Yay, First Post!

Sorry it took so long! I know everyone's been anxiously (or perhaps not) awaiting  news from the land of the rising sun. Not a TON has happened, or maybe it's just that if I go into too much detail about the past two weeks this will end up being a short novel. In any case, I'm going to try and keep it relatively short.

First off, my plane leaving SF was delayed 2 hours because of a mechanical failure with the brakes. Off to a good start! After that things weren't too bad. Got in to Narita Airport, wandered aimlessly for a while, got on a couple trains, and made it to Musashisakai, Tokyo (again, bear in mi

nd that this is the abridged version). Musashisakai is where we had our first orientation, a few days prior to our orientation in Tsuru (where my school is).  

Here's the view from my hotel window.

I was the third person to get to the hotel on the 29th (it was like arriving at the house on the Real World), and slowly the others started trickling in the following day. Really cool, diverse group of kids, all from the different UC campuses (there's 9 of us total).

Saw a Buddhist temple in Musashisakai:

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As well as a Shinto Shrine. It's hard to tell the difference at first glance, but the rituals at each differ, and if you watch the people closely you can figure it out. 

(Instead of adding more pictures here, because it takes forever and it's kind of hard to move them around, I'll keep the blog strictly text, and then Picassa people the pictures.)

Anyway, had my orientation at the International Christian University in Tokyo, and then left to Tsuru by bus (1.5 hour bus ride). 

As we got off the bus in Tsuru, we were each greeted by our student buddies, chuutas (tutors) in Japanese. Daichi, my tutor, is a saint. On the first day, he helped me set up my room, made my bed for me (b/c I wasn't sure how to set up the Japanese "futon"--yes, it's a japanese word), and has been super attentive and helpful. We had some trouble communicating at first as we're supposed to be speaking solely in Japanese and I was a bit rusty. There's still a pretty substantial barrier, but we're working through it. 

Since we got here on a weekend, we had a few days on our own. On monday we took a placement test, and were separated into two different tracks (a practice I'm not a huge fan of in the States either). I was placed into the higher class, althout only 3 of us 9 were placed into the lower one, so I'm not sure how big an accomplishment it was.  

In general we have japanese language class everyday from 9:30 to 12:45, and then we head to the cafeteria so we can integrate with the other Tsuru students and practice our Japanese. It's a little daunting, but a lot of fun because they're all pretty excited to talk to us (I'm pretty sure the foreign popultion in Tsuru consists of us study abroad students).

Yesterday, though, after class, we had an hour lunch break, and then headed back for our first chinese calligraphy class (painting characters with a brush). The pace was a little slow as they were really emphasizing technique, but it was interesting nonetheless. 

On thursday the nine of us had a small party in the apartment of the other guy (yes, there's only one other guy), and invited out japanese buddies. We taught them King's Cup (an American drinking game for those of you unfamiliar), and then we played a Japanese game. Lots of fun, but apparently communicating in Japanese gets significantly harder after you're drunk. 

K, this is already a bit long, so I'll end it here and try to post more regularly in the future. When I get a chance I'll upload the rest of my pics to Picassa and then set up a link to the album on the blog. I miss everybody and hope you're all doing well. Ja, mata (later)!