Other Assorted Updates

So, what else happened?

Well, I went to go see one of my most revered and sanctified musical legends, Asakura Daisuke, at a club night and then at a live. In the club event he played most of my most beloved songs from my mid-teens, and laughed at me singing along to his mix of Madonna’s Hung Up.

I went with Nola and Kaoru, and we had a jolly time of it.

Miles and I also went over to Rei’s for a movie night and nabe party – on our own, as Rob was out.
We watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat while Tera and Yukako cooked the nabe – which, for the uninformed, is a tradition where you pretty much bring a bunch of ingredients and put it in a pot and hope for the best – and then some films that Tera had brought along (Friday the 13th – the original one,with Jason’s mother, meaning it was hilariously bad) and Scary Movie. And Scary Movie 2, which was awful. Melanie was there for the beginning of the night but then left with Yukako to catch her train to her sister’s place.

After we had finished up most of the movies, I, Miles and Acchan headed for home.

Except we’d missed the train.

‘Well,’ Rei said, trying and failing not to look too ridiculously over-eager, ‘You guys could stay. I mean, Tera’s just gonna be cracking dirty jokes. Asuka, too. And Wataru and his girlfriend will just make out. I mean, it would really be better if you guys stayed.’

‘Well, okay,’ we said.

So we stayed over at Rei’s, where I kicked Tera in the face the whole night by accident (sorry, Tera) and we listened to Rei tell scary stories in Japanese that I half understood and half didn’t. It was pretty cool.

We also went to both Disney Sea (Miles-less, sadly, as he went back home to see his family for that break) and Disney Land with Soul Run.
The first time (Disney Sea) it was soaking wet and there was only a small group of us. However, spirits were lifted by us being Soul Run. Soul Run are always happy. Plus, it was DAI-CHAN’S BIRTHDAY AAAAAH (Dai-chan in this case being Masaru, not…Asakura Daisuke).

(It wasn’t really his birthday, he lied. But it’s okay, I lied about it being my birthday when we went to Disney World.)
Disney Sea and Disney World are both a lot different to their American counterparts. They’re a lot less expensive, for one, and a lot cleaner; the rides are fewer and it’s a little disconcerting to have ‘worldwide food’ served by an assortment of Japanese people in different styles of national dress.

But the parades are amazing.

Somewhere before and amongst all of this, we had exams. Before I broke up for the break wherein we did all the Disney World and Disney Sea adventures, my teacher took me aside and asked me about whether or not I want to proceed to JLP5.

‘Yes,’ I said. Instantly.

‘Then you’re going to have to revise a lot over the holiday,’ she told me.

I did, but I also went to Kansai to see Peter for a week.

Kansai is without a doubt where I should have been placed. The second I’d gotten there and slept I felt just how more relaxed and happy it was as a place; Tokyo is wonderful, and I adore it, but Tokyo is definitely as to London as Osaka is to Liverpool.
And I’ve always liked Liverpool more, so I suppose that’s that. The dialect here is different, the people are friendlier and more sociable, the food is better.　There aren’t as many suicides.

While I was there, Peter and I ventured through scary shops that sold questionable things, visited Nara (but surprisingly saw no deer), ate delicious Ohsho gyouza, and went to the Yasaka shrine in Kyoto that miraculously turned out to share a name with an obscure bullet-hell videogame character.
Believe it or not, I didn’t notice this until I noticed that lots of people had drawn her on their ema (small, wooden placards that you hang up at the shrine with a wish written on them).

Speaking of Touhou, we also played that at an arcade.

I may as well write here I returned to Osaka mere weeks later to watch the Professor Layton movie for the first time with Peter. And I will probably return there again, because I love Osaka, and miss it.
More updates tomorrow as I have written far too much tonight.

ICU-sai

Let’s catch up on all the stuff I missed, starting with the day of ICU festival!

Okay, the ICU festival was held on October 31. You may think this an ill omen, but actually everything went beautifully – as performers as part of Soul Run society, we had to make our way in a little earlier to run through the dance once as a practice, get changed, and then run over to the stage in formation.

Rob actually got his hair cut for the dance – he had the symbol ‘tamashii’ 魂 (or the ‘soul’ of ‘soul run) shaved into his head. He tried to keep it hidden from the rest of the group until the day of the dance, with varying amounts of success:

You can see it in all its glory here.

