First impressions and initial adventures.

My apologies in advance for the extreme long length of this post. No, I don’t expect that my entries will usually be nearly this long. However, there are a lot of little adventures and initial impressions to describe, so I guess that’s why this ended up this lengthy. Future posts will probably contain fair fewer words and more pictures. I haven’t really bothered much with taking photographs yet, because I’m too busy taking in all the sights and sounds to reach for my camera. Pictures will hopefully start coming soon, though.

 

 

In Transit (Friday, June 20^th~Saturday, June 21^st)

Mom and I left for the airport at 5:30am on Friday morning. My plane left at 7:30am, and by the time we figured how to check in (I was flying Korean Air but leaving from the Continental terminal because the first flight was a Continental code-share, which was a little confusing), it was already pretty late. Still, when I got to the gate, the plane wasn’t even there yet. The previous flight had a slight delay, and we ended up leaving with an even longer delay because they were waiting on people from other flights and for everyone’s luggage to get there. They managed to make up most of the delay in the air, though.

 

The flight was fairly uneventful. It was just about three hours long, so we actually got breakfast and an in-flight movie (Fool’s Gold). However, the audio for the movie didn’t work, so aside from occasional glimpses at the screen, I didn’t watch it. I sat in a row of three seats with a man; he had the window and I the aisle, and the seat in between us was empty, which was nice.

 

We got to LA around 9 local time, where I had to deal with the frustration of navigating LAX on my own, never having been there before. They had said that there would be a Continental agent outside to give information about connecting flights, but I couldn’t find anyone. My boarding pass which I’d printed in Houston said that neither the gate nor the terminal had been announced yet, so I completely had no clue where to go. After finding a restroom, I went back to the desk by the gate and asked the lady there for directions. She was not particularly friendly and just said, “Go straight and then turn left.”

 

So I tried that, and all I found were more gates, belonging mostly to domestic airlines like Delta and United. All the flight information monitors were United, and when I finally found a Continental one, it was only showing domestic flights. Clearly, I was in the wrong terminal, but I didn’t know how to figure out which terminal I should be at. Besides, I was in terminal 6, and the only connection to another terminal that I could find was to terminal 5, but the sign that that was only for flights to Jamaica and somewhere else southbound. When I looked at the United monitor again, it did show a flight to Tokyo, though not mine. There was no gate given, and for the terminal it just said “TBIT”, which I assumed was some kind of version of “TBA” that I couldn’t decipher. In frustration, I sat down and powered up my laptop, and luckily the LAX information page had flight schedules with gate information. Still, my flight had no gate, and for terminal, it said “TBIT” on one screen and “B” on another. I didn’t understand how it could be terminal B when the terminals here seemed to be numbered, not lettered.

 

Not knowing what else to do, I continued down the terminal toward the baggage claim, where I finally found a map of the entire airport. At that point it finally became clear that all the terminals were numbered except the Tom Bradley International Terminal… TBIT (and possibly occasionally abbreviated just B). However, the map still didn’t make it clear how to get there. The only connection I’d found was to Terminal 5, and the only other exit was toward the baggage claim and street level. Call me spoiled, but I was expecting a big, busy airport like LAX to have an inter-terminal train. When I asked one of the security guards, he said that I indeed wanted to head out to the street and then head left, so I did. Once there, I had to have another guy explain to me that I needed to be heading along the street and walk to TBIT, where I needed to enter through the main entrance and go through security again.

 

Once I’d made it to TBIT, things went pretty well, although there was some confusion just where exactly to line up for security. Overall, the entire experience was frustrating and upsetting, especially because I’d been looking forward to flying through LAX for the first time, since it’s one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US. Part of it is Continental’s fault for not having a gate agent with connecting flight information, but LAX loses major points for lacking clear information and signage and generally being one of the most confusing airports I have ever been to. And I’ve been to a lot of airports, so I think I have some expertise when I say that.

