Arrival - Japan

Kawagoe, Japan

Day 1, Arrival

Around 4pm my flight arrived at Narita International Airport.  We had some time to shop around in the airport and I got my first taste of the types of goodies I will be able to find here in Japan.  I mostly just snapped some pictures in the drug store with the funny little cartoons on them but I also found some beautiful clothes, cat sticky note tabs, awesome stationary (something I was looking forward to shopping for in Japan), and some briefs repping Delta Gamma at the "HipStore" (double meaning, anyone?).

 

By the time I met up with my group, caught a bus to the hotel 2 hours away, finally got to dinner and back to the hotel & bed, I had been up for approximately 24 hours.  Sleep was readily welcomed.

Day 2, Kawagoe

5:00am Body wakes up.  I make some tea and finish the readings for class today.

6:30am Breakfast starts at the hotel and I head down to get some grub.

7:30pm A friend and I walked over to a kombini (small convenience store) close to the hotel and got some Pocky sticks.  Later in the day while at Tokyo International University (TIU) I got one of the premade coffee drinks that I saw in the kombini.

9:00am Met up with the whole group, walked to the train station, and made our way to TIU.

10:50am Orientation with the group and our two Willamette professors.

1:10pm After getting lunch at a Thai food cart on campus, I had my first ever Japanese class with a professor from TIU.  We learned some generic greetings, self introductions, and classroom instructions that a professor might use.  I also learned how to write my full name in one of the four character sets of Japanese, Katakana!  By the end of these three weeks I will have had 30 hours of Japanese classes, not including the daily immersion in the language as we walk around and experience our surroundings.

2:50pm We am getting credit for this three week excursion so we do have assigned readings and in class lectures/discussions.  As horrible as summer homework might sound, the topic is beyond interesting and I am enjoying it immmensely.

4:30pm We sat in on a class taught by a Willamette graduate who has worked his way up to being a professor at TIU.  In groups of Willamette and Tokyo International students, we went on a photo scavenger hunt around their campus.

6:10pm A small welcome reception was held for us at TIU with many students from the class we just had participated in as well as others (probably drawn to the area mainly by the free food).  We got to meet many important people at the university, as well as converse with students.  We will be spending a lot of time at TIU in the coming weeks.

7:30pm Headed back to the train station with two other group members who were ready to leave.  We found our way back!  At the train station there are lots of shops, including the equivalent of a dollar store in the US.  Here it is a 100yen store, and everything was just over 1 or 2USD.  I got a bunch of awesome and lovely stationary for only 16USD which absolutely made my night!  I have seen a lot of the products that they had here online, but they are easily 5 times the price online so I am planning on stocking up before I leave here.  Here are some of my finds (including, my favorite, some awesome new sticky notes for motivational quotes)!

It is 11:30pm here now, later than I anticipated for writing all this.  We have an unusually free weekend in terms of classes but my group members and I have already booked our schedules!  I might be going on a hike tomorrow, as well as exploring more of Kawagoe, and Sunday some of us are headed into Tokyo!

Until my crazy schedule allows me to update again,

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