Rei, our dancho (boss) and primary instructor, was first on to introduce us and get the crowd ready.  Then we had to file on neatly in our rows and get into position (in some videos you can see people shoving each other into correct position).

Then…we had to dance!

For Soul Run, we had been practicing avidly every day and often at night as well. Rei really forced us to put our everything into that dance, and I think it shows in the final product – it’s something really amazing to watch, and I’m sure that it’s not just me being biased, as I’m pretty terrible at the dance in general.

So after that we had no obligation to hang around with Soul Run anymore and met up with the Tokyo Gaidai group (and Kazuya) to enjoy the rest of the festival. Awesome things like eating doughnuts and taiyaki occurred, and then we had to be whisked away again for the Soul Run Otsukare meal (kind of like a ‘WOW WE ARE AWESOME’ meal for everyone involved)

And it was a very fun meal! We all sat around two long tables and cooked the food on a hot grill in the middle of the table, while everyone complimented Rei on a job well done and we handed out presents to Rei and Tatsuya (who was announced as the new dancho).

Apparently announcing someone as a dancho means that all the previous danchos have to kiss them. This is a pretty amazing country.

Yukako happened to be cooking while this happened, meaning she burned half of the food, but it was okay.

Sadly, Wataru (last year’s dancho) was a bit ill and drank too much, meaning Rei and a few assorted others had to take care of him. The rest of us split off into groups who either went clubbing or went to karaoke. We opted for the latter, and reunited with Gaidai-tachi plus Kazuya.

A pretty fantastic night in all.

After a long hiatus…

Well, well, well. It has been a while. A little over a month, in fact, since the last update.

 

I debated about putting this online where my family can see it, but then decided that if students go looking for reports on experiences in Japan, they may as well find honest recaps rather ones that gloss over all the bad stuff.

So, here is the honest truth: For the past month I have been submerged in work, stressed to the point of near breakdown, and severely depressed.  My closest friends are either halfway across the world in other time zones, or stranded across this country where I can’t get at them. The class I was placed into was initially far too advanced for my level, and my lsitening skill is nowhere near developed enough to cope with the explanations.

This is the result:

BAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW

But yes!
Thankfully, that stage has passed for the most part, but it happened, and the important thing is that it’s perfectly natural for it to happen.
Never let anyone tell you otherwise, potential ryuugakusei; being uprooted from your family and friends and tossed into a land where you barely know the language to live for a year may be a cinch for some people, but for most of us, it takes a while to adjust.

Once I came to terms with that, I was pretty okay!

Now, before I start my general recap, I want to use this picture I drew forever ago of me, Rob, Miles and Naomi (a fellow ICU student) in a park in Kichijouji with a strange man who came up and started taking things like stethoscopes and binoculars out of a bag and making gestures at us.

I am an artistic genius.

So, yes, it’s been an interesting month. Studying at J4 level after one year of serious Japanese courses is a lot like running after a kid on really fast bicycle.
You fall over a lot, and now and again the kid disappears around a corner and you’re like well where the heck do I go now, but eventually you realise if you just suck it up and buy a bicycle you can keep pace with him. Barely.
I’ve gone from an E to a C/B student in a month, and I’m studying furiously to make sure I keep those grades as they are.
My listening skill is still appalling, but I’m hoping exposure will rectify this.

The other thing is Soul Run (so-ran bushi), the circle I joined.
Regardless of how often I practiced, I just didn’t seem to be able to get the hang of it, to my own frustration and that of the poor dudes and ladies trying to teach me the bloody thing in the first place.

But EVENTUALLY I got the hang of it, just in time for the performance.
Which is tomorrow.

Ohhhhh gosh why.

As back-breakingly gruelling and difficult So-ran Bushi is, I’m so going to miss those practices. Everyone in the circle is so friendly and helpful, and the dance itself is a really fun way to get exercise.
I guess I’m just gonna have to bike more.

I love you, Soul Run!

