Today was the dorm entrance ceremony. We had to dress up very nice, and most unfortunately, I left my business suit at home, thinking I wouldn’t need it. WRONG. If you come to Japan and are going to attend a university, get a nice business suit!! Preferably in black. I’m so sad that I could have had the perfect outfit but left it behind. QQ.

At any rate, my friend Megumu warned me about it the night before, and I had her pick out an outfit for me. I still stood out like crazy, but at least I wasn’t in jeans. =B

The day started by everyone meeting in the genkan (entry way) at 9:30. Together we walked to campus and into a huge room where all the dorms met. We watched a video (that no one paid attention to), then the president and other guy talked for a while. Some people introduced themselves, then we were dismissed by dorm group to go to another room.

In the new room, we were given a packet with the rules of the dorm in it (all in Japanese), as well as some other information, such as a dorm meeting schedule and such. One lady talked for 30 minutes straight, then another guy talked for about 10 minutes. I’ll admit that I zoned out during both, since I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Afterward, we were all forced to introduce ourselves. I totally blew it too. I just said my name, my room number, and in very very poor Japanese I said, “I understand a little Japanese.” But I don’t think I said that right. Haha. Oh well.

After all the introductions, we went outside and took a group picture of all the girls in my dorm, as well a few administrative people. Chris was nearby, so I had him take a picture of the group as well:

After the picture, we got a free obento lunch.

No, I did not try the black stuff. I have no idea what it was. But the rest was oishii! (Delicious!)

Since I was all prettied up, I had Chloe take a picture of me:

After lunch, I got to talk to Kevin a little bit before the dorm had to go back to the school to go over the dorm rules. Luckily, all the English speakin’ folks were thrown into a group and several people who could speak some English got together to go over the rules with us. It took nearly 2 hours to go over the dorm rules, and we even skipped a section. -_-

I came back, took a nap, and at 6pm we had a dorm welcoming party. There was a lot of delicious food. Again we had to introduce ourselves, and this time I did a little bit better. I told them I liked Ajikan (Asian Kung-Fu Generation) and several girls went “Hee~~~~!” That pleased me. Haha. I probably could have said a few more things, but I’m scared to speak broken Japanese in front of so many people. Haha. =B

The nice thing about it was after we were all done eating, we kind of broke into little groups and several girls talked to Chloe and I in Japanese and even taught us how to say a few things. One of the girls, who is from Malaysia, said the best way to learn Japanese is to say whatever we want to say in English to a Japanese person, and have that person repeat it back to us in Japanese. I think I’m going to do that method, but also keep a notebook with me so I can write it down as well. My memory doesn’t work as well via audio than it does with writing.

It’s 10pm now, and luckily we don’t have anything until 12:15 tomorrow. We have to dress up again, and unfortunately I’m going to have to do a wardrobe repeat. Le sigh.

Ah well. Hopefully I’ll get more fun pictures tomorrow.

ETA: Picture from tonight’s party.

Hitomi, me, and Chloe.

It’s really quite easy, actually. I think NOT having 25 cent pieces makes things so much easier. There are 3 bills and 6 coins, whereas the US has 7 bills ($1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100) and 6 coins (1c, 5c, 10c, 25c, 50c, $1).

Here is the Japanese currency:

Another wonderful thing about Japanese money is that most places include tax in the price. So you don’t even have to sit there and think about what the hell the exact cost will be.

The exchange rate isn’t exact … Right now it’s about 98 yen to the US dollar. It’s just easier to round.

Pretty useful, imo.

Not much happened today. We went to the school at 10 to fill out some paperwork. We filled out papers for national health insurance, a copy of the alien registration certificate, and a form to open a bank account. After all that was done, we went to the president’s office, who rambled for a while. I didn’t understand anything except “benkyou” - study. I’m sure it was probably a motivational speech about how we will study hard!!

After we were all done, Chris, Chloe and I went to eat at the ramen place again. This time I took pictures – I had the same thing I ate last time: Pork and rice, and gyoza.

I also had some ice cream. This cost 100 yen, which is just over $1 at the moment:

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Today we went to Harajuku, Shibuya, and Shinjuku.

