Autumn, at last

Right, so, I guess I already have to apologize for not living up to my promise of updating once every two weeks. To make it up to you, here's some pretty pictures of the changing colours of the ICU campus.

Nice, huh? I'm sorry Tilburg University, but your campus has nothing on this. There's even cats here. CATS! UvT rabbits: I'm sorry, but you are not at all being missed.

Right, so, my life in Tokyo. Well, as can be expected, it's pretty hectic, hence me not updating as often as I would like to. In this post, I'll try to give you an idea of what has been keeping me so busy here (hint: school). Afterwards, I'll show you some pictures of places in Tokyo I've visited in the meantime.

I'll just present you with what will be the general theme of this post: university life at ICU is intense. Shockingly busy, really. Now, I have to admit that I kind of boldly overestimated my abilities and decided to take the maximum amount of credits for this term, but still, I didn't expect university to take over my life like it currently has. Most of the days, I have at least four and a half hours of class, and on Thursday, I have a whopping nine hours, from 10:10 to 19:00. As you can probably imagine, the last class on Thursday (which lasts for four hours) is not very fun. Luckily, one of my studymates understands my pain, and has been bringing me coffee for that lecture in the past few weeks.

And trust me, the coffee is needed, because class is a lot more intense than it is in my home university. Japanese classes in particular are very demanding. Since I had no prior knowledge of Japanese, I had no choice but to take JLP1, which is the beginner's group. We're with 10 people, which is the perfect size to learn a language in, I think. JLP1 takes up about 60% of my school-time, I would say. I have 2,5 hours of it every day, plus plenty of homework (two or three tests/quizzes every week). It's pretty intense, but that's a good thing, because learning Japanese at half this pace would not have been very motivating: I would simply not learn it fast enough for it to become useful at all during my stay here. At this pace, though, I can easily see that I'm getting better week by week, and I'm even able to handle (very brief and basic) social occasions in Japanese already. So while it has pretty much taken over my life, I'm still quite happy I decided to take the course. Plus, there's plenty of people to help me out, because just about everyone else in my dorm is better at Japanese than me, regardless of whether they're foreigners or native Japanese.

The other classes I'm taking this semester are "History of English Literature I", "Contemporary Japanese Literature", and "Contemporary Japan: From Ramune to Anime". I'm enjoying all of them, to varying degrees. The English literature class is pretty straightforward: we just read some English classics and then discuss them in class. However, because everyone in the class is Japanese (apart from me), and thus have for the most part not seen this kind of literature before, the subject is treated rather differently from what I expected - the teacher spends more time putting the works in their historical contexts, because otherwise, the Japanese students just don't really get them. It's really quite fascinating to hear what non-Western readers think about these works. The Japanese literature class is good and interesting, so I'm happy I chose it - but then again, a class on Japanese literature would have to be pretty bad for me not to like it. Lastly, the Contemporary Japan class - it's good, even though it's less "contemporary" and more "history" to me. However, any class that has anime videos as part of its syllabus is worth the time, really.

In all, university life in Japan is good - just much busier than what I'm used to. In a way, it's like I'm back in high school - so many hours in class and so much more homework to do. Tellingly, participation takes up a large part of the grade of my courses: there's not so much emphasis on active participation in class, but attendance is a must. Fun fact: in Japan, sleeping in class is actually quite an accepted phenomenon, and it is considered to be less rude than not showing up for class at all. As a result (especially in these long, long afternoon classes), you'll always find some students sleeping in the back rows of the classroom.

An apt visual depiction of what this new university life is doing to me.

So much for the whiny, self-centred part of this post. All you're interested in is The Tokyo Life, I'm sure. Well, unfortunately, I haven't got much news in that department, because I've been too busy to visit Tokyo a lot. Last weekend, I went to see the last fireworks of the season, to celebrate (commemorate?) the end of summer. A very long, very big, and very beautiful public fireworks show, somewhere in Tokyo (not a clue where, but it was far). I didn't take many pictures of the fireworks, because they're never as nice as the real thing; instead, I took pictures of the huge crowd that was watching along with us. We never actually reached the place where the show took place, because it was so crowded that the roads leading to the place were already chockfull of spectators.

