japan report 1!
Seeing as so much has happened since I've been here and it's only been a week, I'm going to try to sum it up into separate categories.
Plane ride:
Approximately 22-23 hours, four of which were layovers. My first flight from St. Louis to Detroit was a little over an hour, the flight from Detroit to Tokyo was almost 12 hours (and it got delayed by over an hour), and the flight from Tokyo to Nagoya was just over half an hour. I absolutely loathed the long ride; it felt like I was being held captive. While it was a relatively tranquil ride, the turbulent parts scared the hell out of me and I had to reassure myself, "This is completely normal!!!" The flight from Tokyo to Nagoya was absolutely fine, however; I was seated next to another student going to NUFS (my school) and he knew about four other people on the plane, so I had a group to get lost with (which we didn't) instead of being by myself. \:D/ We all had a guided tour back to our dorm that involved an hour-long bus ride and then a 5-10 minute taxi ride. It was 11 or 11:30pm by the time I got here to the dorm, and 1am by the time I fell asleep.
Jet lag:
I don't think I've experienced any, or any differences with the time change. The weirdest thing was seeing sunlight through the plane and essentially skipping an entire night over the span of this 22 hours. I went to bed at 1am the first night I was here and woke up automatically around 6am. I would say it was jet lag, but that would've been 4pm in the midwest. I was just so excited to get up and at'em here! I went to bed around 10pm that night and woke up just past 5am. (=___=) The next night/morning was similar - woke up at 5:45am instead. Then I decided I was tired of it all and took some NyQuil around 9:30pm one night. :D
The dorm/my room:
I live in International House, or I-House for short. Japanese aren't allowed to live here unless they're RAs, which we have three of. There are about 60 students total. While Americans make up the majority of students living here, there are also a lot of Australians, some Europeans, Korean, and Chinese. There's a curfew for 11pm, but so far that hasn't been an issue for me. As for my room, it's bigger than I expected! I have a desk with a bookshelf - actually, there's a ton of shelf space all over - a Western bed, mini fridge, air conditioner, and even my own bathroom. I love Japanese bathtubs because even though they aren't as long as American ones, they make up for that with how deep they are. My tub goes up just past my knees \:D/ I haven't actually taken a full-on bath yet because it takes so long to fill up. Currently our water heater is some sort of broken (I've been taking hot showers just fine though =X oops?) so I'm going to wait for when I don't need to conserve the hot water.
Also, I've decided I'm doing another strawberry-themed bathroom.
Friends:
I made friends the first night! It's amazing how quickly we all bonded. During our dorm meeting the other night I looked around and recognized every single face, and realized I was friends with about 80% of them. There are some students who seem to stick with the same comfort/core groups, but I think it's more fun to jump around from person to person, making different groups everyday and getting to know everyone. Thinking back, I was like this with Japanese class back at Iowa as well, so maybe I've always been a little bit of a social butterfly, LOL~ We had a reception party after the entrance ceremony the other day, and I made SO MANY Japanese friends in addition to my other exchange student friends. It's gonna be a good year.
Language barrier:
It's actually been going pretty well! I've been able to successfully communicate with just about everyone. There'll be the occasional bumpy conversation but I'm doing pretty well for myself. There's little interaction with city residents - making purchases is pretty straightforward; going to restaurants and ordering things can be a little bit more difficult when they ask you extra things (if you want your drinks after or before the meal, telling the waiters you need the check split, etc) but it's still pretty easy to get by. There are some students here who can barely speak the language and they're somehow doing okay. xD
Shopping:
I've gone at least once every single day. After orientation gets done with for the day, we're left wondering what to do with ourselves. We're in a new country, who cares if it's 100F outside! Let's go exploring and see what shop we end up at! There's so much in my area alone - the supermarket and home store (aka Kahma, a Target-ish like store that also has pets for adoption) are just across the street, a bookstore called Radon is around the corner (they don't sell many photobooks, but I got one of Ichikawa Yui's there, w00t!), UNIQLO (clothing) is down the street the opposite way, a 100yen store that's attached to another store is about a mile away (which isn't long - we've made a few treks there), and there's even a bus stop a few blocks away that takes you downtown to the subway, which leads to Sakae, a big city with even more shopping. I don't think I'm going to get bored. Also, there are conbini (convenience stores - think a gas station store minus the gas) everywhere, like 7-11, Lawson, and FamilyMart. Supposedly there's a mall that's about a half hour walk away as well, but I have yet to go.
