Advertisement
Published: August 24th 2004
Edit Blog Post
Computer Lab in the Dorm
The computers are very nice. I'm up at 5am again, after almost collapsing onto my bed as a result of fatigue. Yesterday was fairly busy. I finally went to the actual Kansai Gaidai campus. The dorms are in a slightly different location than the school itself. When I first arrived, I thought that the dorms were the school. I must admit that I was thinking, "It looked slightly differently in the brochure." Fortunately, the actual campus is quite large. It's also only 2 years old. The Kansai Gaidai campus is extremely modern, very clean, aesthetically pleasing, and well equipped. There is a Seattle’s Best Coffee (seatoru besuto coohii), a McDonalds (makudonarudo hanbaagaa), a convenicne store, and a cafeteria on campus. The cafeteria food has a wide range of Japanese dishes, some of which seem appealing, and some of which I am not particularly interested in eating. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures today, since I was getting acquainted with the campus and handling numerous types of registration. I'll try to take more pictures today.
Walking from Kansai Gaidai to the dorms takes about 15 minutes, maybe 20. My feet are very tired and my body is somewhat sore from all of the walking and the lack of a familiar sleep cycle. After leaving the school, I walked down a street for a while to see what was there. I'm still not quite accustomed to cars driving as close to me as they do. The Japanese style of driving is very fluid, and pedestrians zoom in and out of cars on extremely narrow streets without a second thought. This includes the preponderance of people on motor scooters. This is another culture difference in Japan: the likelihood of seeing anyone, let alone middle-aged women, riding motor scooters on a day-to-day basis, is quite slim in America. While exploring, I passed a number of restaurants. By then, it was about dusk, and so I had started becoming hungry. Still, I wanted to explore some more. I found a grocery store. There were too many people inside, so I didn't take a picture, but the grocery stores are very, very bright, if only because of the pastel colors on all of the products. I was tempted to buy some Japanese candy, but I decided against it today. The "Crunky" candy bar looked intriguing, however; it also made me laugh. When I get a chance, I'll take a picture of it. You'll see why it's funny. After leaving the grocery store, went to a bookstore. I was hoping that they had some gaming (as in video gaming) magazines, but this particular store did not. I bought a manga, though. I think that going through it might help my Japanese skills a bit. I left the bookstore and continued walking down the street. I was alone, but Japan is very safe; it even feels safe. The only thing that makes me nervous are the cars driving ever so close to me. I reached then end of that particular street, refusing to make any turns for fear of getting lost, and turned around. I entered a restaurant, which was full. I saw some other people there, but the restaurant was full. Amusingly, an older woman started staring at me. I can't say that I blame her. Even though the people around Kansai Gaidai are accustomed to seeing international students, there are very few African or African-American students. The only things that really make me stand out are my hair and my eyes, because I've seen plenty of Japanese people with equal darker skin tones when compared with mine since I've been here.
Eating with me was a guy from Sweden, a girl from Australia, a guy from California, and another guy from...somewhere that I don't remember. While we're on the subject of international students, my temporary roommates consist of a guy from Canada, who amuses me with his extensive use of "eh?", a guy from Queens, and a guy from Ecuador. It's quite an interesting experience to be in Japan with so many international students. Everyone speaks English, of course, with the exception of the local Japanese people. While at the restaurant, I was slightly embarrassed, because the owner assumed that I was with the other international students, and pulled in an extra char for me to sit with them. It worked out well, however, because I met some new people. When the owner got to me, I asked her,
chaahan ga arimasu ka?
, i.e., "Do you have fried rice?" Fortunately, she did, and it was good. I wasn't fond of the pork in it, since I try to stay away from that, but I worked around most of it.
When I got back, I tried once to buy a soda and another time to buy some water. I didn't realize that what I conceived as being a strawberry soda, was in fact strawberry flavored milk. That was my fault for not reading the package. The second time, though, I was a little irritated, in an amused way. There was a carton with "AQUA" written on it. The carton was blue and it looked like water, so I got it. It was also some strangely flavored milk, much to my surprise and chagrin. At this point, I was so tired that I just went to sleep.
There isn't quite as much administrative junk to take care of today, so, despite the soreness of my body, I'm going to do some more exploring.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 7; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0458s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ally
U
You are too cute. I appreciate the detail to your journal. I hope you have fun.