Visit to Keio University

This morning I woke up at my usual time not to commute to Waseda, but to instead visit their rival university Keio. The Keio campus is separated into different campuses based on what kind of things are studied. I went to the engineering campus and met up with my old host brother Toshi. Keio is about 30 minutes from Shibuya on the Tokyu-Toyoko line near the Hiyoshi station. I arrived about 10 minutes early which was perfectly fine with me, and waited by a giant silver ball for Toshi to show up. He came at exactly 10am (our proposed meeting time) with his bag and a stuffed rolling luggage suitcase. He told me he was traveling somewhere to give a presentation and take a test (graduation stuff). He pulled that thing all around campus and refused to let me help.

My first impression of Keio was that the scenery is much more pretty. The main walkway had trees on both sides (albeit without leaves) that would be gorgeous in the fall. There was also a serious lack of school based advertisements. I don't know if it is like that at our Engineering campus as well, but I saw slim to no boards with school events on them. This made it feel much more like my home campus. Next he showed me the library and a couple buildings. I was surprised that all the insides were furnished very nicely; some even had places to sit! From the Hiyoshi camups we walked to the Yamane campus where the older students have class. I was told that Hiyoshi campus mainly consists of first and second years, while Yamane is third, fourth, and graduate students. The trek was really short between the two, but there is a huge valley in between. I don't know how many steps we walked down, but then we had to climb this huge steep hill afterwards too! Good practice for sports I guess. When you get too far outside of Tokyo everything is not flat anymore. Next I got to see the research lab where Toshi does research, and meet a couple of other people there. Since it is still close to winter break, I was told that many people had not returned yet. We ate lunch at the local school cafeteria which was about the same as Waseda's. Finally we parted ways and Toshi caught the bus to the airport.

I stayed at Keio for another couple of hours and met up with a girl named Alisa Yamasaki. She has Japanese parents but has lived in America all her life. I met her at the bridging scholarship reception a couple months ago and we never had a chance to hang out again. I figured that since I was already at Keio it would be a good opportunity. We ended up exploring the campus a little, checking out a few department stores, and getting some coffee. A little before 4pm we parted ways and I headed back to Baba. I wanted to play a few games of cards before I went home for the night. Now I am regretting that decision as I have a paper to finish for my song class, a paper far Japanese class, and some Genji to read all by tomorrow. It is already midnight and I am almost finished with my song paper >_<