Making friends: The first 3 months

One of my main concerns coming here was social. I was instructed by my company to not learn the language and all I could think is: how in the world am I supposed to make friends?! I'm a very social and outgoing person so it seemed like a terrible fate to be living somewhere for a year with no friends except those that I met at work. Don't get me wrong here. I love my coworkers and I met some great people at training but most of my training friends are far away or busy as are my coworkers. Also, there are not many foreigners in my city let alone ones who are similar in age to me that I can relate to.
At first, I attempted to boldly face this problem head on going to international friendly places like Roppongi in Tokyo and even went by the navy base a couple of times. Every time I would without a doubt meet people. The issue was that I was not meeting the kind of people who could be my friends. A lot of them were Japanese guys trying to pick up an American or another foreigner looking to "get friendly" with someone if you know what I mean. I would strike up conversations with them and then would casually mention my boyfriend. POOF! They would vanish.
I got pretty good at occupying myself by traveling or shopping or gaming but I started to get restless and just wanted some more companionship. Luckily, my Aunt has an acquaintance over here who I met with. She was awesome to chat with and showed me around Tokyo. The best thing she did for me though was introduce me to this adventure club of foreigners. It's basically a group that allows foreigners to meet others in a fun non-threatening environment. I have gone to a couple of their events and met a lot of people some of whom I have started to really chat with. I hope that this will help me really make some connections.
I'm going on a trip with them this weekend on a hike and hot spring trip. I'll keep you updated on my friend success rate.

Tokyo Day 4

My last day of summer vacation and in Tokyo :( I decided to hit up a couple of spots that I hadn't seen yet. First, I made my way back down to Harajuku. It was a Sunday so I wanted to see if people were dressed up or if the tourists and time had killed off that fad. Unfortunately, there was barely anyone dressed up and only one person who was dressed up was allowing pictures to be taken.

The one person allowing photos

After that, I headed over to the Meiji-jingu temple. It was very pretty! I especially enjoyed the walk over to the main temple. It was quite an amazing contrast to the scene of Harajuku located just minutes away by foot. My first stop was the gardens. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed by the gardens. I think that they must look prettier in the spring because there were barely any flowers. The coolest thing in the gardens was an ancient well that the emperor used to use. I got to wash my hands in it! It was a fun experience!

One of the largest tori gates in Japan.

The gardens

Ancient well

Meiji-jingu temple

After that, I headed over to the Roppongi area of Tokyo. My first stop was the Tokyo tower!

Me with the tower :)

It was basically like seeing the Eiffel Tower. I then went over to Roppongi Hills for some dinner and night life! I wanted to go there because all of the guide books I had said it was one of the most foreigner friendly places in Japan. They were right! Everything was in Japanese and English. This was a nice change for me for once since my Japanese is very poor. I had a great time! I found a little bar that was serving drinks for 300 yen (that's cheap!) and had a nice dance floor. About 50% of the people there were foreigners so I got to meet a lot of people who speak English! I also danced with a Japanese guy. It was an excellent way to end my Obon holiday!!

Tokyo Tower lit up with the moon