If there's a Japanese phrase/pecularity I include here, I'm only going to explain it once, so you better remember it! Lots of things are pretty untranslateable so I usually keep the Japanese term in most times. Okay, I think that's it, read on!
Week One: Aug. 28-Sept. 2, 2006
Monday/Tuesday August 28/29, 2006
I had said goodbye to Bekah the Sunday before, just before she went down with Mom and Dad to move in to college, and then this morning I had said goodbye to my dad. Later in the morning (I had a 12:10 pm flight), Mom drove me to the airport and went with me through check-in, then we said goodbye before security. Both of us broke down in tears when we hugged goodbye!! It was really sad. But you know, it's only three and a half months! It could be a lot longer. It won't be so bad.
In line for check-in I'd seen Aubrey and Alex, then after security I found Casey in the waiting area, and the other two joined us too. Of course the first thing he and Aubrey do is start kicking around a hacky-sack!! Ridiculous. Anyway, there wasn't a whole lot of waiting before we could get on the plane, and settle in for the loooonnggg flight. Which was fine, no problems or anything, just extremely long (I took a few naps), and once we got there we got through passport control and customs and all of that just fine. Then we got out to the meeting area and Hyung-Hye ran up to me and gave me a hug! yay Hyung-Hye! She was really happy to see all of us, and since I hadn't seen her since May, I was happy to see her too. We met some other student volunteers and I saw Kudo-san again (the housing director, she was there in January too). Converted my money (I brought $500 in US cash to convert), sent my big bag on ahead to my future permanent residence, bought a bus ticket, then got on the bus along with everyone else who'd arrived in that time frame.
I started talking to this one girl, Lisa, and sat next to her during the bus ride. It turns out she's from Seattle, but goes to school in California, so we had a common subject to discuss there. We arrived back at good old Makuhari, OVTA building (just like Jan-term. OVTA is like a hotel in that it has rooms, but it's more of a "training facility," with classrooms and other such things as well) and checked into our rooms there. Most everyone went back downstairs and we sat around chatting and introducing ourselves (the most common topic being "I am so tired/jetlagged!"). Then we all (IES students and the Japanese volunteers) went to go get dinner in one big gaijin (foreigner) clump. We walked over to the Carrefour shopping center thingy and went to the food court. I wasn't very hungry so I just got a melon cream soda :D Melon soda!!! I fell in love with melon soda in January, it is just amazing.
Melon cream soda!
Miwa and Melissa. Melissa tried the takoyaki, dumplings with bits of octopus inside. (I don't go anywhere near octopus, of course.)
Then we walked back to OVTA and kind of stood around the lobby talking again. More people had arrived, from the buses after ours, so we met them. Even though we were all really tired, about five of us (me, Lisa, and these guys Jakub, Matt, and Randy) decided to walk around the area, and then went up to the little lounge across the hall from Lisa's room and watched some crazy Japanese TV. People would walk by the lounge, and the walls were clear so we'd wave at them and invite them to join us, and they would. Around 9:30 or so everyone went to bed cause we were all still tired.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
And the orientation week begins. Breakfast at 8:30, orientation, lunch, more orientation. More meeting of new people and talking to them; it seems lots of people here are really cool. We had to get up in front of everyone and introduce ourselves (with a microphone! And there are about 60 of us! scaryy) so after I heard several people confess to being anime/manga nerds, I deliberately threw out there the fact that I was a TOKYOPOP intern this summer, and I distinctly heard this collective intake of breath following it, hahaha. We had to say our goals and of course Casey said "My goal is to buy a Nintendo Wii while I'm here," haha. And this other guy said "My goal is to be the greatest Pokemon master" ahahahaaaaa it was so hilarious (this was after he said "Not gonna lie, I'm in love with Sailor Moon" ahahahaaa). Oh! And I saw Ishikawa-san (another IES employee) again, which was really cool. It turns out she's been trying to get TOKYOPOP's Tokyo office to host a field placement internship student for a while now, but they keep backing out on her, so she told me while I'm there I should try and name-drop IES so students from that can come and do what I did! Hahaha.