 

When I finally made it to the gate, I didn’t have to wait very long before my flight started boarding. I had been lucky enough to get assigned a seat pretty far in the back, so I was in the first group called on to board. However, when I got to the front of the line, they took me out of the line because they were checking passports as people were boarding. Apparently, because I have an EU passport, they wanted to verify that I had my green card and could get back into the US. Despite the annoyance of being picked out of the line, Korean Air does win points, because if United had only done this, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble last Christmas.

 

I was lucky enough to get a window seat. I sit next to an older Japanese lady who seems intent on not conversing, but that’s just fine with me. The plane is a Boeing 777. While the 747 will always be my first love as far as airplanes go, I have to commend the 777 for having possibly the smoothest take-off I have ever experienced. Take-off usually gives me the jitters, but this time, I didn’t have any reason to.

 

The entire flight crew is Asian, a mix of Korean and Japanese women, though they all speak both Korean and Japanese fluently. Their English is acceptable too. I’m pretty impressed to have a flight crew versed in 3 languages. You never get that on Continental. Aside from the crew, one of the first things I noticed is that we don’t have individual TV screens. I always thought this is the standard on long international flights (this one is 11 hours long), so I was surprised.

 

To make up for the lack of individual screens, perhaps, the food is simply amazing. We had an extensive lunch about an hour after take-off. We had a choice between seafood curry or Korean food. I went for the curry. The seafood consisted of squid and scallops. It was accompanied by salad with two slices of smoked salmon. We also got a dessert cake that looked like it came from an expensive French cake shop. I was thoroughly impressed. It also made me happy because I remember that as a kid I used to get really excited about airplane food. Of course, lately, airplane food has been nothing to get excited about anymore. This was pretty exciting though.

 

 

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that they don’t charge for alcohol—not beer, not wine, not liquor, not cocktails. I don’t get the impression they’re carding, either, though I wasn’t brave enough to try. (Anyway, I realized I wasn’t appearing very grown-up, with my penguin blanket and all.) During dinner, they even came down the aisles advertising certain wines. It was pretty unusual.

 

They did show two in-flight movies. They started off with Fool’s Gold, which, from the glimpses I’d seen on the other flight, didn’t interest me, even though I could watch it with audio this time. It was followed up by a Japanese movie about lawyers, which actually seemed very interesting. However, when it started off, I thought it was a TV show and not a movie, because it had an intro like one, so I decided not to watch it, though I did basically follow the action without audio, while listening to my own music. When I later realized my mistake, I regretted it, but by that point it was far enough into the movie that I just decided to watch the rest of it without audio. Still, what a bummer.

 

Aside from listening to music, I haven’t done much. I studied for our placement test on Monday for a bit. I think I slept for a total of one hour, while they were showing Fool’s Gold, but I’m too awake and uncomfortable to sleep any more. We’re in the very last leg of the flight, anyway. I had to power up my laptop to charge my mp3 player (I bought a little Samsung before I left… 15 minutes hooked into a USB port and it was charged; pretty impressive) so I decided to start this journal. I’m guessing we’re going to begin the initial descent soon, so I’d better stop here. When I next write, I’ll be on the ground in Japan! Amazing.

 

Arrival (Saturday, June 21^st)

My first impressions of Japan are hard to describe. During the entire descent and landing, it was so cloudy that it was impossible to see anything except the airport. Aside from the many kanji signs and the predominance of Asian people at the airport, it wasn’t really … Japan yet. Airports are this weird no-man’s-land that aren’t truly representative of the country or culture they’re in, so it didn’t really feel like I’d arrived anywhere out of the ordinary. This wasn’t the country I’d been waiting so long to visit, not yet.

 

Unfortunately I ended up having to spend a lot of time at the airport before I even began to get a glimpse of that country. They’d told us to be there by 4pm, and my plane landed shortly after 3, but several others had delayed flights or just weren’t able to make it here that early. The rest of us had to wait on them so we could all go into the city together. Some people immediately started meeting and socializing, but I honestly wasn’t in the mood. I actually dozed off a couple of times.

 

When everyone had finally arrived—between 20 to 25 or so of us—we dropped off our luggage to be taken by truck into the city (not by courier as they’d originally said; they’d rented a truck instead) and boarded the train ourselves. The first part of the ride was underground, so there was still a lot of anticipation.

