Transitional periods are a double edged sword

So Temple University is the first and only american school allowed to give out full time student visas.  This being said, every year there is an increase of about 20 percent in new student registration.  Now, this makes me happy.  I want this school to be the first of many american universities to come to japan.  The problem is that this school is starting to be stressed by the amount of students its getting.  I had to spend a few hours registering for classes because all of the ones i wanted were filled.  The problem is that there really isn’t that many classes to choose from.  This makes things tough to find classes outside your major that you dont want to kill yourself while taking.  I was forced to take some class about islam society or something.  I really don’t care about this topic but it was the only one I could find outside of taking math and english.  What makes it even worse is that the class only meets once a week and is 3 hours long.  WEAK!

TEST SUCCESS!!!!

Yea I tested out of all my bs english and math tests. I rule? I have to send out a thanks to Jon for helping me with the pretest. I actually did not do so hot on the math test, but I did good enough to get out of the class. I got fully exempt from the english class. This surprised me because I thought I was a total English artard. I actually scored higher than a decent amount of people. I guess I rule? I signed up for most of my classes today. I need to take one more class but I have no idea what I am going to take because most of my classes are already filled. It kind of blows. I am done with all my core classes so the only classes I need are major classses. I will probably just pick some class at random to fill my schedule.

I got my alien residence card today. Rather, I filled out the sheet required to get my alien residence card. It was kind of a hassle because the people I was with did not know how to get to the office. You need to go to the head office of your ward, which is like a suburb I guess? I do not know how to explain it because even I am not sure what a ward constitutes. Anywho, I filled out all the papers for that card. You need an alien registration card to do anything in Japan. If you want a cell phone or a bike or anything of that nature, you need an alien registration card. After we applied for the card we looked at cell phones and random crap for a long time. Honestly, doing ANYTHING in Japan rules. It can be the most basic of things like looking at cell phones, and I can be totally entertained. Today was just like that. We looked at cell phones for at least 20 minutes and I was totally happy. I had to force myself away. Afterwards we went to this musical instrument shop and I hit on some chugakusei (middle schoolers SO?!). I actually did it more to see them giggle and laugh at them I guess it wasn’t 100 percent hitting on them They were totally staring at us/me when we walked into the store so I shot them the guns with my hand and made a stupid ass face. They did their typical Japanese giggle with their whispering to eachother then shot me the same hand motion. It was awesome. I bet they were just making fun of me but it entertained me greatly. I live for that crap. I love seeing such stereotypical stuff. It makes me very happy. I think that any of you guys pictureing the situation, would have it exaclty right. Thats how perfect it was. They were wearing school uniforms and everything.

After that borderline pedophilia, I went back to the dorm, only to return to the same city to drink with a different group of people. I wouldn’t call them friends just yet but they are definitely interesting people. We went to this german bar which was great. The drinks were disgustingly priced though. Pitchers were 27 dollars. No lie. I spent at least 20 some dollars there on a minimal amount of drinks. 2 guys and myself bought a 6 pack before we wen there. They let me drink 3 of the 6 beers because they were being lame or something so I got pretty buzzed tonight. All and all, a good experience. This is only the beginning of many good things to come.

Orientation from HELL

Well, in regular Japanese fashion.  When you arrive to a new place, you have to be berated with introductory garbage.  On tuesday we had to sit through like 6 hours of orientation.  Most of which was entirely worthless.  It was painful.  Also they didn’t turn the a/c up very high so we were all sweaty, making it that much more unbearable.  We watched this video on the bad earthquake in 1995.  Then were told, well there is a 70 year cycle for this area and the last bad earthquake we had was in 1924 soooo DO THE MATH!  Yea so by the end of that we are all shitting ourselves.  This is at the very end of all the orientation mind you so we were in a particularly bad mood.  After that though I got one of the best talks I have ever had in an orientation.  The guy pretty much told us that anything we would ever want to do involving japanese culture is at your finger tips for a low cost.  They have a group of people that will research it for you and everything.  If I wanted to, I could wake up tomorrow and go train in the dojo where aikido was started.  Just get up and do it like it was nothing.  The guy was like , “One time I had a group of guys come ot me and say they wanted to go deep sea fishing.  3 days later they were out on a boat deep sea fishing”.  He pretty much told us how the Japanese love to accommodated us and we can do pretty much anything we want.

