ほぼ日刊JF

Last weekend, Robyn invited me to visit some places in Osaka with a bunch of other people.  Having been cooped up in my room for too long, I obviously agreed to it.  We were a bunch of people from the beginning, including me, Robyn, Neil, Hyo Sun, Anna, Jessica, Thitiya, Kana and Chisato.  Hopefully, I haven’t forgotten anyone.  After meeting up at the Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi station, we headed for Umeda where we bought our day pass.  It cost about 2,000円, but that pass ended up being very much worth the purchase because without it, it would have been much more expensive to do all that, not to mention troublesome.

From Umeda we hopped on to the subway and eventually reached our first destination: Osaka-jo. Osaka-jo is Osaka Castle, a castle built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the unifiers of Japan. Inside the castle is a museum where you learn how much of a bastard Hideyoshi was (at least, that’s my interpretation of it!). You can also pay 300円 and be very much tourist-like and take pictures with a samurai helmet or a yukata. We of course, had to do it. I adorned a helmet with gold antlers coming out of it and pretended to fight Neil for Robyn’s heart. Shoguns fought for love, right? Right?

Following that, we headed for the Osaka Museum of History because history is cool. Unfortunately, all the explanations were in Japanese and our level of Japanese is too low yet to be able to make much sense of a lot of it, but it was still fun. As soon as the elevator door opened for the museum, we were greeted by a very grand epic sound which caused us all to go “Oohhh!!!” We were then guided by a big screen to go towards some statues of decidedly unattractive of people holding fans and in Chinese looking clothes. Chinese cultural influence must have been considerable back then. Music was playing that reminded me of Civilization. I have it recorded and at some point I will upload it online. We then progressed through the ages until we reached the 1920s where the tour ended. No World War II display for the history museum, eh?

At that point, we were quite hungry. We all left for Namba I believe, and at that point Thitiya and our group parted ways. We went to eat at an okonomiyaki place near the big Osaka crab, a place that had apparently been operating since 1946. I wondered if American G.I.s had eaten there during the period of American occupation. It was so full we had to wait. I wasn’t able to eat anything there however, except the rice set, which was meaningless to me since I had rice in my backpack so I just ate that while waiting and then just enjoyed spending time with friends. When stomachs were full, we went to a game centre where, fraying our way through crowds of young girls, we got to a purikura machine and took a series of amusing pictures which were of course, thoroughly doodled on afterwards with much hilarity. They were distributed with infra-red making it a cheaper solution than the ones that e-mail it to you. Chisato left us, and then there were seven.

We then rushed to another part of Osaka, running for the final minutes to make it just in time to the port where we boarded the Santa Maria, who for some reason, is supposed to be hanging out in Osaka Bay. For more inexplicable reasons, it was no longer Christopher Columbus’ vessel but a bunch of pirates led by Captain Balloo, or Baru, or something. To add to the strangeness of the experience, the entire trip was accompanied by muzak making us feel like we were waiting on hold in the middle of Osaka Bay. Hesitant at first because I do not particularly like boats and water, it turned out to be quite pleasant with a nice breeze ruffling our hair and a great view of Osaka, as well as a massive Ikea that had several stories of parking lot.

It had gotten late and dark so we made our way to our final attraction: the World Trade Center’s 55th floor, its observation deck. Going up the elevator to the 55th floor actually caused my ears to block. Rapid altitude ascencions are definitely not for me. I guess I will never be a fighter pilot! That’s okay, I wasn’t intending to be one. We spent some time admiring the view of Osaka at night and some of us figured that our recently deceased cameras had been re-animated for some reason so more footage and pictures was caught.

Having no host family to go back to, me and Hyo Sun discussed going to another place, but at that point I was much too tired to go on and my leg was in quite a lot of pain, a problem that has plagued me since I started the massive marathons that is known as daily life in Japan. Some of us parted ways at Umeda, others at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi but in the end, we got home at around 10 PM or so. I got to my room, checked some things online, and then just collapsed in my bed, exhausted.

It was very fun though, I’m glad I went.

One of the things that’s been irking some of the exchange students, particularly the ones from Europe and North America is the amount of rules there is here regarding your personal life.  Some rules are understandable, such as we’re not allowed to drive.  Although I gather, if you have an international license, you should be fine but anyhow as you don’t really need to drive in Japan to get to places anyways.