One of the very busy streets in Harajuku. This is where all the lolita shops and crazy cosplay kids hang out. I hear they’re a bunch of dicks – I didn’t try to interact with them.

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Today, after we were done doing our Alien Registration that took all of maybe 15 minutes, Chris, Chloe and I went to Kichijoji and Shinjuku. Here are tons of pictures from our little excursion.

In Shinjuku, we went into a photo booth and did these crazy pictures:

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I’m finally here, and so far I’ve been having a wonderful time. (Click photos for a bigger version)

I arrived at the airport around 11am for my 2:35pm flight. I got to hang out with my wonderful parents and my wonderful boyfriend for about an hour before going through security. I managed to stay strong up until the point where I kissed and hugged everyone goodbye - then the tears started coming. I smiled passed it, and somehow managed to not cry too much. As Chris described it, the moment was bittersweet.

We made it through security without any issues whatsoever. And we managed to switch seats with people to sit next to each other. Neither of us slept even a second on the entire flight. I watched one Japanese movie and played a lot of Bejeweled and Solitaire. I was thrilled when I was browsing through the “World Music” second and found AKFG’s WORLDWORLDWORLD album as one of the music selections. So I listened to that.

This was the very first sight I saw of Japan. I have to admit, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Haha. I had the stereotype in my head that the land was nothing but concrete and skyscrapers. In fact, it’s not really like that at all. I’ll be adding more pictures and making a video shortly of the area where I’m staying. It’s quite nice. When we got off the plane and through customs - which was also a painless process - we were greeted by two Asia University students.

One of them had stayed at CWU and became friends with Chris while she was over there, so she was the one to help us with everything. Asuka is her name.

The first thing I did was exchange money. Then we took our bags over to a delivery service counter and handed our bags over. Asuka took care of the paperwork for us to make sure it got to the right place. With our carry-on baggage in hand, we headed off to the trains.

I don’t quite recall how long it took on the train to get to Musashino - I think it was about 2 hours. We had to transfer twice after the initial train. We discovered that Chuo line is quite popular and… squishy. Haha. If you have claustrophobia or have issues with people being in your personal bubble, you’ll probably have a lot of problems with that train.

After we got into the city, we got into a taxi and went to the school. We met up with our main contact here, Yukio, and he walked us over to the dorms. I was shown my room briefly and got set up with the entry code/fingerprinting (more on this later), dropped my stuff off, then left. I met Asuka’s and Chris’s friend Megumu, and together we walked over to Chris’s dorm. After he got set up, we walked over to a nice little shopping area to eat Yakiniku.

This is probably going to be my favorite meal style. Nothing but meat meat meat meat meat and more meat!! We got to try tongue for the first time (I’m pretty sure it was cow), which was a bit chewy but very delicious. The way yakiniku works is you get a plate of meat, and in the middle of the table is a sort of cauldron of coals with a grate over it. You put the meat on the grate, let it cook for about 45 seconds to a minute, then put it on your plate and eat away.

I’m really not quite sure what all we had really. I know we had some beef, pork, and chicken. But there might have been other meat on that plate that I didn’t know about. The yummy drink was a cocktail of OJ and mystery yummy alcohol. In any case, it was freakin delicious for my first Japanese meal. By time we had finished eating, or maybe even in the middle of eating, both Chris and I were extremely tired. Afterward, we both went back to our dorms and promptly went to sleep.

Actually, I went to Megumu’s room to email my parents, since I had forgotten to bring an ethernet cord with me. After that, I went to my room and fell asleep around 11:30pm Japan time, or 7am PST (I had been awake nearly 24 hours).

I woke up briefly around 5am, then again at 8:30am. Finally I couldn’t sleep anymore, so I got up. My room was absolutely freezing, both in part because I couldn’t figure out how to work the heater/AC and also because there was a small window thing left open on my sliding door. I got up and sat around, wondering when my luggage would arrive. In the meantime, I started making a list of stuff I needed, unpacked my carry-on stuff, and took a picture of my small room.

I came to the realization somehow that the bags wouldn’t be delivered to the dorm - instead it would be delivered to the international office on campus, since that was the only address we had. I went to Megumu’s room and asked her if she would help me figure out where my bags were going. We walked over to the international office and luckily Yukio was there. He said he would call when they arrived.

