So I’ve had my first week of university – and it’s good to be back.

First thing i’d like to mention is my Japanese classes.  I was awesome enough to miss my first class on Monday – i got my times mized up… *facepalm* However, I managed to turn up for the second class.  It was scheduled to be a 2 hour class, but when I turned up the teacher (who didn’t actually tell us her name) handed out a test and told us to complete the test, then have a 1-on-1 consult with her, where she would mark our tests and give comments, then we could leave.  I had no idea we had a test! ARGH! However, i’m sure its safe to assume that I would have known had I turned up to class on Monday…

Anyway, I looked at the test.  First page: Translations.  I looked at the 5 phrases I needed to translate and immediately felt like an idiot.  I translated a grand total of 1 out of 5 phrases.  Not at all off to a good start. It was quite simply due to the fact that there were kanji in these sentences that i’d never even seen before – Ever.

Second page was grammar. No problems with that.

Also on second page, a thank you letter to a friend in Japan who sent me a Christmas present. No problems again (apart from an embarassing katakana error… guh… so out of practice).

In my last post i mentioned that I was going for my “Japanese Placement Interview”.  The word “Interview” was the word used by Dr. Nagata and so i prepared myself for an interview.  I went through some listening excercises, went over some grammar and vocab…. I didn’t bother with too much kanji practice as I figured speaking would be the primary focus in this interview. I’m already pretty confident with my pronunciation.  And generally, with vocab and grammar fresh in my mind i’m generally pretty ok at speaking, i mean, i’m sure to the Japanese I probably speak like a 5 year old child – a 5 year old JAPANESE child! And so i’m happy enough with that for the time being.

I was set, I was pumped, I was only a wee bit nervous, and really, most importantly, I was open to whatever result I would receive.  So I turned up, there were a few people in the room and so I immediately thought that this must be like a group interview thing.  I didn’t know if I should wait before going in or what, and there were some people sitting down outside so I took a seat and waited for a bit.  I also had a bit of a chat with the people outside, they were also there for either the interview or just to gather some information.  One girl had already lived in Japan for a year, and one of the guys was fresh out of highschool and had never studied Japanese before.

I walked in and told one of the Japanese professors that I was there for the interview to which she replied (in her Obaachan-like Japanese accent): “Oh, you’re here for the test!” then she hands me 2 bits of paper and tells me to sit down and get started (politely of course).

First of all i’d like to apologise for the lack of posting this week.  Spent this entire week getting on my feet and used to wtf is going on around me.  But all is well, i nearly have my laptop up and running (Borrowing my mates adapter) and things, as far as this blog goes, should be back to normal.

Found this whilst scavenging – ¥500

Ok so the first thing that all the new students had a hard-ish time coming to terms with was food.  why? because we couldnt cook! As in literally was not allowed to cook.  This was because we hadn’t technically “checked in” or something in the first week, plus there were temporary room mates (homestay students) and apparently that complicated things – UGH i dunno.  so we had to SCAVENGE!!! … ok not quite, but we started checkin out the local restaurants etc. to find some good eats.  It was kinda hard at first, i found myself going to sleep hungry because the shops were closed or one thing or another.  But now i’m starting to get the hang of trading hours, whats good, whats not, and things are coming a long smoothly atm.  In fact, i have a couple croissants out in the common area calling my name… i can hear them.. they need to be eaten.  Will do that soon.