Arrival and Orientation Whirlwind

In a good way, it has taken me a while to actually sit down and get to this blog.  I have successfully arrived in Japan, and this past week and a half has been a true whirlwind of new and interesting things.  I’m glad I expected so much culture shock because literally everything I do or everywhere I go is at least a little bit different from home.  But let me start from the beginning.

The Flight

I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t nervous sitting at a gate at the San Francisco airport with “Osaka, Japan” illuminated on that little board above the service desk.  It was daunting, to be honest.  As I sat there as a minority, I felt as if I would be the only one in the country who was, well, clueless.  However, soon another girl who appeared to be a college student sat down by me, and shortly after that a group of three more student-looking people came our way.  Looking back, it was kind of amusing, as each of us was nervously smiling/observing, innerly debating if it was ok to ask if we were going to the same place.  Eventually, someone did break the ice.  After a timid, “Are you by any chance going to Kansai Gaidai?”  we all realized we were indeed in the same boat (or plane HAHA) and started to talk, which magically quelled many nerves. 

Then it was time to board.  Walking on the jetway before getting on the plane that would take me across the world for four months felt incredibly dramatic.  But nonetheless, I stepped foot on the aircraft at last and worked my way to the rear of the plane (compromise for a self-deemed necessary aisle seat) to find the tiny area I would be confined in for the next twelve and a half hours.  Upon spotting that lovely aisle seat dubbed 35B, I found that a relatively young non-Asian guy was sitting next to me.  This piqued my interest because I wondered what his story for going to Osaka was.  There was bound to be a story.  Turned, out, this guy worked in California for the research division of Kawasaki (motorcycles) and the company regularly sends him to the factory...in Osaka, Japan.  This was his ninth time going, and he wasn’t that old.  Kind of felt bad because I was incredibly excited for the arrival and he was incredibly not.

After some good movies (“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” lived up to my high expectations, and “Paper Heart”  pleasantly surprised me as extremely enjoyable) and not-so-good airline meals (save the green tea that the flight attendants consistently distributed with the beverage cart AND after meals), it was time to land.

So the plane landed on the little manmade island that is Kansai International Airport (How cool/freaky for landing/Japanese is that?!), and I de-boarded.  Due to time zones, it was suddenly 5pm the day after I left.  The other Kansai Gaidai-bound people and I met, claimed our luggage and breathed a sigh of relief that everything made it there safely with us, and went through the ultra-quiet immigration and customs, at which we were thoroughly fingerprinted and photographed.  Fact: That picture is getting prime real estate on my "awkward photos" tab.  Then I was finally able to go to the bathroom; and there I encountered my first heated toilet seat/toilet with many options in general.  Welcome to Japan.

The Seminar House

It was still daylight when we landed but by the time the bus to the university left, the sun was set.  This was a little bit of a bummer to not be able to see anything on the one and a half hour drive to campus because the whole flight was weirdly in daylight, even though it was over twelve hours and we left from Cali in like the middle of the day.  We just kept flying through those time zones.  But nonetheless, I did at last reach my seminar house (the housing for the international students in this program).  I embarrassingly lugged my overpacked suitcases into the lobby of Seminar House 3, was reminded I needed to take my shoes off and place them in my assigned shelf-thing in the entranceway ( <3 Japan), and was whisked away for a brief tour of my new home. 

When I reached my unit, I met my suitemates...and was happy to discover the wonderful accommodations, both with the people and actual place.  The people are so diverse!   There are four rooms of two, with only one other girl from the U.S. (Georgia).  The others hail from Brazil, Denmark, Argentina, Poland, Mexico (my roommate!!) and Canada.  Everyone’s really nice/a lot of fun.  Plus, for the first week we had some additional people in the unit because homestay students didn’t move in with their families until the end of orientation.  Just adds to the excitement!

The actual suite consists of a comfortable living room area,

a spacious kitchen (complete with not one but TWO rice cookers, believe it or not),

an ultra clean bathroom (sorry, didn't take a picture) and the eight-square tatami mat rooms in which we sleep and have our desk, closet,  FUTON, etc.  Yes, the futon is comfortable.  Actually really comfortable! I’ll post pictures of this sometime soon I suppose.

It also should goes without saying that EACH of these areas is incredibly clean and new-looking, not just the bathroom.  It’s a major constant in Japan: spic and span.  For instance, note how garbage is separated here.  We had in-depth orientation instruction and discussions about this complicated matter...like in even greater detail.  It’s kind of a big deal?

Orientation Week Activities

Orientation activities started the immediate morning after the night I arrived.  Amazingly, I adapted to the 14 hour time difference with incredible ease, since I was simply able to go to sleep when I got in that night and therefore get a regular night’s sleep.  Couldn’t have asked for better timing.  Orientation consisted of multiple meetings, ranging from welcoming ceremonies to banking sessions to faculty introductions to a “Living in Japan” seminar. 

