First Day

This morning I woke up kind of late and went with some of the guys to Hosei for the first day. Before school we were going to see about setting up a bank account. The bank in our neighbourhood said you had to have a 犯行 (hankou), japanese stamp, to set up an account. But being foreigners we had no way of aquiring a stamp. A hankou is like a signature in Japan. It is usually the first charachter of your first name put on a cylyndrical stone. These are registered in the Japanese government and only japanese nationals can get them. While they were figuring out what to do with the bank accounts I dropped by the post office next door to pay my rent bill and send some post cards. They decided that the bank account was too much to try to figure out today so they would try another time. Since all banks here close at 3 pm there is not much time to do so. As a side note, later on in the day we found out that the same bank but a different branch next to Hosei will open up a bank account with no trouble at all. In Japan, even though the bank is owned by the same company, each branch may have very different procedures and policies. They love to be confusing over here.

Any way so we went on to Hosei to figure out what to do for the first day since we still didn't know what japanese class we would be in. The International Centre staff gave us the results of the test and told us where we should go. I did a lot better on the test than I thought I would and I was put in levels 3&4. So I'm not a complete failure.

At 1:30 it was time for the first class, Families and Sexualities in Japan. All the exchange students were about 15 minutes late because we saw a sign telling us to go to another room and assumed it was for that class. Good ol' english misunderstandings. After a late start the teacher gave us a summary of what we would talk about in the class and did a short lecture over the "Koseki" system of identification in Japan. The class sounds pretty interesting because every other week we do a presentation over what we learned the week before and discuss. A lot better than writing down a bunch of notes and reciting it back on a test. But the class was kind of boring today because we just talked about this system of registeration in Japan. Basically instead of registering individually, Japanese people register according to their family. When a woman gets married she joins her husband's "koseki" and if she gets divorced she can either rejoin her father's "koseki" or make her own koseki being the head of the house. It's all pretty sexist and old fashioned. If a child is born to parents that are not married, that child is just labled "boy" instead of "son". And supposedly there is much discrimination against children of non-married parents and divorced women. Sounds like the south to me.

The next class I went to was Japanese Culture. I had no idea what this class was supposed to be. The name sounded a bit vague and the course number indicated that the class was to be in Japanese. The teacher came in and told us that the class was basically a Japanese communication class where we were to discuss japanese culture. The teacher was really energetic and pretty funny. So that class looks like it should be interesting.

After class I ate something in the cafeteria with some of the other guys who didn't make it in time for breakfast this morning and also missed lunch. The cafeteria was pretty funny. The students at Hosei are pretty flashy dressers and make it a point to stand out. There was a group of people smoking underneath the big no smoking sign. It sort of felt like shawnee mission north again.

After that I went with one the guys back to the dorms. It started raining right as we left Hosei. It was my first japanese rain. I was too used to the Waco rain where it just poured for a day and didn't rain for another 3 months. But the rain here is a bit heavier than a mist but not very heavy at all. But apparently it rains a lot.

When I got back to the dorms I decided I should do laundry since I change my clothes so many times a day thanks to 100% humidity. A thing about Japan...and well the rest of the world is that they don't use the dryer. Although they do have a dryer in the dorm which I found weird. But it was too small for even one load. So I got to hang up my clothes and they will probably be crunchy when they dry. Good times.

2 things about my cell phone I found out today and yesterday. I guess when you dial the number from overseas you only have to dial *****. (81 being the country code) That is the number you can reach me at anytime pretty much. And today I found out how to change my email address. Before it was that long strand of numbers that they automatically gave us. But after messing around today I found out I could change it and I did to: **** after I did that I became the email expert because no one else had figured it out yet.

I also figured out how to email myself pictures so I can upload them here. I haven't taken any pictures for the purpose of showing them here so I they aren't that good. But here they are anyway. And you also have to hold the phone really still to get good pictures and obviously I can't do that. And I think there is some way to better focus it...but oh well. You get the point.


This is the view from the 12th floor of Boissenede Tower of Hosei. The black tower is the Japanese Self Defense Force, their unoffical army but for constitutional reasons can't call it an army but they still sent them to Iraq..but that is a whole other story. It was a pretty foggy day today.
































This is Boisenede Tower of Hosei. I'm not sure how you spell it. It has 26 floors and sticks out pretty well in that area of Tokyo. Apparently to stand an earthquake it is built to sway back and forth quite a bit. So that should be fun when I'm in class someday.













This is Rachel friday night just as we got out of Shibuya station into Shibuya ward. Behind her is apparently the world's busiest intersection. And that it was. It looked like a sea of people crossing the huge intersection in all directions.
























This is Yokohama ....something... Bridge. I think it may be called the freedom bridge or maybe the rainbow bridge. I'm not sure, but it's really long and looks cool. I was on the floating park when I took that picture.




















This is a pretty big intersection in the middle of Harajuku. It's pretty fuzzy but you get the point.









This was on the menu at the cafe we ate at yesterday in Harajuku. The idea behind it was that for 300 yen more you could add on a piece of cake to your meal. But the english kind of got mixed up. If you can't read it it says "When you hold it and pay Y300 pairs todrink set. a cake gets possible to choose." I'm probably going to come back talking like this since that is the only english I see most of the time.

















This is a sign that is pretty much everywhere around the trains that tells you who should have the seats on the train. "Priority Seats". The pictures are kind of funny. They recently changed the pictures on all the lines because the old ones could be viewed a very different way.



















This is someone's house I see everyday on the way to Tsutsujigaoka station. It looks heavily groomed and green. In a city as urban as Tokyo it's a nice thing to see everyday.




Tomorrow is the 2nd day of class and actually a full schedule. I'll try to get some better pictures of people and places tomorrow.


When I look at this again I realise that the pictures are placed kind of wierd in this post. I'll try to fix that next time.