By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University.
I just wanted to give a little update to the readers of this blog, and at the same time apologise for the lack of new posts the past couple of weeks.
I’ve already completed my first semester at Kim Il Sung University, and returned to my wife’s apartment in Tokyo, where I’ve been since mid-July.
Much of the past few weeks have been spent wandering the neon jungle of Shinjuku in a daze.
It was kind of an intense experience leaving Pyongyang after being there for three and a half months straight. Suddenly I was able to use the internet to my heart’s content, eat foods which I’d almost forgotten the flavour of, be outside past 9pm (we had a curfew in the dormitory), use a credit card, see and use vending machines, purchase from a 24 hour convenience store, and be surrounded by advertisements, foreign tourists, and people wearing diverse fashions. This was honestly a little bit overwhelming, so I took a week’s break, then spent some time catching up on business that had been procrastinated because I didn’t have regular internet access for so long.
Here are a couple photos from the past few weeks. Tokyo’s no doubt a huge contrast when compared with Pyongyang, but I find it’s that contrast which makes life over there (and here) so interesting!
A beautiful temple not far from the hustle and bustle of Shinjuku’s centre.
I only visited Shinjuku Gyo-en for the first time recently. It’s somewhere between a botanical garden, park, and a forest. It’s splendidly beautiful, very diverse, and located in the heart of Shinjuku. It’s Tokyo’s Moranbong Park in a way.
This tonkotsu ramen is truly the best.
In Akihabara, the heartland of Japanese nerd culture.
More Akihabara madness. The excesses of bourgeois society?
I marvel at technological wonders such as this automatic foreign currency exchange machine.
And examples of Japanese innovation such as these slippers that go over your shoes.
Also been spending good time catching up with people. My wife Yuka certainly deserves an honourable mention.
And this British anthropologist Ed, who is pictured eating spring rolls with mustard sauce in a Japanese diner.
Anyway, readers of From Perth to Pyongyang will be happy to hear that I’m now getting back into writing. With the materials I gathered from this previous semester, I plan to write a couple more blog posts which I will upload over the coming weeks (all previous blog posts were written and published from Pyongyang). I aim to get them all up before I leave at the end of August. On the 30th of August I will return to Pyongyang where I will begin my second semester at Kim Il Sung University, during which I’ll have a whole new set of adventures to blog about!
So, stay tuned for more soon!
Alek
Tokyo, Japan