But if we decide to take off somewhere, we have to notify the university. We’re also banned from having people of the opposite sex in our rooms (or same sex if you’re gay/lesbian, and how they figure out you’re sexual orientation is beyond me), whether you’re living in a host family or in a dorm. But that doesn’t matter really, because the dorm has a rule that no one is allowed in your room. Not even just for a quick hello or anything. We also have a big thick book of rules to follow.

Of course, since the rules are so numerous and often so ridiculous seeming that I see the rules broken all the time and the residents don’t really care. How does the dorm react? By making tighter rules, which in turn get ignored even more.

This brings me to Sun-Net. I got Sun-Net internet. Thankfully, I only have it until January because I found out that Sun-Net actually blocks a whole host of web sites. Yesterday d-addicts.org was up, and I could check the Wiki to see all the nice incoming shows. Now click here to check out what happens when I Google search d-addicts.

Messed up, eh? I feel like refusing to pay them and cutting my connection right now. They don’t have my credit card info or anything like that, so it wouldn’t even affect my credit and they’re not going to send me to court over something like this. Or I could pay it, but my contract is due to expire in January and I’m certainly not renewing it afterwards. If they want to spy on my web activity, well, I have a Linux server in Florida with unlimited bandwidth, so I think I’ll route everything through that server and just browse through an encrypted connection using SSH or a VPN. It’s just not something that I can accept. They’ll probably find this and just block my connection or something…

I’m a pretty open book guy usually, I even put up this blog to describe my life here, but I feel like this complex set of rules on us by the university, the dorm, the Japanese government, is forcing me to go underground with my life, because there might be some rule that I break that they could catch me on without me even being aware of it on the course of me living my life as a human being.

This is what an overload of rules does. It makes everybody a rulebreaker in some obscure way, and if you break one rule, you’ve passed the threshhold, you’re already marked as bad, so you might as well break others, right?

People need to back off and let people breathe. But I suppose I’m just a “Western individualist…”

Homeworks are piling up and I need to hit the books pretty hard soon. I also need to get back to blogging on a daily basis. It should get easier soon enough actually, I applied for internet, and I should get it around the 16.

Not much has been happening. I’ve become better friends with the exchange students here as well as met some new Japanese people. It’s fun. Hmm, what else… I got my books. It came up to about 100$, but it’s five books, I think, in total. So that’s good. All the other classes don’t really need books, the professors just print out the text for most of the stuff, so that’s handy even if the papers are piling up.

And hmm, yeah… That’s about it for now. Sorry for the short, detail-less update!

I am sorry for not updating! I haven’t taken the time to update. But I assure you, I am not dead. I’m starting to slowly get all the things I need so I can settle in. The other day I got a stereo for free, because when people move out they can put things in a bin here and anybody can pick them up. I’ve gotten a few handy things like that, one of them being the stereo, so now I can listen to radio which is very nice. I have recorded clips from the radio actually, so you can hear what the radio sounds like in Kobe:

The funny thing about using the radio on this stereo is that if I plug in my computer, it dies. Apparently powering my MacBook generates FM radio waves that cause it to scramble signals or something.

My life is starting to feel rather Japanese in a way, but not in other ways: wake up at 6 AM, get the rice cooker going, take a shower (this is not very Japanese :P), prepare some miso soup, prepare some chicken or shrimps, eat rice and miso soup, throw rice and chicken/shrimp in bento (or alternatively, make a few onigiri with katsuo, soy sauce and a bit of wasabi inside), dash out of the door at about 7:30, usually bringing an umbrella (I have a story about that…), hurry to the train station, get on the train, go all the way to Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi, hurry to switch train for the one heading towards Takarazuka (and sometimes run because you hear the bell that signifies the train is about to leave), usually hang from a strap, with your eyes closed because you don’t really want to look at anyone and plus you can catch a few zees, get off at Nigawa, walk along a river behind a pack of university students, dodging cars because Japan apparently doesn’t believe in sidewalks all that much and then reach the classroom at 8:50, classes start a 9:00. On Monday and Friday, I have to stay there until 18:20 (6:20), which means when I get back home, it’s about 8 o’ clock at which point I’m thoroughly tired and usually fall asleep playing my DS in my bed. The other days, I’m often wandering around trying to buy what I need and that takes up a better part of my day, and then I have a pile of homework to do. So yeah, that’s my Japanese life!

