ハロー☆
First of all, I realised my comments setting was on that you had to had some kind of account in order to comment, I've now changed that so anyone can comment on posts regardless of if you have an account or not (I believe you just write your name?) So yeah, talk to me! (really, it's lonely)
Okay so as of today I have been at school for a week! It was a boring first week of classes. Mainly because the entire first week was all orientation. And because I'm taking 13 different courses (each one only worth 1 credit, only once a week) I had to sit through 13 orientations describing the syllabus. Fun.
Good things happened though! I've actually made friends! One of my biggest worries coming here was that this would be a repeat of my first year of university: meet nobody, have no friends, stay in room 100% of the time, etc. So it's reassuring that after only a week of school I already have friends (bless your souls new friends, if you happen to be reading this). What's really cool about meeting people here is (I think I mentioned this in a previous post) the diversity. I'm making friends with people from all over the world, so not only am I getting educated on Japanese culture, I'm learning about a whole bunch of different ones.
But back to my classes, basically I'm taking a whole bunch of different Japanese courses. Waseda's Japanese program has classes split into a whole bunch of different categories and levels (levels 0-8, 0 being you know literally no Japanese whatsoever, and 8 being you're pretty much fluent). The categories are like, speaking, listening, writing, reading, culture, grammar, pronunciation, kanji, "politeness strategy" (i.e. honorifics, keigo), etc etc etc.
So some of the courses I'm taking are like, "learning Japanese through food", "reading at your own pace and style", "enjoying cultural events", and "talking about your favourite things".
The great part is that majority of the classes I'm taking have no textbook, and no exams (mostly just small tests/quizzes here and there), most of the marks all come from showing up to class and projects/assignments.
Today was my first real day of school (no orientations), I was supposed to have 2 classes but I kind of ended up skipping one of them because I was in the middle of making a bank account (don't worry I won't be as bad as I am at UBC where I skip all the time - I'm sorry but when every single lecture is just the prof regurgitating theories and proofs out of the textbook there is really no point).
Which brings me to another thing, I made a Japanese bank account!
I tried to make one earlier this week with my host mother but was told I wasn't able to because I hadn't been living in Japan for 6 months yet (even though Waseda told me to get an account at this bank?)
So I went to the exchange centre at Waseda today and asked about bank accounts again and they again told me to try for this same bank (Yuucho Ginko), so I went yet again to the bank, this time the Waseda branch, and hooray, I was able to make one. So now I have somewhere to get my JASSO scholarship, which I also took care of today. I still have no idea why I have received this scholarship as my marks from last year at UBC were kind of awful, but oh well, not complaining, I desperately need the money (obviously).
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| When applying for Yuucho Ginko they gave me this pen which honestly made my entire week. It has 3 colours AND it is ERASABLE |
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| All the papers came in this bag thing with Sato Takeru on it (popular Japanese actor) |
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| but then when looking closer, THE BAG CAN BE MADE INTO A CLEARFILE/FOLDER! (general translation of what's written there: 'cut along the line thing and it becomes a size A4 clearfile') So now I have a lovely clearfile with Sato Takeru's face on it in which I can put school papers. Thank you Yuucho Ginko
And so after I made my bank account and got all my scholarship stuff in I continued to skip that class I missed and just went home. On my way I stopped by a JR train line window and asked about getting a student commuter's pass, which I then finally bought successfully. Tokyo doesn't have the same system as Vancouver does where university students can just get a single pass and use all the public transit freely, the next best thing is the commuter's pass. With one of these you pick your starting station (i.e. the station closest to where you live - you need proof of your address to get one) and the station where your school is at and then you can go anywhere between those two stations for free (well obviously not "free", but you know what I mean). Being a maths major and dearly missing all my maths courses I took this opportunity to get out my beloved graphing calculator (yep, I actually brought that to Japan with me) and calculated the amount of money I would save by using a commuter's pass and found I'd be saving about 300-400$, so definitely worth it. It can get super expensive commuting every day, without a pass it costs me about 10$ to get to school and back.
& with that all bought, I've basically gotten done everything I needed to get done!
Finally I'm pretty much all settled in here. Thank goodness.
And now it's getting late, so I should get to bed
おやすみ！
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