The “Living in Japan” seminar covered topics such as “how to ride a bike in Japan” as well as “how to survive an earthquake.”  Fortunately I haven’t experienced the value of the earthquake safety info, but I certainly have found the biking session extremely useful.  You see, bikes here are a big deal.  Basically everyone rides one, so walkers like me are constantly dodging them.  Because so many people ride bikes, there are strict rules concerning them.  I learned in the orientation session that every bike must be registered and have a certain kind of lock.  If a police officer catches a bike rider without proper registration, the rider can be arrested.  But that’s not even the whole story.  Furthermore, it is against the law for a bike rider to carry an umbrella, use a phone, not have a light, ride someone else's bike, ride drunk...the list goes on.  Plus, matters are even more complicated for people like me because of the whole driving-on-the-other-side-of-the-road business.  Long story short: I'm not getting a bike here.

Of course the orientation activities haven’t been taking up all of our time.  We’ve also been exploring the neighborhood...and beyond.  After the first day we went to the local 99 yen store (kind of like a dollar store, but an even better variety of items/food).  Yes, entertaining.  We also discovered a little (keyword: little.  The place consists of two tables) okinomuyaki restaurant right down the street from that beloved store.  Okinomuyaki is a pancake/omelet-type Japanese dish that’s especially popular in the Kansai area.  Each table has a grill in the center...kind of like Benihana, but, well, definitely not Benihana.  The random restaurant we walked into turned out to be REALLY good.  I will admit that I’ve been looking forward to the night when enough time has passed that it would be acceptable to go again.  I can still taste those little onion flake toppings that sizzled when the waiter set the pancake-like object on the table's grill.

Another night we walked down to Hirakata station, which is the “downtown” area of the university’s town.  This was the first time we were in a real Japanese shopping area, so everything there was pretty intriguing, even though it isn’t really a major place.  “Kiddyland” has everything Hello Kitty, plus every other Japanese cartoon line.  There was even Hello Kitty bottled water.  When we found our first Japanese mutli-level supermarket/department store combination, we were kept busy and happy for pretty much the rest of the night.

Then last Friday, when most of the orientation obligations were over, we had our first chance to go to Kyoto!  Small groups of international students were matched with Japanese students who volunteered to take us around.  Our group was matched with a few Japanese girls who were--to put it simply--awesome.  The girls took us on a train to Kyoto and then we got on a bus.  None of the international kids really knew the itinerary, so this bus ride kind of felt extremely long.  Therefore, we naturally started to make conversation with the people around us.  It turned out the three guys next to us were Korean med students who were fluent in English and spending a few days traveling in Japan.  And they were heading to the same temple—the Golden Pavilion/Rokuon-Ji Temple.  So they stuck around our group, and even posed for some pictures.

After the temple, we caught the bus again.  We clueless international students assumed we were returning to the train to return to campus, but suddenly the Japanese girls told us to get off at some random stop.  Like a herd of sheep, we obeyed.  We filed into an arcade, and it was just like a movie—like a fantasy world of colorful, flashing machines beeping and singing and filled with random but oddly desirable prizes.  Evidently though (and to our brief dismay) this was still not our destination; the Japanese girls quickly ushered us down an escalator, and waiting for us at the bottom was this:

Yup, there was a whole floor—rows and rows—of purikura, the photobooth sticker machines that you can draw/add an incredible range of designs and features.  Now this felt like another world.  Even though we couldn’t really all fit in one purikura camera lense, our whole group did a bazillion takes.  And then each of us had to take a spin at decorating, of course.  I have proudly added one of the printed photo stickers to my Japanese cell phone.  My goal is to go all out with the cell phone stickers and charms here.  Word.

After exiting the entrancing world of purikura, we learned that the final stop of the day was dinner.  Dinner in Kyoto?  Who knew!  At first, the Japanese girls wanted to bring us to one of the sushi places where various plates come around on a conveyor belt and diners simply grab what they want, but sadly the small place did not have enough space to accommodate us.  Thus, we decided to split up.  Some people went to an udon restaurant, but I chose to stick with the ramen crew.  We found a small, traditional ramen shop, and even this was an experience.  To put it simply, we ordered from a machine and then sat in a classroom-like format—tables of two that were more like desks, as the tables were in rows and each chair faced the kitchen.  I got some chicken ramen thing.  Like so many other things this week, it was far from what I expected and/or pictured.  But it was good.  In fact, it kind of tasted like chicken noodle soup.  Almost.    

The next day, I ventured to Osaka with some of the people from the Kyoto group.   To be honest, most of the day was spent figuring out which trains to take, when to get off, where to transfer, etc.  In other words, most of the day consisted of us asking an embarrassing number of passerbys (in severely broken Japanese) how to get from Point A to Point B. Ultimately though, we did make it to our destination of the Umeda area of Osaka, and right by the station there was another one of the humungous Japanese multi-level department stores, which was perfect because someone needed a camera and other various items.  So yes, we pretty much ended up shopping all day.  But no worries because we'll be back soon.  Eventually we discovered some alleyways that had numerous small restaurants, pachinko/slot sites, more decked-out arcades and clubs.   It sounds sketchy but it really wasn’t.

Now classes started this week.  Ultimate slap of reality, but so far they're pretty interesting at least.  Japanese five days a week is just going to be a killer.  More on that as the semester unfolds though; I am aware this is an obnoxiously long blog post, but there is simply just a lot that happened in a little amount of time.  From here on out blog posts should be more like, well, blog posts and less like novellas.  Sorry, but I started to write this play-by-play out of a desire for proper documentation and then just felt like I might as well get it all out.  But thanks for reading if you made it this far!