Wow… there’s real people actually commenting on this blog! And here I was thinking the only people who read this were my family and robots.

I received this comment a couple of days ago:

Hi,

I came across your site and that it was interesting because I want to study in Japan too. I would be great if you could talk a little more about dorm life and what it’s like living in Japan as a foreigner.

Thanks a bunch!!

Alison B.

So, per request, I’ll give you the honest to goodness details of my dorm experience in Japan.

It sucked. Big time.

Just because I say that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the same for everyone. My particular school’s dorm was all female and had a strictly enforced 11pm curfew, dorm meetings, and required bathroom and common area cleaning once a month (but the bathroom and common area cleaning were done on separate days, so really you’re cleaning twice a month). The common area included kitchen and dining area, where as bathroom cleaning included the bathroom and sweeping the floor in the hallway (of your specific wing only).

The dorm had a ryobosan - a dorm mother. She was a tiny, manipulative, passive-aggressive old lady who obviously did not like her job and took it out on everyone around here (to her credit, this particular year housed some very irresponsible girls). When someone didn’t do something correctly - whether it’s sorting the garbage (more on that in just a minute) or cleaning up after themselves - EVERYONE had to listen to her bitch at us for one person’s irresponsibility. These made for uncomfortable and long dorm meetings - which were held once a month. And, if you were walking around, trying to grab a drink from a vending machine, or doing some cooking, or doing your floor cleaning - if she was anywhere in the vicinity, she would bee-line to you like a moth to a flame and criticize whatever you were doing in a very condescending way.

The Tokyo area has a pretty strict garbage sorting method. During the orientation we had when we first got there, we were given a rather hefty guide on how to sort your trash. Particular items go in a particular bin, and if you did it wrong, the ryobosan would hunt you down and tell you how to do it correctly, but not before she made you suffer first and every step along the way.

The worst part about living in the dorm was the curfew. When I had been told about it before I went there, I thought, oh it’ll be no problem, 11pm is late enough for me to still have fun.

WRONG.

Although you were allowed to stay out IF you filled out a form and turned it in BEFORE you left for the night, if you missed one curfew, you were pretty much disowned by the dorm mother and she would growl and snarl at you from that point forward. I missed curfew only once due to an amazingly long Gackt concert (which was AWESOME), and after that day, the dorm mother would be extra rude in a very Japanese way.

Eleven pm was also quiet hours. But don’t be surprised if you have people standing right outside your door giggling in the echo-y hallway. My room happened to be directly across from the bathroom, so I got to hear everyone go in and out and slam doors shut and wash their hands. A handy tool to diffuse sound is a fan. Highly recommend it.

In addition to quiet hours, you were also not allowed to cook after 11pm. There was a lot of miscommunication in regards to this. Someone had told me you could cook downstairs as long as you remembered to turn the gas off afterward. Then later someone told me you couldn’t cook downstairs. So people would cook upstairs after 11pm. But then either because of people’s lack of respect for keeping a common space clean, or who knows what, they have now denied ANY cooking after 11pm.

Keep in mind, you are PAYING to live in these dorms.

~*~*~

My advice to anyone who is planning to study abroad in Japan - if you have lived on your own, are a full grown adult who knows how to take care of yourself, have issues dealing with passive-aggressive behavior, or do not like very community-oriented mindset (in which case you shouldn’t be going to Japan in the first place): DO NOT stay in dorms. Make arrangements to find an apartment; it will save your sanity.

However, if your dorm doesn’t have the millions of strict rules that mine had, you might want to look into it. My dorm was an international dorm, so there were girls from all over the Eastern world there - from Thai to Indonesians to Koreans to Chinese to Malaysians. There were only four white females in the dorm, including myself, and we were all from America. The cultural diversity had its moments.

~*~*~

As for living in Japan as a foreigner, I think it will really depend on the region you’re living in. For instance, Japanese people in the Tokyo area - though an international center - seem to have a very negative opinion of foreigners. If you’re a white person especially, people WILL stare at you no matter where you are - whether you’re out having dinner, or walking around on campus, or even in the streets of Shibuya where there are tons of foreigners. Don’t be surprised if you’re discriminated against, since Japan is a very homogeneous culture.

If you can speak Japanese very well, everyone will marvel at your ability. If you struggle, people will still marvel that you’re trying to speak it. It’s kind of silly, I think, the reaction people give when you can speak their language. But don’t expect people to correct your mistakes. Most Japanese won’t, unless they have had experience studying or living abroad (at least that’s what I’ve found out).

You will occasionally stumble upon people who are extremely nice and giving. I once was trying to find a club in Shibuya (navigating that place is near impossible), and after getting lost, a random Japanese guy stopped and helped me find the place. He even walked me all the way there and asked other people how to get there. Granted, he wasn’t a Tokyolite - he was from Okinawa. From what I understand, the southern regions of Japan have much more laid-back Japanese people who are nice and willing to help.

~*~*~

Definitely, definitely, for sure and for true, take the opportunity to go to Japan if you’re a student of Japanese. I highly recommend it, because you might just find out things about yourself and the culture you’re studying that you wouldn’t have known otherwise.

~*~*~

Also, there’s a fantastic online resource that you can use to help improve your Japanese - or any language really. The website is Lang-8.com. The way the site works is you write journal entries in your non-native language, and native speakers will come along and correct your mistakes. It’s really neat, and I know the Japanese/English side is very active. You’ll find out grammatical points that you might not learn for years in a classroom. It’s a great community, and I highly recommend it as well.