I Can’t Beat Airman

So, Kaoru and Nola and I agreed to meet up last Friday so that we could watch a DVD at my place…
However, Kaoru arrived a little earlier than I was expecting; leading me to leave the guesthouse in a rush and a hurry. I had the bright idea of trying to take a shortcut to the station which ended up getting me lost.

Like, nearly in Higashi-Koganei (the next train station) lost.

I ended up taking an hour to reach a station that it normally takes me ten minutes to get to.
I apologised fivemillion times to Kaoru, who’d had to wait there all this time – and she responded, instead of beating me up and leaving me in the gutter (which she had every right to do), by…
giving me a phone she’d bought for me.

Kaoru is an angel.

I, however, am the worst person in the world. I FELT LIKE SUCH A JERK.
My phone-mail, by the way, is uknouk@softbank.ne.jp.

So yeah, we met up with Nola (who also showed up very late, making me feel a little better) and went home to watch DVDs and then watch Yosuke’s online webcast. He talked about a bullfight he watched, where the losing bull 失禁した as it died.
I didn’t know what that was, so I looked it up; apparently it is ‘to wet one’s pant; have a little accident’.
We all found this hilarious so told Yosuke about it.

Then there was the time we went to karaoke! Now, we’d already been to karaoke once before, but I didn’t know any o the songs that were there. I was all ‘OH NO! I CAN’T SING ANY OF THESE’.

This time we went with Chihoko,  Shin, Naomi (a girl from ICU’s JLP programme), Wynne and Kazuhisa (who we met back in Leeds).
We hadn’t eaten so we all got food to share in the booth. Rob recommended edamame, which are prepared peas/beans(?) served in their pods. You pop the pod open to get to the two peas inside, which are tasty and more-ish as anything.

So…yeah! At first I was all worried that I’d just end up sitting idly by due to my lack of any karaoke song knowledge, but this karaoke place not only had songs I knew, it had Yosuke songs. (Which I didn’t sing; I want to sing them when I’m with Nola and Kaoru)
But yeah. Kazu jokingly suggested I find ‘Airman ga Taosenai’, which is a song I posted on facebook about loving; it’s basically about not being able to beat a boss in a Megaman game.

I found this really funny as Kazu had said when we met up at the station that Akihabara was the ‘shame of Japan’ because it was full of NEET and otaku.
Of course they wouldn’t have such a nerdy song available for selection in a karaoke machine!
How funny Kazuhisa’s jokes are!

…
….

…..
Oh.

There was also a fair amount of VOCALOID (I sang World Is Mine), DOPING PANDA (Beat Addiction – with Wynne. Miles seemed to be amused by the chorus which consists of ‘BEAT-ADDIC-DIC-DIC-DIC-DICTION’) and Linda Linda, which was actually my default choice since the beginning of the night. I presumed any karaoke place ever had to have that song.

Then, on the 21st, I came straight from ICU (we had classes on a Silver Week holiday) to Hamamatsucho station where I was due to meet Gin and go to the Pokemon Center. I also met Sarah!
They were both lovely girls.
I was rapidly enlisted into an evil plot to beat the evil Pokemon Center cashiers and help Gin obtain about five tonnes of plush dolls.
It was my first time ever going to the Pokemon Center; basically, this place is heaven for anyone who is remotely interested in Pokemon. You can buy the games here, though that seems a moot point; for reasonable prices you can buy plush of a whole range of the little guys, notebooks, shirts, bags, DS cases, charms, jewellery. There are several unlived Pokemon lives in the stuff they sell in this place.
To top it all off, they play the music from the Pokemon game over speakers.
But anyway, the evil plot was a success!
I even got paid, in the form of a severly discounted phone charm. Which was sweet, as I really didn’t mind helping out.

So after that we all caught the train and Gin and I set off to meet her boyfriend Pyon at a McDonalds in Akasaka. Pyon is a musician who I am a very very very big fan of! So I was excited.
I stuttered my way through my remedial level Japanese and felt really bad when I spoke English a bunch to Gin (Pyon doesn’t speak English), but he didn’t mind too much apparently. After that we tried to find the venue for the live we were going to see.

Pyon’s GPS failed us so we tried a taxi cab. Now, in the UK, when you get into a taxi you have a fairly sure guarantee that the driver knows where you’re going, right?
Not so with Japan! This guy stopped in the middle of the road to ask two teenage girls directions, and this was after he drove us around in a circle for ten minutes.
Oy. But we got there eventually.

