Adventures in Japan (Part 2)
A few days have passed and a LOT has happened~
All good things of course. No worries there. This time I won't document every single little detail, I'll just go by the pictures. It saves time for all of us don't you think??
Keyboard! On...Thursday? We had a whole bunch of meetings and explanations about stuff like how to register for classes, meeting with our advisor, how to do this, where to do that etc etc. VERY confusing. My brain was seriously on overload! I need to look over all that stuff again, especially the classes stuff. There was this HUGE booklet filled and filled with classes that we can take. ALL IN JAPANESE!
but there was one for the English classes too...the picture just wasn't as impressive :)
So after the meetings, we had lunch in the cafeteria. NOT at all like as home. You have to first pick a "restaurant" (sort of like in the mall). There's a machine in front of each one. You read the sign next to the machine, showing the menu. Then you pick set A, B, C etc for whichever meal you decided to get. You pay the machine, pick the set, and get a receipt. Bring the receipt to the person and voila! You get a meal. At the school the lunch comes with 3 side dish things.
We then had a tour of the library, which is HUGE. And they had moving shelves! Really cool. After the library was the PC room tour. I've always wondered about Japanese keyboards, so it was really interesting. They use qwerty keyboards but the spacebar is super tiny because in Japanese, spaces aren't used much at all. There's a separate button to change from Kanji -> Hiragana -> Katakana -> Romaji (English). I accidently pushed it and couldn't get it back to English XD
Then my friend from Vermont, Deidre, and I wandered to the second campus. You can see Tokyo Dome City from there! It made me really excited that it was so close to campus...more on that place later~
Then Anna and I went more food shopping (we really need to buy enough for at least a week next time instead of day by day) And I bought some House Foods Products: Vermont Curry and Tongari Corn. I couldn't resist. Arashi endorses House Foods, so when I see the products I automatically need to buy them XD I expected Tongari Corn to taste like Bugles, since they look like them, but there's a flavor to them. They're pretty good! (But the whole time I was eating them, I kept thinking of Matsujohn....don't know what I'm talking about? click here)
(plus, if I send in 3 barcodes to somewhere, I get a chance to see them live in Tokyo Disneyland!)
Best Part! Super Clear HD TV!!
The next day, Friday, we had to get our Alien Registration done. So we took the subway, which turns out to be just as easy as NYC subways as long as you know what station you're going too :)
They have these things called PASMO/Suika(?) passes which are like Metro cards in NYC. Except cooler. Because you just sorta scan them on the ticket thingy and it lights up bright blue and voila you're through! You don't have to like stick it through the little slot or anything. Just scan and go.
There's also signs all over the subway that I really need to take pics of because they have hilarious English, or just hilarious explanations...
Anway, while waiting for the Registration papers to go through, we had some time to kill...
Tokyo Dome! (THE REST OF THE DOME TICKETS GET ANNOUNCED TOMORROW!! AHHH!)
The Roller Coaster in Tokyo Dome City~ I really wanted to go on it, and maybe someday, but it's like 1000 yen (10 bucks)
Sofupa! I'm guess that's a shortened name for Soft Partfait. They looked sooo good. Didn't get any though, (it was only 10am) There was like cereal underneath yoguer and fruit and topping. I really wanted the chocolate banana one...
some random English~
There's a ton of fountains and water at Tokyo Dome City. At night everything lights up and I think there's like music in tune to the fountains. Or the fountains are in tune to the water really. I've heard it's beautiful. I'll definitely have to go at night sometime. Especially in the winter once the "Illuminations" get put up! (aka Christmas Lights)
Me and Carlie, from Kentucky with the Colonel! KFC woot! She's like a total Ageha (meaning she's into the big hair, the make-up, the really cute outfits and nails, the gems/rhinestones covering everything, very princess like) But she's crazy. A lot of fun to be with, that's for sure.
We went back to the office place to get our Alien Registration interim paper thingys. Fukushima-san (our Exchange advisor guy) brought us ALL the way to the top of the building. I think it was 24 floors. It has an observation deck :)
Tokyo! It was sooo beautiful~
Then we had lunch and had to use the ticketing machines again. Except this time it was more confusing because there was so much selection! I chose some Kitsune Udon. I love udon. And kitsune. I also had to practice slurping my noodles. In Japan, if you don't slurp your noodles then it means that the food isn't good enough for you. Which was so not the case. But...I really couldn't get any slurpage going. I tried! It splashed everywhere haha. At least I didn't throw my chopstick at the person across from me though! (coughKatinacough)
We took the subway back to the University and learned how to pay for our internet and rent. Super easy. Just use the machine. Everything is with machines lol.
Then, because it looked like it was going to rain, and my hair gets AWFUL in the rain, we went to this little store across from the school. It sold like cute little stationaries, notebooks, school supplies, and....CLEAR UMBRELLAS! I don't remember if Mom remembers, but I told her that I didn't want to bring my umbrella because I wanted to buy a clear one. So this made me really really happy~
Umbrella (It's purple for Matsujun <3) and a normal notebook.
We met our Language Exchange Partners (LEPs) last night. I've got 3 girls and 1 guy, but the guy and 1 girl weren't there yesterday. The two girls I met are Madoka and Maika. They're so cute and sweet! Madoka LOVES Arashi just as much as I do! And she also loves News. She's been to a NewS concert, a KAT-TUN concert, AND TWO ARASHI CONCERTS!! She went to the Kokuritsu AAA 2008 concert last year~~
I showed her all of my stuff and she thought it was sooo cool haha. She kept saying Sugoi over and over and over again. We really got along well. She said that she would take me to Harajuku and go to the Johnny's Shop XDD I can't wait!
The point of LEP is to help each other with languages. So I'm supposed to try my best speaking Japanese and they're supposed to try their best speaking English, as well as show us foreigners around. And the proper way to do things so we don't get in trouble~ It was a lot of fun hanging out with them for like 3 hours.
Next time I post...maybe I'll have a sweet Japanese phone!