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On Tuesday, we didn't have any lessons because we had an excursion to Shibuya, somewhere I've already been to since I've been in Japan, but it was interesting nonetheless. We were told to meet at the statue of Hachiko at 10am, and we were given a worksheet to complete during the day. Sadly, my camera ran out of batteries so I don't really have any pictures of the day.

We started off by going into 109, a big department store for mostly ladies clothing. It had about 10 floors, and our task was to look round the shops and find our favourite shop, item of clothing, and find out the most popular item of that store. Personally, it was a little dull walking around all the shops because there wasn't even the interest of people wanting to buy things, as everything was so expensive. We walked around for about 45 minutes, and my favourite store ended up being the food store called Plaza at the bottom (it had pringles, walkers shortbread... clearly my kind of place). It also sold snoopy items, as snoopy seems to be incredibly popular in Japan.

After we'd completed our tour of 109, we went to Labi - another big department store, but one that sold quite a large number of different items such as video games, household machinery, tech gadgets etc. Naturally, Kelsie, Asya and I went straight up to the games floor to have a look round and see what was there. Kelsie ended up buying the newest Pokémon game, but apart from that not much happened. We had to write down what was on each floor, and also write some sentences on our favourite product.

After that, we went to a restaurant, which wasn't actually open when we arrived but we only had to wait 5 minutes. We ascended to the top floor where we all sat down in tables of 4 and were asked if we wanted any drinks. We paid 400 yen each to try some Japanese Okonomiyaki - Japanese style pancakes. They're made mostly of cabbage and egg, with a sauce and a filling that you mix together and put on a grill. The filling can be things like prawns, squid, bacon etc. They arrive in a bowl with the filling on top, and an egg on the side. You mix it all together, and put it on the grill. After a couple of minutes, you check the bottom to see if it's held together and crispy like a pancake. If it is, you turn it over and cook the other side, when they're cooked we split them into 3 (as Asya wasn't eating any) and atee them. We paid 400yen and got 6 bowls of mixture, when they were around 600-800 yen each so it was a really good deal and they were all really tasty. Once everyone had finished eating we were allowed to leave.

I'd mentioned during dinner that Kelsie and I had found a tiny animal store, and quite a few people wanted to go so we decided to take them. We went as a big group to try and find it, stopping in a nike store on the way for people to buy some very expensive Japanese football shirts. We wandered around for a little while before we actually found the shop, then once everybody's cute meter was satisfied, the group split up. Kelsie, Asya, Cho and I deciding to go to a department store called Loft that sold a variety of items. Asya bought some moustache and some llama stickers for herself and for a friend, and we had a browse around the soap section smelling all the different soaps. Afterwards, Kelsie and I decided to go to a card store and have a browse, and then we went home. In the evening, I played my board game - Settlers of Catan - with Michael. Kelsie had a headache and so didn't play, but I taught him the rules and we played a couple of games.

That weekend we went to Akihabara. Akihabara is a very popular area of Tokyo for foreigners because of its number of arcades, anime and manga stores and maid café's. Kelsie and I weren't particularly interested in these but we thought it would be an interesting day trip. We arrived in the afternoon and made our way around towards some arcades, looking at some of the machines before going into a department store. The theme of Akihabara is that there are some very dodgy stores and you have to be careful where you go into as you're not quite sure what you might find. We didn't really find anything particularly interesting, so after that we found a building with several interesting shops so we went inside. On one of the floors we found a shop that had shelves of manga. There was newer manga towards the back, but as you entered the store there was a big row of shelves with back issues of Shonen Jump, a weekly volume that releases a chapter of popular mangas.

We found some electrical stores, and Kelsie went in to try and find a charger for a DS, as she was borrowing my spare but I didn't have an extra charger. She eventually found a cheap one for 90 yen (about 80p). We went past a number of maids handing out fliers for their café's, before we ended up at a 100 yen store. We didn't buy anything, but it's always interesting to browse around as they have different cheap items in each store and they're usually very good value for money and not that bad quality either.

Finally we went into a big arcade just to have a look around. It had 5 or 6 floors of games, with a different theme on each floor. When we got to the music floor, it was so loud we couldn't hear anything, it was a wonder anyone could tell which was their own game from the mass of noise. When we'd had a look around, we decided that there wasn't much left to do so we got back on the train and went home.

