Japan! -- Mita and Tokyo Tawaa (Tower)
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So, on Thursday I had my meeting with my Academic Advisor, I was running late as I just missed a train leaving the station and had to wait another 15 mins for another. A rare occurance here. But I rushed and made up time so that eventually I was only 5 minutes late. Misaki-sensei, who turned out to be a laaaady, didn't seem to mind and she started explaining stuff about the credits I had to do and so on to me in Japanese which I followed rather damn well. Woot! She gave me my results for the Jap test, I'm in class 2F. This is great. Basically tis the middle class of the Intermediate level. Which means I'll progress faster than those in 2B, but slower than those in 2G. Being not Elementary was all I really cared about anyway.
Anyway, she started then saying about how the work was reeeeeeally 大変 (tough/hard) as there was loads and loads of it. Hooray. She was saying about how a lot of the Korean students who go to Jap unis go home saying about how life at a Japanese uni is great and they had a whale of a time but the ones from Keio just go home saying 'why do I have to do so much work?' Yay. But apparently I'll have fun in Japan anyway. If I can find time for it. Hmm.
Anyway that aside I decided that I wasn't going to have come all the way into Tokyo just for 10 minutes of this stuff so after that was over I decided to go and take another look around the area.
I went back to the shrine we had found on our first day and decided to actually go up the steps and take a look, no-one else was about as I wandered around and took some photos, I did the shrine business and took another omikuji (fortune), actually I was rather tempted not to pay the 100 Yen for it since no-one would know, and money really is something I'll have to keep an eye on here. But I did. Don't want angry shinto gods to kill me in the face. Twas nice up there anyway.
After that I carried on wandering up the road, ate some CalorieMate (like out of MGS3! W00t!) and decided to try walking to Tokyo Tower, which you can see from the outside campus. I wasn't actually sure whether it'd be ages away and I'd not be able to just walk to it, but I figured I'd at least find something interesting on the way. Fortunately I managed to get there within quite little time. It's huuuge. If just a big red and white rip-off of the Eiffel Tower. But I like it anyway. Anyhoo, I went into the Tokyo Tawaa Centre at the bottom where they had souvenir shops and other stuff.
I started browsing one stall selling touristy stuff, I was considering getting my sister an O-Maneki Neko here, after all I wanted to get her one generally, and these seemed cool. Umm, if I haven't explained these already they're the Welcoming Cats. The little (mostly) white cats sitting up with one paw raised to welcome customers and good fortune. Anyway the owner of the stall was damned pushy, he kept coming up as I was browsing, attempting to show me different things he was selling and how good they were, thank God he couldn't really speak any English, or I'm sure he would have done. There were as many Katakan words as he could muster there though. Anyway that was pissing annoying, but I bought the cat anyway as it was rather cool. An a couple of postcards. Maybe I'm going to the wrong places but tourist postcards seem quite hard to find here. Ah well. I'll have to buy some stamps soon and send they.
There were looooads of foreigners there. It was quite funny. Especially the ones who clearly couldn't speak any Japanese trying to ask the shopkeeps for stuff "[American]No, not that one, just this one. Not that one. Only this. This one.[/American]" and so on. Ahahaha! Fools. Anyway I wandered around that for a bit, bought what turned out to be an entirely useless pencil case, ah well.
There were a fair few little 'attractions' such as the museum of trick art, and a 3D thingy but they each cost quite some Yen so I didn't bother. They'd probably be disappointing anyway.
I didn't bother going up the Tower yet either, it only cost about £4 but I couldn't be arsed at the sec, though I definitely will one day soon.
So, on Thursday I had my meeting with my Academic Advisor, I was running late as I just missed a train leaving the station and had to wait another 15 mins for another. A rare occurance here. But I rushed and made up time so that eventually I was only 5 minutes late. Misaki-sensei, who turned out to be a laaaady, didn't seem to mind and she started explaining stuff about the credits I had to do and so on to me in Japanese which I followed rather damn well. Woot! She gave me my results for the Jap test, I'm in class 2F. This is great. Basically tis the middle class of the Intermediate level. Which means I'll progress faster than those in 2B, but slower than those in 2G. Being not Elementary was all I really cared about anyway.
Anyway, she started then saying about how the work was reeeeeeally 大変 (tough/hard) as there was loads and loads of it. Hooray. She was saying about how a lot of the Korean students who go to Jap unis go home saying about how life at a Japanese uni is great and they had a whale of a time but the ones from Keio just go home saying 'why do I have to do so much work?' Yay. But apparently I'll have fun in Japan anyway. If I can find time for it. Hmm.
Anyway that aside I decided that I wasn't going to have come all the way into Tokyo just for 10 minutes of this stuff so after that was over I decided to go and take another look around the area.
I went back to the shrine we had found on our first day and decided to actually go up the steps and take a look, no-one else was about as I wandered around and took some photos, I did the shrine business and took another omikuji (fortune), actually I was rather tempted not to pay the 100 Yen for it since no-one would know, and money really is something I'll have to keep an eye on here. But I did. Don't want angry shinto gods to kill me in the face. Twas nice up there anyway.
After that I carried on wandering up the road, ate some CalorieMate (like out of MGS3! W00t!) and decided to try walking to Tokyo Tower, which you can see from the outside campus. I wasn't actually sure whether it'd be ages away and I'd not be able to just walk to it, but I figured I'd at least find something interesting on the way. Fortunately I managed to get there within quite little time. It's huuuge. If just a big red and white rip-off of the Eiffel Tower. But I like it anyway. Anyhoo, I went into the Tokyo Tawaa Centre at the bottom where they had souvenir shops and other stuff.
I started browsing one stall selling touristy stuff, I was considering getting my sister an O-Maneki Neko here, after all I wanted to get her one generally, and these seemed cool. Umm, if I haven't explained these already they're the Welcoming Cats. The little (mostly) white cats sitting up with one paw raised to welcome customers and good fortune. Anyway the owner of the stall was damned pushy, he kept coming up as I was browsing, attempting to show me different things he was selling and how good they were, thank God he couldn't really speak any English, or I'm sure he would have done. There were as many Katakan words as he could muster there though. Anyway that was pissing annoying, but I bought the cat anyway as it was rather cool. An a couple of postcards. Maybe I'm going to the wrong places but tourist postcards seem quite hard to find here. Ah well. I'll have to buy some stamps soon and send they.
There were looooads of foreigners there. It was quite funny. Especially the ones who clearly couldn't speak any Japanese trying to ask the shopkeeps for stuff "[American]No, not that one, just this one. Not that one. Only this. This one.[/American]" and so on. Ahahaha! Fools. Anyway I wandered around that for a bit, bought what turned out to be an entirely useless pencil case, ah well.
There were a fair few little 'attractions' such as the museum of trick art, and a 3D thingy but they each cost quite some Yen so I didn't bother. They'd probably be disappointing anyway.
I didn't bother going up the Tower yet either, it only cost about £4 but I couldn't be arsed at the sec, though I definitely will one day soon.