 

When the train finally left the tunnel, we found ourselves driving through the Japanese countryside. It was hilly and very, very green. Not nearly as hilly as Pennsylvania, but infinitely more green. I don’t think I’ve ever seen grass such a vivid green color—and yet there’s nothing unnatural about it. It was still light outside, but completely overcast, yet it seemed almost appropriate, because if we’d have been greeted by clear blue skies, I think it would have seemed artificial. The grey skies also helped emphasize the green. Here and there, the landscape was dotted with houses and elements of Japanese architecture. I don’t think I’ll ever forget one of my very first sights: rolling hills, and in the foggy distance, the vague silhouette of a pagoda. I think most are familiar with my sentimental nature, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when I say that it brought tears to my eyes. It’ll be etched forever in my memory.

 

They’d warned us that the train ride was long, and they weren’t joking. It took about an hour and a half in all, partly because Narita Airport is very far from the city, but also partly because the train wasn’t particularly high-speed and made a lot of stops. When we finally approached the city, most of the train ride was underground, so I didn’t really get a chance to see metropolitan Tokyo at night. Once we disembarked, we walked a short distance and then split up into groups according to which dorm everyone was going to.

 

Our dorm is in Itabashi-ku, a very residential area near Ikebukuro. Although in the initial e-mails they had emphasized that we all have a long commute every day, it seems that our dorm is fairly close to the school. Only 4 of us were lucky enough to be placed there; everyone else seems to have a commute of an hour or more. The other lucky 3 are Cathy, Shaunte, and Michelle. Cathy and Shaunte are from Dallas and go to UNT together. They took Japanese together and signed up for this program together. I guess they also requested to be placed in the same dorm. Michelle is from Hong Kong but goes to college at UMich. A couple of her Hong Kong friends are also in the program, though they’re in a different dorm because they’re guys.

 

The dorm is small, but not really smaller than I expected. Fewer residents, maybe, but the size of the rooms and such was about on par with my expectations. We have singles that contain only a bed, bookshelf, desk, and a wardrobe. There is one communal kitchen-slash-dining-room. There is one shared bathroom (for bathing) on the top floor, although there are powder rooms on each floor. The dorm is run by a middle-aged couple. The dorm mother cooks our meals (if we signed up for the meal plan, which I did). Also, mom, it turns out that we didn’t need indoor slippers; despite the instructions to bring our own, our dorm mother had provided them for us. They had asked us for our shoe size on the application, so they actually fit well and everything.

 

We were given a bit of time to unpack before the dorm mother gave around to let us know about the general rules and the way things are run. She herself doesn’t speak any English, but one of the other residents, Shiori, does, so she helped translate. We had heard about many of the rules already, and were actually surprised to find that they were slightly less strict than they had seemed in the e-mails. For example, we do have an 11pm curfew every night, but you can actually stay out as long as you can provide the name and contact information of the person you’re with. Breakfast is served from 7-8am and dinner is served from 6-7pm, but while the e-mails had made it sound like if you didn’t show up to the dining room during those exact timeframes, you wouldn’t get food, the rule is actually that you can still get food afterwards, but you just have to do your own dishes. I also could swear that the e-mails had said that meals are only on weekdays, but it turns out we get meals on Saturdays too. Sundays are the only day we have to take care of our own food. The only rule that’s as strict as in the e-mails is that the bathroom is only available from 5:30-11pm, which is going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, since I’m used to showering in the mornings.

 

Aside from that, no Internet, no phone, and no TV. Internet we could theoretically get by signing up for a contract with a company that has dial-up service, but since we’re only here for 2 months, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it. On the one hand, I realize that it’ll be good for us to have fewer distractions so we can focus on our studies and interact with the Japanese girls in the dorm, but I still don’t like this sensation of being cut off from the rest of the world.

 

After that, they gave us an option of eating dinner or taking a shower first. I think all of us were more in the mood for a shower than dinner, but we ended up having dinner first because all the girls were in the dining room at this point and it seemed kind of like they were expecting it. So we ate, even though Michelle was the only one who was actually hungry and managed to clean her plate. We had curry, which was good, but just too much. I ended up being the first to leave, because I was simply dying for a shower.

