千里の道も一歩より始まる

Day of days, the first.

Today was busy. I'm so tired... Waking up early and getting ready on time always was and still is a complete pain in the bum-bum for me. I often wake up with 5 minutes to spare and get dressed, wash and eat in one huge whirlwind. (sometimes I even dream about getting ready then awaken to find myself still in bed) But now it's an even bigger pain as I have to give myself time to get 2 trains with a hectic transfer every morning. (sigh)

fun fact: Shinjuku station is used by around 3.7 MILLION people every day making it the world's busiest station. 

Shinjuku station yesterday.

So after taking my two trains to 御茶ノ水 (<-- my station name, it means "the honourable tea water" very zen.) I arrived at my campus. Its really quite swanky and also massive. I'm just going to go ahead a lob a few pictures on now and i'll do a full campus tour at some point ^_^: 

Just outside the station

See i'm really here!

A wild university appears

It's nice around the uni :)

One of the best things at this campus is that I found one of my favourite shops. A SUBWAY! hurraaaayyyyy. It's the only one i've seen so far in Tokyo and it's right next to the campus. 神様 are looking after me, making sure I get ma sandwhichy nutrients! So obviously I have popped in and checked out their filling selection and am pleased to say they do indeed have tuna :D (talking of sandwiches there are some really weird ones here O_o stay tuned for info!)

The main point of the day.

The main point of this first day was shockingly not just to look for bread based goodies but to start my orientation into 明治大学!!

Information goodie bag 

BLALBLALBLALBLALBLA O_O

To start with it was like hell, I had unbeknownst to me been put in a group with mostly entirely fluent people and as such was not prepared for the japanese-only super quick introduction which occurred on that day. I swear the woman doing the speech talked at around, if not over the speed of light and I lost track of her blabbering around 1 slide into the presentation.... (I had to ask a chubby korean guy what the hell was even going on.) Turns out it wasn't a hugely important meeting just term dates and administration, didn't help that I forgot my pen (also thanks for the pen same korean guy) (-____-)

Le testing situation!

After this in the afternoon I had my first of two placement tests :O This one was an internet test with 150 questions. You had to get as far as you could do in 90 minutes but every question had an option of 'don't know' in order to skip ahead quickly. I managed to get to about question 120 before a massive block of text appeared and I had no time or energy to read it. I hope i've done well or I will be one moody cabbage. Next test in 2 days :O










In less stressful news! One of my uni buildings is HUGE! It's called the liberty tower and is 23 floors of just rooms and stuff. We had a quick guided tour of the building and they took up to the top floor, SO here's a picture of the view I get when doing the learnings.

Cool right! you can even just see the dubious death trap of a roller coaster on the right.

You jealous? HEEHEE!!

横横GOGO!

GWAAAARRRR BRAAAAAAINS

The morning after the night before, or in my world the continuation of one long day. It had been over 36 hours since  I had slept and i'd previously seen zombies going about their day with more vigour. yet for some reason (probably because i'm an awesome friend) I decided to go to Yokoyama.

Me an the most rubbish person ever.

I decided to go because my housemate, a Japanese dude from last year invited me and all the people from Manchester to a BBQ in Chigasaki. It was going to be good as I wouldn't have much opportunity to see a few of my friends for a long time and they were in the Tokyo area for a little while. Well we were meant to be having a BBQ but Kosuke (the Japanese dude) didn't ask the weather to be good nicely enough so it was cloudy.

   Yerh good job Kosuke, learn to manipulate the weather better. Jeez.

So the plan changed itself to bowling and going to get foods, which was probably for the best as a beach day in my dehydrated state may have spelt the end for me in a sunstrokey fashion.


The journey itself was not a piece of cake either as I needed to transfer lines at Shibuya station. Shibuya station is not quite as hectic as Shinjuku stations 200 exits but their signposting could do with some work! After getting off the train I proceeded to follow the signs for my transfer... this took up upstairs then in a massive loop then downstairs then upstairs and finally down a curvy slope to approximately 50m from where i started. After asking every station attendant I came across on the way and non helping me I couldn't help but think the signs were a conspiracy and the reason why the stations are so busy... people can never leave.

