Sunday, January 22, 2012

I'm a busy girl, in a busy world!

Hey everyone! This past week has been full of fun outings and school work.

Last Saturday, Sylvia, Jeanne and I went to Sunshine City in downtown Ikebukuro. It's a huge mall with shops (obviously) and a theme park inside! I really like Japanese fashion. The women here are very trendy. They rarely wear jeans and I've never seen a woman in any other type of pants. They often wear dresses with tights/stockings and heels, so there is a lot of "click clack click clack" in the train stations in the morning. Their outfits always look well put together and unique, even within a similar style. I see a lot of an old girly Parisian kind of style (I think) - with pale colors, lace, flowery patterns, bows, etc. It's very nice :-) and many of the shops reflect that kind of style, or a more urban one. Anyways, on saturday we ate at a small shop that we thought had the best combination of price and food options. A convenience of most restaurants is that they have small plastic props of the dishes they serve outside, so you can choose before you enter and order shortly after your seated. Which would have been nice, but we had such a hard time reading the names of what we wanted! I've gotten better but last week, even my katakana was shaky. So Sylvia read the name for me so I could say it later. Her's and Jeanne's were in kanji, so they had a worse time trying to figure it out. The hostess/waitress was patient with us, she even helped them with the kanji. After we ate we went through the mall and made stops at a bunch of places, including hello kitty (sooo cute!), a book store (where I bought two magazines), and the center of the mall for a concert. I just want to backtrack a little to say how much I enjoy magazines, and Japanese magazines are no exception! No, I cant read everything inside, but I can understand the pictures! Plus they're larger than what I'm used to, which is great! And one even came with a gift! So, back at the mall, a pop girl group called 9nine performed. They were so cute! It was a good introduction to Japanese pop. I mean, I've heard Japanese pop songs before of course, but they were at the end of tv shows or movies. I've never known who the voices were singing or seen a group perform, it was good! There were a bunch of men at the front of the stage, clapping and dancing, even more so than the women or young girls (who I'm pretty sure are the targeted audience lol). After a while we went to Namja Town, the theme park. The theme is adventure, and you walk around different "locations" and use these "who you gonna call? ghost busters!" looking gadgets to search for ghosts! We didn't find any but we did find Ice Cream Land! Which is exactly what it sounds like. I bought the cutest little house cake, that didn't actually have any ice cream in it (which I realized after I bought it lol). It was yummy! After that we were pretty tired so we decided to leave. But when we got outside, we felt like exploring some more, so we picked a direction and walked in it. We ended up walking into another area of downtown Ikebukuro. A ton of shops, salons, and karaoke (which is important later)! On the way home, we found out that its about a ten minute walk inside the subway station from downtown Ikebukuro to the station by the dorm! So exploring later will be easier.

On Monday, we started our co-curricular classes at school. I went to Japanese Song and Kawazoe, a beginner's conversation class. This upcoming week, I'm also going to try Hand Craft, which is something related to fashion. More on that later...

On Tuesday, after class a bunch of us went back to downtown Ikebukuro for karaoke! I forget what the name of the place, but it was big like an office building. We always have trouble saying what we want but with a series of pointing and various other hand gestures, we manage. We booked a room for two hours and ordered our first drinks, which are mandatory (mine was ginger ale :-) ) then went up to see our room. It was really nice! They have large windows so you can see the city, couches, tables, menus for food, and party lights. We sang, danced, ate, took pictures - it was a good time. I can see why it's such a popular outing, it felt like we were having a small party!

On Thursday, Max (another new student) took Jeanne, Sylvia and I to Harajuku. We were all hungry so we began the food search (going from place to place to look at the food props and prices) and settled on an American style cafe (I know why go to Japan just to eat American food? I just wanted to know what it was like...) It was just like an American cafe lol except that there was a smoking section, which happened to be right next to us, so...it was just like being in the smoking section. The food was good (I had a bar-b-que chicken sandwich with fries) and we watched Alice in Wonderland. After that, we explored a little but we got there so late that most of the stores were closing. So we decided to come back on Sunday (today) to see everything in full swing. Including the Harajuku girls that dress up in costumes, only on Sundays!

On Friday we went back to karaoke! But before that we had a tea ceremony at school. It was very nice :-) More on that later though because I have to get ready to leave for Harajuku! I promise to post pics soon.

Thanks for all the love, I appreciate it!

Until next time

Saturday, January 14, 2012

I made it!

Finally! After years of dreaming, months of running around, and enough prayer for everything in between - I am here in Tokyo! I arrived on Wednesday, a day later than anticipated, because (in short) I have time management issues. Regardless, the Lord worked it out for me to have a smooth flight and a surprisingly easy method to get to school on my own. Since then, I've been busy trying to get acclimated to my new surroundings.

I'll start with Thursday. I went to school with another new student, Jeanne. Japanese is her major (!) and she's been really cool about helping me with things I don't know or remember. We got breakfast and arrived at school about a half hour earlier than we were expected for orientation. I'm sure those of you that know me need a minute to recover from some kind of post traumatic shock - yes - I was early! On purpose! Anyways, I ate as much of my breakfast as I could. It was bread filled with a bean paste and some kind of frosting. Not good :-(. I ate the bread only and then went to take my placement test. What a disaster! I laugh as I write this but it really was not good. I forgot so much of what I learned at Drexel. When the sensei came back with it all marked up in red ink, I kept thinking "that was wrong!?!...that too?" I had to answer some questions about whether or not my grade matters, if I need the credits for graduation, and why I wanted to come here in the first place. I tried to tell myself that it's probably standard procedure but I couldn't help think that they were scratching their heads...looking at my file, with two years worth of Japanese classes...and then back at me, with the whack placement test. Shortly after that, Kato sensei told me about her english support classes and made it clear that I need to come to every session. I agreed and then went on to orientation.

It was loooong. I'm gonna leave it at that. Well, there was one thing that I found hilarious: warnings about chikan - the train pervert. My program coordinator's pictures were pretty good at depicting was is and is not okay on the train, but the movie took the cake. There was a movie made about a guy who is falsely accused of being a chikan, and he ends up going to jail anyway. Apparently most people accused of chikan are considered guilty, its a really big deal out here. Good to know. Especially because a friend of mine told me she was concerned that I may be molested on the train out here. Now we can both breath a little easier :-)

Somewhere in the middle of the day, we were taken out to lunch at a udon restaurant around the corner. Very  tasty! Although, I'll be honest, I wasn't feeling the tiny fish (I only ate one) . After orientation some of the students that were here longer took us around the city. That was fun! I'm most comfortable in urban environments, and this one is so eclectic and cool looking! I already knew before coming out here that Tokyo would have the perfect combination of old and new, but it's something different to actually see temples snuggled between apartment and office buildings. Plus, all the buildings out here seem to have so much more detail and flare than what I'm used to. The best discovery? The hyaku-en shoppu! It's basically a Japanese dollar store and when I say they have everythang (everythang? EVERYTHANG) I mean it!

Even after all that, Jeanne and I went to the supermarket by our dorm. I bought milk, apple juice (did I mention how delicious the apple juice is? So yummy) bread and other necessities. I punked out of buying blueberry jam (they didn't have grape, so I bought strawberry) but I'm gonna get it today. It's probably really good with peanut butter - and I love me some peanut butter (sorry babe!).

On Friday - for the sake of my fingers and your eyes, here's the fast version - I went to extra help, then more orientation, then to class. I will say that the extra help turned out to be incredibly beneficial. I thought class was pretty easy. Afterwards, some of us went out to eat (at a yudon spot with food that was cheap and delicious) and then more shopping. I bought an electric kettle for hot cocoa and tea, a handkerchief for washing/drying my hands at school (there are no paper towels in the building), and a bunch of other knickknacks. My room is coming along, I don't need much now!

Today, Jeanne and I are going exploring! Should be good :-)

That's all for now. I realize this post is pretty long...sorry if that's more than what you expected. Still, I'm happy to share my experiences with whoever is interested in them. If you have any comments or want to send me some love, feel free!

Oh I forgot to mention, I survived my first earthquake in Japan (my second in life lol) on Thursday. It happened during orientation. It wasn't bad, lasted a total of two minutes, tops.

Smiling in anticipation of whats to come,