DAY 1

This is when people from California start coming in.  2 have made it here already, and I'll probably meet them later today (as you'll see in the post).  It's Sunday here, meaning that no school today, and not a whole lot of new things to see.  Perhaps some wandering around as I wait for my program coordinators to get here.
Maybe I get to meet a tentacle monster.


So I met the first English speaking person here, who was also part of the Tokyo program, Maaike (pronounced Mai-kuh).  She's part Chinese and part Indonesian and also goes to UCI (and we also have mutual friends that happen to be in Phi Delt. Small world).  She happened to be staying in the room next to mine, and I didn't meet her until after breakfast (which was the same things from yesterday).
 She and I were the only ones there at the time, and because we didn't have anything else better to do, we walked.  We tried finding the school that we would be attending for the next month, and the best we could do was try and look around the train station.

It was kind of a useless search, since any further exploration would probably get us lost.  So we walked all the way to the high school that I went to yesterday, and then we went even further onto this scenic path with lots of trees.



There was something that branched off the path.  A pair of escalators.



At the time, the escalators were motionless, but we decided to go up anyways.  When we approached it, however, the escalators jolted to a start and a Japanese voice started talking to us.  To be honest, I almost defecated myself.

What we found on the other end was a set of athletic fields!  People were playing rugby on one of them.  I didn't even know Japanese people knew what rugby was.

It started raining very lightly on our way back to the hotel, so I put away my camera.

I noticed that it's pretty hard to get yourself lost here, you'd have to be a complete idiot to do that.  If you just remember the general direction you came from you can eventually find your way back.  At least to the hotel, cuz it's freaken huge.

And enter the next person on the list, Shunya (pronounced like Shanyey, kind like Kanye).  Shunya is African-American and she speaks better Japanese than I do.  For a while the three of us were just making some light talk in the hotel lobby with nothing to do, since all we COULD do was just wait around for the program coordinators.  Eventually, Maaike had the idea to go to Shibuya.  It sure sounded a lot better than sitting around for 4 hours in the lobby.

So we left our luggage with the hotel and went off.

This was the first time I used the railway system here in Japan, but the other two used it to get here and they gave me a quick rundown.
Basically what it comes down to is that the Japanese made public transportation awesome and easy to use and didn't fuck it up like the Americans (at least for my area).

I pretty much left it up to Maaike and Shunya to coordinate where to go, where to switch, and which lines to take.

So we got our tickets and went.

Although I hear from many sources that the Japanese railway system is notoriously crowded, it wasn't super packed today, although there were a bunch of people.

Eventually we got to Shibuya.  I didn't really know what to expect.
I walked outside...and BAM.

This place was CROWDED.  It was pretty much a gigantic shopping district with tons of designer stores and places to eat.  It was the most insane thing I'd ever seen in Japan.

Stores stacked on stores stacked on stores stacked on stores stacked on more stores.

We went inside Shibuya 109 and it was just crazy full of fashionable Japanese girls along with their boyfriends.  Seriously they looked like dolls.  I couldn't take pictures in there cuz there was a sign that said no photography allowed.

Afterwards, we left and walked around for a good hour because Maaike wanted to find the famous huge crossing.

We couldn't find THE crossing but we found other ones.  I was still impressed.
By the way I didn't take a lot of pictures here cuz it started to rain more.

With no luck finding the crossing, we headed back.

The coordinators were at the hotel now and we got our room assignments.
Shunya and Maaike happened to be rooming together, who knew?
My roommate was nowhere to be seen, but I went to my new room anyways.
It was bigger, it had 2 beds and some new additions:
A kitchen-like sink, a heatplate, and a washer/dryer (yes it does both).

I was hungry as ffffff so I went to the konbini to buy some food.
This time I bought an even bigger bottle of Calpis and some spaghetti inside a hot dog bun.

I took a shower, and I was gonna eat the food I got, but then Maaike, Shunya, and a new girl named Teresa (also from UCSD) knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go eat out.
Hell yeah I did.

So we went back around the train station area in search of food.
There were tons of restaurants under the train station, but then we ended up back at the Warehouse Game Center (remember that arcade I found yesterday?).  I told them what it was and once I did, we saw people entering.  We were all like, "HOLY SHIT LET'S GO INSIDE NAO."

Kickass arcade.  No Street Fighter, but what I found was an assortment of unique games.

There were Gundam fighters...

...some other kinds of fighters...

...and even some Jubeat (just for Dennis).

 There were even more things upstairs.
Yeah, there was an upstairs, man.
IT WAS A 3 STORY BUILDING.

The second floor had all kinds of gambling games.  Pachinko, slots, whatever.

And the third floor had a bunch of electronic mahjong games.

Hunger was catching up fast so we got out to go find some damn food.

We ended up at this ramen place.
Luckily for us, it was the kind that you just buy food with meal tickets.

I chose the soy sauce flavored with pork ramen.

Holy fucking shit I cannot believe how good this ramen was.
I still can't believe it.
I ate EVERYTHING in that bowl.
I hate egg, but I still ate that too.
And the pork...
Hands down the best pork I've ever had in my life, no BS.
I know it was only 2 pieces but it was the best pork ever man.
I'd pay the 620 yen again just for the pork.
No joke.

 
Oh by the way, I bought a handkerchief so I could fit in with the rest of the Japanese peoples.
It only cost me 100 yen!

Yeah I bought it cuz it looked like underwear. Don't hate.


So, I was chillin in my room and I hear a knock.

In comes my new roommate!

His name is Demitri (dunno if I spelled that right), a going-to-be senior attending UCLA.
He's damn tall.
So we introduce ourselves and try to get to know each other a little better.
I think this is a pretty nice pairing.
After a while we end up going to the convenience store and getting food.
He didn't know what to get and I told him, "Honestly, everything is good.  Pick one."

Some of our conversations so far have been pretty funny.