Yokohama time

This is Yokohama:

Just outside the station

 It's practically Tokyo, I think it's even attached to Tokyo. It took about 20 minutes to get to and its actually quite nice. I think it was built because there was too many people in the main city so they needed somewhere to live. 

Streeeet

Going to Yokohama was really fun :) I met all my friendlings and we went bowling. Now as you at home may know i'm not very good at bowling. The balls are too heavy and since I cant bowl them properly I just drop them and shove them down the alley. (or use a child bowl-help stand) Sadly in Japan it appears even children are pro-bowlers so the aforementioned bowling stands do not exist. This meant the bowling went disastrously as I tired to learn to bowl properly. Ball after ball gracefully flopped from my hand directly into the gutter.

Although there was the cool idea where everybody had to stop bowling when the lights went off, then the tracks lit up and then every lane bowled one ball at the same time. If you got a strike when the lanes were lit you got a prize and they took a photo. Obviously on my go I got a spectacular direct gutter ball -_- BUT one of the more talented players in our group did manage to get a strike!!

Hurray!! I can bask in the glory of others!!

Ooops....

Pro-bowling movements.

You'd think the bowling couldn't get any worse than continuous gutter ball, but it can. Soon after my team mates amazing strike I managed to get the ball stuck hall way down the track and a man had to go a and get it for me. How embarrassing  On the plus side, i did get to take my shot again and actually hit a pin!

FOOD TIMEEE

中華街！

So, we all got very hungry using all our bowling energy so decided to go to the mildly famous Yokohama china town for dinner. It was a really cool place with loads of little shops selling trinkets and I had to try very hard as to not buy 10 tons of crap I don't need in the first week of being here. (that comes later). The place we went to eat was definitely not used to numbers our size and had to push 4 tables together just so we could sit down. Before we ordered our meal they brought us this place of what i'm going to name "squish-crunch". I still have no idea what it was but it looked like cabbage, tasted of mushroom but was like chewing a plastic straw with cardboard in. I have remembered it's appearance and will be avoiding it for the next eternity. 

Me and my angel grains.

What I did order wasn't in my opinion very Chinese either though, it was just like Japanese food that somebody had dropped an entire ginger root in. Now I don't like ginger, so the soup especially wasn't delightful to my highly refined anti-ginger taste buds. However the rice was a squishy pile of angel grains. yum yum.

The journey home after this was what I think a train users hell would be like. You don't commute efficiently enough in this life. You commute FOR ETERNITY. I was so tired it seemed the journey would never end and when I got home it started raining on my poor aching bones. 


However! It was a great day!!! I had missed our retarded uni times and making fun of whatever Matt does. Thanks guys :)

We so cute.

Missed you guys ^_^ 

TILL NEXT TIME!!!!

子宮に入りましょう！

Late night, good times

It was time. Time for the dreaded ice-breaker. Along with other jargon such as 'back burner' and 'think outside the box', ice-breaker is a term that were it indeed made of ice, I would have no problem breaking it into a million pieces and watching it melt.

ice breaking....

So... I put my study on the back burner and outside the box I found a plan that was so cutting edge it would require reach out for maximum impact but were all the cogs to work together it would take it to the next level and we wouldn't just be boiling the ocean. 

How I perceived 

It didn't start out so well.... mostly because I fell asleep and as such rolled up to the pre-drinks over an hour late having rushed there after taking a mere 30 seconds to get ready.. As such looked a bit like a zombie somebody stuffed into skinny jeans.... Luckily I wasn't actually the last to arrive but unluckily this made my haste unnecessary (- ___ -). But pre drinks were really fun and I learnt to play beer pong!! (I had been worried about this 'beer pong' malarky all day due to not knowing to play and had even gone so far as to google the rules as to look less like the chess nerd at the frat party.)

Out time!

In da club.

I'm freeee

After pre-drinks we caught a train direct to Shinkjuku :O at this point I was trying to hurry in order to meet Ruadhan at the station but everybody else was already quite drunk and so kept stopping to look at things and generally mill about like sheep finding an especially tasty grass patch. However, after about 30 minutes longer than it should have taken I finally got to Shinjuku and met up with Manchester friend.

