Hot, hot, hot

Whew, well, today certainly seemed like a long day! Maybe that's just because I'm so tired right now. I'm getting quite the case of jetlag. I get tired, and I mean tired, starting after 8:00. And since it's 9:30 right now... I am beyond tired. So much that my arms start hurting, ahaha. But the plus side of this is that I wake up in the morning at 6:45 wide awake! I woke up once at 5:00 this morning, then 6:00, and finally decided to get up at 6:45 since I couldn't go back to sleep. It is very weird, I can't even lie.

But anyway, today we had the campus tour, which was nice, though I will probably not remember all the buildings that we went to! Fortunately for us, all of our classes are in the Center for International Education, so that will make things much easier. But we went around and saw a number of the different buildings, and then we found the McDonald's and the Seattle's Best Coffee, as well as the Convenience shop and the book store where we'll eventually buy our textbooks. Lastly, we ate at the cafeteria for lunch. It was quite good! Though I couldn't understand what the ladies were telling me, ahaha. I ordered the main lunch dish, but then they kept asking me something and not letting me go, and it turns out that with the lunch, you got either some miso soup or some melon soda! And they weren't going to let me go without one of them! It made me laugh. But I ended up getting the soda and it was really good. The lunch itself was a chicken dish of some sort. It tasted like it had some curry on it. Then I got a sesame seed onigiri to go with it. I love onigiri!

The banking session was right after that, which was rather scary, actually! Ahaha. You have to fill out all these forms... and... you can't make a single mistake. Not. One. Or else you have to start all over. And everything has to be written absolutely identical to what's on your passport. Oh, and you can't go over any letters, even if it's not dark enough. There were so many rules! It make it rather nerve-wracking while having to write! Luckily, I only had to get a new pink form once, and that was because when you put in your year of birth, you're supposed to put it in in terms of the Japanese eras, so my actual date was 62 Showa Era, not 1987.

Once the banking session was over, Casey and I had already met up with this girl named Colleen (who was much better at Japanese than either of us), so we were walking around for a while, and then she needed to go to the post office, so we decided to just go look for it. We had a pink map, but it was not really very good, and we just couldn't seem to find it! We asked a number of people, including an old couple who owned a cigarette shop, but none of it seemed to be helping. We ended up first finding a grocery store that was much more frequented by the general Japanese population than the one closer to campus, plus it was exceeeeedingly busy and so packed you could barely move in places!! But we went there to get water because we were all quite thirsty. Oh yeah, have I mentioned that it is positively ROASTING here??? It's so flipping hot! And very humid too.

But anyway, after that, we just started walking again, and we finally ended up in this closed-in residential area that was very pretty and cute, even though we had no idea how to get out! Ahaha. We had a number of people staring at us at times, which, once you get used to it, just becomes rather amusing. It was while walking through here that we finally asked a lady with a baby in stroller where the post office was, and she was able to direct us to it. It ended up being not that far away! So we went there, she mailed her letters, then we started walking and hoping we could find out way back... and... the next street we walk down on led to the park outside the seminar houses! We were so surprised! But it was rather nice, ahaha.

After our adventure, we decided to study a bit for the placement exams, so we went over to Colleen's room in Seminar House 1. That seminar house is so cool! It looks much more traditional than ours, though in that same regard, there were normal keys instead of the cards like we had, and the toilets were not quite as advanced, lol. But it was very nice inside. After study for a while (but... mainly just talking) we all were a bit hungry, so we walked down to Top World with another girl, Elllen, to go get some dinner. I ended up having curry chicken and rice, an absolutely giNORMOUS peach, and then I also bought some chocolate chip melon bread, which I haven't finished yet, but is very tasty. I love just walking around the grocery store, even though I don't know what half of it is! Lol.
When we came back to the seminar house to eat in the kitchen, there were some other kids watching Wall-E on someone's laptop, and it made me want to see it again, ahaha. I hope that it's out on DVD by the time I get back! I love that movie. <3

Hmmm, well... that was about most of the day. One thing I'll add in is that it takes a while to walk anywhere! It's at least a 15 minute walk to get to campus... at *least*, and then you have to walk at least a good distance to get much of anywhere else. Man, I'm gonna be so in shape! Though, I guess I don't know how far away I'll live in my homestay. I might end up taking the bus or train, though it will still be a walk from there. The walks wouldn't be quite so bad, though, if it weren't so hot! Geez, it feels like I'm dying half the time!!

Anyway, I think that's about it. I'm going to try to put some pictures up as well, though TravelBlog doesn't seem to like me around this hour. It always takes a long time! If it takes too long to upload them, then I'll just do it tomorrow, because it always goes very quick in the morning. I have a bunch of cute ones from walking around the residential area and such.

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