The story so far #2: Weekend fun!

I had no particular plans for Saturday, except perhaps for writing this blog. However, that train of thought was disrupted by a visit from the Vietnamese girl from the second floor. (She’s shorter than me – something I’m not quite used to – and she has this very youthful air. My first instinct would be to go all senpai on her even though I have absolutely no qualifications to do so :D) She asked me whether I wanted to come to play football (not the American one) with her and some other Vietnamese students. Sports are definitely not my strong point, but I didn’t have anything better to do at the moment and the weather was incredibly nice, so I said why not. In the end, neither of us did any actual playing, since the guys were pretty serious about it, but we watched the game and had a nice, long chat about various things. On the neighbouring field, a group of Japanese students was practising some kind of festival dance, which was also a sight worth seeing.

In the evening I made my first Skype call home, which was very nice : ) Not feeling home sick quite yet.

Sunday was rainy and surprisingly cold. The temperature had been around 20-28 degrees Celcius so far, and this was the first time I really remembered that it was October. Originally I planned to take a trip to the big department store to buy groceries, but ran into a group of students – a Bulgarian, a Hungarian, a Finn and the Bulgarian’s Japanese friend – who were on their way to town. I had lunch with them, visited the 100 yen shop (I finally bought a hanko stamp!) and then we went to a place that calls itself an “internet café”, but I find that to be something of an understatement. You pay a fee (about 1,000 yen for 3 hours unless I’m mistaken) and you can read manga (the selection is massive), sing karaoke and play online games/pool/darts etc. You can get as many hot and cold beverages as you want (probably no alcohol though) as well as ice cream! My roommates found it amusing that I would enjoy eating something cold on a cool day, but who says no to free ice cream?

A fellow Finn showing off his throwing skills (?)

The Japanese guy offered to take us all back to the campus in his car, but I still needed to go to the department store, so he dropped me off partway and kindly reminded me when the next bus would be leaving.

Grocery shopping in Japan is…an experience. Everything is wrapped in shiny colourful plastic that has stylized kanji scribbled all over. I can’t tell which ingredient should be used for what and fervently wished that I had paid more attention to the culinary sections of various Japan-related books I have read along the years (but reading about food is no fun, is it?) In the end, I just end up buying a collection of what seems to be fairly versatile stuff and try to mix and match them. So far I’ve done okay.

One more thing: the results of the placement test were announced on Sunday morning! From levels A to F (A being the easiest) I was assigned to level E, and kanji group 6 from 1-7. The result was a mild shock for me, since I had expected to get a D at most. According to the study guide, the course for level E is for the student to “acquire enough Japanese ability to be able to study and research at universities” – there is more lean towards academic settings and situations that I’m strictly comfortable with. On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of advanced instruction that I would never be able to have in Finland, and there is a two-week period during which you can change to a different group if the level feels inappropriate…so I’ll give it a go.

Protip: You know you're in Japan...when your closest major store has a KIMONO DEPARTMENT (right there, wedged between men's clothing and regular sewing materials?)