It’s not bad though, it’s just tiring. All the train travels is teaching me train Japanese. 「夙川、夙川です。甲陽園ほうめいのりかえです。」 (or something like that, “It’s Shukugawa, Shukugawa. This is the transfer station for Kouyouen.”)
The other train sounds are stuck in my head a lot, 「まもなく。。。」(Shortly…) and the rest of the stuff, 「きけんですので、」 (It’s dangerous,) and then other bits about stepping behind the yellow line, and of course, the constant rings and bells of the station, warning of an incoming train. One of them sounds exactly like something you’d hear in a game like Contra and the boss is coming, and it flashes “INCOMING!” and you hear this alarm, yeah, it’s the same sound, they probably took it from there. I always feel like readying my Scatter Shot rifle and making sure I have enough bombs when I hear the alarm. “Aim for the red spot!” I think.

Talking about Scatter Shot rifles and bombs, I’ve been spending a certain amount of time in game centres, which are arcades. Not too much, because I’m not exactly in a position to spend a lot of money at those arcades, so usually I play about 3-4 games and that’s about it, that comes up to the cost of a coffee or something. But I’ve been getting a bit of mileage on Time Crisis 4, but unfortunately I seem to be getting worst as time goes on. I also played Street Fighter IV, which was actually quite fun, but the damned stick controls is making it hard to do the moves. I played Arcade, easily beating the computer, until it connected to the network and found me a computer player to go up against (you can have a card that you swipe in, it keeps your player information and you can go up rankings and such) and yeah, I got pwned, massively. I also found they have the Gundam P.O.D. game at the game centre near my place, so I will be trying that soon. I also played this really bad Gundam shooting game, House of the Dead 4, Initial D 4, (it’s all 4… There’s Tekken 6, I haven’t played it yet. Apparently one of the best characters is this really fat guy called Bob. I’m not kidding, he’s a great player! But, you have to wonder why they put him in the game.), something like Midnight Club Racing 3 (the only thing good about this game is the soundtrack), the taiko rhythm game (it had one of my favourite songs ever, the Ridge Racer 4 theme song!), as well as a Silent Hill shooting game. But I have also been eyeing the Square-Enix card game thing, where you buy a deck of cards for 500円, and then you can also get booster packs for ３００円 and you put the cards down on this table and it summons whatever card you put down. It looks interesting, but a bit expensive. But since I found out my electricity bill for the month is, get this: about 15$, I might try that game.

Oh, umbrella story. So, when I got to Japan, I thought “Bah, umbrellas. I have a jacket with a hood, that’ll do!” Wrong. I underestimated the power of Japanese rain. One day, it’s raining and I see everyone wandering around with umbrellas. With full on Western confidence, I walk outside, secure in my jacket, or so I thought. Literally the second I step outside, I become soaked head to toe, with the exception of my chest. It was exactly as if I had jumped in a pool of water, my pants were just completely dark and wet from the rain. That day, I had to stay at school until 18:20 so I spent the day with wet shoes and socks, mostly wet pants (although parts of it dried from body heat) and yeah. Not fun. The next day, I bought an umbrella. My shoes hadn’t dried either, so I was wearing Ziploc bags on my feet for like three days until we got a sunny day that let my shoes dry. So if you ever wondered what’s up with the Japanese and umbrellas, well… They can get really hardcore rain, so that’s why. If there’s a hint of rain, you bring your umbrella. It’s incovenient to carry the umbrella everywhere, but not as inconvenient as being caught in the rain, trust me!

What else happened… Oh, last Sunday, the Korean elementary and middle school next to my dorm had some kind of exercise and marching going on, as they usually do. Anyways, usually I don’t mind, they have some march music going on and they do their stuff. But that day, there was one girl screaming in Korean in a megaphone for 6 hours straight. It drove me insane. I closed my window, cranked up the music, and I could still hear her. Here’s what it sounded like, for 6 hours…

Anyhow, that’s that for now.

Had to wake up earlier than normal because of the Himeji-jo trip. I didn’t really feel like going but it was free. My alarm clock software actually didn’t go off that morning, what woke me up at 6:00 AM like I was planning was something that hit my balcony. It had woke me up a few times during the night, but this time it was pretty good timing on its part. I’m still not sure what randomly hits the balcony, maybe something that’s hanging to dry and being blow by the wind. Maybe my neighbour got angry and hit the balcony. I don’t know. What I do know is that it woke me up at the right time.

My neighbour was angry yesterday actually, I believe. Me and Markus were talking late (but not past the time where we have to be quiet) and he just yelled out in Korean “kisseiki ya!” which, from my very, very, very limited amount of Korean knowledge, I believe is basically swearing. But I could be very wrong. (I confirmed this with Korean friends here, it was swearing as I thought. I guess he doesn’t like me.)

