Everything else... Part 2

As it has been over a week since these events have transpired, I once again stress that I'm doing my best to remember what happened with the help of my handy dandy schedule. Well here goes from, Thursday Sept. 17!

Once again we woke up, had breakfast, and headed over to Waseda University to have what we thought would be our orientations for JASSO, the scholarship I and 9 others from CSU received. Turns out though, there was an orientation for all the students living in the dorms too. They made us fill out a form and watch a video about the rules of living in certain dorms. Pretty boring stuff. After we finished with that room, the us CSU folks went to the next room to find out about our JASSO. We won't receive it without a Japanese bank account, which I recently made with the help of my WIC and Niji no Kai buddies. After the orientations, we all met back up in a classroom at the SILS building, where we waited for everyone to gather back up.

Following the return of all the CSU students, the Japanese students had taken down our names and what we wanted to eat. The Japanese students then split us up into groups, so we could all go out to lunch together. I chose ramen, which turned out to be a really dumb decision. About 10 of us CSU students chose ramen, therefore the group was too large. The CSU ramen group was then split again into more manageable groups, allowing us to fit better into restaurants. My group went to a restaurant named Guren I believe. I thought we went to get ramen, but when we went to the restaurant, the restaurant only sold Abura Men or something and Tsukemen. I reluctantly went with the Tsukemen only to find that it was actually quite good. The restaurant happened to play Michelle Branch, so a few of us CSU'ers decided to sing along. As we left the restaurant the worker told a couple of us to order the smaller portion if we can't finish. Our friend Akki assured us that such a thing was not a common occurrence as it was only our our 3rd day in Japan. After the lunch, we returned to the SILS building to get an orientation for class selection. Quite some boring stuff. Almost fell asleep. We all picked our classes, and the WIC and Niji no Kai students waited for us to finish. They then took all of us in separate groups to Shinjuku to look around for a bit. Following the small tours, we all went to an okonomiyaki restaurant.

Okonomiyaki is pretty easy to make but the monjayaki or whatever it is called, is not all that great. We had all you can eat, but the place was literally like an oven with all the hot plates going at once and the 50+ people in a tiny Japanese restaurant. Overall a fun night. After the hot hot dinner, I believe we all headed to a chain bar called Hub. Had a couple beers to end the night. Very fun night overall. Got to have some drinks with some new friends and make some new friends.

9/18 MOVING DAY

Moving day was probably the 2nd saddest day since I've been here. We all started the morning off the same way we did for the past few days by waking up and going to grab breakfast. Afterward however, we all headed back up to get our luggage ready, so we could store it in another room because we had to check out of the hotel. Following the storing of our luggage, we all went to Waseda again, for the host families needed to be announced. We all took a look at all the host families, and after that we had a pizza lunch with the WIC and Niji no Kai students again. I must say it was very trying for me as I had trouble with my Japanese that day for some unknown reason.

When lunch was finished, we had a final mini orientation to address any final issues any of us might have had. The orientation was short, and we all headed back to the hotel to pick up our stuff. We did some final preparations and basically everyone went their separate ways for the time being. The dorm students did however agree to meet up, so that we could all go grab a bite to eat as we didn't have cellphones yet. I'm pretty sure after dinner we all just went home and slept. It was a long and emotional day. The next day we had to pick classes in the morning.

Most of us all magically met up around the same time the following morning. The rundown of the day was pretty simple. We picked classes, had lunch, went to a Hanko store to buy some seals, went to Akihabara for bit though I didn't look at much, ate dinner, and went back to my dorm I believe. Pretty uneventful day overall. With that, I believe I've pretty much caught up with my blog. I'll include some better entries in the near future hopefully! I still have a couple days to write about recently including Ghibili Museum, though don't expect much haha.