Studying Abroad in Japan: April 2012

Always gotta start the day with breakfast:

Remember the nerf ball?

I ate it.

Like most breads here, it had filling. It was good.

Then I took inventory of the stuff I'd gotten the day before.

The wrapper from a delicious cookie.

The paper bag from Labi for my electronic dictionary.

The box for my electronic dictionary.

The other side of the box, which I didn't bother to read. I'd need the dictionary first anyway.

The electronic dictionary itself, the EX-word.

Then I took a moment to fulfill my duty....

A chance to put my origami skills to work :D

Which was an unfun process. I made myself feel better by looking out the window at my wonderful view.

I was startled by a sudden hard rain, which I recorded but can't upload. I guess everyone knows what rain looks like anyway.

I ate lunch, another anpan with red bean paste filling. It differed from the other one in that it didn't have mysterious yellow chunks of mango or something in the filling.

The cherry blossom trees outside looking thin with blossoms.

Yum.

The sky has cleared up a bit.

And then I less than eagerly walked to campus to take a placement test. The roads are confusing, so every time I walk to and from campus, even now, I have a vague feeling that I'm going a different way, even when I recognize the streets.

Since I went in the afternoon to take the placement test, I only had enough time to finish the written portion of the test. The first part of the written section was multiple choice with sentences written mostly in hiragana, which is one of the two phonetic alphabets. After being lulled into thinking this test was a little bit too easy, I got to a page where I was supposed to fill in the readings for underlined kanji or write kanji for underlined readings. This page was ridiculously hard, not only because I didn't remember how to write the kanji, but also because I had never encountered a large number of the words on the page. The page after that was reading comprehension, where you read a short passage and answered the questions. The first couple were reasonably difficult, but the last two were once again filled with vocabulary I didn't know. I did my best.

After my wonderful test, I went to the bridge near the Intercultural Studies building to meet MA-san for the Fine Arts Club (美術部).

Ah! Wow, in my previous description of the Activities Fair, I completely forgot to mention that I went to the Fine Arts Club's table. We had lost contact with the other people we were with, so T-san left me at the Art Club table to talk to the members there while she went to go look for our friends. The Art Club members were a little put off since I so clearly was an English speaker, and they weren't that good at English. I told them it was okay to use Japanese, but since I didn't know any of the Japanese words for art-related things, it was a tough slog. Somehow we managed a conversation and exchanged contact information. I didn't have cell phone yet, so I asked MA-san to email me to let me know when and where to meet.

So on Friday, I went to the bridge to meet the proxies MA-san had arranged for me to meet. They were holding a sign with 美術部 written on it, but since I hadn't memorized the kanji yet, I just guessed that the kanji looked vaguely familiar and went to talk to them. They told me that we needed to wait for another person, but when he didn't show up, one girl kept waiting while the other took me to the building where Art Club is held. The campus has an upper and lower section, and there are two options from getting from one to the other: something like 10 unending flights of steep stairs plus a 5 minute walk, or a roundabout uphill walk with only a couple flights of stairs. For my first trip to upper campus, we took the 10 flights of stairs. We were very out of breath by the time we reached the top.

After our 5 minute walk, we took another flight of stairs to the second floor of the building (I haven't figured out its name yet). The door is a sliding door, something I'm still getting used to. There was a large area inside the door packed with pairs of shoes and abandoned posters and miscellaneous other objects. I found a spot to put my shoes and walked on my toes to the main floor, which was raised about 3-4 inches about the shoe area. We entered the first door on the left.

I entered with a "Konnichiwa," ducking my head a couple times. Then I placed my bag where the people in the room directed me to and joined the group at the kotatsu. A kotatsu is a table with quilted edges and a heater inside to keep legs warm. The heater wasn't on, but body heat had heated the space under the table so that it helped keep off some of the chill in the room. I greeted MA-san (since she was the only person I knew there) and thanked her for contacting me. Then people offered me a drink (milk tea, green tea, black tea, Coke Zero) and various sweets from the table. MA-san provided tape and a marker to make nametags as we did self-introductions. Since my kanji knowledge is poor, they didn't help me much, even though the nametags seemed to be for my benefit, since they only decided to make them after I came.