We had to be there a bit early so I hadn’t had time to have breakfast. I tried to find something to eat at the convenience stores near the school, but from their selection I couldn’t figure out what was edible for me, so I went with a choice that wasn’t the most filling but it was at least food that I knew I could eat: daifuku. A strange breakfast, but a delicious one! Since, I’ve somewhat gotten addicted to daifuku. I was reading somewhere that Japanese sweets are usually enjoyed by women. I’m picking up a lot of habits of Japanese women apparently: when I go grocery shopping, it’s me, and a mass of Japanese middle-aged women. Now it’s sweets. Oh well, whatever, they’re delicious, and I like cooking which means I need to do groceries for that as well, so who cares, eh?

Anyways, we took the bus and went to Himeji which was quite a long ride. Along the way, me and Nicolette, I think her name is, talked about various things like American politics and so forth. The people in the bus were also quizzed to answer Japanese riddles by Abe-sensei as well. It was pretty funny, unfortunately I don’t really remember the questions so much, just the answers, so I can’t relate them.

After the long ride, we arrived in Himeji and started our visit of Himeji’s castle, a world heritage site. It was beautiful from the outside, but inside it was rather empty actually. Simply wooden rooms with some expositions, which was disappointing. After that, we went to Kokouen, which is a garden that was built in 1993 or 1994 which, doesn’t make it very traditional even though it pretends to be. There were some okay places but the summer probably isn’t really the best time to go. I was amazed by the giant gold fish. They probably weren’t gold fishes, likely some other fish, but they looked exactly like giant gold fishes. That was probably the highlight of the trip for me!

Following Kokouen garden, we went to eat at a souvenir shop called Takada no Baba. We were all seated Japanese style at low tables, on pillows and had green tea, an udon, dashi and kamaboko soup thing on one side and inside a plastic box, there was sashimi, rice, Japanese hot dog thing, fried fish things… It was actually a very unimpressive meal. I was thankful to not pay for it, of course (although I’m sure I paid for it at some point) so that was okay, but the meal from the menu seemed to be expensive and it was all very fake. The sashimi had no taste and it was a strange temperature. The soup was okay but nothing to comment on. The rice was rather plain and the whole thing being in a plastic box kind of made it less than authentic. The wasabi came in a plastic package and the soy sauce in a small plastic bottle like you would get in a convenience store. Very fake and overpriced (for the university, at least), very fitting for a souvenir shop. But it was food and at least I could eat some of it, which came in handy later that I could save my obento of rice and sembei for the long return trip.

We got back on the bus and went to Maiko to see the Akahi Kaikyo bridge. I thought “I don’t care about bridges”, but strangely enough, the experience was actually enjoyable. I might have liked it better than the other things actually. It was very long indeed and you had a great view on the walkways. The elevators on the Akashi Kaikyo apparently have a thing against me though, they tried to close on me on two occassions. But since they’re elevator doors of course, they opened back up. Thankfully! Well, if I hadn’t known elevator doors would open back up if you stick yourself in between them, I wouldn’t even have tried to enter the elevator at these times.

As we headed back home after all that, we happened to pass by our dorm on the bus. The Hyogo International Residence people wanted to get off, but they wouldn’t let us. So we drove all the way to Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi. On the way though, we saw a great view of Kobe’s Harborland and Meriken Park, with the Port Tower and the big ferris wheel thing and the big onigiri-like hotel (supposed to be a boat.) We also briefly saw a small matsuri going on, with people carrying a mikoshi, and a number of shrines on the way.

But the day was over, so we all got on to the train (and I caused some confusion because I was saying we can’t take the express back home, and apparently we can, it’s the same exact thing then the local for some reason, we just can’t take the LIMITED express back home.)

I hung out with a French student who lives here, Catia, Katya, something like that, and then I went to bed an hour so after eating some food.

Crazy downpour this morning. I also learned that there’s a drain thing on my balcony that makes strange sounds when it rains and that it seems like if there was too much rain at one point coming down, it would probably flood the balcony because it seems to spill a bunch of water out and re-absorb it, but when it is coming down too hard, it has a hard time keeping up. I like it when it rains though, especially here as it really cools down the weather often (not always, sometimes it just makes it more humid) Anything that makes it feel like Japan in the summer is not one giant sauna island makes me happy.

I did some laundry, but then found out that the dryers don’t really dry anything for 100円. Not feeling like spending a fortune on drying, I tried to hang my clothes outside, but it rained all day, so my clothes didn’t dry at all.