~*~*~

If you have any questions about Japan, life in Tokyo, or anything else, please feel free to leave a comment.

Our particular group has three different teachers. Monday we have Oka-sensei, Tuesday and Friday we have Ozaki-sensei, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays we have Fukuda-sensei.

Monday started out with a tiny little lady who is probably in her late forties or early fifties. She has a perky personality. This first week was mostly full of review. Monday was spent going over simple things like “I will go to the hospital by train.” Etc. etc. We did simple exercises that were very engaging, and she actually made us THINK of our responses when she asked us questions. I’m not used to having to use my brain so much in Japanese class!

Tuesday we had Ozaki-sensei. She’s an adorable woman in her thirties, who brought pictures of celebrities including Ichiro, Brad Pitt, and to our dismay, Britney Spears. We went over the next section of chapter 5 that Oka-sensei did not cover. She asked us our birthdays, and told us what our zodiacs are called in Japanese. I very much enjoy Ozaki-sensei, as she is willing to teach us little bits of Japanese that aren’t included in the lessons. And she writes in Kanji.

Wednesday and Thursday we had Fukuda-sensei. She’s a strange woman who likes to follow the schedule without straying. She refused to write in Kanji, and overall her method is for students who may not have had Japanese as long as us. It was kind of frustrating, but in the end I think it’ll be good when we finally get to things that I may not already know.

Fukuda-sensei will be the woman who teaches us and tests us on Kanji. She also goes along with the book, like the other two teachers. We started on Chapter 5, and when the week was over, we were just getting into Chapter 7.

Our days consist of daily quizzes in different formats - whether it be in listening and dictation, things straight from the book, or tiny kanji quizzes. The sensei will ask us questions in which we need to respond about US personally. For example, “What are you doing this weekend?” Response: “This weekend I will go to Shinjuku by train.” Stuff like that.

We read from the book. We write on the board. We do assignments in class and have them checked the same day.

Everything is done IN Japanese. There has been no English whatsoever, past the teacher asking “(Something) in English is …” and we respond.

We use four books: a Lesson book, a grammar and vocabulary book, an exercise book, and a Kanji book.

Honestly, I LOVE these books. They’re engaging, they MAKE you think, and it’s a good way to learn. If I were to teach Japanese, these are the books I would use.

It’s only been the first week, and there have been only a few new vocabulary words that I have learned - things like “scissors” and “egg” - which I should have known long before this point, in my opinion. I’m not really going to use this first week to gauge how easy or hard the classes are going to be. Once I get about three weeks in, then I think I’ll be able to tell.

But as far as I’m concerned, this has been the best course of action I’ve taken in order to learn the language I fell in love with 10 years ago.

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!

Well, I have to admit that part two of the Visa process is almost not worth writing about. Chris, the guy also attending AU, and I drove down to Seattle early in the morning. We got to the consulate at 9:30, which is when they open. We went in, turned in 1 visa application, 1 photo, passport and the Certificate of Eligibility. I filled out a Fedex form to have our stuff mailed back to us. And that was it.

The hardest part of the whole process was finding parking and figuring out which elevator corridor to go to in the 60 story building.

We returned home just minutes before noon.

Our financial aid short-term loan went through, so we bought our plane tickets.

All that’s left is to get our returned Visas, pack, and go.

So here’s my fancy new countdown:

play backgammon

I’m very pleased and happy to announce that I am now in possession of my Certificate of Eligibility from Japan!! (Ignore my shitty picture.) What exactly does a Certificate of Eligibility do? Well, it speeds up the Visa application process by a lot, supposedly. When you apply for to study abroad in Japan, your school of choice should give you a fancy form for you to fill out. They then send it to the Ministry of Justice. Several MONTHS later, you receive this fancy certificate. I understand now why it took so long to get all my acceptance paperwork - we were waiting for the Ministry of Justice to issue my Certificate of Eligibility. We sent the form to the school way back at the end of October. The date on the certificate shows January 20th. Obviously, it takes a while.

As part of my very small acceptance package, I also received my Admissions Certificate. It comes on fancy, easily voidable paper. Now, supposedly, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan’s website, I will need the following items: passport two 45mm x 45mm passport-type photos taken within the previous six months (stateless persons must submit three photos) two official visa application forms, available at the embassy or consulate documents certifying the purpose of the visit (see the accompanying table)

The “accompanying table” says:

College Student

1.) A copy of a certificate of admission from the educational institution where the person concerned intends to study. In the case where he or she intends to study as a research student or an auditor, documents certifying the substance of the research or the subjects and the number of lessons from the educational institution concerned.

2.) Documents certifying that the person concerned can defray all expenses incurred during the stay in Japan. In cases where the expenses incurred during the stay in Japan are defrayed by another person, documents certifying the income of the person who intends to defray all expenses and documents showing why he or she intends to defray all expenses for the person concerned are required.

Now, I called the consulate yesterday to get verification on some of the questions found on the Visa Application, such as “What do I put for ‘Address of hotels or names and addresses of persons with whom applicant intends to stay’?” and other questions that are found at the bottom of the application. Well, here’s what you put:

Click to see full image

Also, I was trying to ask about the #2 piece of additional documents, but the guy I talked to insisted that I just needed the basic essentials found in the first blockquote. I don’t really trust what he says, so I’m going to bring everything with me anyways.

You can count on me blogging my Visa application process. I’ll be going to get it on Friday. Stay tuned.