Its funny I should say that because I forgot to talk about how we were told to be ready to be harrassed by police in certain areas.  In america, social profiling gets people in an uproar.  In japan, no one will come to your aid.  Its prominent here.  The guy said especially when you own a bike.  In Japan, there are abandoned bikes everywhere.  People just attach them to a post or just leave them against a post and never pick them up.  So some days you might feel inclined to borrow one.  This is a terrible idea.  In Japan, you must register your bike.  If you don’t have proof of registration, you have just stolen that bike.  Even if it was abandonded.  The kicker is that stealing a bike is the same as stealing a car in Japan.  You can go to jail if you steal a bike.  So yea, you must have a registered bike.  Also this doesn’t affect me but weed is taken much more seriously here.  You are so screwed if you get caught with weed, and with social profiling in some areas like roppungi (super gaijin district with clubs and sluts), you can easily be checked.  He told us a story about this moron who SHIPPED WEED to himself through fedex.  What kind of moron does that?   Anyways he was called to fedex to pick up his package and he foolishly went there.  The police were there and took him away.  He then had to wait 10 months just for a trial.  Thats how slow the system is here.   So that guy was in jail for nearly a year without even being found guilty yet.  Japan has a 99.5% conviction rate by the way so you are pretty much guranteed to be owned.  The jails here are much worse than american ones.  The guy was like “I have never seen a floor sparkle as much as the prison floors here in Japan”.  These people are treated like dogs.  They need to start doing that in america.  Apparently butt rape and shankings arent as scary as cleaning floors because Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

So yea they pretty much scare you to death for most of the orientation while mixing in some useless facts about the email system and other lame things.  Im fairly sure that the whole orientation could have been condensed to 2 to 3 hours at the most.

Today we had to take placement tests.  Some of the reading comprehension and other English crap tests made me question if I am literate or not.  Also I am pretty sure I got owned by the math test.  The practice test was much easier.  That always happens.  The practice tests are so manageable but the real thing is always a different story.  I hate that so much.  Tomorrow I have to register for classes.  I hope they let me register because I havent gotten my loans through yet apparently and couldnt get this sticker for my id card today.   The money is supposed to be coming tomorrow but who knows.  They had better not screw me.  I think the fact that they want so much money all at once is sort of lame but what do I know?

Soop tired Soop excited

Arrival was at about 250 pm japan time.  Thats when I finally got off the plane and entered the place that I have been waiting to go to for a year now.  Yes, I write from Japan.  The plane didn’t crash thankfully.  Yesterday I woke up at 8 oclock because of 1.  My dad woke me up and 2.  I was sweating my ass off.  I honestly got like 4 hours of sleep and it really sucked.  Not only that but i got a horrid cold.  It figures the one time I really really need to be with it, I get a bad cold.  I nearly puked from exhaustion but I managed to make it on the plane without getting terribly choked up.  I knew that if my grandma started crying that I was gonna lose it but she held it back pretty well so I made it out ok.  The plane ride sucked.  I had to sit next to two people and the movies sucked.  I had this movie by nicholas cage called Next where he can see 2 minutes into the future.  It was awful.  I also watched spiderman 3, shrek 3, some ninja warrior and this japanese movie.  None of which were terribly entertaining.  I managed to sleep for a few hours so that I didn’t die but it still was painful.  When I got to Japan I had to wait in line at customs for like 90 minutes.  It was hot as dick in there too.  They barely had the a/c on.  I remember the last time I went to japan there was almost no line for customs.  Not so much this time.  I did my currancy exchange and got on the bus to the hotel with no troubles.  There I met some of the newcomers….  Yea not impressed.  There was actually one pretty hot asian chick but she looked like a handful and doesn’t seem to be living in the dorms with us.  Yea she was the only one that packed more than me…  I felt like such a homo.  I totally held up everyone because it was such a hassle to get my stuff into a taxi.  That chick packed a lot more than me though but shes a girl and can get away with it.  I thought for sure other people would have had comparable amounts of luggage but i was very wrong.  I rode in the taxi with this guy named tom.  He seems nice enough.  Im pretty sure I paid more for the taxi than him but im too tired to care.  I found out that unfortunately, it seems that most of the people at this dorm know eachother somehow so I had to infultrate their giant group.  I introduced myself and acted like a big ass and made everyone laugh (in a good way I think).  There wasn’t really any girls there that I particularly found that appealing.  I ended up going to a convenience store with this one guy and tom.  The guy’s name is mike and he seems alright.  As it stands right now, I have yet to meet someone that I would want to spend time with on a regular basis.  Today was barely a meeting day though.  I think tomorrow I will actually get to meet people for realz.  I was impressed with my headway that I made with the people that I talked to tonight though.  I usually freeze up in large groups of new people, and I did at the hotel, but all of a sudden I got this power to overlook the awkwardness and it worked out well.  I at least think the ladies genuinely laughed at my assholish ways.  Thats really all I care about anyways owned.  Yea I already did the air grab to some guy a few times.  I don’t know if he noticed it or not.  They were small air grabs so its ok.  Oh, the outlets here dont have three prongs on them so I had to get this adaptor that also doesn’t have 3 prongs but i can have the third prong sticking out.  Its making me nervous.  I dont want to somehow fry my laptop X(.  Yea sorry if this post is all over the place.  I be super tired and I sorta just want to sleep now.  I think I will do that actually.  I’ll post more tomorrow with pictures.