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.