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.’

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