If I thought Shibuya Songlines (the venue where I saw Yosuke Sakanoue) was small, Akasaka MOVE was miniscule. There were twenty people at a generous maximum sitting and standing around. Even with getting lost, we managed to get there in time to catch the girl in Hirokey’s support slot.
She had a lot of energy, and sang an ELLEGARDEN song (Kaze no Hi), some other song, and Go! by Flow.

Gin and Pyon are acquainted with the main act we were going to see, so Hirokey asked us guys up to the front. ‘To fangirl,’ Gin explained.

These guys put on an awesome show. Very high energy, lots of audience participation, amusing banter in between songs. It was actually Shingo’s birthday, which was pretty lovely.
It was very good kikitori practice; I had to listen to things quickly and figure them out in order to get what was expected of the audience. And when to laugh – that’s a pretty important part of any live, am I right?

I went to the live for the sake of one of my good friends in America, who is actually how I found Shingo’s solo music in the first place.  I was able to pick her up a lot of things and have a really good time while doing so, so I count that as a success.

Here’s hoping I have more days like that, and less nights like this one, where I am cowering on my bed in tears about the ugly beetle currently wandering around on my floor trying to avenge its fallen brother (I crushed one with a bag before). Yikes.

To Bring Everyone Back Up to Speed…

I haven’t had time to update in a while, because life here is -hectic-. You relish the time you can spend doing nothing, let me tell you that.

Okay!

Firstly, and most importantly, I accrued a few things in the last week or so. Namely, my own Japanese bank account (courtesy of the lovely people at Mitsubishi UFJ; much more tolerant of my stuttering Japanese and appalling comprehension levels than the folks at Mizuho), a Japanese PSP with three videogames to stumble through, and…

A bike.

I call him Sir Speedy in my head, to be ironic, because I always lag behind Rob and Miles up hills.

Biking is an essential part of the daily commute to Tokyo International Christian University, where I now study as a OYR (One Year Regular) exchange student. Our matriculation ceremony was held in the University Chapel and was accompanied by a choir singing hymns in Japanese-accented English, which lead to a couple of ‘what country am I in again?‘ moments.

So after that there was the arduous business of registering for classes, realising some were falsely advertised, dropping said classes. I am actually only taking one additional class to my core JLP lessons, which is Japanese Literature in Translation; it compensates for the fact it lasts until 7PM (yes, at night) by being incredibly interesting.

Meanwhile, recreational fun also had to be had.
I got to meet my lovely friend Kaoru for the first time in real life, and we went to a live together in Shibuya. Said live was of my favourite musician, an indies singer-songwriter-artist-beatnik by the name of Yosuke Sakanoue.

Me talking about how much this man changed my life and inspired me is better suited to livejournal, but let’s just say that was an incredibly good live.

Then my friend Nola from Canada also arrived!
Due to lack of phones and communication, we kept missing each other. But on one glorious day she, Kaoru and I managed to meet up and travel around Harajuku and Akihabara (an unforgettable experience in itself. We went into the belly of the beast this time; game stalls set up on every corner, shops that cater solely to lonely old basement-dwellers who want to marry two-dimensional girls like Miku Hatsune, cheap electronics with maid girls to advertise them. Oh boy.)

It was pretty surreal to think that we were all together like that; a Canadian, a Nihonjin, and an Englishwoman.
Surreal, man.

So, at the moment…

I am struggling to keep up with the intensive workload for Japanese level 4, along with all the things I haven’t learnt and yet should have. My speaking and comprehension are woefully poor, I have discovered.

The insects here are horrific.

I have started learning to cook (a slow, painful process), began to learn my way around Koganei (also painful, as I have the worst directional sense in the world) and joined the Soul Run Circle at ICU (a traditional fisherman’s dance that is a hell of a lot of fun to do).

I have gained a 外国人登録証明書 (gaikokujintourokushoumeisho – try saying that three times fast) which means I’m officially registered as an alien here. Whoo!