Today was the proper day that I was supposed to meet up with Mio, her brother and her friend Liu so I went to Umeda again. At least this time I was confident on how to get there. We met up in the station (minus Liu, who hadn’t arrived yet) and headed to a game centre. There was a ridiculous amount of UFO catchers, those machines that you move this little crane to catch things with all kinds of things in it, from the usual stuffed toys to foods like squid on a stick. There were a few floors and I ended up trying two games: Time Crisis 4, and Initial D 4. Both were pretty fun, and they weren’t that expensive when it comes to arcade: each were about 100円. Technically, I could have dried my clothes instead of playing Initial D 4. But Initial D 4 was much more fun than dry clothes!

Liu arrived after a bit and we headed for a karaoke place, called Big Echo. Inside, it was full of white plastic things, little multicolour bumps and Engrish like “Let’s heve good energy” (yes, heve. Maybe it’s a combination of heave and have.) We got our room and went up to it, which was a couch, a table, and an LCD screen, along with some speakers. Then they asked for the foreigner music catalog too so we could get some English songs in there for me to sing. And then the singing began! I actually did try to sing one Japanese song (TOKIO - Amagasa) but I had no idea about the lyrics and it had furigana for the kanji, but it was all too fast for me to sing. It’s good practice though. So when it was my turn, I mostly sang Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails and Ramones. There was Ilona - Un Monde Parfait, which made me laugh. I laughed even harder when I saw the video associated to it. You basically had these skinheads going around punching people and flipping people off, but the song is normally sung by a 12 year old girl who sings about a magical beautiful land that’s perfect, that has sheeps, cows, sugar and all that nice fluffy stuff. The video couldn’t have been more mismatched! The video for Nine Inch Nails - Hurt was pretty good actually, it was this suicidal girl. Rage Against the Machine, one was people breakdancing, which I guess is okay, but the other was about stores and such, which I doubt RATM would appreciate. I also sang Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit, which reminded me of Yasu.
Mio sang some Spanish songs and Hirai Ken, her brother various artists that I didn’t know and Liu sang pop Japanese songs, but also the occasional Korean and Chinese song. It was a very multicultural karaoke session, Japanese, English, Spanish, French, Korean, Chinese.

We went back home afterwards and that was my night out in Umeda. I liked the feel of Umeda actually, compared to Sannomiya. I’m not sure why. The colours, the shape of the buildings, it has a more sophisticated urban feeling it seems to me, even though Mio insists Sannomiya is much more organized than Umeda is.

I wondered if I would prefer living in Osaka than Kobe on my way home. There probably shouldn’t be that big a difference though for the most part.

Well, not much to report for today. I spent most of my day on the train, as I thought I was supposed to meet Mio in Osaka Umeda station but then after arriving there, and looking around for her for a bit, and I called her up on a pay phone and she was like “No, it’s tomorrow!” Oops.

Since I hadn’t left the station, I thought of going back to Shukugawa and trying to just come out there again to not charge anything, but I’m not sure if that actually works. I’ll have to test it sometimes. So I left the station, and it ate my ticket. I wandered around Umeda a bit but I didn’t go to far, I didn’t really feel like getting lost at this point, so I went back home.

After that, I went to buy some koshian and mitarashi dango at Gourmet City, spent most of the day watching episodes of Osen and went to bed early because I was tired from the heat and all the walking.

Argh, I placed lower than I wanted. But I was kind of expecting it. I’m in level 2 class. It’s okay in the sense that if I study really hard and well, I can get to level 5, but if I don’t, the maximum I can go is level 4. Which is still good but I’m hoping to be fluent enough when I get out of here. We’ll see how my Japanese improves. This dorm isn’t really helping me though, since the other people here often speak English. There are no native Japanese speakers except the staff. I suppose I could talk to the Koreans around here, they’re usually pretty good in Japanese on average.