So everything was ok up to Shinjuku but then my new friend here told us he had forgotten where the club was, and we needed to be there for midnight... This meant we wandered down the street trying to ask people who looked like they would know where a club was for directions. We must have asked about 8 different people (including a weirdo with a beardo who was selling beads on the side of the street) and wandered up and down the roads with every movement taking us closer to midnight. The reason we were so desperate to arrive before midnight is that on my internet surfing travels I had located a free entry for students voucher which only worked before 12 with the cost rocketing infinitely ¥3500 just after! Luckily we made it with 2 minutes to spare and crammed into the entrance way just before the shut the door! WOO!

Sammy B iz in da club!

There's a few differences between japanese clubs and english clubs.

These signs are all around

1. Dancing is illegal!!!

2. Water is not free

3. They open all night right up until the sun rises

4. You can smoke

5. People are somewhat more friendly but sometimes completely insane

So let me clarify a little: The club was called Womb and it was amazing, so many people, crazy lasers and lights and also famous and popular DJs from around the world do sets there frequently! Dancing is actually banned for real but as the night progresses this goes very quickly out the window and the "dancing" becomes crazy with some people swinging about like an electrocuted chimp. People also have no regard for personal space, this means I elbowed about 3 guys in the face and head-butted a sweet looking girl... 



The smoking and the pricey water does not however make a happy Sam. It's still weird for me to be inside and have somebody just start puffing away in my face! The smokey air means I also want the pricey water more but I refused to pay the £5 equivalent they were charging so just spent the night shrivelling into a smoked human prune.

ZAP ZAP

Smokey!

I met and talked to so many people in that club. Just japanese people being really enthusiastic about a white person being in the club and speaking Japanese. Always the same questions "Where are you from?" "What are you doing here?" "How old are you?" constantly all night. Then they would hang around and dance with us for about half an hour. 1 middle aged man pinched my bum though -___-

2 of the many many Japanese people who talked to us!

By far the most insane many I saw that night was a guy rolling on the floor waving his head about. Sadly of course he then wanted to speak to us and continued being a complete nutcase for the rest of the night. 

I also found this guy sleeping in his work clothes in the a million decibels bar!

Lol!

 So by the time I got home it was the 7am in the morning again and I had to go out to Yokohama. TIME FOR ROUND 2!

Tokyo never sleeps so nor will I..... 



I'm so tired.... 

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しゃしゃころり

Registration and the creamy croquette ;)

The title of this post sounds like some sort of secretary related sexy film, but rest assured it is not. 

Registration and the Creamy Croquette Vol. 1 feat Leggy Mc' Spud [sneak peak]

But on a serious note, yey i'm registered. The sort of registration I mean is to do with my visa in Japan and also national health insurance. It is required that students studying from abroad in Japan have to go to the local ward offices and make sure that our 'foreigner card' has an address on the back. I guess they do that so we cant all escape or run free in the mountain ranges after our visa runs out.  All in all however it wasn't difficult to get this done, all I had to do was look confused while somebody pointed out the finer details of about a million check boxes, sit in a room for what seemed like an eternity, pay 300 yen and boom, done! 

My address all nicely on my card :)

In addition to this I also went with some people to get a stamp for opening a bank account. The stamp is custom made with my name on and works the same sort of way a wax seal press did in the medieval times. It seems Japan is refusing to move forward in the banking sector, sometimes I wonder if they still send carrier pigeons between branches.

The last thing on my mission to do important things was my phone. After much help from more fluent people and umm-ing and aah-ing I finally decided on a phone plan. The one I have is quite cheap and gives me data only (1GB a month from a company called B-moblie). The part i'm really proud of though is being able to set it up entirely in Japanese! granted it took me a good few hours to translate and sift through the online set-up. BUT its working!!! (and i'm chuffed I didn't balls it up somewhere in the 9 pages of sign up)

What you've been waiting for....

A "creamy croquette", yes that is indeed its official name in Japanese.  I decided to get one for my breakfast purely because of the name but yet again I don't know quite what it is made of... all I can say is it was a bit like prawn and cheese... but creamy!  (no picture... I ate it... sorry)

Tv and learning

The Radio-parasol Michelin man likes to sing

Due to being up in a morning, recently I have been watching Japanese kids TV. It actually really helps when the odd-faced presented says like 'それはキュウリです!' (This is a cucumber) or they sing a song about musical instruments and the nosies they make. 太鼓はどんどん！竪琴しゃしゃころり！(the drums go bang bang, the harp goes plinky pling). I was goign to write about how odd the TV shows are, but then I remembered we in Britain have the terrifying 'in the night garden'

Also, its not just me, or just the English... Even shops get languages wrong sometimes. 