Hopefully my entries will be a little more frequent now that all the registration malarkey is out of the way, so I can start posting observations and anecdotes as opposed to ‘AND THEN I ARRIVED AND THEN WE HAD GYOUZA AND IT WAS TASTY AND THEN I CAME BACK TO THE GUESTHOUSE AND FOUGHT A CICADA.’

Georgie-Time!

Wrote this yesterday; I’m posting it now due to having free time later in the day. XD
—

Where to begin with today?

Well, today we had to meet Georgie at Tokyo (the city; yes, we’re already in Tokyo) train station at about midday. We only had her until 7PM, so we decided to make the most of her and give her a mini tour of Tokyo’s hot spots.

Although, of course, I hadn’t been to half of Tokyo either. So it was all new for me, as well.

It was very surreal meeting Georgie in Tokyo – a familiar face in a country halfway across the world is always pretty jarring, I suppose – but lots of hugs were given round and we decided to go take photographs around the imperial palace in Tokyo while we were here.

It was swelteringly hot again after the brief respite of the typhoon. We were yet again serenaded by scores of cicadas while we wandered from photo location to the next, but the area in general is very beautiful; kind of a melding of concrete and greenery with all these beautiful, angular buildings tucked away in nooks of the landscape.
Pretty.

Then we decided to get moving on the tour so we headed back to the station and onwards to Akihabara!
I tensed a little, seeing an unfortunate glimpse of a building completely covered in two scantily dressed anime maids (eewwwww), but when we arrived in Akihabara itself it was easy enough to avoid skeevy stuff.

First off, we had lunch. Katsudon = OM NOM NOM NOM. It was delicious and not too expensive.

We then went to a camera store to buy me a new camera; found a very awesome new camera for the same price as my lost darling Lumix.
In fact, this one is also a Lumix.

I LIKE LUMIX CAMERAS.

So we took it up to pay for it, and someone pointed out ‘oh, you can get it tax free with a passport!’
But sadly I did not have a passport.
Georgie, however, did.
Thus begins the TAX-FREE CHRONICLE:

Georgie: /pays for the camera tax-free, then receives a slip of paper in her passport that says she’ll be taking it home with her
Georgie: Wait, what.
Me: Oh no, that’s not good.
Georgie: I’ll go cancel it, maybe? Because obviously I can’t take it back with me, you’re still gonna be using it.
Me: Yeah. I’ll just pay the extra!
-toddle up to the desk-

Georgie: すみません、タックスフリーをキャンセルしてもいいですか？ (Excuse me, is it okay to cancel the tax free payment on this?)
Clerk: Of course! /returns the money and voids the passport thing)

Georgie: 日本人の友達のプレゼントですから、タックスフリーは・・・ (Since it’s for a Japanese friend, the tax free won’t really work…)
Clerk: 　うん、うん。 (I see, I see.)
Me: また買えいますか？ (Can we buy it again?)
Clerk: Of course! Let me change.
-Clerk gives us back the change, passes us over to Clerk 2-
Clerk 2: 日本人お友達ですね? (Japanese friend, huh?) Please follow me. We need to change.
Me: Uh…?
-he starts taking us to get a Japanese camera)
Me and Georgie: いいえ、海外のモデルを要ります！友達は英語だけではなせます・・・わかります！ (No, we need an overseas model! Our friend only understands English!)
Clerk 2: Ehhh? Oh, okay! So this one is okay.
Us: Yes!
Georgie: And to make sure….これはタックスフリーじゃないですね？ (This isn’t tax free, right?)
Clerk 2: Tax free…?
Georgie: はい。 (Yes.)
Clerk 2: *wanders over and brings some forms over*
Georgie: いいえ　いいえ　いいえ！ (NO NO NO!)
Me: タックスフリーが欲しくないです！ (We don’t WANT tax free!)
Clerk: (explains the sitaution to Clerk 2)
Clerk 2: OH.
Us: *eventually buy the camera and go on the exercise machines, still with our brains fried*

Returned to the station to go to Shinjuku. On the train there I saw some dude with a little Luke mobilephone charm, which made me nerd out a little more than I should have. : (
So! Shinjuku, where we sped along to go up some very tall buildings and look out over Tokyo. The view from there is breathtaking, and also the elevators are so fast they make your ears pop. Woahhh.