While most of the members sat at the kotatsus and talked, drank, and munched on cookies and candies, some of the upperclassmen members prepared dinner on the other side of the room.

MA-san drew a portrait of me during the conversation.

I was one of the first people to receive a bowl of spaghetti and tomato sauce. After asking if I could use them, they also gave me a pair of chopsticks. Before we ate, the club leader (部長 buchou) proposed a toast. Everyone hurried to pour some liquid into their cups. After saying a brief speech, we all said, "Kanpai!", tapped our cups together, and drank. Then they finished serving people pasta and we began to eat.

I commented, "I"ve never eaten spaghetti with chopsticks before!" To my amusement, the people around me immediately looked embarrassed and quickly assured me that they usually don't either, it's just that they didn't have any forks.

Some people are very enthusiastic about drinking. Even before the kanpai, some of the guys had been asking about the sake in the fridge. (The drinking age in Japan is 20, by the way.) After we finished eating, those guys and some girls starting drinking and turned red very quickly with the Asian blush. Not all of us drank though. Here's a few pictures I took later on. The reason some of the students are wearing suits is that the first years went to the ceremony for new Japanese students earlier that day.

It's shameful but I forgot everyone's names.

The first guy on the left is the club leader.

Ooh, they noticed.

See the how the light in the background is dark except for the pink part? Most of the lights on that half of the room are out.

We resorted to drawing to help the conversation keep its flow. We drew to help explain the meanings of words, or just because we felt like drawing something, whether it was related to the conversation or not. And yeah, that's Inuyasha. The bombs are on there because I told them about Pitt's bomb threats, which was difficult without knowing the words for "bomb," "threat," or "warning."

This page mostly concerned shrines and priest(ess) dress.

At the bottom of the page, we were discussing the different kinds of bicycles in Japan. They have bicycles (called 自転車 jitensha), motorcycles (called bikes), and I think they also have mopeds (called scooters). I drew the American version of scooter, and they called it something else, although I can't remember what.　（UPDATE 4-22-2012: Scooters are called "kickboards". American kickboards, the kind you use when you learn how to swim, are called "beatboards.") It's a reminder that even though the Japanese use many English words, the meanings or the words themselves usually have altered slightly.

I ended up staying really late, so one of the guys was kind and took me home on his motorcycle. It was raining a little, but despite that, it was really exciting riding a motorcycle for the first time. I was surprised to see that the seat opened to reveal a storage space, from which he pulled out another helmet. I was wearing a skirt, so I had to sit sidesaddle, which was scary for both of us. When we started moving, I pulled my feet away from the back wheel and found myself glad I have good balance as we navigated sharp turns and stopped and started at intersections. We got a little lost, so we stopped a few times to ask for directions. The last guy we asked pointed us straight up the road. After I got off the motorcycle, returned the helmet, thanked F-san for driving me home, and waved him goodbye, I saw the guy who gave us directions walking up the dorm's driveway. He lives here too! I realized. We smiled at each other and introduced ourselves as we entered the building. Then we separated and I haven't seen him since. I don't remember his name anyway.

When I got back to my room, I remember that I had laundry sitting in the dryer from earlier. It was still wet when I took it out. I didn't want to pay money for another cycle, so once again, I hung my clothes all over my room to dry. At least they were clean this time.

The cardboard is from my futon box. I eventually asked the office how I was supposed to dispose of it, and was told that I had to make into smaller pieces and put it in the burnable garbage, but it was a while before I actually got around to ripping it up.

My nametag. In romaji, it says, "Ni-nen-sei koku-sai-bun-ka (next line: my name)." In English, "2nd year student. Intercultural studies. (my name)." The tape used for the nametag is a kind I've never seen before. It's strong lengthwise, but rips very easily along its width to form strips with straight edges. How useful.

