First days YOKOSO!

Well, I arrived in Japan on Monday, but could only access the Internet for about 5 minutes using the airports wi-fi. From there it was a 2 hour drive from the airport to the college. It hasn't been until now that I finally have been given access to Wi-fi so quite a bit has happened.

First there was the welcoming event. It was about 9:30pm here and me and about 10 other people coming here for the exchange program were welcome right as the bus arrived in front of the dorms. We then split up, because the Men's and women's dorms are separate. The guys were then welcomed by the entire dorm waiting for us in the main lobby. It was a nice welcoming, and luckily I got a video of them welcoming us.

I was so tired I had no idea what they were yelling at us, but it was fun. We then went around and introduced ourselves to everyone. Then we took a big picture.

Then I went upstairs, unpacked and met my roommate. I lucked out and got a Japanese roommate, and also one of the main people assigned to help out foreign exchange students by showing them around and other things. Then the entire dorm group made yakisoba for dinner which was pretty good. Then around midnight I went to sleep.

I woke up around 7am on Tuesday, went downstairs to the little cafeteria in the dorms and got breakfast. Then I kind of hung out untill 12pm, but we did have 2 more exchange students show up at the dorms, and we gave them a similar welcome

Each time it seemed like less people wanted to come down to welcome people. Must have gotten tired of constantly having to do it.

Then me and a couple other exchange students walked to downtown Hachioji and explored a little, but it was mostly just walk for about 50 minutes down one road, then just walk back. When we got back about 12 of us, including my roommate went to a nearby Ramen place.

Was a pretty good Ramen place, but difficult at times to order because you buy a ticket from a machine with the name of the ramen you want, but when you give them the ticket they ask a couple of other questions like what size noodles you want, and what spices you want. This isn't something Ive ever learned so I got Seichi to help. We then took a bus into the city o go shopping at the EkiMae (shops in front of the train station). I bought a pair of slippers to wear around the dorms, since we  take our shoes off while there. I also bought a big bin to put my dirty clothes in, and a kind of pillow thing. they supplied us with pillows and sheets when we arrived, but the pillow was a kind of weird bean bag thing, which hurt my neck. The pillow I bought was an improvement, but I may get some pillows shipped here from America if i can't find any similar ones. After that we looked around downtown some, but  didn't do much else. We rode the bus home so that we can start learning the different bus routes. Tomorrow I will take my Japanese placement test, and get my Alien Registration card from city hall. Once I get this I can go rent a Cellphone, and also will be allowed to buy a bike. Will probably also explore the EkiMae area more since those two things only go from about 9pm to 1pm. So I still have a free afternoon, since while I was there today I saw quite a few electronics and book stores, which I'm pretty sure also sold some video games and other cool things.