First Days of Doshisha

I was a little worried about living with a host family but now that I’m at school I’m starting to get used to things. It feels like I’ve been here forever but I’ve only been here exactly one week. It’s weird. It hasn’t really hit me yet that I still have 8 months here. I feel like I should be doing/ buying/ experiencing everything right now.

I’m thinking I’ll probably buy tickets to go to Korea soon. I want to go in November so that I can visit my friend who’s studying abroad there right now and also experience Korea when it’s not freezing. I have other weeklong breaks in December, February and March but I already have tentative plans for 2 of those weeks.

The first few nights here at my homestay exhausted me. I had to speak in and listen to Japanese constantly and I’m not very good at it yet. I feel sort of bad for my host family who has to speak to me really slowly and use really simple words. Furthermore, I can’t express everything that I want too and look like a dumbass a lot. It’s all right I guess. My second and third night here I was thinking to myself, “can I really survive 8 months of this??” ..But for now I think it’ll be okay. My Japanese will improve and I will become more familiar with my host family.

Classes started yesterday (Monday) and I went to language class and a film class on the “other” in post-war cinema. So far my classes seem OK. I don’t know… On Thursday/ Friday we all have to take a placement exam so we can be put into Japanese classes specific to our levels in reading & writing/ listening/ speech.

Yesterday morning we had a bike practica where two ladies came and taught us the rules of the road IN JAPANESE. It was intense. I’m guessing that these ladies usually go to teach kindergartners because they were dressed up in cute fake police outfits.

Today I got a bike to ride to/ from school (only a 10 minute commute!). It’s blue and mechaaaa kawaiii (toads cute). I’ll probably have a few near death experiences while riding my bike so I also borrowed a helmet ..which I just realized I left at school in the AKP lounge.. stellar..

The highlight of TODAY was when school got out and Katie and I perused the area for a café with wi-fi. We found this tiny traditional-looking place that had pretty decent wi-fi and weird but decent food and a man that spoke very manly and therefore unintelligible Japanese. I TOOK A PICTURE OF US: