My travels started at 3:30am on Monday. I left home with my mom then drove to pick up my Grandma and we all drove up to Chicago for my flight from O'Hare at 10am. My first layover was in San Francisco for 2 hours then I was off to Hawaii for another couple of hours of waiting and then an eight hour flight to Tokyo Haneda. After a bus and train ride, I was finally at my hotel by midnight on Wednesday. On the bright side, ANA has great in flight movies. I watched Green Hornet, Wild Wild West, Harry Potter Half Blood Prince, and a few episodes of Burn Notice.
My first night of sleep was surprisingly good, especially considering the 14 hour different of jet lag I was fighting. My first stop on Wednesday was to visit Prof Shiomi, the prof at Kogakuin that works with the Mudd program. After some paperwork and lunch, it was off to the dorm with Nobu.
My dorm is in Chofu, which is about 40 minutes from Kogakuin in Shinjuku, and then a 20 minute walk from the train station. I have a miniature card swipe to get in. Right past the rack for umbrellas are lockers to put shoes and switch to slippers. I didn't have my own at first so I borrowed a pair from the dorm attendant that were way too small for my feet. I just bough my own pair from a 100 yen store (even better than dollar stores, btw) that are slightly bigger but still not big enough. The dorm also has a nifty board thing that is used to indicate if you are in or not. I'll snag a picture of it at some point.
My room is pretty much the size of singles at Mudd, except there is a lot of closet space and the desk is super puny. My biggest complaint is that there is no Wifi here in the dorm. My only internet access is wired. Jerks. I do have an IP phone and nice lighting though. And the bed is very comfortable (especially since it is barely more than wooden support frame and two inches of padding). The pillow is my favorite part.
The dorm here is so much different than Mudd. There is a dorm attendant on duty that enforces all the rules. Visitors aren't allowed (except family members of the same sex), and curfew is midnight. Past midnight, the gate outside closes. If you are gonna be out past midnight, you have to let the attendant know the morning you leave. There is a dining room on the first floor that has decent food (not that I can really judge the quality of Japanese food) and the showers are past the dining room. In the evening, the public bath is open and the showers are open at all other times. I am mildly tempted to try the public bath before at some point, but I'm still debating. Bathing with a bunch of dudes isn't extremely high on my list of fun things to do. Then again, it might be a huge community building thing. No idea, but you only live once, right?
Benjamin Liu showed up a day or two ago. He is the rising senior that is actually here to work on clinic and such. I only met him a week or two before the year ended and we didn't talk much, but we are getting along really well and it should be awesome getting to know him better. And two guys that live in the dorm stopped by the room to welcome me, so I'm expecting to have no issues with the guys I am living with. Btw, guys only dorm.
As for the things I've been doing, I explored the area around Kogakuin's Shinjuku campus and tried to explore the building but got lost. The building is 28 stories tall and is connected to another building and Kogakuin owns half of that building. The elevators only go to certain floors and there are like 4 sets of elevators per floor. Since I arrived a few days before Benji, I was asked to help with the English conversation class at Kogakuin. It is taught by Prof Sebastian Brooke, an engineer from New Zealand. Amusingly, all the Japanese students in the class had slight british accents and (kind of) spoke British-English. I think I am having lunch on Monday with some of the students, but they were talking pretty fast and I might have misheard... Either way, Sebastian is really nice and he told me to contact him if I need anything. That doesn't sound like much, but it is really nice to have someone I can call if I need help.
Ah, I have yet to detail how I am feeling and such (you know, assuming I have emotions and all those things that I don't claim to actually have). Being in Japan is great, but being in a foreign country is kind of overwhelming. I have been studying Japanese for four years now, but I definitely don't know enough to live here yet. I comprehend simple things and I catch random bits of conversation around me, but I still have trouble in some stores (especially here in Sengawa where there are fewer tourists). I didn't really have culture shock because I knew to expect most of the things I come across though out the day. The things that do surprise me are the parts of Japanese culture I never expected to come across and never looked into, mostly small trivia things. For example, the current generation of Japanese guys are referred to as "herbivores" because they do not go out and hunt. Instead, they are shy, kind of like rabbits. I can't say that I blame them. Japanese girls are scary, best off to just avoid them. On that note, Japanese fashion is weird. I already knew Japanese girls pretty much always wear high heels and never wear pants, but short skirts aren't as scandalous as in the states. Showing the shoulders, however, is risque.