There wasn’t really much else to do in Shinjuku, so we moved onto Harajuku.
Harajuku is a little like Camden Market, but amped up to ten, Japanese’d out, and with much more bizarre shops.
God, it was kickass. So many strangely dressed people there.

On the way through the train station to get our next train, some random guy came up and started helping us with using the ticket machines (which we already knew how to use). At first we were like ‘awh, what a friendly dude, helping out foreigners’ but then he was like ‘OH BY THE WAY CAN I HAVE 200 YEN?’

…I gave him 100 yen because I felt bad. Miles gave him money too and went and looked at a map with him.

Then we went to Shibuya, and thankfully we took a momentary detour so I could see Hachiko-guchi.
The entire time we were in Shibuya I was internally freaking out over how perfect the team who developed The World Ends With You got all this stuff. The scramble crossing? Hachiko? 104- I mean – 9? PERFECT, man. It’s so cool.
I’m going back there on Saturday to meet Kaoru and see Yosuke, so that should be cool.

Anyway, after Shibuya, we went back to Tokyo to see Georgie off. She’s in Japan until Friday, when she goes to start her year abroad in China :>
BAWWWWW I’m gonna miss her.

After that we took a long train ride home and finished up the day with dinner in a little ramenya near the guesthouse. I had katsu curry. It was deeeeelishus.

Food in a Typhoon

Pardon the terrible image. I kind of forgot I didn’t have any photographs and had to do one at the last minute.

So, yesterday a typhoon hit near Tokyo. We noticed, funnily enough, because the weather that had been incredibly warm and humid suddenly took a turn for the British and became cool and full of rain. I actually vastly preferred this weather, but then, I am British.

We met up with Chihoko to apply for our alien cards and health insurance. There was a lot of English at first, which was relieving, but when we got upstairs to the Health Insurance part, everyone talked in extremely fast, polite Japanese and it was all I could do to nod and smile and sign things.
Then Chihoko gave me a copy of an ARASHI CD :’D She’s such a lovely girl! I listened to it today. I actually have a guilty pleasure for ARASHI, even though I’m mainly into indies bands.

So we battled on; this time to the yuubinkyoku or post office, to register our mailboxes (to make things easier when accepting important mail). The form was so difficult to read, I felt like such an idiot… But we got it figured out eventually.

Then we had lunch in this really awesome place atop the mall. Miles and I had tenpura; I’ve only had it once before, ages and ages ago, so it was a nice surprise.
Tenpura is food done in batter, but the food isn’t always conventional; in this platter there was a battered flower, two thin, spindly mushrooms, spinach…And of course, the garden-variety fish and so on.

After that we started the traumatic attempt to find Rob a phone. Rob’s 20, so he’s legally allowed to own a phone, but it still looked like a seriously traumatic state of affairs. I guess I’ll have to wait a while to get mine, though I am gonna have a go at convincing them that I should be allowed one (I’m an adult in the UK, damn it!)

Oh, also – at some point, Rob’s umbrella broke. The typhoon was THAT HORRENDOUS. You may understand why we lurked around the mall for a while and actually had a SECOND lunch in McDonalds.
I managed to order a Teriyaki burger without mayonnaise (success!) and it was really good! It’s a shame they don’t have it in the UK. The fries, however, are IDENTICAL.

So yeeeeah… we went and bought some food for dinner and then came back to the guesthouse and studied a little and talked to Wynne about the test. Apparently it’s multiple choice which RELIEVES ME TO NO END, so I can just focus on studying readings and grammar. Excellent.

Eventually Kaz and Chihoko had to go home (Poor Chihoko looked like she was falling asleep) so after a little more study we decided to go and cook dinner.
Dinner was in two stages – first there was miso soup with harusame, clear, thin noodles recommended by Rob. It was delicious.

However.

The main meal was rice, with cooked prawns and boiled vegetablesplus cut up boiled eggs. The latter ingredients were all incredibly easy to prepare and cook
The problem was the RICE!
We tried a rice cooker, realised it wasn’t cooking (and then promptly switched itself off), then followed a friend’s recommendation to put it in the microwave; but we didn’t have a covered dish to put it in with.
Eventually we resorted to type and used the pan again. Sadly it takes forever to clean the pan after cooking rice in it.

