Nyuugaku Nomikai – Sept 21st

Today was a busy day, starting with the placement test at 9am. Since I’ve arrived, I’ve been going to bed relatively early, and getting up extremely early. Every day starts at around 7:30am. Perhaps I was just living in Japan-time all along, and now that I’m halfway around the world, I’m keeping actual normal hours.

I got to school with a bit of time to spare, but I was in the wrong building for the test. After a brief panic and some text-messages, I found the right building, already packed with foreign students from all around the world. Around 200 or so people are here for a short term (single year) exchange—we are known as SP3 students. At around 9:15 or so, the test started.

The placement test was broken into three short parts: grammar, vocabulary, and composition. The first part was a 3-page list of about 25 sentences of increasing complexity/difficulty. Certain characters of the sentence were missing, and our job was to fill them in with the appropriate hiragana to complete the grammar structure of the sentence. The vocabulary test was similar, but instead of a list of sentences, it was a series of dialogues and paragraphs. There were two 3-page booklets to this, the first being meant only for hiragana to be filled in, and the second hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The basic goal of this test is to try to fill in the blanks using the context of the surrounding sentences. The final two paragraphs of these tests were extremely complicated, about the recycling industry and art theory. Although I was able to read the passages almost in their entirety, I had no idea what was supposed to go in the blanks. The final portion of the test was just a 400-600 character essay regarding anything about computers. This wasn’t so bad, but they only gave us 20 minutes to do it. I came within one line of the 400-character mark, but it seems that most people weren’t able to write that much, so I’m not too worried. As I walked around the room during the brief breaks between classes, I heard almost everyone say “this is bullshit!” or something similar. Of course, this was a placement test, there really was no right or wrong; it’s all about placing you in the proper level. I’ve just been wondering to myself exactly what my level is these days.

After the test everyone went to eat, and pending some comments about my outfit (“so, you’re going to wear that?”), I decided to head home and change. Yukiko dropped Okaasan and I off at the west gate with plenty of time to spare; most everybody was milling around the front of the building where the entrance ceremony would be held. The ceremony was mostly just a quick introduction to the teachers, some speeches by the MC, the dean, and Dr. Shek, and a performance by the Glee Club and the Waseda Orchestra. The speeches were interesting, especially when the English dean gave his speech a second time, completely in Japanese. As always, Dr. Shek was brief but eloquent. The clubs were truly impressive; I took some videos that I’ll use to help me memorize the school anthem, which is one of the best-known in the country. I can’t wait to go to a baseball game with Keio and sing the school song.

Afterwards we puttered around the building for a while and Okaasan said she’d catch the train home. We (the students) made plans to meet up at the rotary later for a nomikai. Hilary was heading home, so Hans and I walked her back to her place. I hadn’t spent much time on that side of the campus, where the subway station and the gym are located, so I wanted to explore that a bit. We hung out at Hilary’s for a while, and jumped on the Tozai line to go up to Takadanobaba and meet everyone in the rotary. An impressive group had gathered, including many CSU and Japanese students, as well as a few of the students from the Oregon program. We made a beeline for a new izakaya, which had a surprising amount of space.

The nomikai was nothing terribly special: we ate, we drank, we laughed, and made new friends. A funny thing that Josh and I noticed was that the Japanese ladies were constantly surrounded by the guys. Even after a while I went over to talk to them and cut in on the conversation. I’ve noticed that Josh and I are at an interesting vantage point; I’m able to goof off and cockblock the other guys and even make a fool of myself, because unlike the single guys, I’m not looking to score. I’m sure some of the guys are enjoying themselves as much as they can, but I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that whole mess. I’ve already predicted that some of them are going to run into trouble, it’s only a matter of time.

This time, I sent Okaasan a message to make sure that she knew when and in what state I’d be returning home. My walk home has become immensely more enjoyable with my ipod, which I had to leave home due to the fact that I was wearing pants with limited cargo space. I desperately need to get a bag!