I'm happy to say that I don't seem to draw too much attention. The only time I really noticed anyone staring at me was when I was on the train and I saw a little boy, probably 6 or so years old, looking at me with a confused look. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary. Its nice, I don't feel like an outsider.
Speaking of trains, the train system here is amazing. The buses are functional, but the trains operate with a precision engineers dream of. I hope the engineers that worked on Japan's system are proud, I know I would be. They do get crowded, but whatever. People watching is a great way to pass the time. The train ride from my dorm to Kogakuin's Shinjuku campus is a bit under an hour and I can get to the building from the station without going above ground (or getting lost). I learned the kanji for the places I need to visit so I don't have trouble traveling.
Walking to Sengawa station from my dorm takes about 20 minutes (and it is uphill, so I won't be able to potentially make it faster by freelining), and it lets me soak in what living in Japan is like outside when not in the city. Traffic is scary and the buildings are small and the sidewalks even smaller, but I do get occasional reminders that I am still on Earth and not in a completely foreign, distant land. There is a rose bush on the path that I walk, and it always reminds me of home. Not in a way that makes me homesick, but in a way that reminds me I am still in the same reality.
I am desperately looking for somewhere to freeline. The roads here are rougher than I expected (and filled with traffic that scares the crap out of me), and the sidewalks are even worse. But there are some potential spots on the side streets that I will test once it stops raining.
I hate rain. It has been raining for almost two days straight, and it will only get worse. Not only is summer Japan's rainy season, there is a typhoon off the coast and heading towards us. In case you don't know, a typhoon is basically a hurricane but in a different part of the world. And, lucky me, the typhoon that is going to hit recently reached category 5 "super typhoon" rating, the highest possible. My first typhoon experience is going to be a fun one...
I've been able to confirm that college students in Japan have essentially the same diet as us. When Ben and I went to the Hachioji campus yesterday, Nobu and his friends showed us the Japanese way to do lunch in college: a trip to 7-eleven and cup noodles. No joke. They already had a stock of cup noodles in their clinic room, so we headed to 7-eleven to buy drinks and such. The best part is that the prepackaged food was so much better quality than in the US. Gotta love college students.
So I'm not sure if any IMSA folk are reading this or not, but if anyone remembers Cari Peterson from the class of '09, she goes to college here in Tokyo. She lives in Shinjuku (cue the NO WAY! WHAT! etc.). So, yeah, I spent yesterday hanging out with an IMSA alum. I hadn't actually thought about that she was here until the night before and then happened to catch her online the same night. Since she has been here for almost two years, I was having her show us around Shinjuku. I feel sorry for Ben, we spent a lot of the time talking about random IMSA things. My favorite was when she mentioned going to Korea though IMSA and having "Papa Gleason" as a chaperone. Papa Gleason. Apparently, they also called him "M.D. Gleason" and "Gleason in wonderland".
Mmm, the food. Though Japanese food isn't my favorite, and there are plenty of things I don't like to eat, I am enjoying the food. I have had some pretty good noodle dishes, and the dining hall in the dorm served amazing curry the other night. Not to mention the phenomenal cup noodles. It is possible I'll get radiation poisoning, but it is far more likely I will die from sodium overdose. Delicious, delicious death. ^____^
Alright, I have been working on this post for days. My first attempt was after my first day here, but I got sidetracked and fell behind by a day. Then I had to postpone writing about my day in order to finish writing about the day before, and that continued until today when the rain kept me in the dorm for most of the day (minus a trip to 7-eleven for food, mister donut for donuts, and the grocery store for an umbrella to prepare for the coming typhoon). Oh, Japan has a really popular donut franchise called "Mister Donut", and it is delicious. I wiki-ed it, and Mister Donut was Dunkin' Donut's competitor in the states until they were bought out. I think I will be a frequent visitor since it is on the way to the station (and I love donuts).
If you have any specific questions about culture, language, or something, let me know. I probably have forgotten to write about a lot of things that I can' think of right now. The important thing is, I have written my first (substantial) blog post. I kind of hate myself for blogging, but whatever.
