水曜日, 5月 17, 2006
so... the first day of classes was long. real long. it could be because i got up at 6:30. which is way better than the 4-something of the day before, but still not quite what i was hoping for.
yay... (that was tuesday).
So, i went to class around 8:45 because that's when a big group of us were leaving because... well.. nobody quite knew how to get there. we got there allright, it just happend to be waaay before 11, when my first class started. During that time I registered my laptop so i could get wireless on campus and got some breakfast.
then I had Oral Intensive Japanese II. surprisingly it's hard. i suppose that's because it's the hardest japanese course that's not for native speakers so everyone who's beyond 1 year of japanese is taking it. there are only about 6 or 7 of us, but it'll be good practice and hopefully i'll be able to speak really well by the end. we'll have homework every class and speaking stuff... i think i might need a tape player or something.
then, i got my TUJ id, a locker and had some lunch.
oh my god. they have this thing here called jampan. it's basically a softroll but inside, is jam. it's amazing! strawberry jam and bread. maybe i'll find myself some creamcheese and make the most awesome invention ever.... the creamcheese and jelly sandwich. also, had a salad.
then I went to Japanese culture. that class is pretty awesome. it involves a lot of reading but the papers won't be too much work. the teacher wanted to meet with us individually and so i did that after class. she's really cool and uploaded all the readings onto blackboard so we wouldn't have to copy like $40 worth of reading for the year. but for me that rocks because i don' teven have to print it. now it's all in pdf so i can write on it on my tablet. squeet.
after that i met Stefania, who is a girl who lives at akasaka with me, and we metro'd to akasaka and walked to the vodaphone. together we got cells, and since they took an hour to set up, she waited for mine since i had to go back to TUJ for my last class. With a bit of running through the tokyo metro, i go there about 5 min or so before the class started. Oh, and now i'm the master of the tokyo metro. on the way back, i went from a stop i'd never even been to before and took a line i'd never been on before and found my transfer and was very efficient. in other words, i totally rock. (don't deny it)
so, my class was US and East Asian relations. it doesn't have too much reading, it'll be mostly lecture based. the prof is a crazy british guy who requires that we have folders for his handouts. he will, throughout the summer, do folder checks.... this reminds me of highschool freshman bio. eeew, or worse, 8th grade civics.... but at least it'll be easy. i just don't like this sort of forced organization. but we've only got a final paper and a midterm so it won't be bad. i just need to make sure i eat before the class starts ebcause it ends at 9:30.
we got out early... 8:15 or so, and i left campus and took the metro back. behind the metro, on the other end of the track, there was random art. this one was called holly and sardine. yeah... that's what i thought too.
there was also some olympic poster stuff left over from the winter olympics. it says good luck japan. *shrug*
at the conbini at akasaka station(my station), i got some soba (buckwheat noodles), but totally got lost walking from the metro to the dorm because i was being a space cadet and kept walking waaay past my turn. i'm just retarded
so after my 20 or so min diversion i got back to the dorm, ate my dinner, and went to sleep around 10.
got my cell from stef around 1 and went back to sleep.
and that was my day. wheee.
[fin.]
yay... (that was tuesday).
So, i went to class around 8:45 because that's when a big group of us were leaving because... well.. nobody quite knew how to get there. we got there allright, it just happend to be waaay before 11, when my first class started. During that time I registered my laptop so i could get wireless on campus and got some breakfast.
then I had Oral Intensive Japanese II. surprisingly it's hard. i suppose that's because it's the hardest japanese course that's not for native speakers so everyone who's beyond 1 year of japanese is taking it. there are only about 6 or 7 of us, but it'll be good practice and hopefully i'll be able to speak really well by the end. we'll have homework every class and speaking stuff... i think i might need a tape player or something.
then, i got my TUJ id, a locker and had some lunch.
oh my god. they have this thing here called jampan. it's basically a softroll but inside, is jam. it's amazing! strawberry jam and bread. maybe i'll find myself some creamcheese and make the most awesome invention ever.... the creamcheese and jelly sandwich. also, had a salad.
then I went to Japanese culture. that class is pretty awesome. it involves a lot of reading but the papers won't be too much work. the teacher wanted to meet with us individually and so i did that after class. she's really cool and uploaded all the readings onto blackboard so we wouldn't have to copy like $40 worth of reading for the year. but for me that rocks because i don' teven have to print it. now it's all in pdf so i can write on it on my tablet. squeet.
after that i met Stefania, who is a girl who lives at akasaka with me, and we metro'd to akasaka and walked to the vodaphone. together we got cells, and since they took an hour to set up, she waited for mine since i had to go back to TUJ for my last class. With a bit of running through the tokyo metro, i go there about 5 min or so before the class started. Oh, and now i'm the master of the tokyo metro. on the way back, i went from a stop i'd never even been to before and took a line i'd never been on before and found my transfer and was very efficient. in other words, i totally rock. (don't deny it)
so, my class was US and East Asian relations. it doesn't have too much reading, it'll be mostly lecture based. the prof is a crazy british guy who requires that we have folders for his handouts. he will, throughout the summer, do folder checks.... this reminds me of highschool freshman bio. eeew, or worse, 8th grade civics.... but at least it'll be easy. i just don't like this sort of forced organization. but we've only got a final paper and a midterm so it won't be bad. i just need to make sure i eat before the class starts ebcause it ends at 9:30.