Days 5 and 6

So Friday was our first day of proper lessons, we had to get up at 7ish in order to be ready to leave the house at 8. The journey to uni is quite interesting, we walk to the station, which takes about 10 minutes depending on whether a train comes past the level crossing and we have to wait. Following that, we get on the train, which is incredibly busy every morning, changing once on our way to Meguro. Then, it's another 30 minute walk to get to the uni. We arrive at about 8:55, so we have a little time to spare as the lesson doesn't actually start until 9:10.

When the teacher arrives, she introduces herself, and we begin the lesson. The morning consisted of two 1hr 30 minute lessons, with a 10 minute break in the middle. The first hour and a half was spent going over the film that we'd watched a segment of the day before. We were required to answer some questions about the first 8 chapters that we'd already watched, and then we watched another half an hour of the film in order to do some more listening comprehension.

The second hour and a half, we have a different teacher who goes through grammar points with us. She gives us an example verb, and puts it into 4 different tenses, and then goes around the room giving different verbs and getting us to say the 4 different versions of that verb. Then we are given a worksheet with some questions on and we pair up to write answers.

All in all, it was quite a helpful lesson, but after it was done, we head down to the Cafeteria, where I buy something other than Chicken Curry. I'm not 100% sure what it was, it was basically fried chicken with rice and a slightly odd sauce but I quite enjoyed it. Nobody could really decide what to do as we didn't want to go and get a bank account sorted without the help of the buddies as the people that had theirs sorted said that it was quite difficult to do. Because of that, Asya, Kelsie and I ended up just walking around Meguro station, seeing the different shops there.

Asya wanted to go to Baskin Robbins, an ice cream shop, where she got a strange flavoured ice cream. We walked around the shops near to the station and briefly went into an AU (one of the mobile services) to try and get me a mobile phone, but gave up fairly quickly. We found a good supermarket that sold cheese of all things, but didn't really need to buy anything so we went back to the flat.

Torrential rain

On Saturday, the morning was much the same, as we had class again. However, we watched the film in the second half of the lesson, not the first this time. The only difference was that it was torrential rain in the morning. It wasn't cold in the slightest, just extremely wet, so wet in fact that even I, who usually looks at rain and is perfectly content to walk in it with only a jacket for protection, was forced to admit that I needed an umbrella (kindly provided by the uni house).

Excuse my camera

That evening however, Kelsie and Asya wanted to take me for a walk as they'd had a long look around the local area the evening before and wanted to show me what they'd found. We set off from the house and already I could see that there were odd Japanese lanterns hanging above the roads like christmas lights. There was also some Japanese music playing from speakers on the lamp posts, much like in a theme park.

Before long, we saw a strange procession of people, in a big group carrying a small shrine-like object down the street. There was a good 20 or so people carrying it, all chanting words we couldn't make out, with some people with whistles keeping the time of the march/stepping. It was all very odd, so I took a video. Once they'd passed, we walked further down the road to go to a supermarket in order to see whether it was any better than the one much further away that we'd got our food from before. Outside there was a grilled meat stall, which smelt delicious but none of us got.

Once we'd explored the supermarket sufficiently, we continued our walk, seeing another 2 or 3 of the processions along the way. We split our group up once we got to the end of the road, as Asya wanted to go one way, whereas Kelsie had already been that way the day before and wanted to explore in the opposite direction, so I tagged along with Kelsie and we headed towards a more bright shopping area. After a while we started going past some interesting stores including a bookstore and an independent games store that was very expensive, but had an awful lot of games. We kept looking around, and just as we came out of one of the stores, we saw Asya, who had done a big loop, and ended up meeting up with us again by accident.

Fish Game

We decided to head back to the flat, and on the way we went past a temple with a lot of stalls in it. We decided to go in, and it was pretty awesome. There were a load of food stalls, selling grilled meat and fish, there were stalls where you could win goldfish by trying to catch as many of them as you could in a net. Cork gun stalls, where you fired a gun at what you wanted, and if it fell over you won it. It was all very cool really, but after we walked around all of the stalls and decided we didn't want to get anything, we made our way back to the flat and called it a night.