Oh, also, most of the day was accompanied by people saying innocent things and then Miles laughing at them and turning them into Bad Things™.

Today we’re meeting Georgie and I’m gonna get a new camera!
WHOOOO

Shinjuku

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I went with Rob and Miles into central Tokyo.
It was amazing, even in spite of the torrential rain.
Shinjuku is HUGE. Huge and full of people who move in droves like little ants.

Our objective was to find a Kinokuniya to buy our Kanji in Context textbooks – they’re MUCH cheaper here, you see. In the main branch we found one reference book and two work books, so Rob bought both and I bought a workbook while asking the woman at the counter if there were more.
She went off on a valiant quest to find us more, but came up empty. So she gave us a map for the south branch.

Which I lost.

Honestly, I think that Beatles bag is cursed.

So we went valiantly onwards to go find Rob something to eat! We ewnt into the food court of this huge building but all the places were really expensive. We eventually found a nice Italian-style place. I had garlic bread

Then we went back to Kinokuniya to ask for a map (my job, as I lost it). Thankfully, the assistant anticipated me-

Me: すーすみません、南のー (E-excuse me, the south-)
Teninsan: 南店？ (The south branch?)
Me: はーはい！南店の地図がありますか？ (Y-yes! Do you have a map for the south branch?)
Teninsan: /finds me one at the speed of light

Thus we found the south branch, and after a bit of confusion over floors we found the reference books and bought them. SUCCESS!
On returning, we bought some food for dinner and experimented – Rob is a very good cook, so while I wouldn’t have originally expected chicken + vegetables + white plum dressing to work, it was very nice! …At first. Eventually the plum sauce got the better of me.

We also found a girl staying here, Wynne, who’s also coming to ICU. She went here last year too, so it’s nice knowing someone who’s been through the system before.

すみません、カメラをなくしました！

So yesterday we planned an intrepid plan to go and get the camera back, after I freaked out and realised it was missing. We went to the local grocery and asked for directions to a kouban – sadly the nearest one was twenty minutes away, so we went to the one by Musashi-Koganei station instead.

Oh God, it was HORRIFYING. After waiting for a nice woman to finish (she invited us in with an explanation of suzushii! , meaning that it’s cooler inside) I walked up to the desk, momentarily froze, and then managed:

Me: K..Kamera o….naku…shimashita. (I’ve lost a camera)
Omawarisan: Kamera?
Me: H…Hai. (yes)

He then found a form for me to fill in, which thankfully had a little English on it. Unfortunately I don’t have my own mobile yet, so I wasn’t able to provide any numbers except Miles’ and the guesthouse. I also had to say whereabouts I’d lost it, describe the camera and its case, etc.
Eventually they told me they’d contact, and if not, I could call them up to see whether or not one had been found.

Efficient!
So then we wandered around a little more while waiting for Chihoko, who met us at the south exit of Musashi-Koganei station. She took us on the tube to Musashi-Sakai, the closest station to ICU. Even from there, it’s still a thirty minute walk…

In the midday heat, it wasn’t pleasant. But we arrived eventually!

ICU is really, really pretty. It’s so…GREEN. There are trees everywhere, but all the campus buildings seem to be really well ventilated.
We found the University Chapel, accompanied by the sounds of five million competing cicadas (those babies are LOUD), and then sat in the cafeteria for a little while. We had various beverages in Engrishy cups. I had iced cocoa.
It was good.

Then we found the Science Hall, which is where I need to go for my JASSO Scholarship talk (eeeep). This building is a lot warmer than the cafeteria, but it has snack vending machines where you can buy GIDr. (G I Doctor) cookies. So that makes it all okay!

After that we decided to walk back to go find something to eat – a cicada attacked Rob’s neck on the way – and stumbled onto a Book-Off instead.
A Book-Off is a great idea; it’s a HUGE secondhand store, primarily for books, but also for CDs.
I was feeling a little down after the loss of my camera so I bought a banapa (the band apart) CD. They also had a LOT of games – I think I might get a PSP if money lasts, because they’re SERIOUSLY cheap here.
Gyakuten Saiban (Phoenix Wright), Layton-kyouju (Professor Layton), Persona…There are a LOT of games here. If only I could understand Japanese well enough to play them all! Sob.

