Day 10-14 - Jan 15-19

Well, nothing really exciting has happened in these past several days.  Interesting though, definitely that.

So Friday night I went and finally got my cell phone.  My several day quest was finally over.  Unfortunately, the Softbank store in Shinjuku only had one prepaid model, which was the non-flip one.  *sad*  I selected the black one and then wandered around Shinjuku for an hour while they got it ready or whatever they do during that time.  Of course, since I didn't have a watch or a phone I had no idea how long I'd been wandering, which was rather annoying.  But I have a phone now!  Which means I can tell time again! :P

I had heard Li was going to Akihabara on Saturday, so I got in touch with him and we both went over there around noon.  So many maid cafes lol.  I felt really bad for the (tons of) maids out on the street handing out fliers since it was mildly cold but there was a rather cold breeze almost constantly, so they must have been freezing their aprons off.  One of the first things I was greeted with (besides maids) was a gigantic billboard advertising the Unlimited Blade Works movie that comes out on the 23rd of this month.  Holy crap everything comes out this month @_@  Li showed me around Akiba and we wandered through some stores.  I really need to come back to the Club Sega arcade and try that Gundam POD.  The stores were really cool and I managed to make it out of Akiba after ~5 hours having only spent $50 or so (almost all of it on Fate stuff of course), but oh man were my feet hurting after all that walking/standing.  I think I'm going to hit up Harajuku next Sunday, though, with the UBW movie coming out on Saturday....

Sunday I pretty much sat around and did nothing while trying to get work done, though I did actually manage to do some...

Monday I had a meeting with Ichimura-sensei at 3pm so that I could buy my textbook from her.  Well, I was going to be getting to her office right on time, until the train stopped at Harajuku for about 10 minutes.  I thought, hmm, thats rather odd, but eventually the train started going again.  Not for long though, because we spent about 40 minutes at the next stop (Shibuya).  By the time I finally got to TUJ it was 4:30pm, which left me with 20 minutes to grab some food and walk 10 minutes to the other TUJ building for my 4:50pm class x_x

As of today though, my life is over forever until next Thursday.  I have an interview in my Conversational Japanese class tomorrow which I need to start preparing for; I need to write a 1-2 page paper in Japanese for Thursday, which will then become a ~5 minute speech that I will do next Thursday; I need to write the paper for a case study in my marketing class due Friday; I also need to write a 5-7 page paper for my business ethics class which is due next Tuesday; and finally I need to do research and write up an outline using said research for Japanese corporate structure due next Tuesday.  Oh, and on top of that I need to be applying to grad schools, internships, and jobs, just about all of which have deadlines at the beginning of February (2 weeks away).  I'magonna die @_@

Day 5-9 - Jan 11-14

Ok, so I haven't updated in a little while.  That's primarily because I didn't do anything on Monday except work on applications, and because classes started on Tuesday.  So Tuesday/Thursday are my bad days; I have class from 10:20am straight through until 5:20pm, with only a 40 min break from 3:10pm-3:50pm.  Yea, that kind of wears you out.  Also, I'm sad now because I realized my Monday/Wednesday class is actually a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class.  Oh well, at least its still only that one class on those days.

I need to get my textbooks tomorrow, which I'm not looking forward to.  Hopefully my excess student loans come in soon, b/c I'll need that temporarily free money.  I also need to pick up a new flash drive since somewhere between the US and here my flash drive broke (only registers as a removable device drive, ex: a card reader, which it is not). 

On Wednesday I applied for my Alien Registration Card.  It took me forever to find the building, so I ended up not having time to get the health insurance (same building, different floor).  Also, I apparently forgot to get the Certificate of Matters, which means I couldn't get a cell phone on Wednesday like I was planning.  I went back this morning to get it, but of course I ended up forgetting not only my passport, but the receipt from my application yesterday.  *sigh* looks like I'm going back tomorrow.

I did manage to get my Commuter Pass and Suica card, which means for a one-time fee of about $160 I'm able to ride the JR Yamanote line from the Takadanobaba station to the Yamachi station (closest to school) and any station between them for free (for 3 months).  Its definitely worth it though, since it would normally cost me around $5 round trip every day, and between the home and school stations is Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinagawa (basically a large portion of the places I'll want to go regularly).  The whole commute is about 50 minutes: 10 to the station, 30 on the train, and then 10 to school.  Also, I haven't really had any issues with the train being packed except for today.  Today was definitely packed.  It was at the point where you think they can't possibly fit another person into the train, and then 5 more get on.  At least that only lasts for maybe 10 minutes, since usually everyone gets off at Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Shinagawa.

