On Wednesday we had our first long day at the campus. First part of the day was mostly spent on a ceremony for the new students and the graduate students (I noticed some cute girls wearing pretty kimono!). It was a pretty boring ceremony, even worse was the fact that we hardly knew anything of what was said during the entire thingl. The rest on the day was orientation stuffs, what we are going to do the rest of the week and semester. All of the international exchange students also had to take a Placement Examination, just to give the teachers an idea regarding our Japanese skills.
We were notified regarding the rest a week before the semester start, so I thought reading from Genki I & II would've helped a little bit. How wrong I was! So much stuffs we didn't know about during that test. Good thing the test itself wasn't important at all, even though we all had to take it. Filling out the test was easy enough, since you are supposed to fill in either "A, B, C or D" as the right answer. We were told to leave fields blank if we didn't know the right answers, but during test I completely forgot about that. So I was randomly guessing and filled out ALL the fields. Well, the test wasn't of any importance, right?!
Either way, we had even more orientation after the test, so in the end we spent our time at the campus from 9:30 am till about 5:00 pm. Phew, so tired from wearing the stupid dress too! After that, I didn't really do much. So I was just chilling outside with other classmates. Went to bed pretty early (12 am!) since a university bus would give us a ride to the uni at 9:15 am the next morning. Well, we had even more orientation yesterday. Presentation of the teachers that are going to teach us even more Japanese and so on, and again...we hardly understood much of what they said. And wow, some of these Japanese teachers are really energetic. And some of them talk like a fast flowing river!
During the time at the campus, we also had lunch for about an hour and thirty minutes. Curry rice and a Coke only costed 20 NOK, which I think is pretty cheap. Good to know that the canteen got plenty of cheap and good stuffs to eat! For the last hour we (students from UiO) had some final orientations together with students from the Philippines. Oh yeah, I mentioned about the placement test which was insignificant, right? Guess what! The teacher who was giving us informations during the last hour, came over to my place and told me that I did it "Really good!" on the test. He was also wondering whether I wanted to take a class with more advanced Japanese or not. Geez, that was quite a shocker...seeing how 95% of my answers were pure guessing. What's the chance of such things to happen? Pigs flying and the sky raining fishes is even more likely. Why didn't I play lotto that day? Hell, I might've been a Japanese trillionaire by now!
At least what the offer he asked was optional, and he told me I could await with replying till today. Of course the initial reaction among the fellow classmates sitting close to me was "Wtf?" and alot of laughing. While the inner me was trying to get myself up from the bottomless pit...or like a salmon trying swim against the river. Yeah, it was that shocking for me! Hell, if we get a similar test for another time, I'll make sure to leave BLANK fields.
So anywayyyyy, after all the orientation and paperwork stuffs were done and explained. We went to get our rental bikes. Having a bike is a necessity (at least for us), since walking to school would take about 40 minutes, while riding a bike will take 10-15 minutes. I'll take a picture of it later picture of it later, since I forgot. The only bad thing with the bike is the lack of adjustable gears, so it's constanly set on the third gear. Luckily the road to campus is mostly flat, except for the bridge. So the riding isn't that bad at all.
We left campus at around 5:30 PM, I went to WonderGoo to get myself a used Wii, three used games, one Classic Controller and Gamecube Controller, everything for less then 40000 yen. That's less then 2100 NOK, which is really good. Since in Norway, a brand new Wii w/ Wii Sports still costs around 2500 NOK. Now I need to figure out how the hell to get it back to Norway... And I am pretty much done with buying games till December (at least I hope so). Since I got the apartment rent, internet/cell phone subscription, and food to pay for the next three months.
Later the same evening; me, Tor Erling and Øistein went to the same okonomiyaki restaurant for dinner. This time we knew what the hell we were supposed to do, so we didn't "screw up" like last time. And as usual, good food and pretty stuffed!
First class was today, introductions with the three teachers we are going to have. They are named Watanabe, Omoto and Fujishiro. Each class lasts one hour and thirty minutes. Went through some basic Japanese from Genki 1 & 2. And learned a some basic things regarding classes. Lack of attendance would affect our grades. No drinking, chewing gum etc etc blabla so much to list. Discipline is important! Omoto-sensei, by the way, is a really really interesting and funny teacher. He described himself as an otaku that likes old and boring music/videos. Now that sounds really weird, right?!
Also, apparently there's a tyfon coming to Japan on Saturday (which is right now). We were told by our teachers to stay in our apartments during this time, and make sure to buy some food just in case. Not quite sure what I'll be doing for tomorrow...probably just play more on my new used Wii and read some Japanese.
Here's some pictures from before and during the ceremony. Click on them, remember!
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