During the first break I got onto the computer lab and sent an email to my parents telling them it was okay to call me, so they did, and it was nice to talk to them, even though it wasn't for very long and I was a little distracted since our next session was about to start.
So far I'm just proud of myself for not relying on Casey or anyone I knew previously and not reaching out and meeting new people. Fortunately, this is that fertile period so reminiscent of freshman year of college when everyone's eager for friends, so it's not very hard. I'm also trying not to rely on the people I've already met and hung out with a few times; I don't want to be a burden on them and limit both myself and them from meeting other new people. I'm just being open and friendly, everything you're supposed to do.
For lunch we went to the Carrefour food court again, and this time I got KFC because all of the traditional Japanese food places there are still pretty unappetizing to me, oh well. Then we had some more (boring, sorry Hyung-Hye!) sessions and then finally free time for about an hour until this scavenger hunt around the Makuhari area. The scavenger hunt was pretty fun, and once everyone was done with that we came back to OVTA and were given 1000 yen ($10, for future reference you can just move the decimal over two places and you've got a rough conversion) for dinner, woohoo! Then everyone was just kinda standing around, and Casey and Aubrey and their people were talking about going to Chiba, and we were going to join them, but they were taking too long and we were hungry so we just went to the station where I'd seen some ad for something that looked like curry, which was indeed curry, at this little station diner collection of restaurants, and we ate there. Then we got Baskin Robbins, which was delicious, and then we wandered around and ended up at this karaoke place on the top floor of the Makuhari Messe mall place, which turned out to be pretty fun. We struggled with figuring out the karaoke machine (good thing I still remembered from January) and eventually sang some songs and it was good times. Then back to OVTA, and sleep!
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Got up for breakfast again around 8, only this time the day's activities began at 8:30 and not 9 as before, with us going over to Kanda University in a huge clump of gaijin. Seriously, 60 foreigners walking around, we are a formidable force. Once there, we had an "academic session" which was just them talking about the classes we could take, then we worked on filling out our class registration sheets, then it was tour time. Two ePals led us around campus and attempted to explain in English (pretty amusing) what was what. (ePals is a system you can sign up for where you're paired with a student from your university who will do things with you and introduce you to the area and you can both benefit from the connection. I signed up for one but she goes to Meikai, where I haven't been yet.) The high point of the tour was coming across the "Poetry Corner" where there was some hilarious Engrish "poetry" written with magnetic words, and we all laughed about it. For lunch we just went back to the cafeteria we'd seen with cheap food, and had that. Curry again for me, but it was good. The cafeteria was definitely full of Japanese students, mostly club people who had come early since school hasn't started yet, which was an interesting experience.
Walking around Kanda, we found a koi pond.
Anna and Lisa.
Then we heard this infernal screeching, and it turns out it was a cicada (commonly associated with summer in Japan). A HUUUUUGE cicada. You can see it here in the middle of this picture. It was gigantic!!
Random shots of the campus
Deciding where to go next
I really like the way this looks.
Hee hee. This just amuses me a lot. I have no clue what it's for.
Another random picture. It's the toilet controls you sometimes get. "Shower" sprays water up your butt, while "Bidet" goes right for your womanly area. Both have frightening precision. I was afraid to try it in January, but I did it once here, just to say I did. It's.... interesting.
Then we pretty much had nothing until dinner. I had my "academic meeting" at 3, which was just me giving them the registration sheet and the director guy signing it. So I have my classes now, the manga class and History of Tokyo (and of course Sogo Nihongo, my Japanese class,but I don't know which level yet). After that I went to sleep :D but not for very long, sadly.
Dinner was a thing where we had options of what we wanted to eat and where we wanted to eat it, and only 10 people could sign up for each one. Mine was tonkatsu (pork cutlets) at Shin Urayasu (working out for me for very obvious reasons, since it's where Meikai and my old host family are, and made even more fortunate by the fact that people like Lisa and Melissa and others that I like had signed up for it too. Our IES person who went with us was Naito-san, and the director guy Malik-san joined us too. The tonkatsu was very good and we talked with Naito-san about how we can celebrate holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween in Japan. The fact that big turkeys aren't sold here except at, like, specialty shops (which means expensive) is a bit daunting, but we'll have one somehow!