A nice new head for my bloom

Shower news: 

1. GOOD! I have deciphered what the wall heater is saying (maybe)

2. BAD! It says I need to open a water tank but I cant find one.

3. BAD! The shower head fell from its hook and drenched my new and only towel.

Overall.... things can only get better right!

紅茶を飲まなきゃ

Edibles and Explore

Noms.

So I thought I'd tell you guys a bit about what I'm eating while I'm here. This is mostly for you guys who think (like my mum) that everybody in Japan plucks fish from the sea then consumes it directly. Well contrary to expectation I've only eaten one bit of raw fish so far, but I did come across some 明太子 which looks like it means "brightly fat child" but in fact means fermented pollock roe. O_o

Squiddy noodles

Yellow Kiwi?

Beany squish rounds

So let me explain a little bout what each of these is: The first is a nifty sort of noodle pot where you add the water and squiddy cabbages first then close the lid and let it cook, after which you put in the sauce and TADA noodles :). (the drink behind is 'aquarius', a sort of isotonic water good for us pasty foreigners that get all our ions sapped by the zapping of the sun.

Right, the second I don't even know what they are. However they did come A la melted plastic... as apparently our microwave is like a nuclear reactor and anything you put in becomes instantly like the surface of Betelgeuse within 10 seconds. This includes plastic cases. The round things themselves appeared to be like a veggy dumpling with beans in, yummy yummy.

The latter is self explanatory but also COOL. look at it, thats a kiwi but YELLOW. sadly they aren't particularly tasty as they taste of a normal kiwi that had around 4 tablespoons of sugar tipped on it. I also have about 5 left (cry)

 Wanderings

I'm not going to hide it, the main reason I left my room in the 30 odd degrees heat was because I had no sugar for my tea. I was perfectly happy to sit here with my air-con on and not go out but the tea-need struck so off I went. Heres a few pictures of just outside where I live on the way to the shop.

Bigger road with cables

Windy road

So no it's not hugely spectacular but that isn't the nice bit. ;) Well I have to have something to write for the future, cant have you guys losing interest. I live around 3 stops from Shinjuku <-- thats the place that when you think 'Tokyo' its appearance is what you imagine. SO thats to come.

Anyway, I did find sugar and milk (though all of it is UHT here as Japan has no cow space)

Shower fails.

There's been around 3 shower fails so far. 

1. On my way around I did not however find any shower gel so I will have to go on another venture soon or when my travel soap runs out I will smell and nobody will talk to me.

2. The water heater is entirely in Japanese as you would expect, but after 10 minutes my water was till chilling to the touch and due to being impatient I went and asked how to work it (just incase I had read it wrong). So the nice Japanese guy came to help and merely explained I had to wait for it, and obviously the instant he turned it on instead of the arctic shards of a moment before the water was a lovely warm temperature, akin to being embraced by a thousand swan necks, making me look like a royal plonker.

3. I pressed the wrong button and now the wall unit for the heater keeps talking to me. 

The culprit. 

I'm going to go try and get it to shut up again now, so stay tuned for showerly updates! byeee.

地震や竜巻

England is so mild.

So last blog-time I was in a box.... The box was good but I didn't do so much. Jet-lag sprang up and I just slept like a cave hermit for about 16 hours. I miss the box.

And now it's back to Sam in the studio with the weather!

When in England, the weather milds along mildly. Temperately tepid and boringly bland. But HERE, noooooooo. Danger and disasters left right and centre. 

oooo shakey

The main point I wish to make here is that there was an earthquake :O Not so shocking as I am in Japan, which is known to lay on a fault line BUT i've never been in an earthquake before and it was 6.9 on the Richter scale. All i have to report is it was very wobbley and loud and I can honestly say I didn't run for cover under the nearest table or whip out a hard hat like our health and safety manual advises. I just got jiggled around while watching the morning Kawaii update on NHK. In other weather news theres tornados to the north and typhoons to the west, radiation to the east and volcanos everywhere. Maybe I should buy a hard hat or goggles or something?

Moving in!

yes, "nothing up" good sir "nothing up" indeed.