 

Now that I’m squeaky clean and unpacked, I have a feeling I’m going to pass out very soon. I haven’t been this exhausted in a very long time.

 

Sunday, June 22^nd

I managed to make it until around 9:30~10pm last night, which I thought was impressive given how little sleep I’d gotten on the plane and how utterly exhausted I was. The bad news about going to bed that early is that I was wide awake around 4:30~5 am. I trained myself earlier this summer so that, despite not having to be up at any particular time, I’m not used to much more than 6 hours of sleep, 8 hours at the very most, so that I don’t have as much trouble adjusting when I go back to school in the fall. The combination of that with jet-lag told my body that at 5 AM I had had enough sleep, despite how tired I had been.

 

I honestly didn’t do very much today. I didn’t have the energy to walk around and explore the town. On Sundays we have to take care of our own food, so I ate the snacks I had brought and the leftover food I had refrigerated from the day before. I wasn’t very hungry anyway.

 

I spent most of the day reviewing for the placement test, especially kanji, because I feel that that’s what I’m most likely to have begun forgetting since class ended in early May. I also read a bit, listened to music, and lounged around my room. Although the Japanese girls in the dorm seem to be very social, it seems that everyone uses Sunday as a rest day. Nobody was hanging out in the dining room and there wasn’t much noise, nor a lot of traffic in the halls.

 

It rained almost all day. It stopped for periods at a time, but it never seemed to take long before the rain resumed. Tokyo is in a rainy season right now where it’s expected that it will rain pretty much every day until mid-July. I think I heard something about a festival when the rains stop.

 

Everything still feels very surreal. I think it might be because we haven’t really gone sightseeing yet, or anything like that, where we can touch and really experience what I’ve always mentally associated with Tokyo and Japan. Even though there are certainly things in the dorm and the neighborhood that are very different from the West, it’s still another dorm, still another residential neighborhood. It’s too… normal. Right now I feel like I’m in this limbo place where I’m half-expecting to wake up one day to find everyone speaking English, to go along with the overall normalcy of everything else. It’s almost like I need to see some crazy things that are completely different from the West in order to believe that I’m actually here, in Japan.

 

Maybe I just need more sleep.

 

Monday, June 23^rd

We had to be at the school today by 9 AM for orientation and the placement test. They had warned us on Saturday that we would have to deal with rush hour traffic and that it was better to leave early while we are not completely used to the transportation system yet.

 

I was awake around 4:30 AM again, and dressed by 6. I spent the morning continuing to study for the test. At 7, I went to have breakfast. Before leaving, mom had asked me if I had any idea what breakfast in Japan was going to be like. I told her, “Well, I’m not sure, but the traditional breakfast in Japan consists of rice and miso soup.” It turns out I was right. She had made us breakfast bentos (rice, some kind of deep-fried fish wrapped in eggplant, an egg, tomato, and a piece of broccoli) and we could help ourselves to miso soup. Although very different from what I usually have for breakfast, it was delicious.

 

All 4 of us seemed to have wordlessly agreed to leave right after breakfast, an hour earlier than we probably actually needed to leave. It’s a short walk to the subway and then only about a 10-minute ride, followed by a slightly longer walk from the station to the school. Once we get completely used to everything, we can probably do it in 20 minutes. As it was, today, we took our time, which was good because we had a lot of trouble finding the right exit to street-level at Shinjuku San-chome station. Still, we arrived at the school about 45 minutes early. Shaunte took the time to call home, and the rest of us walked to 7-11 to buy juice and coffee.

