A smile and a bow

Ok, so first the frustrating news and the reason why I have to get a second entry done today.

I still have no password for the school computers/ the wlan. Which means I cannot use the computers on the weekend, because now I'm only using them through my tutors account and logically she won't be here on weekend. It's so frustrating! They have to send the request for a password to the main university in Toyama! What the fuck? I mean seriously, one single tiny little computer password for an exchange student – what can be so hard about that? In Lahti at my home university this could me made in a matter of hours or longest a day. I don't get it... and those were the first news I got in the morning, after I had met with Ai around noon.

The next thing was that I was supposed to

do, was pay for my lodgings at Senshinen. I seriously thought I would simply need to go to the office of the woman who manages those things and pay and be done with it. Was I wrong about that!

In the end we went 6 (that's SIX) times up and down the stairs from the Senshinen person's office to the main school office. SIX times because first one person didn't know how to fill in the one form that said who would pay for how many days, or then thought another person would have to fill it, and then because something seemed to be wrong with it. And when I finally had payed in the downstairs office, the Senshinen-woman was actually taking the change back from me and giving me back my original bank note and said that we would have to go back up to pay because it was a different office.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Yeah, but believe it or not, eventually I actually got it payed (miracle, really) and then, finally, the better part of the day was starting.

Today on Friday was the day when the freshmen of this school have their first orientation and most other students have some various information meetings. So we went with Ai to the orientation of the freshmen who now start studying ”Industrial Crafts”. We had 'missed' all the boring talk (not that walking up and down the stairs had been so much more interesting) and were arriving after a small break, just as they were starting with the 'cooking game'. Taro Ogawa introduced me to the whole room (at least 80 people) and then made me introduce myself rather shakily in a few words in Japanese. All seemed very happy to hear me talk their language so they applauded and smiled and nodded and when Ogawa-san asked which group would want to have me (or at least I'm pretty sure that's what he asked) an arm from group number one right in front of me shot straight up into the air.

After 12 years of being chosen last into any team in school sports, that felt actually really, really nice.

And the game went like this: each group got a gas cooker and a paper with a receipe in english. On a table on one end of the room were various unlabeled(!) ingredients as well as pots, bowls, pans and so on. We had fifteen minutes to make what was written on the paper, which turned out to be pretty basic pancakes. After the time was up those pancakes would have to be presented to all others in the room in some way.

Of course having an English speaking student in their group gave my people some time advantage and we got both pancakes ready. But since the ingredients were unlabeled, we made them not with normal all-purpose flour, but with 'okonomiyaki' flour, which is used in Japan to make some kind of 'cabbage pancakes'. So they were more salty than they should be, but that was alright. In the end no winner was chosen since all of it was only supposed to be only fun, which I thought was a good way of going about things.

And it really was a lot of fun. Also, I realized once again that Japanese are just so cute! It's hard to explain why, or what makes it so. Maybe over my time here I will be able to analyze that a bit better. So far I'll just accept it at that and enjoy it, since who knows, maybe I will get tired of it one day.

So today I got very much contact with different people, mostly because they were Ai's friends and she was always introducing me when we passed them in the hallways. It was nice. Even though I cannot interact by using Japanese very much (I tend to understand what they are talking about generally, but not exactly, and I cannot yet say much myself) in many cases a smile and a bow seem to get me pretty far.

The evening ended with me and Ai taking another trip to the city to check out some second hand shop with the name 'King's Family' which I will definitely have to get back to to get some clothes.

Then some more grocery-shopping before we got back to the school and Ai opened one computer for me so I could still write this before I will be off for the weekend.

Today was actually the first day since I came that it was raining here, but I hope it will be drier on the weekend again so I can start exploring the city by bike on the weekend. Until then here a few pictures of Takaoka campus!