I already have a few essays assigned, which I am not looking forward to.  At least the 10+ page one is something we are required to show progress on weekly throughout the whole semester, so it shouldn't be that bad, I mean, that's about a page a week.  Conversational Japanese is the troublesome one though.  They gave us a placement test on the first day, which I epic failed (0/20).  Yea, the test was comprised almost entirely of stuff from 101 (I like X more than Y, I like X better, I like Y less, out of X, Y, and Z I like Z the most), which I quickly realized I have not used in a very long time (at least a year).  On top of that, apparently our Japanese program is even more intense than the one in TUJ, which they said was "way more difficult than the programs at any of your home universities."  Their JPN 101 consists of Hiragana, Katakana, the te-form, some amount of vocab, and around 50 Kanji.  I'm beginning to dislike how much they rushed our vocab learning.  I mean, around 30 vocab and 15 kanji every other day?  There's no way I could retain all of that.  Do that over the course of 2.5 years and you have someone like me who knows a good amount about Japanese, but can't remember 9/10 of the vocab hes learned.  So yea, I talked to the Professor today and she was suggesting I go down to their 102 class, unless I felt like I could get myself caught back up real quick.  I don't want to mess with getting a different course approved back at UR, so my only option is to benkyoushimasu!

@_@

Day 4 - Jan 10

A couple hours after I got up this morning Tom asked if I wanted to join him in a trip to Tokyo Tower.  We headed out around noon, and once we got on the JR we realized we had no idea which stop to get off at.  We ended up riding all the way around to Akihabara and decided we had gone too far, so we hopped on the JR going the opposite direction and kept a lookout for the Tower, which we knew was nearby one of the stations.  After finally spotting it, we got off at the Omamatsuchou (or something like that) station.  The walk to the Tower wasn't very bad at all, and there were a couple nice parks and a big shrine on the way there.  There was about a 30 minute wait to get our tickets (~800 yen) to take the elevator up to the first observation deck.  The view from that was really cool.  After waiting about an hour (still not quite sure why) we got our tickets (600 yen) to go up to the "Special Observatory," which was the highest observation deck.  That view was really really nice.  Even though we were starving, we waited around on that deck for about an hour for the sun to set behind Mt. Fuji so we could get some nice sunset pics and then some pics of the city lights.  I took way too many pictures of the same scenery today (over 400).  Going through them after we got back around 8 PM was not fun at all.

Oh, I forgot to mention that while we were up at the top observation deck there was an earthquake!  At first I couldn't tell when Tom said he felt something, but then when I leaned against the railing I could feel the heavy vibrations coming through the tower.  They weren't very fast, but they definitely did not feel like something normal, plus the tower was swaying ever so slightly.  I don't know if anyone else on the deck noticed it since it was so small, but still, that was pretty intense.

Aside: For those who don't know, Tokyo Tower is 333m tall (the upper observation deck is 250m), and the Eiffel Tower is only 320m.  Pretty cool.

Day 3 - Jan 9

Today started off being a very uneventful day.  I had decided to just sit around all day and get myself settled in, which I did until about 4 PM when Tom asked if I wanted to go to Shinjuku with him.  We were out and on our way to the station a little after 5 PM.  The train ride there wasn't too difficult, and I definitely think I'm going to be taking the Yamanote to class instead of the metro, especially since I won't need to change trains.  Shinjuku was crazy packed, even more so since it was Saturday night.  We wandered around for a bit marveling at the intense amount of lighting until we decided to go into a Bic Camera store.  Holy crap that place was cool.  They fit about 5 Best Buys into 4 floors each only a bit bigger than my room.  Afterwards we wandered around a bit more taking some pictures.  Happened across several homeless people at the edge of this park kind of place as well.  Japan is very interesting; one bum had left his sleeping mat out with his bedding perfectly folded on top of it and a couple small books next to it, all completely unattended.  Over the course of the night I also saw several people walking around with snowboards, which rather confused me.  We stopped by a McDonald's, but unfortunately they didn't have shaku-shaku chicken T_T so I just got a chicken sandwich. 