we got out early... 8:15 or so, and i left campus and took the metro back. behind the metro, on the other end of the track, there was random art. this one was called holly and sardine. yeah... that's what i thought too.
there was also some olympic poster stuff left over from the winter olympics. it says good luck japan. *shrug*
at the conbini at akasaka station(my station), i got some soba (buckwheat noodles), but totally got lost walking from the metro to the dorm because i was being a space cadet and kept walking waaay past my turn. i'm just retarded
so after my 20 or so min diversion i got back to the dorm, ate my dinner, and went to sleep around 10.
got my cell from stef around 1 and went back to sleep.
and that was my day. wheee.
[fin.]
so, two days ago, monday, we had our TUJ orientation.
We had no idea how to get there, so again, they picked us up and we walked there. it took soooo long. but, since they took us the back way, that was why. Howesan, you may remember these things... the big circley tunnels through water...i don't even know what they were...but we walked through them, but you usually don't.
that's my only pic of the "orientation" because everything elese was inside.
so... we go inside and then for about 2 hours they tell us that in japan, we'll probably be stopped by the cops because we're foreign and they want to make sure we're here legally. and...if we get bikes...we'll be stopped for sure. make sure we're properly registerred and stuff. also, we can be held for questioning. just because. aren't the japanese great?
then we had lunch and learned about earthquakes. we saw this great pic of the 1923 earthquake that destroyed tokyo. apparently these giant tokyo earthquakes have been going on for around...at least thousands of years and have been pretty much regularly occurring every 70 years. so, they warned us that at any moment we might just die. that sounds fun. so they wanted to go over earthquake safety information. also, because japan is at the intersection of about 4 tectonic plates, there are small earthquakes pretty often all over japan. if you hear of an earthquake hitting "tokyo" on the news, chances are it hit some city way outside of tokyo. so, don't worry about it unless they talk abotu a death count. at which point i'll have probably heard about it too so i can post that i'm not dead. also, if something like that happens, i'll have my cell phone on- so feel free to check if you're worried. that'll happen within 2 hours of of when anything's happening.
so... that was a day of scare tactics or someting... it was mostly long and tedious.
and cold
the building IS VERY VERY COLD.
....
so, after orientation a bunch of us went out karioking. it was in roppongi, which is a huge entertainment district and about a 5-10 min walk from the dorm.
here's the karioke place. see the blue series of blocks, that's on the building. it's like 10 floors of karioke rooms.
and here's a group of us karioking...wheee
yay, karioke.
we got back to akasaka around 10:30 and i went to bed probably around 11 which made it the latest i'd stayed up in japan. actually, it still is the latest i've been up. stupid time zone difference.
[fin.]
We had no idea how to get there, so again, they picked us up and we walked there. it took soooo long. but, since they took us the back way, that was why. Howesan, you may remember these things... the big circley tunnels through water...i don't even know what they were...but we walked through them, but you usually don't.
that's my only pic of the "orientation" because everything elese was inside.
so... we go inside and then for about 2 hours they tell us that in japan, we'll probably be stopped by the cops because we're foreign and they want to make sure we're here legally. and...if we get bikes...we'll be stopped for sure. make sure we're properly registerred and stuff. also, we can be held for questioning. just because. aren't the japanese great?
then we had lunch and learned about earthquakes. we saw this great pic of the 1923 earthquake that destroyed tokyo. apparently these giant tokyo earthquakes have been going on for around...at least thousands of years and have been pretty much regularly occurring every 70 years. so, they warned us that at any moment we might just die. that sounds fun. so they wanted to go over earthquake safety information. also, because japan is at the intersection of about 4 tectonic plates, there are small earthquakes pretty often all over japan. if you hear of an earthquake hitting "tokyo" on the news, chances are it hit some city way outside of tokyo. so, don't worry about it unless they talk abotu a death count. at which point i'll have probably heard about it too so i can post that i'm not dead. also, if something like that happens, i'll have my cell phone on- so feel free to check if you're worried. that'll happen within 2 hours of of when anything's happening.
so... that was a day of scare tactics or someting... it was mostly long and tedious.
and cold
the building IS VERY VERY COLD.
....
so, after orientation a bunch of us went out karioking. it was in roppongi, which is a huge entertainment district and about a 5-10 min walk from the dorm.
here's the karioke place. see the blue series of blocks, that's on the building. it's like 10 floors of karioke rooms.
and here's a group of us karioking...wheee
yay, karioke.
we got back to akasaka around 10:30 and i went to bed probably around 11 which made it the latest i'd stayed up in japan. actually, it still is the latest i've been up. stupid time zone difference.
[fin.]
