Global House

Turns out I'm not very good at updating this....
About 3 weeks ago now, I met 2 french people going to ICU in my hotel, so I spent the day with one of them, Lou, in Asagaya and then in Shibuya. We went to Shibuya 109 the big clothes shop in the cylinder building in Shibuya. The clothes in there were really nice (some were a bit strange) but I didn't buy anything because I'm trying to save money a little bit at the moment. Later on the 3 of us planned to meet in the lobby of the hotel at 8 so we could go to ICU together, but my phone alarm clock ran out of batteries during the night and I was late :( Anyway, we made with plenty of time but the journey was so difficult. We had all our suitcases again and we had to catch the train, then a bus and walk through campus to our dorms.

Global House

We left our luggage there and then went for foreign registration. When we got to the office at ICU that we had to meet at I saw Rina who did a study abroad in Leeds last year, so that was nice. She showed us to the city office to do foreign registration and to apply for health insurance. This didn't take long, we had to show our passports and hand over a couple of photos, then we were done.

Once back at the dorm I met lots of the people living in Global House. It's a mix of four year regular students and one year exchange students. There's also a mix Japanese, American, and a few other nationalities living here. I live with 3 other people; two are Japanese the other is Chinese but she has lived in America for a long time.

My room (before I'd unpacked properly....)

In the evening we had to go to a dorm meeting with all the other new students from the other dorms. We expected it to just be about the rules but actually we all had to do a short self introduction at the front of the busy lecture room. It took quite a while though because there were so many of us. Since this meeting I've learnt that they seem to like doing self introductions here because we seem to be doing them nearly every day.

We've had lots of little welcome parties with other dorms to get to know people around ICU, where we all eat food and do the awkward self introductions one by one. Then play games that sometimes turn violent (in a good kind of way)

The next few posts won't be in order and will probably just be as i remember them- and then maybe I'll start writing this properly.......

Oishi ku nare ♥

On Sunday we had breakfast at Nanoka's, so I got to see what japanese breakfast is like. There was rice, salmon, soup with pickles in, scones, and a few other things but I wasn't sure what they were. It was all nice, except I'm not used to Japanese soup. It's served with nearly every meal I've had so far but I've been struggling to have more than a few sips. I need to start liking it... The four of us headed out to karaoke in Shibuya where we met Hiroaki. It was in a little room with a mix of english and japanese songs. We went to do purikura afterwards. In purikura you all go into a little photo booth and pose a bit, then you go to another booth and decorate the photos. It also changes your skin so it looks nicer and also changes your eyes. Although, it doesn't really pick up western eyes very well so mine are how they look in real life in the photo. (it probably didn't help that i forgot to look at the camera and looked at the screen instead lol) In Shibuya we went to see Hachiko by the train station. This is a statue of a dog that lots of people stand by to wait for their friends if they are meeting up. In 1924, a professor at the university of Tokyo took in a dog called Hachiko as a pet. Everyday after work Hachiko would greet him until May 1924. The professor didn't return that day because he had died, but the dog continued to wait at the station everyday for 9 years!

Tom wanted to see what a maid cafe looked like as well so Hiroaki took us to Akihabara. I was thinking that maybe girls don't really go in, but there were several other mixed tables in there. All the walls were pink with cute things everywhere and all the waitresses were dressed as maids. Whenever they brought out drinks to each table they would have everyone at the table "put a spell" on the drinks so they taste nicer. So in the cafe you kept hearing people saying "moi, moi, nyan, nyan, oishi ku nare!" That place was.. an experience... but I think it's something that tourists should do in Tokyo and this week I'm a tourist!

Nanoka had invited us back for tea so we went back and ate with her family. We had gyouza, fish, beef, and some other things (I'm not sure what they were but they were really nice and I will get better at remembering food names!) Her family are very friendly as well. We had to mainly speak in Japanese. I couldn't follow the whole conversation but I understood more than the day before :D