Hey there,
It has now been around 2 weeks since I arrived, and for some reason A LOT of my money has disappeared! When they told us that the Tokyo lifestyle was expensive, they really weren't kidding! I don't even want to think about how much I've gone through in such a short amount of time. All I can say is thank God for loans, grants and scholarships! Hopefully my scholarship will go in soon, it's supposed to, so fingers crossed! I also need to pay for rent, bills and pay my laptop off too. I'm not in a dire situation by any means, but I'm gonna have to slow it down if I want to, you know, EAT.
Anyway, as for what I've been up to, this weekend I went to Japan's biggest club: Ageha. Basically, if you want to be picked up, that's where to go. Although you have to pay a ridiculous ￥3,500 (￡18ish?) to get in, so you might just want to go to a bar and try your luck. As we went on a Saturday, there was only one kind of music - trance. Which is fine if you like that kind of music. I don't. But never mind. I thought, the entry fee is expensive, so the drinks are probably cheaper, right? Wrong! My advice: drink beforehand. Lots.
One plus about Japan's clubs is that they're open until about 5am. As trains stop running from about 12:30am, it's hard to get home, so they stay open until then, and then when you want to get home you can stumble to the nearest station and get the first train. Which is what we did, and as you'd expect, it wasn't really that fun. I also noticed the amount of people who were getting trains to wherever at 5am. Crazy Japanese people.
I may have enjoyed the experience a bit more, if one of my friends hadn't taken my previous advice, and drank beforehand. While going into the club she was fine, but it went pretty downhill from there. I won't go into details for her sake, but we spent a lot of the night looking after her until we could get back.
On another note, I've been to the shrine in Asakusa, where I bought myself a little souvenier, which I then proceeded to forget in the restaurant we ate in... and I went to Yasukuni Shrine too. Both were okay experiences, although I still have no camera, so once more... no photos.
Other than that, I've mainly been drinking, shopping, and playing crane games (UFO catchers), which is probably where all my money has gone. Ah well, you live and learn.
As for classes, they are actually really easy. As my university only has 8 exchange students, we all have to study at the same level. Which is unfortunately equal to first year grammar at the moment. Same goes for kanji... hopefully things will get more difficult. I talked to one of the teachers though, and she said she'd give me some stuff to do by myself, which should be good. I'll just have to make sure to actually do it...
I have my first non-Japanese class on Wednesday, which happens to be tennis, followed by badminton! I don't know if the 3 hours of sport will be too much... I'll find out, I suppose! So even though I've been taught in Japanese anyway up until now, the other teachers will be speaking as though to actual Japanese students (as most of them will be) so hopefully I'll be able to understand!
Well this is long enough already, so I'll stop now. I'll update whenever I can, as still no internet.
Bye!
About Me
- Rachel
- Shibata Mansion, Kanagawa-ken, Japan
- I'm a second year student at Sheffield University studying Japanese, about to start my year abroad at Seijo University in Tokyo
2 comments:
Hi,
This is completely random but I was googling Seijo University, looking for as much information as I could on the university since I plan on doing study abroad in Japan next year.
How do you like it there? It seems like it's a smaller university compared to the other ones I'm looking at at the moment (Aoyama Gakuin, Yokohama National, and Waseda)
I don't really know much else about Seijo haha.
I hope to hear back from you!
I really enjoy Seijo University. Yeah it is very small, especially in comparison to places like Yokohama, but it's pretty good in my opinion. I definitely don't regret coming here.
The classes range from grammar, kanji, listening, with quite an emphasis on speaking Japanese, which obviously is why I came to Japan! We watch TV programs, listen to songs, read newspaper articles and have kanji tests in each class.
We can also choose to take normal classes, so they are aimed at normal Japanese students. This semester, I've only chosen easy subjects - badminton and tennis, but next semester I'll probably take an actual seminar of some sort.
One drawback that I can think of is in terms of the classes. As this year there are only 8 exhange students, we all have to learn at the same level, even though our Japanese backgrounds are not the same. Whereas at a place with more students, they take placements tests and then take classes with people of similar abilities. So for now the core classes are quite easy for me, as I've already studied all the grammar we're doing.
Although If you feel like this is where you want to go then I would definitely recommend it.
I've only been here a month but I'm definitely enjoying my time here.
Feel free to contact me again.
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