A quick update

I have been writing in a text file for the past couple of days because I did not have access to the internet. Here is the long awaited first update since I arrived in Japan!

September 17

So far I have been up for a total of 30 hours straight. Sure there may have been some sleepage on the plane ride, but I sure didn't get much. It was a long day of travel. Mom and dad escorted me to the Detroit airport where we spent the night. The next morning at 4am we woke up, ate breakfast, and headed to the airport. I waved goodbye and made my way through security. The first plane ride was fun and short. At Chicago I met up with all of the other exchange students. There were about 15 of them on the flight. It was nice that all of us were put together in the same two rows. The people seem nice so far and it seems that my Japanese is up to par with theirs. Perhaps even better. Even after talking to Vaso for a couple hours I could see that his conversation skills were not as good as I was expecting.
Needless to say, the planeride was miserable. 13 hours being crammed in a tiny seat beside two other people is never fun. The kids beside me, Michael and Houston, were pretty cool, Houston more so. I tried to sleep a couple times, but only got a half hour maximum each time. The air was just to dry and the seats too uncomfortable to get a good rest. Once the plane landed at Narita, everyone was relieved. We all marched right through customs and on to the baggage claim. I found my baggage and noticed that one of them had the zippers in the wrong spot, it had been opened. I think it was because the dum-dum stand that my mom got for me looked like a bomb... Maybe... We had a layover for an hour for everyone to get rested and get food. Then we hopped on a bus. 3 hours later we arrived at the college that we would be staying at. I unpacked my bags a little, took a shower, and here I am. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get some shut eye.

September 18

Today I bought my first issue of Famitsu magazine. I cannot wait for Rune Factory 2 to come out. Anyway, today was a pretty exciting day. It started off with an early introduction by Don Capener, our resident director. He talked about homestays, manners, and various other things relating to the program. Afterwards, Vaso and I went to Mister Donut for lunch. Then we had interviews with Don and Michiyo for our homestays. I requested first of all that my homestay family not speak English at all. Secondly, I wanted freedom to come home late and whatnot. I want to experience Japan as much as possible. My interview ended at 3pm and there were no plans the rest of the day. Vaso wanted to go to Shinjuku, so I escorted him. Shinjuku is about an hour away from Choshokigyou-Daigakko. We walked around, into and out of various shops before we ended up at Kinokuniya. There I bought my Famitsu and DS + Wii magazines. We walked around more and ended up back in Takadanobaba. I took vaso to the best raman shop ever. Steven McCrarthy and Jeff Taylor may remember it well. The name is Yasubee and the game is Tsukemen. Most delicious noodles ever period. Afterward, we headed back to the station and made our way back to Higashi-Yamatoshi station.

September 19

I'm in Japan! The realization is making my day much better. I had trouble sleeping last night. This was probably due to the fact that I am so far away from home... Or simply jet lag. In the morning my group went to Tachikawa. We stopped at a huge supermarket / eatery first off and observed all the food. I wanted to buy some, but I was told there would be time later. Lies. We were set off to go on our own shortly thereafter. Of course, Vaso and I went off together. We stumbled across a huge department store that was selling mainly clothes. After going up a few floors I felt like I wanted to leave, but then we hit the manga and anime floor. We browsed the goods for the rest of our time in Tachikawa. I ended up buying a capsule toy that makes the 8-bit mario jump sound when you press a large button on the front.
We returned to our dorm for the first Japanese language session. I placed myself in the intermidiate level, but wished I had chosen the more advanced class. We ended up talking about homestay manners, giving gifts, etc, which I have had much experience with already. Afterwards we had a group dinner with all of the students.

September 20

Today we all woke up super early to take the Japanese Language Placement Test. I ate some egg cake for breakfast and threw on some clothes. The train ride was long and packed. By the time we arrived at Waseda, there was no more room on the train. It has to look weird for 37 Americans to be crammed onto the same train for and hour. We arrived at the exam just on time. To my suprise, there were probably 200+ people already sitting down waiting for the test. It is amazing that so many people came to study abroad in Japan, and at Waseda no less. The test was very difficult and I do not think it really tested our Japanese skill level very well. It consisted of filling in the blank with the correct letter in 100 sentances. Then there were 3 different conversations that we had to fill in entire words. Finally, we were given 20 minutes to make a composition about computers. The thing that bothered me was the fact that I knew how to read and comprehend most of the sentances, but I didn't have the grammer points to fill in the blank correctly.... Meh, it's just a placement test. I plan on learning much more outside of class anyways. Once the test was over, the Japan Study people broke up into 4 groups and had a campus tour. This consisted of visiting the library, post office, bookstore, bank, and ended with a visit to a local pub. Seriously, the visit to the pub was on the tour syllabis, I checked it myself. All the students drank and talked from 5 to 8 pm. Afterwards we had a drunken trip to Shinjuku to do Purikiri (the picture taking machines.) Aside from the test, today was a fun day.