Friday, September 1, 2006
Breakfast at 7:30 and back to the same room as before at 9, for another session, this one about getting involved in the community. Didn't last too long, though, and when that was over the dorm students left to go to a tour of the IES Tokyo Center, which of course I've already been to. Most of the people I've gotten to know fairly well/hung out with more or less regularly are doing homestay (and, additionally, the Society & Culture program as well) so it was sort of like "Where are my frieeeends?" since we even had different lunch times, but I found a group that included two people I knew a little bit, my future housing-mate Brette, and Sylvia who had gone to karaoke with us, and their friend Zhumi, and we went to the Italian place Saizeriya's we went to a lot over Jan-term, and that was fun. It was raining pretty hard that day so as soon as I got back I had to hang up my jeans to let the bottoms dry :x
After that there was pretty much nothing until dinner for me, so I took another nap :) I thought I got up in time to meet downstairs, but it turns out we were actually meeting at the station (since we were going to Ginza for okonomiyaki) and the big group of people had already left, so I had to walk over with a smaller group. It was really seeming like we were going to all arrive at the restaurant at different times, and since none of my friends were in the group I was with, it was looking like I wouldn't get to sit with them, and I was fairly unhappy. But then we got on the train and there was another group of our people, some that I knew, and I was happier. Then at Shin-Kiba Station, where we transferred to the Yuurakuchou Line, there was the entire group waiting for us, which was even better! So we got to Ginza, where I had never been before. Fancy!! All the big names and stores are there; even though I've never been to New York City, I think it would be a lot like Fifth Avenue.
Ginza!
After walking some more, we got to the okonomiyaki restaurant we were going to have dinner at. We had rented out pretty much the whole restaurant in order to accommodate all 60 of us! Even though I'm not the biggest fan of okonomiyaki (a sort of pancake thing you cook yourself usually on a pan built into the table. It'd be good if there wasn't any cabbage, which there almost always is), it was still fun to cook it. Also, they gave us some yakisoba (fried noodles), and that was extremely fun to cook, because it really did wind up tasting just like yakisoba, which is amazing! yumm yakisoba.
My table at the restaurant. You can see the pans we cook the food on.
The rest of the room (we are a big group. This isn't even all of us)
An okonomiyaki I cooked.
As things wound down, I suggested going to Shibuya, but in the end we wound up going to Roppongi in a group of 17 (I know the exact number because this girl TK, who took CHARGE, insisted on counting heads to make sure no one was ever left behind). I had never been there before, and my only impression of it was that Aubrey had always talked about how "hardcore" Roppongi is because of all the hostess bars and such, but really, we had no problems. It's the gaijin area, so we saw lots of gaijin, which was very interesting. We walked over to Tokyo Tower and saw that again, which was fun, then went home. On the Keiyo Line train home, I was in a car with Anna and Melissa and we just kind of talked about everything, including the cliques we could already see forming amongst the larger group, which was lots of fun.
The famous women-only train. I actually saw one. (For those who don't know, it's to deal with the groping problem in Japan. It's only women-only during the morning rush hour, though.)
At a station, waiting for a train. I love Japanese public transportation.
Saturday, September 2, 2006
Breakfast, then checkout of OVTA. We brought all our stuff downstairs and then carried it over to the Makuhari Messe. Yeah, THAT was fun. Carrying a whole bunch of heavy things, AND it was sunny outside so everyone got all sweaty? A great condition to be in when you meet your host family for the first time, which was the purpose of the trip. Ohh welll. So we were all in this big room, and everyone's host families began arriving, including mine!! :D My old one! My host mom and Nanaseeee! :D :D yayayay! It was so good to see them again. My host mom gave me a copy of her schedule for the next month, with weekends that would be good for "short stays" marked, heehee. She also said whenever I have free time, I should just come over and "play"! :D I told them I want to go to Disneyland (proper) so I think we're going to do that at some point. woohoo :D
Host mom + Nanase.