 

One interesting thing to note: before leaving for Japan, when I was talking to my mom and sister and mom wondered how much I’d get to speak Japanese with random people in the city, my sister said, “It’ll probably be like when I was in France; everyone will just speak English to you.” This is actually not the case at all. Of course, it might be different in a very touristy area like Shibuya, but overall, people here (such as the cashiers at 7-11 and the guides at the subway stations, for example) just speak Japanese to us, though they often use a lot of exaggerated hand gestures to try to help us catch their meaning. At first I wondered whether they assume we speak Japanese, but I don’t think that’s quite it. The cashiers must definitely have realized we’re foreigners by how much time we spent selecting what we want and then trying to figure out which coins to use. It’s also true that not that many people seem to speak English, but no one seems to be embarrassed about that. It seems to be more of a general “we’re not going to cater to you Americans and will continue to speak our own language, thankyouverymuch” kind of attitude, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. At any rate, it gives us more of an opportunity to test our understanding and really learn the language.

 

The orientation wasn’t too extensive. They mostly talked about the placement test and what would happen afterwards. We had already received a schedule of the program from now until the end, but I think it had confused a lot of us. In its description, the program had boasted “over 200 hours of class time”, but according to the schedule, official classes do not start until July 9^th. All it said about the period until then is that it consists of “orientation and group sessions”, with no real description of what that involves, and an overnight trip to Yamanashi.

 

It turns out that these group sessions are actually classes—but twice as long and more intensive than the normal ones. The other (mostly Asian) students we are going to be in classes with starting July 9^th are ones who are here for multiple terms, and they are on term break right now. The purpose of these group sessions is to basically make sure we are up to their level when we start. Of course, there are still different levels of classes (1 to 6, to be precise), but the program directors believe that we Westerners are highly disadvantaged when it comes to learning Japanese. They said that American students who have been taking Japanese for less than 2 years should expect to be placed in level 1. The good news about the group sessions is that even if you fuck up the placement test and get placed in a lower level than you possibly should, you can use the group sessions to prove you are ready for the next level. This was of some comfort to me, because I did not at all feel ready for the test and I have only taken Japanese for one year (even though I know for sure I am at least on the same level as, if not higher than, Shaunte and Cathy, who have taken it for 2).

 

I wasn’t wrong in my apprehensions about the test. It was pretty bad. It consisted of three portions: a listening comprehension test, a writing test, and an interview, in that order. The listening test started off okay, but it progressively got faster. The last section was a complete disaster; it was just way too fast. The writing test was only a little better, because there was a lot of grammar we’d never learned. I did answer everything, trying to use educated guesses whenever I could. The interview was probably the worst part. By the time it was my turn, I was feeling stupid and dejected, having lost whatever confidence in my Japanese ability I’d had remaining. It also didn’t help that I got assigned to the one interviewer I’d been hoping not to get, because he seemed kind of condescending from what I could see of his interviews with other students. He was not particularly nice, and it didn’t help how dreadful I was feeling about everything. I stumbled my way through my answers, had to ask for clarification several times, and probably didn’t help my already what I assume to be poor performance. When he finally asked what level I thought I should be in and I told him level 2, he didn’t seem convinced, although he said he would think about it.

 

We were free to go home once we were done with the interview, and since Shaunte and Cathy had been done with their interviews for probably over an hour, I figured they were already gone. Michelle was outside talking to her Hong Kong friends, so I didn’t feel like it was my place to interrupt them and ask her if I could go home with her. She probably wasn’t even going straight home. So that left me to find my way back to the dorm by myself.

 

Finding the subway station wasn’t too difficult. The problem was remembering which train to go on. I had two choices, but it wasn’t clear which one I should be taking because both were headed toward Ikebukuro. However, for one of them that is the final stop, while the other goes beyond Ikebukuro, and the latter was the one that I needed. I had a 50/50 chance and guessed wrong. Not only did my train stop at Ikebukuro, but it took the long way round, taking more than twice as much time to get there.

 

However, maybe halfway along the subway ride, a (Japanese) girl came up to me and asked if I speak Japanese. When I told her I did, a little, she began talking to me, asking if I was a student here and so on. She ended up asking me about some of my hobbies and things, and told me a little bit about herself as well; she’s 22 and a university student, and in her spare time she likes to play volleyball and hang out with her friends. She said she has several American friends, which is probably why she’d approached me and why she seemed used to speaking slowly and rephrasing her questions when needed. She was very sweet. I never got her name, but then I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Even another chance encounter on the subway seems unlikely, what with there being 12 million people in this city and all.

