Japan: Fukuoka... DIE! Ja nai!
For 5/19/2006:
It's wet... dark and wet... it's the kind of weather that penetrates... I wake up early Friday morning to the sound of one of my roommate's alarm (7:17am... he has one of those clocks whose alarm is only the hour hand). The cool thing is that I don't feel tired at all (jet lag kind of takes away all sense of time and you start off again with a clean slate). In any case, I hear the rain going already... slow and steady. I brush my teeth and head down to the dining room to have a nice Western style breakfast. This meal consisted of an omelette, sausage, ketchup, fruit, and bread. After breakfast, we head to the lobby and watch some wonderful Japanese TV until Masuda-sensei comes and tells us what's going on at 8:40am. We each get 2 5,500円 subway/bus passes that speeds up the process of using the two types of transportation.
We then walk to the bus stop in the rain, then all board the number 12 bus bounded for ふくおかだい (Fukuoka university). We get there and rush in the rain to Building 8 (where we will be spending a lot of our time). We head to the International Affairs office and introduce ourselves to the staff (including the guy who is directing most of our program). We then head to room 834 (building 8, floor 3, room 4) and sit in these odd bench/desk combinations (3 seats per desk). The orientation mostly consists of the director reading us the contents of the program packet. After the orientation, a few of us wandered around the halls some, then head back down and Naki-sensei hands us these yellow sheets of paper with lyrics to songs on them. Apparently, we were going to have to sing a Japanese song at the Welcoming Party. Too bad the room we were just using was taken up so about 4 of us started singing this song in the middle of the hall. We then headed downstairs where the rest of the group was and proceeded to practice the song in the middle of that hallway during a class change... yeah... that was fun. I'm terrified of singing in public...
We get let into our next room (824) and there are about 5 or 6 Japanese students who seem terrified already in the room. The director comes up and tells us (oh yeah, he spoke pretty much entirely in Japanese btw... just so you get a scope of what we're going through) that these students are going to be our tour guides for the campus. He calls them all up and he tells them to introduce themselves. The first person goes up and says "英語で？" (In English?) and he responds "No, they can speak in Japanese." She proceeds to introduce herself anyway in a heavily accented English. They each introduce themself; some in English and some in Japanese. It's funny, but these people have been taking English classes for upwards of 10 years and they're scared to death of speaking it, whereas we have been taking Japanese for like 5-8 semesters or so and we're now fully immersed in it.
Anyway, Masuda-sensei splits our groups up into groups of 4 or 5 for the tours. My tour group consisted of Lee-san, Luu-san, Liu-san, and Moon-san. Our tour leader was a Biology major and he actually spoke a decent amount of English. He kept commented that we spoke very good Japanese though. He showed us various parts of the campus (in pouring rain) including a few buildings (some with computer labs we can use) and a restaurant or too (a place called "Mo's Burger" - Welcome to Mo's!), the gym, the library, etc. He also points us to the 地下鉄 (Subway), which we can take to てんじん which he states as a great shopping district. He takes us to one of the school stores and I buy an umbrella for 350円 so that I wouldn't get quite as soaked anymore. Of course right after I buy the umbrella it stops raining.
We're getting pretty hungry by this time so we head to the cafeteria and I get かつカレ for like 330円 or so plus 90円 for a coke (so around $4). Not bad for a lot of food, that was decent. We have lots of fun talking to our tour guide and he even offers to let us tag along with him and his friends to go see a movie sometime. We exchange Email addresses and phone numbers and such, then head back to Building 8 to get ready to go to a computer lab to setup our accounts. The computer room is extremely hot and I was very wet from the rain. Hence my title from the posting I made in the lab. Computer stuff set up and we now had student accounts to use. The keyboards in the lab are pretty interesting. I may try to get a picture of one before I leave. Lots of random Japanese stuff. They also have both Linux and Windows installed :)
Wow... tired already... More to come about this day later. Jeeze... I need to catch up; I'm falling behind. みんなさんおやすみなさい！ (good night)
It's wet... dark and wet... it's the kind of weather that penetrates... I wake up early Friday morning to the sound of one of my roommate's alarm (7:17am... he has one of those clocks whose alarm is only the hour hand). The cool thing is that I don't feel tired at all (jet lag kind of takes away all sense of time and you start off again with a clean slate). In any case, I hear the rain going already... slow and steady. I brush my teeth and head down to the dining room to have a nice Western style breakfast. This meal consisted of an omelette, sausage, ketchup, fruit, and bread. After breakfast, we head to the lobby and watch some wonderful Japanese TV until Masuda-sensei comes and tells us what's going on at 8:40am. We each get 2 5,500円 subway/bus passes that speeds up the process of using the two types of transportation.