The room where we all were.
Na-chan!
The rest of that event was pretty much an endless series of introductions, first of the dorm students, then of everyone with their host families one by one, and once all that was over everyone was escorted to their new places of living. Hyung-Hye took me, Brette, and Aly over to Endo-Ryo, so first we took the train to Ichikawa-shiohama (that is a TINY station) and then, since there were no buses and walking over with all our burdens wouldn't have been fun, we took a taxi (usually so expensive you never, ever bother with them! My first and hopefully last experience riding in one).
So we arrived at "Gyotoku Soft Town," our apartment complex, and went up to the fourth floor where our apartment is. Endo-san, the owner of said apartment, is right next door, and will cook our breakfast and dinner. First we picked rooms, and Aly and I did rock-paper-scissors to decide who got the best room, which is also the biggest and airiest, with sliding doors leading out to the balcony, but of course she won and I had to settle for one of the two smaller rooms. Still has a window and all, but it's not a big door window like hers. Ohhh wellll. Endo-san came in and we sat down to go over the rules and such. She is really big on Japanese manners and etiquette and wants us to abide by them at all times. When I stepped onto the front entryway in bare feet, I think she almost had a heart attack. (Filth! Dirtiness from the outside world! Polluting the pristine zone of the home! Yeah, if you've studied anything of Japanese culture, you can understand why that's a huge no-no). I think we might chafe under that a little bit, but otherwise I think it'll be pretty good. The living room area is really nice and airy, and the apartment itself is pretty cute. It's a little annoying because there's no central air (it's not worth it buying a fan for my room when it's going to get cold soon anyway) so I have to leave the windows in my room open, but that also lets in sounds of the street (not a car street, but a street people use nonetheless) below, which sometimes include kids yelling and babies crying. Augh, whatever.
Later Kudo-san came over to see how we were doing, and then took Brette, Hyung-Hye, and I (in her car!) over to Gyotoku Station (Tokyo Metro as opposed to the JR Keiyo Line Ichikawa-shiohama), with a Seiyu department store nearby. Hyung-Hye went home and Brette and I did some shopping at the hyaku-en shop (dollar store) inside the Seiyu. We got stuff like laundry clips to hang our clothes, hangers, laundry detergent, etc. When we came back we got dinner from Endo-san (curry and rice, yum) and then went to the grocery store to get food for tomorrow (we aren't served any food on Sundays). The bread aisle!! Bread stuffed with things! Melon bread! That aisle is dangerous. But on a side note, why don't we have bread stuffed with things in the U.S.? I demand chocolate stuffed bread.
Pictures of where I'm living:
The front hallway (what you see when you walk in the front door).
The entryway itself (so turning around from the previous view). Note the shoes! Yep, we take them off when we come in. We're supposed to put on slippers but I usually don't bother (oh no!).
My room. I sleep on a futon! Then I have that little desk over there for my laptop, and on the wall that you can't see is a closet. I have a chest of drawers too.
The bathroom (okay, not a very all-encompassing shot of it). But you can see the separate rooms for toilet and shower.
Shower/bath room. Traditionally, you fill the tub with hot water, then rinse yourself off/shampoo in the little area to the left. Then you soak in the tub after you're clean. Usually we just take showers, though, being barbaric foreigners and all. When it's cold I want to have some baths the proper way though.
The other side of the bathroom, our sink and washing machine (noooo dryer! Clothes dry outside).
The kitchen. Fridge, sink, stove, etc.
The living room/common area. I like it because it's nice and airy.
We'll close with this Engrish poem, written on the cup we keep chopsticks in.
A sea-green tree with green nuts
Love the red cheeks of the pink tree
A sky-blue tree with blue nuts
Both thinking of kissing its cute cheeks
Cheeks turning bright red from loving the sun
But neither knowing the other's secret desire
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