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.