Part 5 - Feet Have Gone Numb

Day two of orientation. Woke up and went to take the placement test. Those who had no experience were divided a bit from the others and got a different packet. It was a set of questions that basically had us rank different methods of learning. The beginning Japanese teacher was the one who constructed the test, so we’ll see her again on our first day of class, on Monday.

I just realized that it’s only Tuesday. I feel like I’ve been here forever already.

For lunch we went back to Sunnys, which is the grocery store nearby where we get everything food related. Then we had to meet back and we went to the Sawara ward office for our alien registration cards, which we will get in about three weeks. We need them in order to make our cell phone contracts, but since I’m getting a prepaid I shouldn’t need a contract, so we’re going to try and get ours tomorrow. But for the alien registration you need two passport sized photos, so don’t forget to bring them with you or you’ll have to take extras here. Others did theirs in a roadside photobooth for 700 yen, about $7.

After orientation stuff ended we spent forever looking for a ramen place, until a man finally led us there. GS Ramen. It’s pretty cheap, except I can’t eat a full thing of ramen. I’ve never come close yet and I end up wasting so much. I had Christian eat some of mine to make it look a little more finished. But while we were there, there were some guys sitting at the table beside us, and in front of me, so I made eye contact with one by accident, smiled, and got a smile back. And I looked at another a little while later and waved, and he nodded. Then I heard them talking and I hear “kawaii”, which means cute, and a minute later they walked up and set down a carton of juice on our table and said to mix it with our water. They let us keep it, so it’s in my fridge right now. So… me being a friendly foreigner got us free juice. They said they go to Seinan also, but in the high school department. I’m in the university, but maybe I’ll see them around. It’s a little hard to tell people apart though, since we’re new and so massively outnumbered. But, on the way out the owner of the place also called me cute as I was paying.

Anyway, Alecs' (from Hawaii/Colorado) birthday is tomorrow, so we went to the beach. Natsumi, one of our advisers, had made him a cheese cake so we tried that, some people drank a bit, and most people went back. We stayed and talked with a group of girls who were nearby. One of them, Abe Hanako goes to Seinan too, and she said to say hello if we saw her there. She’s a business student and knows a bit of English. She helped me talk to one of the girls who was trying to talk to me, acting as a translator a little. But I can recognize words like, if someone says “____doko___?” I know they’re asking where I’m from because “doko” means “where”. And I know “mina-san” is “everyone”, so when they ask about mina-san they’re asking if we’re all from America, or going to Seinan, or something like that.



Eventually they left, and I left, and I went to bed to find everyone again in the morning.