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!

@_@