Crowds at the fireworks (don't worry, the crazy white girl in the centre is someone I know)

Yesterday, I went to Ueno Park, which is one of Tokyo's biggest and most famous. It's green and nice, just like any other park, and there's a few very old buildings, which is pretty rare in Tokyo, which has been burned to the ground more times than I could enumerate here. The reason for going there was an essay I have to write for one of my classes - gather some information, take some pictures. However, the REAL reason we went was the famous Ueno Zoo, which is home to some exotic Eastern creatures, including actual pandas. PANDAS!

PANDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd never seen any before, so I was pretty excited. Honestly though, the whole visit was disappointing. Japan being Japan, the crowds surrounding the panda habitat were simply ridiculous, and in general, the zoo really was too small for all the animals living there. It left me a little bit depressed.

CRAZY JAPANESE CROWDS FOR PANDA!!!!!!!!

However: panda mail box. So all was all right in the end.

To quote one of my dormmates: "It's SO cute! WHY IS EVERYTHING CUTE IN JAPAN!?"

Simon

Two weeks in

So, I'm here. I'm in Tokyo. I apologize for not having updated my blog sooner, but you probably guessed how that goes: at first, there's no time, and then, there's time, but simply too much to say. Where to start, really? Needless to say, these first two weeks have been overwhelming; it's been quite a while since I experienced something new every day, got in touch with so many new people (I seriously need to work on my name-memorizing skills), and had such an overload of information poured upon me in such a short time. In the end, what I decided to do for this blog post is simply list some of my initial experiences and thoughts about the past two weeks. It's not going to be a very structured story, but then again, that might be kind of fitting, somehow.

So, the first thing that came to my mind when entering Japan? Man, it's hot. After just about the worst summer I've ever experienced in the Netherlands, and leaving the country in clothes that suited the 15 degrees celcius weather, I'm not sure whether arriving in the scorching hot, humid, a-typhoon-is-upon-us-Tokyo was a relief or a nightmare. During the trip to the International Christian University (during which I was luckily accompanied by one of my dorm-mates, Hazel), I certainly veered towards the latter. At any rate, the climate definitely took some getting used to, but now I'm pretty happy it's still 25-30 degrees every day; a proper summer after all.

That's me, zombie-mode, waiting for the train at the Narita Airport station.

So Hazel and I travelled together from Narita airport to the ICU campus, which was good, because she understood the Tokyo public transport system and was able to use her Japanese skillz to buy tickets and ask for the times, that kind of stuff. It took us about 2,5 hours to get to the campus, and luckily, the inhabitants of our dorm, Global House, were there to take our suitcases and show us our rooms. The dorm is very nice indeed, with airconditioning in every room (YES!) and a nice sort of social room with a big TV and, usually, people to talk to. So far, though, the biggest advantage of living on campus has been that it takes only five minutes to get from my room to the classrooms, which is great when you have a jetlag.

The ICU campus is beautiful: spacious, welcoming, and very, very green, which is pretty special, considering it's located in one of the biggest urban spaces in the world. It is also absolutely loaded with cicadas, whose noise took some serious getting used to as well. Walking beneath the trees, it kind of feels like you're about to get raided by an army of murderous bugs. Hasn't happened so far, though (knock on wood). Insect life in Japan in general is pretty interesting (for lack of a better word) - so far the biggest impression has been made by a praying mantis chilling in the bicycle space of Global House. People who know me well can probably picture my response to seeing it.

A shot of the ICU campus.

Yes, you heard that right, a bicycle space. Apparently, biking is huge in Tokyo. Not as huge as it is in the Netherlands, but still, there are bikes everywhere, especially in the not-so-central area of Mitaka, which is the place where ICU is located. I bought a bike on my third or fourth day of being here, and I've used it nearly every day since. Unfortunately, there are no real biking lanes in Japan; instead, you're supposed to bike on the sidewalk. This is a challenge, especially in more crowded areas, but the Japanese have been conditioned to step aside as soon as they hear a bell ringing, so it's definitely doable.

