Day 6 - Finally, some rest

Oh, so I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures to flickr. The site is http://www.flickr.com/photos/yuugaijin/, if you feel like checking them out. The ones up right now are kind of out of order, but I've also edited my old posts to include pictures.


Today was finally my rest day. Woke up late, and everyone already left the house. I got to hang out, watch a few tv shows, and chat with some friends back home. Definitely helped. It also gave me a chance to upload those photos. I had hoped to maybe hang out with some oregon friends today, but it was so windy and rainy I just didn't want to leave the house. I watched a few japanese television programs, but didn't really know what was going on… There was one that was a childrens english channel, which was interesting to watch. I also watched a strange, prank-playing show? It was kind of like improveverywhere, where they do random things in a large way, but a little more mean hearted. For instance, they staged a large crowd in a park, then when someone walked by, had someone shout "everyone to get down, it's dangerous!", then have another person shout "run away!" and have the entire park population run away. It was hilarious, but I couldn't help but feel a little bad for the person they played the prank on. They were so confused, and sometimes more than a little frightened.


Rio was home a little later, so we sat and had tea and talked for some time. Mama came home at about 8, and we decided that since it was so late, Mama, Rio, Yuri, and I went out for dinner. Yuri is also living with me here with mama, and is a cousin, I think. They say things so fast that I kind of forget… Both she and Rio speak very good english, so if they're reading this, I'm sorry if I get your names wrong! We went to a fancy italian restaurant and ordered a bunch of stuff. I was only able to take a few pictures 'cause my battery was dying, but there was a lot more food. We started off with escargot, and it was my first time eating it. They brought the dish out sizzling hot!

Next was a sweet, crunchy bread to dip in the garlic-butter sauce. Then came salad, which was delicious, and I wish I had taken a picture, because it was beautiful. Next was pasta. Two huge dishes of pasta that the four of us shared. One was in a cream sauce, and had ham, and the other a marinara sauce with seafood. Soooooo good. Sorry, but I didn't take a picture of those either. Guess I'll just have to go back. ┐(‘～`；)┌ We were all pretty full after that, but had ordered pizza, too. Japanese Italian pizza is pretty interesting:

I don't know if it's just because I've never had real Italian pizza, but the eggplant, raw meat, and cubes of tomatoes threw me a little. Still, it was delicious.

We got back home, and watched some more tv. There was some sort of domestic dispute outside. It seems a neighbor was doing renovations and making their roof bigger, but another neighbor called the city council on them because they weren't building to code, or didn't have a permit or something. It was way more interesting listening to them than the tv, so I don't even remember what was on. That settled down eventually and I had tea with the family, and tried something new called Monaka (最中), which was almost like a cookie wafer, with anko inside. 

Really tasty

We watched a figure skating competition. I guess it's pretty big here, and in asia in general. I had no idea, since we don't really show it in the states unless it's the olympics. There's a pretty famous skater from Japan that Rio was rooting for, Yuzuru Hanyu, who's only 17 and lives in Sendai, where the earthquake and tsunami happened last year. He place third in the competition, much to Rio's delight. 

Tomorrow I finally get to buy my own teiki, a sort of bus/train/subway pass that you can also use in some convenience stores. I was that the US could have things so interconnected, it's so convenient! I've been borrowing a teiki from Mama for the past couple of days. The one I'll be getting is more specific, with certain train lines and exits, while this one is more general. After getting those, a couple people from the OUS group hope to head over to a festival tomorrow as well. I'm suuuuper excited!

Day 5 - I guess I'm always going to be busy, huh?

Today was my first break from orientation. I thought it would be a nice lazy day, where I can finally wind down and relax a little. I was wrong.


Thankfully, I got to sleep in, and slept until about 10, and then had breakfast with the family. However, after spending a few minutes unpacking my luggage, mama called me to go. Turns out we're going to visit papa in the hospital! I might not have mentioned it before, but before I came to Japan, the Katayama family agreed to host a study abroad student. Between that time and me getting here, Mr Katayama caught a cold, which got worse, and winded up landing him in the hospital. He's still there now, and slowly recovering, but I didn't get to meet him until today.


However, before I could go to the hospital, Miri-chan and I got to go to Harajuku! Woooooooow! It was amazing!