Day 4 - Lessons and Shibuya

So today we had our first 'lesson' of the semester. Officially, it's not the semester yet, but the international students have 2 weeks of intensive Japanese language courses, and so today we had a placement test to decide what group we will be in for the two weeks. We had to leave the flat at 8am to get there for 9:10am. I had my first experience of crowded Tokyo subways. It wasn't too bad, because at least the underground in Tokyo has air conditioning. I hate it in London because it gets so hot.

The Classroom

We walked to the uni and arrived at about 9am, where we waited in our room on the 5th floor for the teacher. When she arrived, we were given a quick quiz to complete, followed by a 4 part placement test that we had to fill in. After that, we went into a different room and watched a film, first in Japanese, then in English. During that, we were called out individually to have a short oral interview with the teacher, where she asked us questions like what our strong points were, where we were from etc. After this was done, we watched a small clip of Spirited Away before the class ended.

Canteen

Asya, Kelsie and I went to the Cafeteria to have lunch. I again had chicken katsu kare, I should probably be more adventurous but there's plenty of time yet! We then decided that we should go to Shibuya, by we I mean me, and Asya didn't go, so Kelsie and I got the train to Shibuya. When we arrived, we saw Hachiko, then I wanted to try and find Tower Records to have a look around. Unfortunately, I went down the wrong road, but Kelsie wanted to go in UniQlo, so that wasn't so bad.

Kelsie liked the K-Pop

Outside Tower Records

Eventually after much roaming we found Tower Records, and we went through its 7 floors of music. Kelsie was particularly enthralled by the K-Pop section, as it had signatures from, and albums of her favourite Korean artists, which was rather cool. Following that, I wanted to go and find the department store that I'd been to last time I visited with my Dad. On the way, we found the Disney store and had a look around. We discovered that you can buy tickets for Disneyland there too, which will be helpful if ever we want to go. We went the wrong way again, but a little while later we arrived at the department store and made our way slowly up to the top floor where we found the games and hobbies section. After much deliberation on my part, I decided to buy Settlers of Catan in Japanese, so hopefully I can play it with some of the people here and get to know them a little better.


On our way back to the train station, we went into a 100 yen store to have a browse around. The quality of the items in the 100 yen store is much better than Poundland in the UK, but we didn't see anything we wanted, so we went back to the flat. Tomorrow we have our first actual lesson, and we find out what classes we were placed in for the pre-semester lessons.

Day 3 - Fun with admin

Chapel

Standing outside the dorm

Lawn outside the uni

So we got up yesterday morning and met with a couple of buddies outside the dorm at about 9:10 in the morning. We walked up to the train station and got the train over to Shirokanedai station, where we had to walk for about 10 minutes to get to the university. When we arrived, we went through the main gates and into the university itself. We saw the chapel that I'd seen online. We walked up into the main part of the university and were taken through past the library to the room where we met Joe again and had a briefing.

We were given a bunch of documents about the uni, including some we'd been given before like the student handbook. Joe ran through some of the more important information in the handbook such as emergency numbers, how we pay rent, how to join clubs if we wanted to etc. We were also told what was going to happen during the day and told that we would shortly meet our buddies who would give us a tour of the university.

After Joe was done, the buddies were called in and everyone came up to the front of the room and we introduced ourselves and were shown to our buddies. Once that was done, we were shown round the university. We saw the Library, Academic Management Office, lunch halls, medical rooms etc. By this point it was around 12pm, so we were getting quite hungry. A big group of us went down to the dining halls and bought some food. I had a Chicken Katsu Curry, which was as tasty as I remembered from the last time that I had it.

Proud Railcard owner

Queuing for Railcards

After this, we needed to set up a bank account and buy a mobile phone, but first we went and got a railcard sorted out so that we could travel between Meguro (Where the uni is) and Midorigaoka (Where our flat is) for free during the year. We had to buy a 6 month pass which cost 13,000 Yen, but considering we got 40,000 Yen to spend on it, and we'll get 40,000 yen more next semester, we had a lot left over which is good. Getting the railcard sorted took a little while, and so we thought the bank had closed, but we headed to another bank which was apparently open until 5pm.

