Study Abroad in Japan: First Day of School @ ICU (9/9)

I guess I should start this by first telling you how the day before my first day of school was. Overall, it was really chill... I slept in until about 12:30pm, and left at 1:00pm to check out this club called "ICU Hub" where Japanese and Foreign students can hang out make friends and explore Tokyo. The meeting that I went to at 1:00pm was a welcome party at this place called Shin-D (?) which was basically inside this building that had a convenience store. It felt kind of odd at first because everyone was done eating for the most part, and everyone was already in their own conversation but I tried chiming into people's conversations in order to be part of the group. I met some cool Japanese people.

I saw this kid named Hirotaka who I met at one of the orientations. He was advertising this Dean's Welcome Dinner "party" about a week back. I also met (I think) the leader of the club named Misa (?) a guy named Go and a girl named Chisa, and another girl named Juri (sort of sounded like Judy, but I wasn't sure which was her name...could've been Judy with a japanese pronunciation) during dinner with UCEAP people + some ICU Hub Japanese students at none other than Gutara Ramen.

ICU Hub is only one of a few other clubs I want to check out. Some other clubs include Running Club, Calligraphy Club, Yearbook (might check it out with my friend Derek), Papoose (Casual Social club that is supposedly for beginner Tennis Plaers), Hatake (gardening), etc.... I actually don't remember all the meeting dates, so I should probably get that figured out.

School is pretty awesome I must say. My schedule is pretty packed but I might change it up a bit. I will probably keep my Japanese Language course, but if I drop any course I think it'll be my business class, Management of Multinational Enterprises. I started class today at 8:50am (1st Period) and ended at 3:00pm. All of the classes I have are in Honkan, which is the main hall for classes. All classes are either in Honkan or ILC (I forget what it stands for). It's super convenient because all my classes are like less than a minute walk from each other and my dorm is like a 2 minute walk from Honkan.. ^_^

The Regular Schedule @ ICU

My weekly schedule. Notice how the campus goes by periods... just like in high school!

As my friend in the dorms named Michael said, it feels like high school. I don't personally think that's a bad thing though. ICU Campus is a private university that only has about 3000 students. Our class sizes as far as I've seen in my first two classes have been between 16 and 25ish.

In my first class, Japanese, we did some review work and I was pretty intimidated at first because she was doing most her lesson in Japanese while my Japanese teacher back home primarily taught in English. After about 30 minutes (and after the daunting Japanese introductions), I got used to it. Since it was all review, it was pretty easy but I still won't underestimate it. While I am placed in a level of Japanese that I should be fine with, I heard that the JLP is quite difficult and people tend to get very low grades on it so we'll see.

After 3 periods (~3 hours) of Japanese, we had our lunch break... because My 4th period class was a "Super 4" period, our lunch break was only about 30 minutes so I didn't even bother going back to Dialogue House to eat at the Cafeteria... instead, I sat at the windowsill to enjoy the extremely warm, beautiful, and less humid day while talking to some Dorm-mates.

After that, I headed to my next class -- International Trade. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't chalked full of international students like me. Other than me, Nicole, Mike J, and Lillian, I don't think there were any other foreign students (or so it seemed). Since ICU is a school with predominantly Japanese people who have English as a second language, the course is quite forgiving. For example, our quizzes are online for a week and it's open book / we can work in a group. The "term paper" is only 5 pages and we can also collaborate with a group too.

I think I will honestly only be worried about Japanese, but it's too early to tell. I still have two more classes that I have yet to take.... That'll be later in the week.

After school I went over to Derek's apartment in Global House with Tiffany, Cathy, Monica, and Mike J. We chilled there and talked about what type of adventure we wanted to have next while munching on some snacks and watching TV that we couldn't understand... after a few hours there we finally called it a day. It was like 5:00pm by this time I think, so I went to the Cafeteria to finally have my first real meal of the day. I had Chicken Katsu ^_^ It was alright... it was nothing special. Just Katsu with Katsu sauce, and sticky rice. No real seasonings were used other than the sauce if you count that....

Now I'm here relaxing... I should be going to sleep b/c I only got about 6 hours of sleep last night, but....yeah!

NO CLASS TOMORROW! (as you can see by the schedule)

I hope I'm able to go out and explore somewhere I haven't been yet.... I also still need to get an External Hard Drive because my uploaded photos from phone / camera are filling up way too much room on my laptop. My 500GB laptop only has like 20GB left.... Anyways,

KONBANWA FROM JAPAN! Hope tomorrow is as nice as it was today

OH YEAH. I also saw a hornet... I think.... In the inside of the main building for classes, Honkan. SCARY STUFF

(9/10) Update: Later at around midnight, Kyle, Mike J. and I went to Mc. D's to get some food. I wanted to get something that the American Menu didn't so I ordered a #8 (Ebi Filet O') with Qoo (Spelt Kuu in Hiragana. It was pretty much just White Grape Juice, but it was good). Overall, the flavor wasn't overwhelming... I mean it was pretty good and interesting having shrimp in a burger but it wasn't life changing.