But yes, eventually we made our merry way back to Musashi-Koganei, where we found a ramenya (ramen eatery). Genuine Japanese gyouza and shio ramen are absolutely delicious, though quite pricey – I presume they’re cheaper from stalls.

Then we did a little more shopping (I bought an umbrella, a potted plant, and some things for showering) before saying goodbye to Chihoko and turning in.

I’m sure the novelty of the walk to ICU will wear off very quickly, but today, it was pretty fun!

The First Two Days

I made it here in one piece!

The flight from JAL was painless and (mostly) comfortable; I sat next to Rob, who’s also studying at ICU this year, with a nice woman called Sayuri on my other side. We talked for a little – mostly in English, though with some Japanese – and I told her about wanting to teach. She said she knew a lot of families with children who would like to learn English, so we exchanged contact details.

I also watched some films. Monsters Inc is pretty well dubbed in Japanese, and a lot of the language is fairly simple. It was also pretty cool to see how they translate some of the jokes – for example, in the blooper reel, a character says ‘Go on, go throw up’ instead of ‘Go grow up’.

In Japanese it’s changed from ‘Ookiku naru’ (grow up) o ‘oishiku naru’ (get tasty).
Yeah.

I watched a few other kids’ programmes in Japanese, including a very surreal, Neil Buchanan-devoid Japanese Art Attack. I also tried to watch Goemon but fell asleep, which was a shame, as it looked very good.

On touching down, we were ushered through a very efficient checking in  system and were then met by a tiny crowd – Kazuya, Rob’s friend, who I know from Japsoc; and also Chihoko and Shin, two students from ICU who were sent to help us get to the guesthouse.

So we navigated our way to Higashi-Koganei to finalise our guesthouse reservations. Shin fell asleep on me at one point, but it was a very long  journey.
I also realised the problems of having a ridiculously large/heavy suitcase – you can’t get it up and down stairs. Kaz lugged it up and down about five flights of stairs while I guilted in the background. Next time I stay somewhere for a very long time, I’m gonna get a lighter one.

Around this time I started noticing just how…Japanese everything is. I’ll admit I play a lot of videogames, and there were little things – the wa-wa-wa-waaaaaah noise that cicadas make, the reflectors hung everywhere, the flags outside of shops, the sheer abundance of anime-styled art – that really drive it home.

It’s…peculiar, but not bad. I actually really like it.

So we made it, sweaty and jetlagged, to the guest house main office.  Then we had a grilling about rules and regulations which, in my bleary state of mind, set off a whole host of alarm bells: the internet is free, but it’s temperamental and occasionally stops working all together when lots of people are using it. You can only use one electrical appliance at a time. If you have a friend over you have to alert the guesthouse.
But we had nowhere else to stay, so we paid up our first instalment and agreed to sign on for three months. Then we were driven to the guesthouse itself and were given out keys. The room was actually really nice; small, but fitted with everything you’d really need. The bathrooms are close by and there’s a shower downstairs (though I’ve yet to work out how to get the hot water working).
Then we went for a little wander before we met up with Kaz again to go out to eat. A woman politely asked me if I’d like a points card and I said ‘no’ in Japanese and left, only realising how rude I looked afterwards.
It took a while to meet Kaz due to lack of mobile phones, but we managed it eventually. We ate in this little restaurant that I can’t even remember the name of, but the food was very good – I was just too tired to actually eat, so..
—

The next day, homesickness hit. And hard.

I felt under the weather for most of this day, which was a severe downside when going food shopping. However, I did buy some English muffins :B
We’ve yet to do our Alien Registration, but we did walk around town and stock up on a lot of supplies. Met up with Kazu again; there’s upsides and downsides to the fact he’s so good at English, because on the one hand, he helped us to get things done really quickly and efficiently, but on the other, we’re not really speaking as much Japanese as we should be.

It’s still early days and I’m feeling really prone to crying and being sick, but I’m sure things will clear up soon. Unfortunately, I’ve also mislaid a £150 camera in the meantime and have no idea where I’ve left it.

Going without a camera isn’t really an option though, so I’ll have to buy another if I can’t find one….

Hopefully the next entry will be more cheerful.