Food:
THERE IS SO MUCH. There are at least 10 restaurants in the near vicinity; so far I've been to Hamazushi (the rotating belt sushi place - 105yen a plate), Komeda (a cafe), and Yeast Paradise (a bistro), but there's also an okonomiyaki restaurant, a diner, a pizza place, and an Indian restaurant among others. There's also my school's cafeteria, or the atrium, where you can go to get awesomely cheap Japanese food (the most expensive dish is 400yen) that's also filling. We have a Mos Burger on campus too but I haven't yet been. Vending machines are all over the place. They might be a little bit more expensive than the supermarket, but when you're sweating your shirt off in this weather they're a welcome sight. My drink of choice is Kirin's Royal Milk Tea, but I'm making it a point to try every drink possible. I had a Japan-exclusive hamburger set at McDonald's, but all in all it wasn't much different from American McDonald's. Even the sizes were the same to me.
Specific things I've noticed:
First off, trash collection. Most of you might already know this but Japan is BIG on eco-friendly, and they separate trash into four different groups (combustible, plastics, PET bottles [think soda pop bottles and the like], and cans). I'm already getting into the habit of it, but I need to take an hour to clean up my room better. As a result of this anal retentiveness, I end up just throwing trash around my room (especially the bottles, which Nagoya is really picky about - you have to rinse them out, take off the label and cap, etc) when I don't have enough time to do anything about it or I feel lazy. When I'm walking on the street, I'll occasionally see random bags of trash (like plastic ones with some food wrappers in them) or bottles/cans on the sidewalk. Litter's slightly rampant here; there are really very few trash cans or places to put any of your trash. The most common is the PET bottle bin, but even those are few and far between.
Another thing I've noticed is that the majority of the girls here wear black leggings as part of their layering...even though it's 90-100F weather practically everyday. I don't get how these girls aren't dying from the heat being trapped onto their skin. Parasols on a sunny day are extremely common though, which makes me happy because I've wanted to use one in the US but if you walk around with an umbrella on a sunny day people stare at you because it's not raining, so why do you have one? >/
----
I can't really think of much else at the moment...any questions? :D
(crossposting this at Facebook so family and other friends can read it - might seem a little redundant to those of you who know about Japan as a result!)
Plane ride:
Approximately 22-23 hours, four of which were layovers. My first flight from St. Louis to Detroit was a little over an hour, the flight from Detroit to Tokyo was almost 12 hours (and it got delayed by over an hour), and the flight from Tokyo to Nagoya was just over half an hour. I absolutely loathed the long ride; it felt like I was being held captive. While it was a relatively tranquil ride, the turbulent parts scared the hell out of me and I had to reassure myself, "This is completely normal!!!" The flight from Tokyo to Nagoya was absolutely fine, however; I was seated next to another student going to NUFS (my school) and he knew about four other people on the plane, so I had a group to get lost with (which we didn't) instead of being by myself. \:D/ We all had a guided tour back to our dorm that involved an hour-long bus ride and then a 5-10 minute taxi ride. It was 11 or 11:30pm by the time I got here to the dorm, and 1am by the time I fell asleep.
Jet lag:
I don't think I've experienced any, or any differences with the time change. The weirdest thing was seeing sunlight through the plane and essentially skipping an entire night over the span of this 22 hours. I went to bed at 1am the first night I was here and woke up automatically around 6am. I would say it was jet lag, but that would've been 4pm in the midwest. I was just so excited to get up and at'em here! I went to bed around 10pm that night and woke up just past 5am. (=___=) The next night/morning was similar - woke up at 5:45am instead. Then I decided I was tired of it all and took some NyQuil around 9:30pm one night. :D
The dorm/my room:
I live in International House, or I-House for short. Japanese aren't allowed to live here unless they're RAs, which we have three of. There are about 60 students total. While Americans make up the majority of students living here, there are also a lot of Australians, some Europeans, Korean, and Chinese. There's a curfew for 11pm, but so far that hasn't been an issue for me. As for my room, it's bigger than I expected! I have a desk with a bookshelf - actually, there's a ton of shelf space all over - a Western bed, mini fridge, air conditioner, and even my own bathroom. I love Japanese bathtubs because even though they aren't as long as American ones, they make up for that with how deep they are. My tub goes up just past my knees \:D/ I haven't actually taken a full-on bath yet because it takes so long to fill up. Currently our water heater is some sort of broken (I've been taking hot showers just fine though =X oops?) so I'm going to wait for when I don't need to conserve the hot water.