You know in highschool, when all the classes got out at the same time, and the hallways were so crowded you couldn't walk 3 feet without bumping into someone, and had to walk so slowly that the entire 10min break between classes was taken up getting to class? This was even more crowded. It's a good thing I didn't lose Miri-chan, because she still doesn't have a cell phone, and if she did get lost, she'd have a hard time getting back on her own. Together we roamed the main strip, Takeshita street, and got to enjoy the interesting clothes and accessories. Miri-chan hadn't done a Purikura/photobooth before, so we found a place and had a crazy time of getting that done. I did it before with the whole waseda group, but doing it on our own was a daunting task, and we ran out of time editing pictures. Eventually I will put up pictures, but I'm just to lazy to do it right now. After purikura, we got food at mcdonalds (My first time in japan!) It was weird, because they put egg on all their burgers. I got a egg teriyaku burger, and it was pretty good, if messy. We also ended up getting crepes before going to see papa.

Getting to the hospital was a trial of its own. We didn't look at any maps before entering the station at Harajuku, so we had to ask someone how to get to the right station and nearly missed it. We finally got to the hospital, and after buying flowers for papa, couldn't find mama. And that's when my cellphone died. After some more sweet directions, we managed to find mama, and found out that the don't let the patients have flowers for individuals in the hospital, they all go to a mutual waiting area on the floor, so mama kept them to put on the table at home.

I finally got to meet papa, who was very sweet, if quiet, probably because he's still sick. I didn't feel good about asking why he was sick, and when he would get better, but I hope he will before I go back home.


On the way back, Mama, Miri-chan and I stopped in Shunjuku. Turns out that the station is actually part of an enormous shopping center, kind of like costco, but bigger. We sampled a bunch of different delicious foods from hokkaido on the 6th floor, then worked our way down through floors and floors of different clothes and furniture and other miscellany. I got to try cantaloupe from hokkaido, and it was probably the best I've ever had.


We got back to the house, and I remembered finally to sign up for classes. I'm taking… 8 of them. I didn't want to take an intensive japanese course, which would be 5 of the 7 possibly japanese credits I'd get, so I'm taking a bunch of 1 credit classes instead. I'm also taking an econ and a lit class in english:


Japanese:
Enjoying Life, Culture & Seasonal Events
Honorific expressions for business 3-4
Learning Japanese through Food 2- 3
Practicing Natural Conversation Activities 2-3
Living in Japan 1-2
"Kanji" Encountered in Town 2-3


English:
Economic Development 01
Contemporary Japanese Literature

After signing up, we went out to shop again, to get some basics for Miri-chan. That was a bit hectic because the store we went to was already closing. Mama pretty much forced her way in and bought whatever she wanted anyway. Then we went to a supermarket and bought food for dinner. The sushi was huge!

 

I couldn't eat the squid. It was too cute. And also kind of scary, staring up at me with those creepy dead eyes. Nnnnn. Couldn't do it. 

Found out my room has a heater! I'm finally warm! I'm sitting here in my room writing, and I don't have to huddle under the covers to keep from freezing. This might be okay after all. I have high hopes now, Japan. Don't disappoint.

Day 4 - busy busy busy

Today started with breakfast with the family. The youngest daughter was here, Rio-san, and she ate breakfast with me and mama(who insists on my calling her mama). After that, I took the train with Mama to Shinjuku, where we split, and I went the rest of the way to waseda on my own. This morning we had orientation regarding what kinds of classes we should take. I'm going to end up taking an economics class, a modern japanese literature class, and a bunch of Japanese classes (6!) that only meet one hour a week. A lot of them look really interesting, especially "Learning Japanese through Food".


On the way into the orientation today, the group and I noticed the campus was really busy, and when orientation was over, we realized that the clubs and circles on campus were showing up today as a sort of "rush". Well, rush is a very simple way of explaining it. It holds none of the desperation, excitement, and all over just crazy, hectic-ness of what happened today. The streets in japan are pretty narrow already, so when the streets of the waseda campus are filled with booths and clubs searching for possible new members, it becomes a claustrophobic bottleneck of eager hands passing out fliers. I'd be walking just fine, checking out a few interesting booths, when I'd be onset by a mob of people, dumping their club's info into my hands, chattering away in whatever hodgepodge of pseudo-english they could think of. It's extremely exciting and a little intimidating at once. Some clubs were typically Japanese, like the biwa-playing club, or the aikido club, but some looked really cool. There's a number dance groups on campus, about two do traditional japanese dance. We got to see one of them preform, and man, do they have energy. I was amazed. The other makes their own costumes and travels japan on long weekends and breaks. Other interesting clubs included a table-top gaming club, a pokemon fan club, some sort of german thrash metal music enjoyment circle (what?), and the best of all, Waseneko, a group that goes about, feeding the stray cats that live on campus, and doing fund-raisers to gain money if some of the cats get ill. They were soooooo cute! Ugh. I dunno if I'll join the group, but it's certianly interesting. According to the website, there's over 300 clubs and circles on campus. The difficulty is finding the ones that are okay with and can accommodate someone who doesn't speak japanese very well. But I look forward to the next couple of days, when I get to sign up for classes, and take another look at the types of clubs I can join. Suuuuuper excited.