 

At any rate, that encounter made screwing up and taking the wrong subway totally worth it, in my opinion. I got off at Ikebukuro, bought another ticket to transfer trains, and managed to make my way to the right line. I got lucky this time, though, because it turned out that the subway I boarded was an express train which didn’t stop at every stop, but it did stop at the stop I needed, so I was okay. The next challenge was figuring out which exit to take to get to the street-level. I had four choices, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me which one it was. Once again, I guessed wrong, picking instead the exit furthest from the dorm, and found myself in a completely different part of town, although it did give me a chance to look around the neighborhood a bit while I used my map to make my way back to the dorm. When I finally did make it back, it had taken me almost an hour and a half to get home.

 

Still, it was only about 3 PM, and I really had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I ended up settling in to read for a while and was just considering taking a nap when Shaunte and Cathy knocked on my door. “We looked for you after the test,” they said, “but Michelle told us you’d already gone home.” I felt really bad, then, because I had just assumed they weren’t going to wait for me. Even though I know that nothing good ever comes of making assumptions, I’d done so anyway.

 

They invited me to go and explore the town with them. They’d actually made the same mistake I did when getting off the subway and taking the wrong exit, so they, too, had noticed that there was a little more to the town than we’d initially thought. We agreed to check it out and in the process hopefully find a wi-fi hotspot or an Internet café. We ended up walking all the way to Senkawa (the next stop on the subway), which has more shops than our area does, but it’s still very residential, meaning that the stores are mostly konbini (convenience stores), suupaa (supermarkets), bookshops, hair salons, and the occasional depaato (department store). We saw one hotel, and Cathy wondered if it’s a “love hotel”. We weren’t sure how to figure that out, but the sign outside did say that you could pay for a 3-hour “rest” as well as an overnight stay, so we figured it might be.

 

At any rate, no Internet cafés, and nothing advertising any wi-fi hotspots, either. We made our way back to the dorm and arrived there about 5:30. Dinner was at 6, and it was quite delicious: meat and tofu and vegetables that you dipped in raw egg (like sukiyaki), some kind of tuna and noodle salad with Japanese mayonnaise, miso soup, rice, and a milk caramel pudding for dessert. I’m so glad I signed up for the meal plan. The food is really exciting.

 

After dinner, I once again had nothing to do and ended up reading again… which was a bad idea, because soon I found myself nodding off. I ended up taking that nap I’d postponed from earlier. Bad idea. I’d set an alarm for 10 pm, intending to stay up until midnight or 1 AM after that and then sleep until maybe 6 am, but when I did wake up at 10, all I could think about was how I wanted to sleep for the rest of the night. Is it weird that I can’t wait until we have homework so I have a reason to stay up later at night?

 

Tuesday, June 24^th

Nope. No luck. Still wide awake at 4:30 AM. I knew that nap was a bad idea. It also doesn’t help that it’s already completely light outside at this time. I’m not one of those people who staunchly believes everything is better in the West, but I’ll never understand why they refuse to switch to Daylight Savings Time here. It would make a lot more sense.

 

Aside from that, the vague unreality of being here is beginning to wear off. I suppose that establishing and growing used to a sense of daily routine helps with that. It still bothers me that I feel so cut off from the rest of the world. I really wish I could get in touch with my family and friends. I’m not homesick, but I wish I could tell people back home about my experiences… share it with somebody. I know there’s this journal, but it’s not the same as a conversation. It’s also frustrating that there’s no TV anywhere in the dorm. Even just being able to see glimpses of world news would help remind me that I’m just in a foreign country and not isolated on some alien planet.

 

Since we left for school way too early again, I used the extra time to call home from the pay phone near the school. It’s not super expensive, but not cheap either. It felt good, though, even if it was for only a couple of minutes, just to hear my mom’s voice and once again establish a connection with someone elsewhere in the world.

