Contrary to my previous post, it was not ‘sayonara, America’ on the 8th and ‘konnichiwa, Japan’ on the 9th. My departure was unfortunately delayed by a full twenty-four hours due to failures on the part of the U.S. Postal Service, and my perennially procrastinating self, which kept my passport/visa from arriving until late on the 8th. After all of that stress, spending half a day cramped in an airplane was no issue. My flight went smoothly, I caught up on all the movies I’d missed in my last two years in the wilderness, and managed not to sleep more than twenty minutes, which apparently helps with avoiding jetlag.
Luckily, there was another TUJ student on my flight and in my same dorm so we were able to take the same shinkansen (super fast train) together and then split from our station to the dorm. Arriving so late meant missing some parts of the orientation but we were caught up in no time by dorm staff on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, starting with a student worker escort to main campus who gave a full run-down of the train rules and routes.
My morning commute at its calmest.
Thursday afternoon brought placement tests for those of us with language experience and visits to the ward office to establish residency for those without. I was in the former group, smaller in size and collectively shaking with stress. We established camaraderie while waiting for the test to begin, joking around and offering cheesy pneumonic devices for remembering vocabulary. I was by far the worst offender on this front: kusuri, the word for pharmacy, is easy because it sounds like cough syrup, while zo, elephant, live in zoos, and sara, plate, can be saran-wrapped, etc, etc. Then it was into the test, heads held high, and out of the test with eyes glued to the floor. Heading back to the dorm, things were definitely fraught but a stop at Mr. Donut and then to buy pillows at a nearby department store offered a reprieve from the gloom. Dinner that night also provided a pick me up, although my picture does it no justice.
Fellow TUJ students with their new pillows (and doughnuts).
Thursday’s dinner, panda coin purse not included.
Friday meant a ward office visit for my group, followed by a few hours of free time that I spent exploring our neighborhood in search of cheap coffee, and then hopping on the train to find Tokyo Tower with a friend from the day before. We decided to eschew GPS and simply follow it in the sky with our eyes, keeping track mentally of each turn we took as well as every hole-in-the-wall coffee shop for future excursions, mutual caffeine addiction binding us together. Once we arrived, it was a bit of a struggle to find the ticket booth for the observation deck and we ended up going to the third floor only to come back down. Tickets were only 900 yen, a much better deal than most U.S. lookouts offer, and especially affordable knowing we had a free dinner coming at the welcome party that night. Mt. Fuji was not visible as we had been told it would be, but it was still an impressive view.
View from Tokyo Tower.
After we had snapped a few dozen pictures from every angle, it was time to head back to campus for academic advisory meetings. Since I have no more language requirements for graduation from my home institution, I ended up dropping my pre-scheduled language classes for an art history class titled ‘East Meets West,’ with a field trip component, and ‘Introduction to East Asia: China,’ which should be interesting as I know very little about China. All in all, the past few days have been a great introduction to this city and I can’t wait to get into the swing of things when classes start.
-Nora