My first two real days in Japan: a retrospective

Tuesday (火)

My sleep schedule was still totally screwed up on Monday evening, which meant I woke up wide awake at about 4AM on Tuesday. I used the time to stare at the television and write that last blog post. When 7:00 rolled around, I put on all my warm clothes (and put all the stuff in my backpack in the little plastic bag that my pillow came in--I thought that was pretty clever) and headed out to go explore the city.

I expected to find a bank, exchange all my American cash into Japanese yen, and then hit some random restaurant and see if I couldn't make a total eel out of myself trying to order food in Japanese. I had a map that Yamasa had given me on arrival, so I had a general idea of where I was most of the time, but since the streets don't ever have names here, I was never 100% sure of where I was at any given point.

In Japan, this is a worthless piece of paper.

I ended up getting to Okashin bank around 8:45 or so after a bit of aimless wandering and sightseeing. I admit that I didn't take nearly as many pictures that morning as I should have (in fact, I didn't take any at all), but whatever. The Okashin bank building was open, but the tellers weren't there--the only service available in the building were ATMs. At that point, I didn't realize that there were such things as international ATMs here that would work with my American debit card, so I started to leave, becoming increasingly hungrier as the morning went on. As I left the building, an older Japanese lady told me that the main part of the building opened at 9AM and that I should come back at that point if I want to exchange money. I thanked her profusely and went out to walk around for 15 more minutes.

I walked down the street a bit and managed to pass the Yamasa II building at just about 9:00. Content with the knowledge that I now knew where class was gonna take place each day, I turned around and started back towards the bank. Before I could start walking away, though, I was intercepted by a Yamasa staff member who asked me if my placement test was today. I told him yes, at 1:00, but he ushered me into the building regardless. Apparently there were two placement tests that day, one at 9AM and one at 1PM. So there I was, handed a packet of information and ushered into a small room with a bunch of other prospective students at 9AM without any food in my system and without any activity in my brain.

There were two phases of the test: one was a written portion, which I thought I did really well on, and a speaking portion. During the speaking portion (which essentially was a little informal interview with visual aids such as pictures with empty speech bubbles, etc) I managed to steal a glance at my graded written exam. Awful. There was more red ink on that thing than I thought really possible for such a short test. The interview itself was rather brutal as well.

Needless to say, I have the feeling that I'm going to be placed into 101. 102 if I'm really lucky.

So, after that, feeling a bit demoralized, I decided at least I could go back to the bank and get some real Japanese money so I could actually eat. I went to the bank, took a number, and when I walked up to the counter I tried my best to explain what I needed in baby pidgin Japanese. Apparently, that particular branch doesn't do currency exchange. Awesome.

I did find this delicious looking beverage though.

As I left the bank, it had just started to sprinkle and the wind was getting rather intense, so I stood in the overhang in front of the building and checked my map for the next closest bank, since I had no money and I was becoming rather ravenous. Luckily, I noticed that the dot for the post office said "Post Office / International ATM", so I went there and withdrew about ¥18000. At that point the rain was coming down pretty hard so I ran to the convenience store and picked up some orange juice (which turned out to be super delicious, by the way), two apples, and some ham. Don't judge me.

I then fought my way back to the apartment against the crazy wind and rain. By the time I got back, I was completely soaked, so I placed my clothes out to dry (in front of the air conditioning / heating unit) and ate some delicious ham and apple.

Since I wasn't in the best of moods, I decided to take a bit of a power nap, which kinda turned into a regular nap, which kinda turned into a full-blown 8-hour sleep. I woke up at 9PM and spent the rest of the evening cleaning my apartment, watching television, Skyping my family, and forcing my demoralized ass to do some studying.

Wednesday (水)

Yesterday was a lot better. I managed to get a bit of sleep in the early hours of the morning, and woke up at about 4AM. I ate some ham, noticed I had a frying pan, and wished I had some delicious bacon to cook up. I resolved to go find myself some bacon. I don't care if that makes me a stereotypical American; bacon is freaking delicious.

I spent most of the morning figuring out a good VPN to watch my Hulu shows. That's probably going to become a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, since I'm really not supposed to be watching American television, but one episode of a few shows a week can't hurt.

Seriously though, this guy is everywhere.

I headed to orientation at 1PM after preparing a last-minute 自己紹介 (Japanese self-introduction), since I wasn't sure if we were gonna be doing that at orientation or not. Turns out not. I did get to meet my fellow English-speaking students, though, and the guy who's in charge of the admissions office, Declan. He's a pretty cool dude. We all got a tour of the campus as well as an explanation of the bureaucratic stuff we'll have to deal with in the next few weeks, such as registering as an alien, among other things. I'm pretty sure if I'm an unregistered alien, the Boss is gonna come after me. Frightening. I've seen how he deals with aliens.

Curry udon!

After all the orientation stuff, I teamed up with two of my fellow students, one from Germany and one from Sweden, and we set out to find a bunch of things we still needed to buy for our apartments, as well as some food. We ended up going to the big mall in Okazaki and eating at the food court. I got curry udon and it was way more delicious than I was expecting. I had never eaten anything curry-related before so this was a totally new experience for me. It ended up being great, though I wasn't really able to finish all of it because I don't eat a ton.

As we walked around the mall and found various things we needed to buy, I kinda started to realize that in order to be successful here, we really need to get over our fear of looking like total idiots to native speakers. It really does seem like everyone who we've interacted with so far has been very nice and accommodating, and genuinely grateful that we're even making an effort to speak their native language. I figure if acting like a big dumb white dude American makes people willing to interact with me, I consider that a winning strategy.

Oh, and as a sidenote, I played one of those ¥100 crane games and managed to win this cute little penguin guy on my first play (see right). I should have taken a picture of the machine as well, but oh well. It was some Doraemon-themed game, but I'm not sure why this little fella was in there.

We continued to walk around the city a bit, and we were planning on visiting the castle at some point, but it started to get late (i.e. 8PM or so) and we were all still a little jetlagged, so we decided to head back and call it a day.

Today (木)

I woke up this morning and made some bacon. I kinda blackened the everloving shit out of it because I had no idea that my electric hotplate thing got that ridiculously hot. Whoops. It actually still tasted okay though, so that's good. I spent a long time cleaning my frying pan, though, because as it turns out, I forgot to buy dish soap. Or a sponge. Luckily I had an old rag I had thrown in my suitcase as I was packing so that did the trick well enough.

No class today, but there is going to be a pretty important new student ceremony later on. I think it's at 1PM but I'll have to check my schedule to make sure. I'll definitely need to prepare a short little introductory speech so that I don't sound like an absolute idiot. Or, you know, maybe it's okay if I sound like an idiot. We'll see.

Other than that, though, I don't really have any other plans. Maybe I'll go to the castle today!

What I really need to do is make a shopping list because I keep remembering things I need to buy when I'm at the apartment, but when I'm out shopping I can never remember. Oh well. I guess I'll head out now. Thanks for reading!