 

At any rate, when we got to school we found a sign announcing who was assigned to which group. They’d split us into 6 groups, A through F, in (as we later found out) roughly increasing order of ability. Shaunte and I were assigned to group D, which was quite an achievement because groups E and F consisted mainly of close-to-native speakers and people (such as Michelle) who have been studying Japanese for many years or who have the advantage of being Chinese and already knowing all the kanji. They are the people who are expected to be placed in levels 3 or above. My group was told that we are very close to qualifying for level 2, but that we need to prove ourselves during this group session period, or we will get placed in level 1. The group consists of a guy who lived in Japan off and on for a total of 6 years over the course of his life, a couple of students of Japanese descent who grew up with a bit of the language but never learned it formally until they recently began taking classes, one guy who’s been studying it for 5 years but never excelled at it, and everyone else except myself and one other girl has been taking it for at least two years. The other girl is clearly in the wrong place; she couldn’t write her own name in katakana, can’t answer simple questions, and can’t formulate a sentence on her own to save her life. Despite everyone else’s superior experience, I seem to be in just the right place, though. My pronunciation is better than most, and I probably know more kanji than everyone there except maybe the guy who’s a Chinese major. If I’m lacking in anything, it’s probably vocabulary (especially names of things and places, like ‘grapes’ or ‘embassy’), and that’s easy enough to pick up. At any rate, I’m glad, because I’m definitely determined to get into level 2.

 

We had class from 9:30am to 12:45pm and then from 1:30pm until 4:45pm, with different teachers for each period. Our morning teacher, Konno-sensei, is young, energetic, and extremely funny. Everyone quickly fell in love with her, and we were all pretty bummed out when we discovered we had a different teacher in the afternoon. Takahashi-sensei is quite funny too, but she is a little less easy-going. Overall, both classes were a lot of fun, especially because my groupmates are fun people. I consider myself very lucky for being placed with them.

 

The content of the classes was at times frustratingly easy though, and I can’t say I really learned any new material other than a couple of random vocabulary words. Today’s classes were mainly a review of fairly basic Japanese. There was a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and some basic conversation practice. They barely touched kanji, which was frustrating because I’m just not used to writing things in hiragana anymore when I know the kanji for them. However, some of the students in the class (like the 6-years-off-and-on guy) don’t really know many kanji at all, or they are familiar with the characters but don’t know exactly when and how to use them. I hope this won’t slow us down too much, because that would be frustrating. In general, I hope classes don’t continue to be this slow because I really do want to make sure I get to learn everything I need to qualify for level 2. I won’t be stuck in a class with complete beginners. I’ll never learn enough.

 

Overall, I’d say it was a good day. During our lunch break, Shaunte and I met up with Cathy (who’d been assigned to group C) and bought ready-made lunchboxes and snacks from a konbini. After class was done for the way, we went to the computer lab, which was open from 5 until 5:30pm. It ended up not nearly being enough time to check and do everything we wanted to do on the Internet, but at least it felt good to get in touch with the “outside world” again.

 

After that, we went home, having to deal with rush hour at subway station, though thankfully our train wasn’t very full. We got home just after 6, so we went straight to the dining room and had dinner. Afterwards, we took turns taking showers and then went to Cathy’s room to do homework, study, and watch a bit of the weird and grotesque movie The Suicide Club. The Japanese have very, ah, interesting imaginations.

 

 

Wednesday, June 25^th

The day started off about the same as usual. We got up and had breakfast. We decided that, since we’re usually there way too early, we would leave at 8 am today instead of 7:30 like we’ve been doing. Everything was going well. When we got to the station, rush hour was in full force, so we had to pack into an extremely crowded subway car. Still, everything seemed to be fine… until we found ourselves passing through an unfamiliar station. There are two different subway lines that pass through the station by our dorm, and apparently they both depart from the same platform. We didn’t know this because we’d always gotten lucky and boarded the right train before. It’s not really obvious from the outside that it’s a different train. Anyway, we realized our mistake two stops too late, so we had to backtrack to Ikebukuro and then transfer to the other line. It ended up being okay and we still made it to school by 9 AM when class started at 9:30, but for a second there, it was kind of scary.

