Little Matsuri

On the 23rd, me and some friends went down to a small festival that was happening by the station and it was surprisingly entertaining, we were able to enjoy some intense group dancing, a violin duet and my three other campanions inadvertingly ordering chicken giblet stew, ovaries included!

Moving as one!

The audience was sparse but the passion was real.

Amefuto!

On the 17th I went to see an American Football game for the first time in Tokyo Dome, a stadium with a capacity of many many people. It was really fun even though I didn't fully understand what was going on most of the time (having watched a 10 minute youtube video beforehand in an attempt to grasp the rules). The atmosphere was really nice and the cheerleader were most impressive! Enjoy some photos:

Tokyo Dome from outside

And inside

The enemy!

Afterwards I stayed in a business hotel in Tachikawa which was very comfortable and came with it's own origami totoro and rubber duck!

Holiday Party

This is a bit late but I feel that it's worthy of a post. On the 11th myself and several other international students were forced to attend a 'holiday party' at the English support café where we work. Unfortunately, what we consider to be a 'party' is vastly different from the university management office's opinion.

Myself and four other English Support people were divided into each corner with a different colour (I was yellow) and we were incharge of managing the 'fun activities' and making sure everyone was having a 'great time'. After the initial mingling, the 'holiday presentations' began, starting with my fellow English student and I presenting on what Christmas was like in the UK, followed be presentations on how China, Thailand, Germany, and Malaysia spent the holidays. Being forced to present infront of about 80 people seemed like a daunting task however it wasn't so bad as were each given a maximum of 3 minutes and 3 slides per presentation.

After this, some fun word games were conducted which weren't nearly as fun as the head of the department was making them out to be and then finally we were allowed to escape.

Halloween!

The weekend before Halloween, me and 14 other people from uni decided to go to Shibuya (the busiest district for halloween in Tokyo). It was very fun but involved getting continually lost for the first half of the night. We stayed up and got the last train back at 4:30 to Kofu. Here's some photos!

On the train home...

Safety first

On Thursday (25th) all international students were required to attend a one hour lecture from the Kofu Police on the law. It was somewhat more interested than I intially thought it might be as they provided some very interesting resources throughout the presentation. The highlights have to be 'molestation' and 'bad drugs' sections.

"Since everybody is in scanty clothing in hot summer in Japan, molesters increase rapidly in this season. In order to protect yourself from molests... avoid wearing bare fashion of provocative clothes; do not hand out your underwear at prominent areas; do not walk around by yourself at night as much as possible."

"If you encounter a molestor... shout loudly and inform people around you."

Dangerous drugs (liquid, herb, and powder)

They also outlined the importance of being prepared for natural disasters as they could happen at any time and gave us each a little pack with an emergency blanket, wipes and bike lock in.

After the police lecture, we also had to do an 'orientation' at our dormitory which outlined quite a lot of useful points such as the rules, duties, how to pay rent, etc. However almost all of it wasn't exactly  useful to us as we've already been here for about a month now and have learned from the other students the ways of the dorm. As it was also the final night in Kofu for another student, we went out afterwards into the bustling Kofu nightlife.

The following evening, myself and two friends went to an izakaya for our dinner and to relax and reflect upon the week. This plan was comprimised, however, by an incredibly drunk Japanese man who was already there. The first thing he said to me after I had asked for a drink was "I thought you were a boy!! She's a girl!!!" or something to that effect. This was a running theme throughout the evening as he seemed to be so drunk that he kept forgetting what he had already said/done. He served me and my friend some of his shochu (a very strong, disgusting alcholic drink) which I tried to drink faily quickly so that I could order my own drink but about 20 minutes after serving us he forgot and poured us another glass each. Other that repeating about how he thought I was a boy and how much I remind him of his grandson, he revealed that he was apparently 80 years old and coming to an event at the dormitory we live in as he lives so close by and comes every year. We're all looking forward to seeing you again, Mr Ishihara.

The recorder incident

On Wednesday (17th) I, and various other international students, were subjected to a 'welcome party', hosted by the Faculty of Education. Having gone to another department's party on Monday (15th) I thought I knew what I was in for, light conversation, mingling, meeting new people in a relaxed enviornment with food and drink. What I, and none of my fellow brethren, were prepared for was an oddly formal event lasting more than two hours in which we were obliged to partake in origami, caligraphy and trying on, and then removing yukata infront of everyone present (I was thankfully spared from this). Up until the half-way point in the gathering I was in a fairly good mood, not overly happy, as I couldn't eat any of the food available and was begining to feel the pangs of starvation within my gut, but overall I wasn't complaining, the caligraphy was pleasant enough, the origami was fun, seeing my fellow german and french colleagues embarrassing themselves was midly entertaining.