We had more orientation. The one I was not happy about was “Kwansei Gakuin and Christianity”, but the chaplain was a pretty funny guy. He asked a question which, thanks to Dr. Griffiths’ training, made very little sense in itself. He asked “Is Japan part of the Western world?” Of course, I started thinking, “First, you need to ask ‘Is there a Western world, and if there is, what makes it the ‘Western’ world as opposed to any other grouping of human beings.” Everybody will come up with different explanations but I’m not sure there’s any absolute one, as opposed to you know, Japan, which very few will disagree that it’s a country with fairly defined borders (depending on if you include Dokdo and places like that in it)

After that, I went grocery shopping a bit at Co-Op Food Store near Niigawa station. It became my new favourite grocery store. It has a wide selection of things, especially of fish. I saw some squid and octopus tentacles for sale. At some point, I have to learn how to cook these. Also lots of different fish which I wasn’t so sure what they were and I couldn’t yet read the label to verify. I think I saw tai (sea bream) and saury. I know I saw blocks of salmon and tuna. All for good prices too (about 3.00-5.00$ CAD for a whole fish/squid) I bought a bit of groceries and went back home fast enough, thinking we’d get hit by Typhoon No. 13.

And nope, it just sort of veered off the coast and wandered away. That was lucky. Although, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad else than just some strong wind and some flooding, possibly. So I just stayed in my room for a bit and listened to the kids screaming something that sounded like a military drill. You know when you have forty or so people responding “Ha!” simultaneously.

Eventually, Markus called me and said they were going to hit Sannomiya tonight and wanted to know if I would come. I felt more like relaxing after the crazy week, so instead I agreed to go meet up Tim and his conversation partner, Yone, at Oujikouen and walk around a bit but I would be retreating to my room when they were ready to go to Sannomiya.

So that’s what I did.

I think I know why Japanese people bathe at night. It’s useless to bathe in the morning, because even if you do, it’s just so humid that in about five minutes you’re covered in sweat.

As per the other days in this week, the Kangaku students at the dorm went to the station in a group. It seems the route we took was shorter than the one I had found, so I should make sure to remember it. It tends to go through dirty back alley areas though, but that’s okay, at least in the morning. At night, I go through the more populated, better lit areas.

At the university, we had more orientation for the various courses we’ll be able to take and tomorrow we have to submit our courses. We also get to know which class we placed in.

This was also the first semblance of a break that I had had. I quite enjoyed not having to run around. I was so tired that I went to sleep early.

We had a placement test today.  All of us from the dorm went together to the station and reached school just in time.   Then we were each assigned a desk where paper for our placement test were waiting for us.  It had several parts, a kanji part, a grammar part, a listening part, an interview part and a composition part.  I think I did alright on the kanji and grammar, nothing too special, maybe intermediate level, and I feel I did well on the listening and the interview part.  But when it came to composition, oh boy…  I totally failed that part.  I ended up only writing a few lines than I had nothing more to say on the topic.  That’ll probably scale me back a bit.  In two days, I’ll get the results.

After that, me and my conversation partners, Makoto and Tomi, went to get my 外国人登録証　（ がいこくじんとうろくしょう, gaikokujin tourokushou) at the city hall. However, I had forgotten my passport and pictures in my room and I live about 20 minutes from the train station. It was 3 o’ clock and the city hall closed at 5, so it was a race to the dorm and back, then to the Sannomiya City Hall. We finally made it though and then applied for the card. I got a paper in the meantime telling me when I should be getting it (around October 14) and that was all good. After that, Tomi had already left and Makoto went home, so I went back home by myself. The running had been very exhausting and I had sweat buckets and buckets because of the heat, the hurried pace. To make matters worst, I didn’t have a chance to drink much water.

Once I arrived in my room, I called Shoko and she said she was in Sannomiya and she’ll get to JR Nada very soon. So I walked out of my room. I guess at this point it’s important to note that I hadn’t eaten dinner because they had this orientation welcoming thing with the staff and they all served Domino’s Pizza and fried pork sandwhiches, which obviously didn’t do for me. So I hadn’t eaten yet and we had to rush for Sannomiya, so I didn’t have a chance to eat then too and as mentionned earlier, had very little to drink. So I left my dorm and met Shoko. We visited this Hyogo International Center where they have computers I can use and also a library of books to learn Japanese. After that, we went to Gourmet City.

As I was asking Shoko to translate the ingredients list of everything that seemed interesting to me, suddenly I felt really, really hungry. Then the room started spinning and I felt like puking. Following that, I started shaking. So Shoko offered to buy the stuff for me, so I gave her the money and went to sit outside. Even though it was hot outside, I felt a bit better and then I tried to eat some of the food, but it all tasted very horrible, adding to the fact that I wasn’t feeling good. We went back in and we bought nigirizushi and then we ate that instead. Shoko also went to buy me some water. I felt better after. We tried to continue shopping a bit but I started getting some heat flashes for some reason and then tired. So we decided to go back.

After returning to my room, I just drank a lot of water and fell asleep until the next day.