We then walk to the bus stop in the rain, then all board the number 12 bus bounded for ふくおかだい (Fukuoka university). We get there and rush in the rain to Building 8 (where we will be spending a lot of our time). We head to the International Affairs office and introduce ourselves to the staff (including the guy who is directing most of our program). We then head to room 834 (building 8, floor 3, room 4) and sit in these odd bench/desk combinations (3 seats per desk). The orientation mostly consists of the director reading us the contents of the program packet. After the orientation, a few of us wandered around the halls some, then head back down and Naki-sensei hands us these yellow sheets of paper with lyrics to songs on them. Apparently, we were going to have to sing a Japanese song at the Welcoming Party. Too bad the room we were just using was taken up so about 4 of us started singing this song in the middle of the hall. We then headed downstairs where the rest of the group was and proceeded to practice the song in the middle of that hallway during a class change... yeah... that was fun. I'm terrified of singing in public...
We get let into our next room (824) and there are about 5 or 6 Japanese students who seem terrified already in the room. The director comes up and tells us (oh yeah, he spoke pretty much entirely in Japanese btw... just so you get a scope of what we're going through) that these students are going to be our tour guides for the campus. He calls them all up and he tells them to introduce themselves. The first person goes up and says "英語で？" (In English?) and he responds "No, they can speak in Japanese." She proceeds to introduce herself anyway in a heavily accented English. They each introduce themself; some in English and some in Japanese. It's funny, but these people have been taking English classes for upwards of 10 years and they're scared to death of speaking it, whereas we have been taking Japanese for like 5-8 semesters or so and we're now fully immersed in it.
Anyway, Masuda-sensei splits our groups up into groups of 4 or 5 for the tours. My tour group consisted of Lee-san, Luu-san, Liu-san, and Moon-san. Our tour leader was a Biology major and he actually spoke a decent amount of English. He kept commented that we spoke very good Japanese though. He showed us various parts of the campus (in pouring rain) including a few buildings (some with computer labs we can use) and a restaurant or too (a place called "Mo's Burger" - Welcome to Mo's!), the gym, the library, etc. He also points us to the 地下鉄 (Subway), which we can take to てんじん which he states as a great shopping district. He takes us to one of the school stores and I buy an umbrella for 350円 so that I wouldn't get quite as soaked anymore. Of course right after I buy the umbrella it stops raining.
We're getting pretty hungry by this time so we head to the cafeteria and I get かつカレ for like 330円 or so plus 90円 for a coke (so around $4). Not bad for a lot of food, that was decent. We have lots of fun talking to our tour guide and he even offers to let us tag along with him and his friends to go see a movie sometime. We exchange Email addresses and phone numbers and such, then head back to Building 8 to get ready to go to a computer lab to setup our accounts. The computer room is extremely hot and I was very wet from the rain. Hence my title from the posting I made in the lab. Computer stuff set up and we now had student accounts to use. The keyboards in the lab are pretty interesting. I may try to get a picture of one before I leave. Lots of random Japanese stuff. They also have both Linux and Windows installed :)
Wow... tired already... More to come about this day later. Jeeze... I need to catch up; I'm falling behind. みんなさんおやすみなさい！ (good night)
posted by Christopher Luu at 11:29 AM
2 Comments:
wow chris luu. and i thought my journal entries were long! i do like all the details tho. just means i'll have to read daily =)
It's long over due that I read through your blog. I really can't wait til you get back and tell me all about it in person too. What an exciting begining.
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