The train back to Takadanobaba was extremely packed, and when I was leaving the station the gate wouldn't let me through.  I became very confused and a security lady came up and started questioning me in Japanese, which didn't help.  I was able to stumble my way through enough to understand that I couldn't go through that gate and needed to go downstairs and go out a different one.  I think that one must have been a transfer gate and I just wasn't paying attention.  So anyways, I head down and go out the other gate, which let me through without trouble.  I had asked Tom (who went through the first gate ahead of me) to just wait for me out in front of the station, but when I got there he was nowhere to be found.  I looked around for about 10 minutes and he finally came out of the station.  Apparently he stood there waiting for me at the gate and the security lady asked him what he was doing after a couple minutes.  Eventually she game him some random ticket which let him through and he then went through some other gate and came out of the Big Box building.  We checked that out, which was pretty cool.  I picked up an umbrella at the 100 yen store inside the Big Box and then we headed back to the dorm after stopping at a conbini on the way.

So... I don't think it was a commercial, but for some reason there were Capybaras chillin in the water at a temple on tv for a good few minutes.  Those things have got to be the most disinterested animal on the planet.  You could be trying to kill them and they'd probably still just sit there and look off to the side like, "meh."

Day 2 - Jan 8

Today ranged from rather eventful to extremely boring.  For starters, the alarm on the room phone never went off, so it was sheer luck that I got up at 7:10 AM.  I got a shower and talked to Tsuki and then went off to our 8 AM meeting with our Dorm Manager.  Oh, and I forgot to mention in yesterday's post, but the toilet here is CRAZY.  The handle has two directions: small flush and big flush, and HOLY CRAP the big flush is ridiculous.  So anyways, after the meeting we all went downstairs to meet the student guides who would be showing us the area, how to get to school, the area around the school, and finally the school itself.  After all that it was noon, so I grabbed some butterscotch bread from the convenience store next to the school and ate with Rachel (who goes to art school) and Fay(sp?) who is British and goes to school in California.  From 1-5:30PM we all had lots of people talking at us telling us the usual orientation stuff.  After that we met up with our guides from that morning again and headed back to the dorms. 

The subways on the way back were EXTREMELY crowded, to the point where one extra person crammed himself in and from several feet away I was squished back with others.  After we finally got back to Takadanobaba Tom (from Slovakia), Lee (his 2nd semester abroad at TUJ), and I went off on our own to get some foodstuffs.  Since my knowledge of Kanji is - as usual - lacking, I found shopping for food rather difficult.  Once we got back to the building we each went back to our rooms and I made some of the food I bought.  Since then I've been writing these two entries while watching Doraemon and now some magic show called God Hands II.  My pictures from the tour today are posted in my facebook albums.

There are no more school-organized plans until classes start on Tuesday except for an ice-skating trip tomorrow, which I don't believe I'll be going on since I can't find skates that will fit me even in the US.  As for the rest of tonight, I'm feeling rather tired and since I found out how to make the air conditioner work as a heater, I think I'll just sit in for the night and get some rest.  As for tomorrow, I have no idea. 
じゃね！

Day 1 - Jan 7

Well now, where do I begin?  Today was one heck of a day(s).  I guess the whole thing never really hit me until we were taxiing to the runway.  Once it did though, I started feeling incredibly homesick.  That quickly passed though, once the agonizingly long flight took its hold on me.  The moral I learned from that flight was two-fold: the window seat direcly above the wing sucks (especially because you can see the several thousand pound turbine shake a foot or so in each direction every time there is turbulence, which does not inspire confidence), and I need to have a watch or something that can tell me the time when I need to look at it every 5 minutes.

So, once I landed things started going much better.  Narita airport was surprisingly not that crowded, despite Temple saying this was the peak travel season.  After a while I got my bags, went out and exchanged $300 for about ￥30,000, then purchased the bus ticket as the arrival instructions told me.  I was surprised that this bus had a manual transmission, I thought they were automatic.  I made this discovery when the driver demonstrated his horrible tendency to constantly be in too high a gear so that they made this horrible sound.  The driver was apparently also terrible at being in the fast lane, which I realized when I saw another bus headed for the same destination that left 30 minutes after us pass us.  After at least two hours on that bus we finally arrived at the hotel where we were to meet the Temple representative.  There were a couple other people on the bus headed for Temple, so I ended up sharing a taxi with this girl named Arianna(sp?).  She packed even more than I did, so not only could the trunk not close, but we had to shove bags in the back seat with us. 

By the time I finally reached my room it was around 7 PM (see my first Japan album on facebook for pics).  I did my absolute best to stay up late enough to talk to Tsuki, which lasted only until 10 PM.  I really wanted to talk to my parents (who were both on skype at the time) but I just did not have the energy, so instead I set the phone alarm and passed out.

Note: I only got through half of this last night before I was too tired to write any more.