Anyway, after that, I got to go meet up with some other waseda students, and study abroad students who've been in the program for the past year. They brought us to a cell phone shop and I got to pick out my cell phone! Even though it was free, it's way better than my american free phone. A lovely aqua blue, it has a 13.1 megapixel camera that makes an annoying noise whenever I take a photo, infrared for exchanging information with other phones, and most importantly, that little hole so I can attach a bunch of adorable japanese charms from it. If you wanna contact me, and don't mind paying out the butt to call international, you can call me at 011-81-80-08056822392 or maybe 011-81-90-08056822392. I haven't found out which one is the right cell-phone code yet. Another way is to message me. In japan, cell phones get emails, not texts, so my email is 0hb325440cj5v0h@ezweb.ne.jp   That will send an email straight to my phone! The wonders of japan never cease.


After getting cell phones, the group moved on to get dinner. We went to what I can only describe as a Japanese version of Shari's. It had almost the same color scheme, the seats were the same style, it just had the whole feel of Shari's to it. The one different thing it had was a drink counter that you went to on you own. You could get whatever you wanted, and as much as you wanted, for a flat fee of like, 300 yen. Pretty cool.

That was a kind of boring dinner, but after that Tamarra and I went to a nearby bakery and I bought a beautiful cake called a Sakura Roll cake, and it had mochi and sweet bean paste rolled inside.

 

When I got home I had a second dinner with Mama (I forgot to tell her I already ate, and I couldn't tell her no. She's so sweet.), Miri, and a new face, Saori(?) who actually studied at PSU a year ago. She's a friend of mama.


Conversation after dinner was a whirlwind. I'm not sure I completely followed everything mama said, but a lot of it was just… wow. We talked about the president, and grammar, and different places to not go in tokyo, and the earthquake and tsunami last year, and how there's so many earthquakes, and she's afraid the house will fall down so she sleeps in the living room when there's an earthquake… There was a part where we ended up taking about nuclear proliferation, I think, it was a little confusing there.


I'm so cold right now. Mama doesn't really have heating, so I get to sit up here on the second floor on my bed, in the cold while I type this. I expect that it'll be nice come summer, but for now I'm freezing. Summer can't come soon enough.


Also, if anyone knows what a Raffle Cleaner is, let me know. They have them in almost all of the classrooms here…

Day 3 - Chaos

Oh man, where to start today? There's so much interesting fodder. This morning, Tamarra and I went down to the St Germain bakery. Had a delicious "curry" roll that had ham or something in it. I want to eat so many.

Went to uni for more orientation, and learned about train-perverts. And taxi-perverts. Apparently  it's not a good idea to ride in the front seat of a taxi if you're on your own. Even if you're a guy, they can (and did!) pull off to a secluded place and molest you. Yay Japan. We learned some less scary/more practical things like how to choose and ride the train system. Soooooooo confusing. Thankfully it ended pretty quickly, and we went for lunch at a chinese food place that I didn't like too much, and there was a woman smoking in the next booth.

The main, big thing that happened today was meeting the homestays. Gone are the days of hanging out with Tamarra in our hotel room, it's time to move in with a real Japanese family! Hooo boy. I've been worried about this for a long while, but nothing really compares to actually meeting them. The first and only one of the family that I got to meet until… 10 minutes ago, was the mother of the family, "Mama" Katayama. Very nice woman, but the only thing I could think when I met her is how genki genki genki she is. This woman does not stop for a moment. Every second she's moving about, picking things up, going over here, talking about this and that. It's a good thing she speaks mainly Japanese, I feel like I'm going to learn a lot from her.


Not only her, but Mama is keeping another student in her "guest house", an 18-year-old Korean girl, Miri-san, who's going to Meiji university. She just got to Japan today, but has a known the Katayamas for awhile. The two of them, in the same house, is a little overwhelming. They really feed off of each others energy, and reflect each others nerves, so it's becomes a cacophony of Japanese when they're together. We decided to go get alien registration cards today, rather than tomorrow, but that meant we'd both need 2 copies of passport-sized photos. I was fine, but Miri couldn't find hers, so the two of them spent half an hour tearing through her things trying to find them, to no avail.


Another surprise, is that Mama keeps a maid(?), or at least employes a woman from Thailand(?) who doesn't speak much Japanese. She's very nice, if quiet, but also has a good sense of humor. She and I bonded over laughing at the antics of Mama and Miri as they fumbled over locking doors and unpacking bags, etc.


