Thursday, April 5, First Orientation and Sannomiya

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.

I tried to get a nice picture of a flowering tree in front of one of the houses, but since it was nightttime,...

....it took...

...a couple tries.

This view refused not to be blurry.

That's better.

End day 3 in Japan. To be continued in Friday, April 6, Placement Test Part I and Art Club...