When we arrived, we were told that there were too many of us for them to serve before they closed, so they could only do 3 people that day, so 3 people stayed and the rest of us went off to get a mobile phone. I hadn't brought my passport, and so I wasn't able to get a phone (for some reason we needed our passports) so that was a shame, and I'm going to have to get that another time. I was exceptionally tired, and started falling asleep in the store while everyone else was getting their phones. Following a long wait for the phones to be processed and set up, everyone got their mobiles, and we headed back to the flat.

Day 2

So this morning we all had to meet in the common room for a quick briefing/meeting about what we were going to do today. Joe (the member of Meiji staff that has the job of looking after us) gave us all forms to fill in, because today we had to go to the Setagaya ward office and get our foreign resident registration, and our national health insurance application. We were briefly introduced to the buddies that are helping out with taking us around that we also met yesterday, before we were told it was time to go.

On the way to the station

This was at Shibuya station,
not 100% sure what it is...

We walked to the train station up roads with no pavement, which took quite a while - mostly because the level crossings in Japan lower the barriers about 1 minute before the actual train goes past, so you sit waiting and nothing happens! One thing I forgot to note yesterday is just how many vending machines there are. It's physically impossible for you to walk down a street and not see at least 2 vending machines. Asya and I were both really thirsty so we wanted to get a drink, but because we didn't want to get separated from the group, neither of us went and got one until after we'd arrived in Shibuya. We got the train from the station to Shibuya, having to change once but it only took around 15 minutes in total. From Shibuya station we headed past Hachiko to the bus stop where we picked up a bus to the ward office. The bus ride took quite a while, but I chatted a little with one of the buddies called Nobuto.

Lunch - there were more
but I ate them. Not sure what
they were, but they were tasty.

Asya eating flavoured ice..

Once we arrived at the office, we had to wait for quite a while for the first person to be served, but after that, it all went moderately quickly, taking about 30 minutes for everyone's applications to be processed. We got told by Joe that our applications wouldn't be processed until 4 so that we should all go to the shop and get some lunch. We headed across the road and wandered round a 7/11 store to get some food. There was a lot of food in the fridge that we were told would be heated for us if we wanted, something which I took advantage of when I had my dumpling things. I think they're caled Gyoza, at least I'm pretty sure they are. Not very sure what was in them but it looked a little like cabbage, and tasted pretty nice so I'm not complaining. When we were done eating, we went back into the office where Kelsie and I chatted with Asya about her family, Pokémon, people in the UK and places we wanted to go. This meant that the time went pretty fast in the end and we got our cards and it was time to go home.

We got back on the bus and had another long bus ride back to Shibuya station. When we arrived at the station, we saw this incredibly cool bus, then we were told that if people wanted to stay in Shibuya they could, but they were responsible for getting themselves home, and that everyone that wanted to go home could go with Joe. Kelsie, Asya and I decided that we wanted to go shopping to buy food and various items, so we went back to the flat to drop things off, where - while waiting - I nearly fell asleep because I was very tired.

Dead cicada we saw on the
way to the shops. They're huge!

Then we went out for our walk to the 100 Yen store (Basically a poundland). The university provides cups and plates etc, but I decided I wanted my own so I bough a mug, a glass, a bowl, a teapot (yes for 100 yen), some cutlery and some chopsticks for about 800 yen (about £7.50). We then headed over to the supermarket to buy food, which was probably the most tricky thing we've done so far. It's a bit strange trying to buy food for yourself when a) you don't know what half of the items are, b) when you find things like mince and chicken, you don't know if they have anything to make a sauce and c) they put SALT next to SUGAR which is incredibly confusing.

After a long walk round the shop several times, I managed to buy myself some spaghetti, mince, 'meat sauce' which I'm going to assume for now is bolognese, golden sauce (a type of curry sauce I think), chicken and drinks. They have Lipton ice tea in half sized orange juice cartons! It's so tiny! I'll have to take a picture. The shop also had fresh bakery items like curry bread (Basically a sort of savoury bread doughnut, with curry in the middle rather than Jam) which I'll have to get at some point because they were quite nice last time we were here.

We then went back to the flat and on the way saw a hospital where the outside was decorated with plants. Almost like the entire hospital had scaffolding, around it, so that the plants could grow. It was a bit strange but looked very cool! When we got back to the flat we put our stuff away and went back to our rooms. Tomorrow I have to be up at about 8:30 as we have to leave at 9:20 to go to the campus, apparently we have 'Daily living orientation, Academic orientation and a Campus tour' so lots of stuff to do tomorrow!