Eventually everything settled down a bit.  We made Okonomiyaki for dinner, which was an interesting experience. I discovered that I dislike Kimchi, but okonomiyaki is pretty good with ketchup, honey mustard, and okonomiyaki-sauce. Not something I'm going to do often.

Finally, I got to meet one of Mama's daughter's Riyo, who used to study at Waseda. She plays piano well, and has braces. She's also done study abroad in australia, and is very good at english.


This is my new room for the next four months:

That's as far as I got before deciding to turn in. Because I'm freaking tired.

Day 2 - The Reckoning

I don't know why I decided to make a blog. It was a bad idea. I didn't last time I was in Japan, so I guess it should be something I should do. I got the day off to a great start by falling up some stairs. Tamarra and I went for breakfast at a French bakery, and on the way back I tripped in the hotel. I now have a good-sized pair of bruises on my hip. Horay. On the plus side, the food was delicious. Had a pastry with cheese and apple in it, and a really good cheese sandwich. Sorry about the poor image quality, it's a little dark in the hotel room.

Today was the second day of orientation, and we learned how horrible a kid named Paul was to his homestay family. It didn't really help to decrease my fears of somehow horribly offending my family. We meet them tomorrow night, and I guess I'll figure it out then.

The other traumatic experience of the day was taking the J-CAT. Japanese Computerized Adaptive Test. Last year I took it online, before I was supposed to come to Japan. I got about a 140? This wasn't much different, and I got a 162, but that puts me in the same class. So I'm taking 200-level classes here. Doesn't matter too much, since I'm officially done with my Japanese major. I got a C+ in my JPN 415 class, so that's done, over, officially off my check list. All that's left is econ. Which should not be difficult. Unless I can't sign up for the classes I need, but I don't need to worry about that until tomorrow. 

I realized that at this point, most of the pictures I've posted have been food. Today will not break that pattern. We had lunch at a place called Moss burger, where I had some sort of chili-onion crazy thing:

And Marie Sato, the Waseda OUS coordinator took us to dinner at a pretty nice traditional restaurant. All this delicious food for less than 2000 yen!

 

Also, most of the names of my posts are stupid because I'm writing these at night and cannot be clever.

Day 1 - まだ疲れている

Today was my first full day in Japan. The room I'm staying in in the hotel is freaking tiny, but I guess I should expected that. There was hardly room for two people and four suitcases. I started off the today bonding with my roommate Tamarra. It turns out we're both total nerds, brought our DSs, and are fans of Doctor Who. I showed her my wind-up dalek. We've decided together to keep an Achievements list for things we accomplish in our stay. Here's the list so far: We'll think up interesting names later…


Buy breakfast alone on the first day
Successfully sign up for classes --- "Hit the okay button!"
Visit a shrine
Visit 5 shrines √√√√√
Visit a temple 
Visit 5 temples √√√√√
Eat good sushi --- "Something smells fishy"
Buy something from a vending machine
Buy something differend from 5 different vending machine
-Cold
-Hot
-Food
-Toy/Umbrella
Visit
-Tattoo Museum
-Condom Store
-Ryokan
-Karaoke Bar
-Edo Period Park
-Kyoto
-Nara
-Sanrio Puro Land
-Tokyo Sky Tree
-Square Enix Store
Traditional Japanese play
Disney Land and Disney Sea
Buy a Japanese book
Have 1 of each denomination of Japanese currency (up to 10000) --- "Get ALL of the Money"
Eat at a Ramen Shop
Eat/Drink in a Tabehodai/Nomihodai --- "Eat ALL of the things!"
Take part in a Nomikai
Survive three weeks without getting hit by a cyclist


I'll add more as we make more up. For breakfast we wandered down to a nearby convenience store and bought some generic food. I found Chopper candy!

After breakfast, we went to the first day of orientation by bus, and almost got lost from the rest the group. Spent too much time on too much stuff that I won't be able to remember after I go to bed tonight anyway, then we wandered the Waseda campus. Had lunch at a place that served Indian curry, and the biggest naan I've ever seen. 

And it was delicious.

Then we walked back to the hotel. But before we could actually go to the hotel, the group decided to go to the arcade, in the BIG BOX store nearby. Rather than being civilized and taking elevators, we hiked the 7 floors of stairs to the arcade so the 10 of us could take a group photo in a tiny purikura photobooth. Then we returned to the hotel to rest a little bit.


Dinner was ramen, and that was pretty great. 

Tried to go to a pub after, but since Waseda's graduation was today, but the graduates had it reserved. So we went to an alehouse instead. I discovered that peach-flavored sake only tastes like peach, so it's hard to tell how much your drinking. And that pretty much any Japanese food I try is delicious.