First Full Day – Sept. 13th

Today we got up early and walked to the Waseda campus. We took a similar route to the one I guided students around last night, but then we stopped at building 19, the fairly new SILS building. I think SILS stands for the School of International Liberal Studies, its Japanese name is 国際教養学部 (kokusai kyouyou gakubu). This will be our main building for the next year. After gathering in a large classroom, we were group up with some Japanese volunteers from the two International clubs at Waseda: WIC (Waseda International Club), and 虹の会 (Niji no Kai). Our guides showed us around the campus a bit more, and we got lunch at a local Ramen shop. Fortunately for us students, there is a plethora of cheap food in close proximity to the campus. We’re all on our own for lunch, so the variety of cheap food will definitely come in handy.

Later on, we walked back to the hotel to meet up in the lobby, and headed over to a local izakaya (Japanese bar/restaurant) for dinner. Kazaoka-sensei asked if we’d like nomihoudai (all you can drink for a set period of time, about 2-3 hours usually), and of course we all consented. We had a second round of slightly more detailed self-introductions, and a second big toast to the upcoming year. In all of OIP, Japan’s program is the only one that isn’t dry. Drinking is an important part of student life here, and it’s a good thing that the teachers understand this fact and allow us to use alcohol as an icebreaker with the Japanese students. Of course there will be people who will suffer from poor judgment as a result of this permissiveness, but ultimately, it’s a good thing to let adults act like adults. Besides, all-out prohibition would simply lead to all-out disobedience.

I was sitting across from Shek-sensei and his son Alvin, who is here for about a month to visit. Next to me was my roommate Stephen, and next to him was Heather, a girl who was actually born in Japan but moved to the States at an early age. Stephen, a lover of umeshu (plum wine), kept a steady stream of glasses coming to the table. Pretty soon, everyone was drinking umeshu, especially Heather. After the nomihoudai had ended, we all kind of broke off into separate groups. I went with a big group of people to the karaoke-kan for some drunken karaoke (although granted I really wasn’t even buzzed, Heather was drunk enough for the whole lot of us). We crammed into two of the rooms and started trying to figure out just what we could sing. Hilary, one of the students from Chico State, has a great voice and belted out some Japanese songs I’d never heard before. I did my usual rounds of Ulfuls, SMAP, and some random American songs I found. I even sang “A Whole New World,” with Hans (from Fullerton) as my Jasmine. Singing the Disney songs really made me miss Sacchan; I couldn’t bring myself to try “Beauty and Stupid.” One of the other students, an unassuming chap named Robert (from SF State) busted out California Love in a very convincing imitation of Tupac. After karaoke, I walked around a bit in the rain to survey the area, and returned to my room to once again pass out.

PS: These events happened about a week ago, but since I’m just now getting around to writing them, please be patient as I play catch up.