STUDY ABROAD: WEEK 3

SEPTEMBER 15

I was hoping for a lazy day today. I didn’t want to get dressed or spend money, but lo and behold - ! There is laundry to be done. On top of that, as soon as I hung my laundry out to dry, the storm hit. Clothes are soaked. Don’t care, better than trying to get the dryer to work. Seems there’s plenty of wind though, I’m sure they’ll dry off eventually.

SEPTEMBER 16

School was supposed to start today, but in the morning the typhoon was still hitting us relatively hard, so classes were canceled! Yeah, it’s windy, a blustery kind of windy, but it’s actually not that bad in my opinion. That means I’m going out in it. The store that I had previously bought my rain boots from was closing, so I bought a few other things on sale: slippers for inside my room, only 50 yen, and a pair of plastic/rubber shoes similar to Crocks but not. The prices seem pretty good in general, it’s a shame it’s closing.

From that shopping area I walked a little farther towards the station where there was another hyaku-en shop. For one specific item: a tension pole. In theory I can put it in my shower and dry clothes there on, I don’t know, maybe rainy days. It doesn’t seem as though it can hold much weight, but it’s worth a try.

Now, I guess I’ll catch up with my Youtube subscriptions.

SEPTEMBER 17

Classes finally started today: “Knowing Today’s Japan”, a survey class and “Conversation.” I was kind of worried in the survey class because she started us off saying that we will have to make surveys and ask students at the University. That part was okay, but the handout she gave us was loaded with some never-before-seen kanji. I was midway translating it when she started going around the room asking us each to read a line. Mind you, the bulk of the class were students who came this past March, and they were Chinese or Taiwanese, so they had a much better grasp on kanji than us new students. That being said, I fumbled through the reading and made a mental note to study more. The teacher, however, is actually very nice and cool. Once I get used to the class, I think it will be a lot of fun.

Conversation class went a lot smoother. Between kanji and speaking, I have a small leg up on speaking. Today we just talked mostly because our textbooks had not come in yet.

Other great news: my beloved gyuudon, beef and rice bowl, is still cheap and still delicious. Not only did I find Gun Gun Gurt, but it’s in a much larger bottle, and only 100 yen! Dinner was sushi at a kaitenzushi down the road from our apartment called Sushi-Ro. Cheap, delicious, and close. I have a feeling that we will go there often.

SEPTEMBER 18

The morning starts out with “Composition and kanji” class, with another awesome teacher. It looks like our study methods will be to divide up the weekly kanji between us six B-class students, and then present them: reading, definition, and example sentence. Add that to a quiz, and ending with writing a composition, and there you have it. Simple, to the point.

Drama on the other hand is just going to be fun I think. Basically, we watch [a part of] a Japanese drama, for example, we are starting with the Waterboys movie, and that is going to take a few weeks because we will also have discussions and dictation practice. I’m looking forward to it~

Another food side note: there is a place down in the food court that sells onigiri which are 1.5x larger than the normal convenient store sushi. The prices are still relatively cheap, especially for the size, it’s fresh, and there are tones of flavors! Got to start with Tuna and Salmon~~

SEPTEMBER 19

Grammar class with Mrs. Yamamoto. I am excited. I can already tell I will be learning a lot from this class. Maybe she is a little stricter than the other teachers, but I need that. Today we studied ‘ように’（you ni), which represents a change, and how its used in different forms of grammar. I’m kind of getting the hang of it.

Lunch was the International Welcome Party. There was so much food provided, sushi, chicken, sandwiches, chips, etc. But we barely had a chance to eat any of it! It was an open party, so other University students were more than welcome to come and meet the new exchange students. Meaning, they wanted to talk to us. They outnumbered us, so as some of them ate, the others talked to us, and we just really couldn’t catch a break or grab a plate full.

Then, I happened to notice people dancing outside the cafeteria. Could it be-? Yes! The dance circle was outside!! As soon as the party died down I went to check them out. They all seemed very talented, with genres ranging from hip hop, to break, popping… I was intimidated. My dancing experience was more like “exercise” in our basement at home. This is my chance though.

I went up to one of the girls, explaining that I was an exchange student and asking how I could join the group. She was only a freshman, so she passes me off to one of the hip-hop guys. He told me that if I spoke to their group leader it would probably be okay, but he hadn’t shown up yet.

I would have stuck around, but we needed to head back to our apartments to receive our bikes (provided by the school). It seemed as though they also practiced on Tuesday nights, so I promised I would come back then. Nothing was settled yet, but I knew, this was the group I wanted to join. I would have to put aside all my reservations and just go for this.

Receiving our bikes took a total of ten minutes. I could have gone back to the dancers, but the group wanted to go out and eat dinner. This time we had okonomiyaki, made on order, but not the kind you can mix together yourself. It was hard to find options without pork, so my experience was so-so, but I did get to speak to the Japanese students again. From there we headed to the station. There’s a large open area between the JR Station and the Meitetsu Station known for being a couple hang out. A couple guys actually tried to hit on the French girls— kind of my fault though. The guy waved for them to come over, and I gestured that he should be the one to come, though I didn’t think he actually would. He did, it got awkward, I’m sorry.

Thankfully, we were just on our way to another location. The building across the street had a glass elevator than went up to the 42 floor - the observation deck. We had a great view of the city at night, but we could only look at it from the west side. The other sides were part of a pay-to-enter space. Instead of doing that we headed back down and out to a Game Center. It was so loud there, the difference was palpable. We squeezed our group of about nine people into a purikura photo booth, took some pictures, and played the taiko drum game until about 10pm.

We really owe our upperclassmen a ton of thanks for helping us settle in and showing us around the city (again).

SEPTEMBER 20

We had our first history and culture class today. I don’t know why, but when class was over I was SUPER tired. So tired that I went home and took a nap.

In any case, starting next week we have to make a presentation to the class on any one subject in Japanese history. I volunteered to go on the first day, just so I can get it over with. But I’m nervous because I’ve never given a presentation completely in Japanese before. We’ll see how it goes I guess. Right now I’m trying to decide between presenting on the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), or when Islam came to Japan.

SEPTEMBER 21

The tiredness continued all day yesterday, but I slept in today so I feel fully rested!!

Raachael and Joy went to the Osu Temple today, so I ventured to join them on my bike. As if trying to navigate to an unknown location isn’t hard enough, there are just so many people that get in the way! I’m surprised I didn’t run into anyone today. It’s kind of like a video game— let’s see how many people I don’t hit today~

(Osu Temple)

I have finally been able to return to Osu. I remembered my trip from 2011, when I went to Osu with my host sister. I thought it would be easy to find the same route we walked, but boy was I wrong. The place is at least eight times larger than I remember; meaning the three streets we walked down was barely a fraction of the massive outdoor shopping mall that is Osu. There’s a ton of cool clothes and shoes… and bags… dangerous for my wallet.

After we had wandered up and down the streets a few times we headed back to the apartment and hung out on the 7th floor balcony. Mark was up there practicing dance a bit, but we kind of ended up borrowing his laptop to look up other dances that would be fun to do in costumes for Halloween. Rachael and Joy had already bought their costumes: Gachapin and Stitch. I’m jealous because I kind of wanted Stitch. No costume for me yet.

I also took the opportunity to dance a bit and catch up after three long weeks of not doing so. It felt great! I will never run again! Haha

Now I can approach the dance group again with a little more confidence~