 

Yesterday, I’d really made an effort to speak up in class whenever I knew the answer and prove to the teachers that I am definitely no longer a beginner. This turned out to be a good thing, because several people had requested to change groups, so they had shuffled around the group assignments again. About half our class, including Shaunte and the completely clueless girl, got “demoted” to group C, while 3 group C students got moved up to our group. We were also joined by two students who had been (we assume) accidentally placed in group E when they were definitely not 3^rd-year level. Luckily, I was kept in the same place. Our new group is okay, and I am happy the clueless girl (who was incredibly annoying and nerdy) is gone, but overall, the group isn’t nearly as fun. Several of the new additions to the group are the kind of noisy, giggly, vain primadonnas who are the reason why I tend to hate my sex. Lucky me, I got to sit beside them, too.

 

Unfortunately, the class shuffling also meant that the teachers got switched around. Our new teacher is somewhere in between Konno-sensei and Takahashi-sensei in terms of both age and energy. She doesn’t really make jokes as much as either of them, which is why there was a lot less laughter and the class overall seemed a lot less fun. We only had class in the morning and not in the afternoon today, so we didn’t get to find out if we have a different afternoon teacher too.

 

On the bright side, even though we’re still reviewing stuff I already know, I felt like we covered a lot of material today, some of which was in the last chapter we covered before the end of the semester this past school year, so maybe that means that we’ll move on to new stuff soon. Although, we don’t seem to be covering every topic as in-depth as we could. For example, we were going over describing what’s in a room, but we just used「がある」instead of using placement words like「が置いてある」which is frustrating when you know the more proper way of doing it. We also went over「あげる」and「もらう」(giving and receiving), but she didn’t at all mention「くれる」and then when we went over「がほしい」and the -たい form of verbs, she didn’t go over how you have to use「ほしがっている」and「たがっている」when describing the third person, which was again quite frustrating. I don’t get why these group sessions are supposedly more intense than regular classes, because so far I’m not very impressed. You could argue that we do still have a week and a half of these group sessions to go, but next week we don’t have class for two days because of the trip to Yamanashi, and we have half-days again that Thursday and Friday, so I’m not sure how much they’re expecting to cover when they’re not even going nearly as in-depth as they could.

 

Having a half-day was nice, though, because it gave us the afternoon to explore. We decided to head to Shibuya, which is one of the most touristy areas of Tokyo. Lots of shops and things. We ended up walking around the Shibuya~Harajuku~Aoyama area, which includes the Tokyo version of New York’s 5^th Avenue. We didn’t go into too many shops, but we did go into Kiddy Land, a famous Harajuku store which contains five floors of the ridiculously cute merchandise Japan is famous for. What a crazy awesome place. I bought a penguin umbrella for myself (only about $6, not bad at all!) and a couple of things for friends, but I’ll probably be back. (Mom, remember the penguin rolly carry-on suitcase I saw at Schiphol over Christmas Break? They had them here. If I need an extra suitcase, I totally know where I’m getting it.)

 

Aside from that, we also spent a good amount of time at a bookstore. Cathy wanted to buy a sightseeing guide, and I ended up buying a Japanese grammar reference guide because we never used a textbook in class, so I have no easy way of looking things up when I don’t remember something. It also contains quite a lot of material we never covered in class, so I guess if we don’t start covering new material in these group sessions, I can try to use this book to teach myself some new things.

 

We managed to make it back to the station just before rush hour started, and got back to the dorm around 5pm. We relaxed a bit, took turns showering, and had dinner. Today’s menu included breaded chicken with this mayo-and-egg “sauce”. Super delicious! I love the food so much.

 

But now, I guess I’d better go do homework.

 

Thursday, June 26^th

I ended up making it until after midnight yesterday, for the first time since I got here. I slept until around 6am, which is much better than 4:30, at any rate.

 

Today hasn't been filled with too much excitement. We made it on the right train and managed to make it to school just fine this morning. Class has been okay. More fun than yesterday. We played some games with colors, and we did a skit where we pretended to be at a restaurant and one person in our group played the waiter and we had to order food. Other than a few useful phrases to use while at a restaurant, I still haven't learned anything new, though. I wish they'd get on with it!

 

I'm on lunch break now. Hopefully I will still have time to get food before class resumes at 1:30pm...