Also, I've decided I'm doing another strawberry-themed bathroom.
Friends:
I made friends the first night! It's amazing how quickly we all bonded. During our dorm meeting the other night I looked around and recognized every single face, and realized I was friends with about 80% of them. There are some students who seem to stick with the same comfort/core groups, but I think it's more fun to jump around from person to person, making different groups everyday and getting to know everyone. Thinking back, I was like this with Japanese class back at Iowa as well, so maybe I've always been a little bit of a social butterfly, LOL~ We had a reception party after the entrance ceremony the other day, and I made SO MANY Japanese friends in addition to my other exchange student friends. It's gonna be a good year.
Language barrier:
It's actually been going pretty well! I've been able to successfully communicate with just about everyone. There'll be the occasional bumpy conversation but I'm doing pretty well for myself. There's little interaction with city residents - making purchases is pretty straightforward; going to restaurants and ordering things can be a little bit more difficult when they ask you extra things (if you want your drinks after or before the meal, telling the waiters you need the check split, etc) but it's still pretty easy to get by. There are some students here who can barely speak the language and they're somehow doing okay. xD
Shopping:
I've gone at least once every single day. After orientation gets done with for the day, we're left wondering what to do with ourselves. We're in a new country, who cares if it's 100F outside! Let's go exploring and see what shop we end up at! There's so much in my area alone - the supermarket and home store (aka Kahma, a Target-ish like store that also has pets for adoption) are just across the street, a bookstore called Radon is around the corner (they don't sell many photobooks, but I got one of Ichikawa Yui's there, w00t!), UNIQLO (clothing) is down the street the opposite way, a 100yen store that's attached to another store is about a mile away (which isn't long - we've made a few treks there), and there's even a bus stop a few blocks away that takes you downtown to the subway, which leads to Sakae, a big city with even more shopping. I don't think I'm going to get bored. Also, there are conbini (convenience stores - think a gas station store minus the gas) everywhere, like 7-11, Lawson, and FamilyMart. Supposedly there's a mall that's about a half hour walk away as well, but I have yet to go.
Food:
THERE IS SO MUCH. There are at least 10 restaurants in the near vicinity; so far I've been to Hamazushi (the rotating belt sushi place - 105yen a plate), Komeda (a cafe), and Yeast Paradise (a bistro), but there's also an okonomiyaki restaurant, a diner, a pizza place, and an Indian restaurant among others. There's also my school's cafeteria, or the atrium, where you can go to get awesomely cheap Japanese food (the most expensive dish is 400yen) that's also filling. We have a Mos Burger on campus too but I haven't yet been. Vending machines are all over the place. They might be a little bit more expensive than the supermarket, but when you're sweating your shirt off in this weather they're a welcome sight. My drink of choice is Kirin's Royal Milk Tea, but I'm making it a point to try every drink possible. I had a Japan-exclusive hamburger set at McDonald's, but all in all it wasn't much different from American McDonald's. Even the sizes were the same to me.
Specific things I've noticed:
First off, trash collection. Most of you might already know this but Japan is BIG on eco-friendly, and they separate trash into four different groups (combustible, plastics, PET bottles [think soda pop bottles and the like], and cans). I'm already getting into the habit of it, but I need to take an hour to clean up my room better. As a result of this anal retentiveness, I end up just throwing trash around my room (especially the bottles, which Nagoya is really picky about - you have to rinse them out, take off the label and cap, etc) when I don't have enough time to do anything about it or I feel lazy. When I'm walking on the street, I'll occasionally see random bags of trash (like plastic ones with some food wrappers in them) or bottles/cans on the sidewalk. Litter's slightly rampant here; there are really very few trash cans or places to put any of your trash. The most common is the PET bottle bin, but even those are few and far between.
Another thing I've noticed is that the majority of the girls here wear black leggings as part of their layering...even though it's 90-100F weather practically everyday. I don't get how these girls aren't dying from the heat being trapped onto their skin. Parasols on a sunny day are extremely common though, which makes me happy because I've wanted to use one in the US but if you walk around with an umbrella on a sunny day people stare at you because it's not raining, so why do you have one? >/
----
I can't really think of much else at the moment...any questions? :D
(crossposting this at Facebook so family and other friends can read it - might seem a little redundant to those of you who know about Japan as a result!)