Yay for wireless internet!

September 21

Yay! New issue of Famitsu today! That kept me occupied on the train ride to and from our dorm. Today I went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast. It was suprisingly good once I figured out how to order. I told the lady behind the counter what I wanted and she showed me to the vending machine. You buy a ticket first and then give it to her to get your food. I guess it is just an easier way to manage the money. After breakfast myself, Shoko, Adam, and Vaso went to Shinjuku to check out a junk shop. They had lots of cool stuff there. I ended up buying a wallet and a strap that goes around your forehead. Shoko bought a Tiara. Adam bought some plastic ears and a interesting looking hat. We need to do a video for class and we wanted some props. Afterwards we all checked out the arcades. Vaso won a mario and luigi keychain, go figure. We also played this really cool gundam game. Now I'm not a big fan of gundam, but I liked the game. It's team based and you can play with 4 people seated beside you. Once you have a team you play against another team over the net. It was amazing. Vaso and I won the first battle even though we had no idea what was going on. We lost the second one though. Afterwards we had the formal Waseda reception to welcome all the SILS students. It took too much time if you ask me. We met up with Rienzo San once the reception was over. He just graduated from CWRU and is taking a year to study Japanese at Waseda. He was in my Japanese 101 class when I was a freshman. We went out to eat at a tiny shop near the train station. It was really cool seeing another friendly face in Japan. Back in our dorm, we had a meeting to find out who our host families were. It looks like I am living with the Usui family in Shimotakaido near Keio university. It is about a 50 minute train ride. The host father apparently likes teaching Japanese! This should be a great opportunity to improve my skills. The Waseda students put on a little skit explaining what not to do in a host family situation. It was really funny. Shohei dressed up like a girl and had Byu over for a "romantic" evening. Tonight I will be packing my bags back up. They are getting shipped to my host family tomorrow morning, but I won't meet them until Sunday.

September 22

I woke up this morning to take my bags down to the lobby in order to ship them. 7am never seemed so early before. On top of that, the school cafeteria is closed all day on Saturday and Sunday. We had to go find food on our own. Today was the first day of our project. Every person in this program was assigned a group and a place to explore. My group of Shoko and Adam headed to Hamamatsucho around 8:30. It took us over an hour and a half to get there from our dorms. Luckily we managed to snag some seats on the train. Once we got off the train, we all got into character and started filming. Needless to say, I got many strange looks today. I think Adam looked more akward with his ski mask on, but he didn't need to wear that constantly. I however just had a simple headband that said "Japan" in kanji on it. I noticed a lot of people talking about me. Anyways, we started filming our movie. This lead us towards Tokyo Tower via some parks. We just made up a script as we went along, and I personally think it will turn out pretty good. Basically the villan (Adam) kidnaps the princess (Shoko) and the hero (me) gets to save the princess. It's pretty "Super Mario" if you ask me. We filmed until around 2:30 and proceded to make our way to Waseda. There was this club meeting called the Rainbow Club that Adam wanted to go to. It sounds corny, but it is a kaiwa club for Japanese and English students wanting to learn the other language. They put on a good show with many power point presentations. The party afterwards featured Waseda students and international students at about a 1:1 ratio. I met a bunch of cool people. I also found out that there is a circle (club) that plays lots of video games, mainly smash brothers. I have to get in on that.

September 23

I cannot believe that it is 5pm already. We all had to wake up at 9 am in order to check out of our dormitory. Afterwards we went to Waseda for our orientation where we ate Dominos Pizza. The pizza in Japan is much different than in America. The weirdest thing was the eggplant pizza. I don't know if I could eat that. After the pizza there was more orientation while our host families started arriving. My host father Shouzou came to pick me up. Once all of the host families arrived, they had a short orientation and then were sent home with their respective students. On the way to my new home, I picked up my commuter pass. This allows me to go from Waseda to my host family's house as many times as I want. The school will of course, reimburse us the cost. The commute to my new house was only about 20 minutes, but then there was another 20 minute walk to get from the station to my house. I met my host mother Masayo when I got home. They both seem really nice. We had some nikuman while giving our introductions. They handed me a little packet with the house rules on it. I was impressed by this. Afterwards I was sent up to my room to unpack my stuff.

September 24

We finished our project today! Yay! The filming part is all done. Adam is going to throw it together while Shoko and I work on the other part of the presentation. I went to Shinjuku this morning to buy a power adapter for my laptop. All the plugs here only have 2 holes instead of 3. I ended up buying a surge protector so I can plug all my electronics in at once. For lunch we met up with Keaton and had some Gyuudon. Afterwards we hit up the local pub for drinks. I managed to make it home for supper right on time at 8pm. My sister Miko got me connected to the internet so now I will be able to do updates every day!