Flight and Day 1

All packed

So it's not every day you fly to Japan. I woke up at 7:15 on the 2nd - 15 minutes before my alarm went off, an amazing feat for me. A feat that was only surpassed when, when my alarm DID go off at 7:30, according to Rachel I'd fallen asleep and managed to turn it off without realising. We didn't actually start getting up until around 8ish, which turned out to be for the best, as once we started driving, there was no traffic all the way to Heathrow. I'd been expecting tailbacks and 2 hour delays so that by the time we arrived I'd have to go right away, but nope, London traffic was nonexistant.

They look pleased

A wonderful photo of Rachel in the Café...

We parked at the airport fine, and then wandered into Terminal 3a where, because we had already checked in online, bag drop took about 5 minutes and there was no queue. Unlike Stanstead where you have to rush to bag drop and hope you end up somewhere near the front of the queue otherwise you're going to be in a line for at least an hour. Then we went and sat in Pret à Manger and had a drink and some Carrot cake, trying to kill time before my plane arrived. Eventually we decided I should probably just go through so I had enough time to get through security. After a teary goodbye from Rachel (which she's probably glad I don't have a photo of) I made my way through security and waited to find out which gate I should go to. I didn't have to wait long, as the gate number popped up on the screen about 10 minutes after I got into duty free.

My flight's on there, I promise

The gate was a decent walk away but when I arrived I immediately spied people I knew. Tim and Sian were sat next to Liam in the lounge area waiting to be called to board. Because my seat was right at the back of the plane. I got to go on in the second group. The flight was 80 people short, and so there were two empty seats next to me, which on its own was good, but the only other person on my row left and moved somewhere else. So I was able to switch seats and have the entire row to myself.

After an exceptionally lengthy inflight advertising and safety announcement, we took off. I decided, once I flicked through the in flight entertainment magazine, to watch as many films as I could before we arrived, and so proceeded to watch Brave, Chronicle, Dark Shadows, Men in Black III and Prometheus. I have to say I think Chronicle was the best of all of them, but I wasn't a big fan of any of them...

Breakfast looks... interesting.

We arrived in Narita 10 minutes early, but given the taxi time to the terminal, that extra time was lost pretty quickly. We then had to make it through immigration which took quite a while. We queued with everyone else before finding out when we got to the front of the queue that we needed to be in the diplomat queue because we were needing resident cards. This involved another long queue followed by me finding out that they couldn't process my passport or possibly my visa. It was a little scary as everyone else that I knew had all left and gone through, and there was nobody else going through immigration at all. It took them about half an hour but eventually they sorted it out and gave me my card, then I collected my baggage which had been kindly looked after by Liam and Michael, and we wandered into the main airport.

After wandering around a little, we found where we were meant to be, and we met Kelsie and Asya in the meeting point room. By this point it was only about 11:30, and we weren't getting picked up until 3pm so we wandered around, bought some food and drinks and waited to see some people from the university. Fortunately for us the Meiji group arrived about half an hour early, so we got told they had another 7 people to pick up, but they had 2 coaches, so we could leave now and then the rest would follow later when they arrived.

Beautiful weather!

I fell asleep on the coach, so I'm not sure how long it took us to get into central Tokyo, but when I woke up we had arrived at the dorm. We collected our bags and went inside. We'd been given sheets that told us which room we were in. The dorm itself is like a hotel, in the sense that there aren't individual flats, but there are 3 floors (including the ground floor) with a number of rooms on each floor, and a bathroom at the end. I haven't had a chance to look around everything yet but I have taken photographs of my room.

I unpacked my bags and made the bed. The room is really quite spacious, but perhaps that's because there's only a desk, a bed and a recessed wardrobe in it, so there's a lot of floor space. Sadly the walls are wallpapered a plain white, so I can't put up any posters to make the room feel more homely, but I'm sure I'll manage. We've to meet at 10:30 tomorrow for a 'survival orientation' followed by getting our documentation sorted out at the university I think, so that should be interesting. I wanted to go for a wander around Tokyo when we got in but I was just too tired.

I'll do my best to update this tomorrow, but no promises