This was soon to change, however, as three women (two young university students and an older lady) walked to the front of the makeshift stage area with a recorder in each hand. I turned to my friend and saw the same panic I was feeling reflected in his eyes, we turned back as the trio began to play a classic Japanese children's song, beloved by all those gathered, which no doubt made the fact that both me and my friend, as well as several other international students couldn't stop laughing throughout the entire song, incredibly insulting. The song transitioned from just being played on the recorders to being sung by the trio as well which didn't help hilarity levels at all. After they had finished, we tried to make an escape but we had apparently misunderstood a social queue as everybody gathered into small circles to play a game, which left a frankly disturbing impression upon each of us, as each person made a loose fist with one hand and placed it in the centre of the circle while one person placed their finger into each persons 'finger hole' in time to the recorder music until the designated 'fingerer' landed on a final person (as dictated by the music). After asking what happened in the end I recieved clarification that the final person was "just the loser" and that "there's no deeper meaning" to the game. At this point me and my companion took our leave, red faced and shaking with laughter, we felt tremendously bad as, to the Japanese students and teachers present, we were probably terribly offensive to their nice childhood games and songs but years of being traumatised from childhood in the UK education system with recorder lessons was too deeply engrained for us to respectfully restrain ourselves and smile pleasantly.

 Two victims of the forced yukata dressing.

Beautiful ladies!

At the weekend (20th&21st) I went down to Tokyo to see one of my favourite bands (神聖かまってちゃん) with my friend and it was fantastic! After the concert we stayed up until 3:30 doing karaoke which was splendid, as always. The next day, we met up with two more friends and had some delicious lunch in Tokyo station (they even had some gluten-free noodles for me!). After lunch, we did three hours of karaoke which was just as fun at the previous night's.

Outside the concert venue!

Shinseikamattchan's 10 anniversary's shrine thing + a screenshot of a professional photo from the concert on the singer's instagram.

"Tokyo teleport", a weird stop on the metro.

My special gluten-free noodles!

Friends!!

The last three weeks!

I hope everyone reading this has been having as much stress/hunger/fun as I've been having these last three weeks. I arrived in Japan on the 26th September at about 8am, joined the very short queue (only one other person) for people with residency, dragged my very heavy suitcases (23kg and 17kg) down to the train station, got an express train to Shinjuku and prayed I wouldn't have to walked too far through the ridiculously large expanse of Shinjuku station. Luckily, the bus terminal was very close to where my platform's exit was, I took a bus to Kofu, drifting in and out of conciousness.

When I arrived I was so relieved that I had gotten to the right place I had a little rest outside for about 45 minutes before I realised that I was supposed to be meeting someone from the university. I made my way to information office, asked them to charge my (dead) phone a little bit so that I could get the phone number of the person who was supposed to collect me and it turned out he hadn't left the university yet but would be there soon. Eventually he came and collected me, took me to the dormitory where I was bombared with paperwork and reciepts, shown to my room and allowed 10 minutes to rest before I was taken to the university to meet the student they'd assigned to be my buddy and (of course) to introduce myself to the entire international student department.

After many sleep deprived, broken introductions later I was escorted back to my dorm and was finally allowed to sleep... until I woke up at 2am. Luckily my sleep schedule sorted itself out fairly quickly, unlike my body temperature which was clearly not expecting to be assulted with 30 degree blazing sunshine in late September/early October or to be greeted with two typhoons (and a very small earthquake). This week it has fortunately cooled down enough to sleep comfortably without the assistance of the aircon. Up until now I've played some zombie games, gone to karaoke, and been very hungry. Here's some photos to summarise!

The view from my room (on a cloudy day)

Some sensible storage bands.

"A taste that makes sense comes from a production process that makes sense."

Some tiny socks for chairs!

English marketing at its finest.

A view from Kofu castle.

A tiny motorbike an old man was riding (normal man standing slightly in front for scale)

My favourite section of the library.

"Government approved textbooks"

A packet of eggs with a piece of paper inside with the best before date as well as individual stickers on each egg with the same date on them.