. The Meetup is held every Sunday afternoon by a language school.

For the trip to Tokyo, I took the Tsukuba Express (TX) which is very fast and convenient. From Tsukuba Station, it only took about half an hour to reach Kita-Senju station, which is within Tokyo. From there, I took to Tokyo Metro to the Meetup place. Now, Tokyo's train system can be very intimidating at first, but Google Maps can easily help you find the best path to get to where you want, as it contains the train's schedule and the fares.

The Tsukuba Express

In Japan, every station has a fare adjustment machine. If the ticket you've bought wasn't enough to cover the distance to travel, you can use this machine to pay the difference instead of having to walk to the counter.

Train tickets in Japan are paper with magnetic strip on one side and printed information on the other side. Once you've entered the gate, the machine will punch a hole and print the date of entry onto the ticket.

At the Meetup, I've met some travelers from many countries and also many Japanese. Everyone's English was very good (not a single obvious grammatical mistake!) In an informal environment, we've discussed about many things such as Japan, Japanese culture, Korean culture and I've also shared about Thai culture. I've managed to learn many things about the various cultures that I wouldn't have been able to learn otherwise.

Some of the people I've talked with.

And that's it for this weekend. Tomorrow is Monday, time to get back to work!