As far as exploring the city goes, I haven't done quite as much of that as I'd expected to, mainly because the university and our dorm has kept me very busy (in a good way). The orientation has taken a huge deal of my time. In the first full week, Global House organised a tsukimi every night, a sort of social event during which we met the new inhabitants of the other on-campus dorms. In addition, there was a proper welcome party for us organised by dorm as well. University has mainly kept us busy by demanding about a 1000 different forms from us that all asked for the exact same information. Yes, Japanese bureaucracy is killing me already.

Nonetheless, I have managed to visit a few places already. My favourite so far is Kijijoji, an area that's actually pretty near to ICU (about 25-30 mins by bike), and has become a sort of hotspot for young people in the past few years. It's not as crowded as central Tokyo, and can almost be described as "bohemian" - this is still Japan, though, so it's not really that apt a word to describe it. I've also been to some of the most famous neighbourhoods of Tokyo: Harajuku and Shibuya, both extremely hip places filled with fashionable people. I need more time to explore them properly, though, but the first impressions were good. I also visited Shinokubo, which is the "Korean" district, so there's Korean restaurants, food stores, and... K-pop fan stores. Korean pop music (and the dance with which each song is accompanied) is extremely popular in Japan, and it's definitely interesting to see how crazy some people are about it. I suggest looking for k-pop on Youtube, just to get an impression. At a later stage, I'll upload some pictures of the k-pop craze in Japan.

A slightly blurry (~art~) picture of Shinokubo

As a final note, I would like to talk money (I'm Dutch, after all, Zeeuws blood running through my veins). To me, Japan is almost shockingly expensive. It's not so much household products, clothes, or electronic devices that soak up my money (they're not exactly cheap, but at least similar to European/Dutch prices) but prices of groceries are on a whole 'notha level. In particular, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products are just almost unaffordable to me, which is sad, because they make up much of a Dutch diet. To illustrate, apples range from €1,20-1,50 each, and 450ml of yoghurt is about €1,30. My biggest disappointment so far has been granola, for which I paid about €3,75 for a package of 400g. Sad story, indeed. Nonetheless, since this means that eating out is virtually the same price as cooking yourself, it at least provides me with an excuse to visit as many Japanese restaurants as I can find.

There's so much more to say - my first experiences with karaoke, the awesome food I've had so far, izakaya, my classes (intense!), the people, dorm life, and what not - but it will have to wait for another time. I hope you enjoyed reading these random observations, and if you did, stay tuned for more. I'll attempt to update once every two weeks (I'm going to regret this promise). I'll also try to provide a little more depth to my stories later on; my initial experiences are far too shallow to allow for such an approach, though. So yeah, stay tuned.

Simon

Preparations

45 days left. Only 45 days! This thought was pretty much the only thing my mind has felt like occupying itself with the past few days. Needless to say, these days, most of my time, energy, and especially brain activity is devoted to what is probably going to be the adventure of my life: studying at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan, for 10 months.

Naturally, I'm extremely excited about the times ahead, but I'm also scared in pretty much equal amounts. I've never lived abroad, let alone in a country of which I don't speak a word of the language (well, to be fair, I know two or three), so I really haven't a clue about I'm going to respond to such a different life situation. Nonetheless, I'm preparing every way I can to make the most out of next year. Firstly, there's practical preparations - making sure I'm enrolled properly, getting my hands on a student visa, etc. Secondly, there's what I call cultural preparations: reading Japanese novels, history books, and watching Japanese films, in order to get an idea of the culture I'm going to operate in the following year - unavoidably vague, superficial, and Eurocentric as this idea might currently be.

Most of my time, though, is devoted simply to mental preparations, that is, getting used to the idea that I am actually, really, positively going to Tokyo. So far, I've not been able to properly make sense of this fact, even though it certainly is a dream come true. I really can't wait to finally board that plane.

Next time I update my blog, I'll either be in Japan, or (this is perhaps more likely) I'll be writing from the Netherlands, killing time during the final days before my departure. Whatever the case may be, make sure to check back every once in a while. I'll make sure it's worth it!

Simon