Day 1 cont. - Stuff

[SOME DISCLAIMERS:  This will be my last retroactive blog entry.  Actually, it’s only half retroactive.  I finished it just now.  I did the first part when I was really tired, so it isn’t very interesting.  For example, if you read this to hear about interesting experiences, you can probably skip this entry.  If you read this to learn about Japan, you can probably skip this entry.  If you enjoy my sense of humor, you can skip to the part where I apologize for not posting pictures and complain about how busy I am.  In fact, unless you’re my mom (Hi, mom!) and are interested in the raw, boring details about my arrival circumstances, don’t read this, or read it anyway if you like.

One final disclaimer:  If my first three entries have lead you to believe that my blog will be chronological and organized, be aware that that is about to change.  From here on out, I’ll be jumping around quite a bit and what I post about may have happened that day, a few days ago, or is maybe something that I completely forgot to mention from some previous month. *nod*]

I’ll probably keep this short.  I’d like to do more justice to my experiences yesterday (two days ago?  It’s almost 4 a.m.), but I haven’t really had time, and now I’m going to pass out again soon.

Thus far everyone we have met has been very, very nice and helpful.  On the way to pick us up from the airport, the van got a flat.  Rather than be late to pick us up, they got another car and arrived in plenty of time.  On the way to Tsuru, we drove through Tokyo.  We tried to take pictures, but we couldn’t.  I have heard that Tokyo is the biggest city in the world.  I’m very tempted to believe it’s true.  We stopped to eat after that and the leader of the student affairs section, Mr. Shimura, bought us dinner.  After that we were introduced to our apartments and our tutors (AKA the kind student volunteers that attempt to take care of our every need).  Their names are Youta, Nanami, Machiko and Sakura.  We had tea and cake and they showed us how to use the Japanese appliances in our apartment before retiring to their own dwellings and leaving us to take care of ourselves until the following morning at 11 a.m. when we would have orientation.

The apartments are sort of small, but not nearly as much as I was expecting.  The main room is about as big as my room at St. Norbert, and off of that there is a hall with a kitchenette, a toilet, a sink and washer, and a bathroom.  Aside from the kitchenette, all of these things are located in small separate rooms.  It’s as if they split an American bathroom into three parts and then stuck a washing machine in with the sink.  Although there is a small sink above the toilet that activates when it is flushed, it seems to be just for rinsing one’s hands, while the sink in the other room functions as most bathroom sinks in the US do.  The toilet is heated.  In fact, at any given time, it’s probably the warmest thing in my apartment.  The shower/bath room on the other hand, is furthest from the heater and is typically very cold.  I find this highly unfortunate. =(

One thing I was mistaken about is that we are not in any sort of foreign student housing; there is no such thing.  All of the other people in our apartment complex are Japanese students.  In fact, we were also mistaken about there being other American students here.  Someone told us that UCLA students also come to Tsuru, which is true, but their time here does not coincide with ours at all.  I would be a little surprised if this was true, but we may be the only Americans in the entire city.  On that note, we were a little worried that so many of the students would have English skills sufficient that we would hardly have to speak Japanese.  If anything, we should have worried about the opposite.  (If you're curious, this is where the two day break in this entry is) There are a select few people that we can really communicate in English with, and even those people try to speak Japanese to us when possible.  Takiguchi-sensei, the person we had primarily been communicating with about the study abroad program, is completely fluent in English--in fact, probably more so than our Japanese teacher.  Our other primary care-giver (using the word loosely), can speak English as well, but seldom does.  Of our tutors, one can speak English pretty well.  The others don’t seem to be much better at English than we are at Japanese.

I must apologize again for the lack of pictures on this blog.  Since adding pictures requires the convergence of several factors, namely Tina’s presence, free time and a lack of complete exhaustion, I really haven’t been able to get any onto my computer.  Actually, I think it would be very difficult to properly convey how incredibly busy I am.  I’ve never been this busy in my entire life.  Even now I’m dipping out on plans to go to one of the other foreign student’s apartments for a party, at first because I got carsick on the way home from my host family’s house, and now because I’m realizing more and more that I’m desperately in need of free time and that if I don’t get it my head will probably explode.  Or my arm.  Or something.  Besides, I don’t really feel like playing Wii or seeing people, probably for the next four years at least.  (I arbitrarily picked that amount of time; please excuse my delusional mental sense of direction.)  I've been told by many people to seize every day and push my comfort zone, but I'm about to collapse under the weight of all of the days I've been seizing, and my comfort zone almost puked today, so just for tonight I think I'll take a break.

I’m not sure what else really fits in this entry, so I’ll leave it at that, and immediately start a new entry that jumps this topic.  Please continue to support me.

Also, fun fact: apparently, Tsuru University is similar to St. Norbert in the respect that it has more female students than males, at about a 2 to 3 ratio.  Woohoo.