So in the morning I prised myself from my capsule at the ungodly hour of 6am only to be faced with the prospect of taxi ride number two. I was confident as the last taxi ride was relatively cheap and the driver was a cheery old guy. However this new taxi man was cheery but also tried to speak english. This is where the awkwardness started. For approximately half the journey he just repeated the phrase "up!! up!! nothing!! up!!" with a crossed arm gesture, and it cost me the best part of £40 -____-.

So I'm all settled in my nice room now. I shall post some photos :)

Jaunty angle!

From the door angle

My desk :)

Thats my room! I put up all my photos and all my trinkets and stuff, it's a nice place now :) The only problem is its very humid and my books are all now very wavy and flexible despite only being on the shelf the best part of one day... Also the cicadas sound like dial up connection crossed with a buzz saw. I will post a video I took of the particularly annoying culprit which i went out of my way to find, glare and tut at (hopefully just how annoying the noise is was captured well by my iPhone)

So that's all from me today. Enjoy the cicadas (make sure you play it around 100 times for full extent of the reality)

飛行機友

Leaving and arriving

Much time has passed since I first learned that Tokyo existed and on the day of Sunday the 1st September I left my house for the last time for a long time.

Bye Bye house

I had all my stuff packed and ready to go for my practice year abroad (the premier inn next to Heathrow) The night there was OK even if the staff were obviously all grinning robots whos' enthusiasm dial had not been limited and apparently the best time paint all the main corridor walls is just as I and many others were checking in.






So it was onwards and upwards (literally). At around lunchtime I got to the airport and got charged £40 for having heavy luggage. I then got randomly selected for both frisking and shoe x-ray, which was massively inconvenient due to wearing converse. So after much hopping and shoe wrestling the security woman asked me "do you have anything sharp on you?" and I watched the sad deepening of her eyes, the eyes of a woman who has heard something so many times as I replied "only my wit" (and chuckled to myself).



After this there was no delays and I got a BIG-TEA and amused myself for 20 minutes by watching people run for the connecting shuttle that arrives every 2 minutes like it was the last train in existence. I then chucked myself onto a plane and took off without delay.

Journey time

Although many of you know I don't like flying, the plane ride actually ok :) The person who was lucky enough to be meant to be sitting next to me missed their chance for awesome conversation by not boarding the plane. The upside of this was that I could splay out over two seats while watching a variety of space and ocean related movies and documentaries. WOO sharks and planets. The spare seat also had another benefit, it meant that Pamilo could really relax and enjoy the flight too!

Pamilo and his new buddy

You can see there my flight friend with whom I had my first Japanese conversation about world war 2 bombers and David Beckham. Needless to say I did not have the vocabulary for that but it did mean i got to use the word 空爆 (air strike) multiple times, who knew that would be useful!

Arriving

外人card and train ticket

Ok, I was dead. In fact i'm still dead. I didn't manage to sleep on the plane so when I got off, it was like continuing the same very long day. The immigration staff didn't help move my day along either, they instead passed me along desk to desk with each new officer saying "study!?!?!" in a confused and somewhat horrified voice before sending me to the next guy along. After finally being cleared immigration by the oldest man I have ever seen I did get some karma rebound as my bags both instantly appeared together on the luggage belt and I gladly pranced through the irritable crowd of people waiting for bags and got my bags and left.

So as you can see on the picture, I took the Narita express to Shinjuku an this is where the annoyance began. Maybe I should not have pranced so gleefully at the baggage carousel.... I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The need of a wee was calling but I was also extremely thirsty. I manage to solve thing but because I had clicked the "any seat is ok" button when buying my train ticket I was in the very last carriage of the train and this meant the bathroom swayed almost sinking titanic flinging all my spare change English and japanese all over the floor.

To make matters worse, upon arriving at Shinjuku station I was faced with this:

NOOOOOOO

The construction around the station meant there was 3 down escalators but no up.... so I started going up the stairs very slowly when was ok as a dude coming down to the station helped me carry my bag :) However this set lack of convenience the style for the rest of the stations. So after getting to ground level I wandered around for over 20 minutes trying to locate my connecting station and when I finally located it there was no lift and around 5 stories of stairs. So I gave up and got a taxi.

box!

<------ Now i'm in a box.