At about noon, I got a call from a lady who didn’t speak barely any English, but I somehow was able to understand what she was saying (how awesome is that?). Chris’s and my bags had arrived at the office. I wandered over to the boys dorm and grabbed Chris, and together we got our bags. On our way out of carrying 100+ pounds of luggage each, we ran into an American teacher who had just came to Japan two weeks prior to us. He was there to teach English. He gave us some of his information and offered to be a sort of friend if we needed it, which was really nice. He was also super nice in the way that he helped me carry my bags down a flight of stairs.

After we got back to our dorms, I was able to take a shower and arrange some stuff. Then we met up with Megumu. While we were outside figuring out where we were going to go, we met up with another American girl named Chloe, and one other Japanese girl (I can’t remember her name unfortunately ). Together we walked down to a place called Donki Hote (pronounced Don Quixote. How fucking cool is that?). On the way there, we walked over a natural creek and saw these HUGE koi. They were awesome. I wanted to keep the orange and white one, which we dubbed Frank.

I managed to get an ethernet cord and an extension cord that had three prong sockets (the wall sockets are only two prong). After we shopped and got a bunch of stuff, we dropped off what we had and went over to an awesome Ramen place. I didn’t have ramen - I had gyoza, pork and rice. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me to take a picture of the meal before I ate. But Chris captured me eating some gyoza. We wandered back towards the dorm, where all but Asuka left Chris and me. We wandered around a bit, getting lost trying to find the equivalent of a dollar store (Asuka lives in another area). Eventually we met up with Megumu again and found the store. I bought a bunch of hangers and other misc stuff.

Chris and I were looking at cups and found this AWESOME Engrish cup. “I can hit and run!” We had to explain why it was so funny to Asuka. I also found some finger condoms. Again, unfortunately, I did not have my camera to take a picture. After we were done shopping, we wandered over to AU and sat in their sort of dining room area. Asuka brought us some Takoyaki, Octopus donut-type balls. Chris JUST told me they were octopus - I had no idea when I ate it. Either way, it was very good. Haha. I would have ate more except I was still full from our earlier ramen excursion. We came back just before 6, and I spent an hour trying to organize my clothes and such. The dorm had a meeting for all the new students to the dorm - there are two Korean girls, one girl from Mongolia, and the girl who translated for us is from Malaysia. Quite the diverse group.

In this city, there are very strict recycling laws. Everything must be sorted. I’ll make another post about that in the next few days.

After the meeting, I came back to my room and finished organizing. I got caught up on all my twitter posts, and then decided to write this! Tomorrow we have a meeting to do Alien registration. Once my room is completely decorated, expect pictures! I’ll also be making a video of the area, as well as a post and/or video of the mundane everyday things for my Kevin.

Ja ne!

I have only SIXTEEN days left before I head off to Japan. TO TOKYO. It’s still surreal for me that I’ll actually be doing something I’ve dreamed of doing since I was 13. How exciting! How scary! I’m beside myself right now.

To help myself become better prepared to leave, I’m making this list to make sure I don’t forget anything. Some of this list is borrowed from here.

Things to do:

1. Get international health insurance from here.
2. Call any credit or debit companies to let them know when you will leave (don’t want any accounts frozen)
3. Make list of addresses, phone numbers, emergency contact, etc.
4. Make copies of credit cards, debit cards, id, passport or anything else. Make copies for you and or parents (just in case).
5. Register at U.S Department of State to let them know you will be out of the country.

Things to buy:

1. Rechargeable batteries. (2000 mAH or better)
2. One or two simple picture frames with pictures of family and friends.

Ah, class time! I’ll finish this later. I will add onto this list as I think of more things.

ETA:

Before you leave the country, make sure your electronics can convert power, and that you have the correct plug converter. This site is useful to find out that information.

Once you get to your new country, try to find all miscellaneous items you need at a dollar store. If you’re not staying for a long time, this is a good alternative to use for easy stuff, like a trash can, laundry hamper, tissues, paper, and more.

More tips later.