First two weeks of school

Dear readers, 

So, Sept. 1-3 was placement testing, which was super tiring. It was really hard and I got really depressed that I didn't understand a large portion of it haha... Surprisingly, though, I did really well on the reading part, and on the first part of the reading part I got 100%! How?!

Thursday was a day off, so I went to see the movie "Lupin III" with my new friends from the my program, Jake and Atsuo! The movie had one of my favorite actors, Oguri Shun, and he did a really good job at his role, so I enjoyed the movie a lot! It was also fun that I had friends to go with :)

Monday Sept 8 was the first day of classes and the program is really tough. There's a lot of work in class and a lot of homework. We have to write an essay and practice for an oral everyday! Plus, I have to do work for the independent study courses that I'm taking for Madison, so...it's a lot of work. 

After morning class, though, we have a lunch break and there's a rock garden veranda where I like to eat lunch. It has a beautiful view of Yokohama's ferris wheel and bay:

  

Speaking of the ferris wheel, the other day, my friend Jake was like, "Do you wanna ride the ferris wheel?" and I was like YEAH SURE! It's a huge ferris wheel and the view is really beautiful. It feels kind of fancy to be able to ride a ferris wheel out of the blue after class.

This is me and Atsuo in the ferris wheel: 

Last weekend, I was mostly studying, but on Sunday I was able to participate in a special free cooking class done by a famous cooking school called ABC cooking studio. The teacher was also really sweet and the same age as me, actually. Sometimes I felt she was only being so nice because she was trying to get me to sign up for classes, but it was still a lot of fun. I actually tried to sign up for classes, but I don't have a cell phone yet, so I couldn't do it in the end, which is probably for the best because the classes were pretty expensive. I do want to find a cooking class that I can join maybe as a nice relaxing afterschool activity. Maybe my roommate and I will try to find one. Anyways, I made a cheese fondue bread! It was the first time making bread and it was really fun:

There are also several free cultural activities that you can sign up for through my program, which is really cool. This was the first one I went to, an ikebana (flower arrangement) exhibit. It was very pretty:

So, school is a lot of work, but cultural activities are really fun and I've already found some really great friends: Of course, my roommate, Erika, but also my neighbors Nathan and Steven, all of who I walk to school with everyday, which is nice company. My friend Jake is really nice and reminds me a lot of Tamaki. My friend Atsuo is someone who has worked at Mori no Ike before and I met 2 years ago and is friends with Inga and Tamaki so it was kind of a crazy that we met again here! I think because I've grown a bit, it's been a lot easier to find friends this time and I feel a little less alone. I'm also looking forward to all the lovely people that are coming to visit me in the next few months. 

I have full weekend planned so hopefully I can blog about that soon, but in the meantime, I will continue to work hard on both classwork and having fun! The program doesn't give out grades, so all the work I do is for myself. I will work hard because I want to learn a lot and expand my linguistic and cultural knowledge a whole bunch this year!

Visiting nostalgic places

Dear readers,

Sorry that I haven't been able to post in a while. It's been really busy with school and the like. I probably won't be able to update as much as I like, but this weekend is a three day weekend, so I have a little more time. 

I'm probably going to divide the past couple weeks into different entries.

First, before school started, I decided to revisit the little town I used to live in, Hiyoshi. It was kind of relieving that not much had changed! I did notice that some of the stores changed, though. For example, the place where I bought my PSP, the used video game store and the bookstore I used to go to aren't there anymore, which is a bit sad. 

So, I walked all the way to my dorm, Shimoda: 

 

 

This is the entrance to Keio University, Hiyoshi campus. I remember walking this way to go to the Sukima Switch concert and to go to Manga club on Wednesday evenings:

This is the famous meeting place in Hiyoshi station, "gintama" or silver ball:

Yup, so Hiyoshi was fun! Hopefully, it will be an even more fun experience revisiting the places we used to go when Inga and Tamaki get here!

I also thought that I might as well visit Shibuya while I was on the train, so I went to Shibuya afterwards. The train station has changed a lot and gotten more confusing, but I was able to make my way out and into the crowded streets. It was a weekend, so of course it was full of people as always. Shibuya has always been confusing to get around for me, but I was really proud that I was able to find every place that I wanted to find.

Of course, the first place I stopped by was the Disney store. I remember going there all the time when I was feeling down and it would help make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I passed by the Loft and Tokyo Hands department stores and stopped in to look around the tiny manga/anime Mandarake store that I found by chance 3 years ago.

I also found the larger manga/anime Animate store for the first time. I had only been to the Animate in Akihabara, but I had heard there was in Shibuya, so it was cool to find it. There, I bought a voice actor DVD for fun that came with a ticket that may let me go to a voice actor event. Hopefully, I can get it♡ haha...

By the end, I was super tired out and it was super hot, so it was nice to return home that afternoon. Overall, it was a nice day of nostalgia. It was kind of lonely to do it all on my own, especially in Shibuya, where there are more people so when you're alone you feel even more alone than usual. It's really a strange feeling. But, in the end I'm glad that I did it!