After a good night's rest, I didn't do anything of interest Saturday except take some pictures of the mushroom shaped chocolate cookies I brought home from Art Club.

Kinoko Mountain. "Kinoko" is "mushroom."

It's a lopsy looking mushroom though. Those cookies always look like that.

Saturday night, I once again looked at the view...

....And decided to take another attempt at eating the mysterious grape jellyfish in a squeezable packet that the Art Club members had given me. It's not that it tastes bad, it's just that the texture and the way it plumps out the container all at once into my mouth is a little...offputting.

See what I mean?

It's "light" grape-flavored, but it tasted like almost-regular-strength grape soda to me.

At the bottom you can see the diagram instructions for squishing up the insides so the stuff comes out easier.

I don't know, maybe it's the fact that I associate that kind of container with a drink like CapriSun, rather than a half liquid, half jello solid, but I wasn't able to finish it, even though the container wasn't that big.

Anyway, stayed tuned for the next installment in April 8, Sunday Outing....

Thursday morning, I admired the bottle of tea I'd bought at the university convenience store the previous day, ate breakfast, and walked to campus to attend the Exchange Student Orientation.

Anpan, bread with red bean paste inside.

Yum.

I noticed my toilet paper, in addition to being green, has rectangle sheets instead of square ones.

The tree hedge has wooden supports in it.

Looking out at the practice field from the Intercultural Studies building.

Sports practice. Looks like tennis.

This was included in the envelope full of papers I got at orientation.

Not excited about this process.

After orientation, I went with a group of Tutors and exchange students back to the Softbank in Sumiyoshi. I ended up buying a phone in one of the Tutors' name. I had difficulty understanding the conditions of the phone, so they had to explain it many, many times. After the long wait we spent for everyone to get their phones, we took the train to Sannomiya (三宮 or 三ノ宮) to buy electronic dictionaries at the big electronics store there. The mall was packed with people.

A bridge we crossed from the station to the mall.

The department building.

Inside the mall.

Non-blurry version.

Labi Sannomiya, a several-story store with an overwhelming number of products.

We took the escalator up to the third floor to where the electronic dictionaries were. After looking at the wall full of dictionaries, some without noticeable differences, we asked a salesperson to help us choose. One exchange student wanted to know if they offered Italian with any of the dictionaries, but it was a rare, complicated, and expensive option. We ended up buying the same dictionary, the Casio EX-word.

After that, we split up and I stayed with the tutor who had helped me buy my phone, KM-san. She asked me what I wanted to eat, and she found me a place where we could eat okonomiyaki, a sort of pancake made of egg, vegetables, etc. On the way to the restaurant (which took us a while to find), we paused to look at a used-book store.

There were shelves and shelves of manga in the cramped store.

On this shelf, I spotted Harry Potter prominently displayed.

Then we left and finally found the okonomiyaki restaurant.

My Seafood Mix (Mayo) okonomiyaki.

I couldn't help but be fascinated by the curling stuff on top.

Cutting the okonomiyaki with the spatula isn't as easy as it looks, especially since stuff like shrimp and squid don't cut easy.

After our meal, KM-san showed me the bus to take to get back. She waited with me until the bus came and I got on. Since it was nighttime, the bus was really crowded. I struggled to keep my purse and shopping bags from bumping people. Sannomiya is pretty far from Gomotenjin, so I was on the bus for quite a while. At one of the bus stops, I had to let go of the bar while we shifted to let more people squeeze onto the bus. The bus started moving again before I got my grip back, and I stumbled a moment. After that, there was a large gap of people around me that made me feel self-conscious as the clumsy foreigner. Eventually, some seats near the front emptied and I was able to sit down and count out the fare. I was interested to see a little elementary school girl among all the adults. She was so small, but even she had trouble moving or being moved past on the bus. She also looked much more comfortable on the bus than I felt. I was jealous.

The walk from the bus stop was quiet and peaceful after my hectic day.