flameraven | (no subject)

Yare yare. Home again. That was more than trial and error, I can tell you.

Anyway. Woke up today with my clock saying it was 9:00, only to turn on the TV and discover it was really 10:00. Naturally, a few seconds later I got a knock on my door. Kind of a hectic morning, only to find out that the "orientation" thing was just some welcoming ceremony for new students. Quite boring, to say the least. I paid attention only when they mentioned us, and also when one of the professors mentioned Obama-- apparently using his "Yes we can!" message as a goal or challenge for the students. I was highly entertained to see his message has come this far, and a bit encouraged too.

Afterwards, I thought we were going to have the real orientation, but... apparently it was not to be. We ended up sitting around in the English lounge for several hours. (I knew I should have brought my laptop!) I managed a cursory check of a few sites, but little else.

We left to go shopping, after a brief stop in with one of the teachers-- some kind of business professor, I think? They were showing us schedules of the various conferences, pretty much all of them business-related, that we could go and listen to. I'm not sure how beneficial any of it would be for me; I got more than a little lost between the conversation of the teachers today-- too many specific words I just don't know the vocabulary for.

So after that we headed into Oyama's downtown, essentially. We ended up biking to the station since the bus was late, which, since I don't have a bike yet, meant me clinging to the back of one of the others'. It was terrifying. I was awkward at first and the girl asked if I knew how to ride a bike, which of course I do, but I couldn't quite explain that generally in the US we don't ride together. The trip itself is pretty short, though; maybe five or ten minutes. You basically take the road straight over the bridge to the station. We stopped at the eki and I managed to find an ATM that would give me yen so we could go shopping... hit up the hyakuen store for some of the basics, and another, kind of... drugstore? For shampoo and conditioner, etc, since the girl (I really do need to learn her name) looked at me a bit oddly when I was going to buy everything at the hyakuen.

Shopping was a bit difficult in general; I was wandering around because I'm still a bit slow and need to read the labels on everything to figure out what it is, and I only understand the Taiwanese students most of the time, and couldn't really explain to them why I was buying so few things now, that it is too hard to shop and think of what I need to buy without a list, that I will come back later (alone), so I have time to wander around and figure things out. I picked up some cup noodles and juice for tonight; later I can make a better list and go to the grocery store, since at least I know where that is now.

The trip back was a bit more difficult; Rin dropped me off at campus, and from there I managed to find my way back...eventually. It was getting colder and I was getting hungrier, though, and I took more than a few wrong turns, so by the time I finally got here my Japanese was completely lost, as evidenced by my incredibly awkward explanation to the guy at the door that yes, I actually do have a room here.

The language is an interesting puzzle in general... I end up speaking English most of the time to Brian and half the time to Yoshiko, and I was disappointed that I ended up speaking it more to the professors as well. I'm having a harder time getting across that, you know, I do understand, most of the time, and I can in fact speak better than I have been, but you know, I just got here yesterday and it's going to take me a bit before I'm completely pera pera. The Taiwanese in particular are difficult. It's good to spend time with them, because then I'm forced to use Japanese, but on the other hand when I don't understand a particular word it's harder to get an explanation because they flail around and try to tell me in English. Most of the time they chatter in Chinese for a bit first, making me feel even more lost. I really need to learn Chinese.

Still need to go to the bank (it closes at three, so I missed it today), and apparently I need to get my gaijin card before I can get a ketai or anything like that... that can apparently take a few weeks. Hopefully I can talk to Usui-san about it tomorrow.

Chris and Keleigh will probably be getting in around eight or nine, I would think... maybe if they go out to dinner like they did last night I can tag along and grab some food. Things will get more interesting once they're here, I think. Although, it might be even harder to speak Japanese then because the temptation for English will be more. Iyada ne. At the moment it's all sort of awkward and all I can do is flail a little bit. I know I'm doing much better than I was the first time but I still occasionally get tired of having to think and fight to say what I mean all the time. Probably I need to study more-- I have been noticeably neglecting that this semester. At least I have a victory in that I've been generally good about using keigo when I should.

One challenge at a time, I guess.