鴨川セミナーハウス：2週間/ Kamogawa Seminar House: 2 Weeks

7/12/08

10 hour flight from Vancouver, BC (YVR) to the Narita Airport. About as problem-free as I could have hoped for: I was finger-printed, photographed, and my passport stamped and out of customs in no more than 10 minutes, tops. Easy. My suitcase even came through, contents intact.

Finding my program leader-peoples was a little more interesting: as I (thought I)recalled, they were supposed to be at the Information Desk, which appeared all too conveniently in front of me as I came into customs, and from there the people staffing it were supposed to be informed about the students coming in and where to direct them. Not the case: "Waseda? You mean the university?" I had them page the one person whose name I remembered off the top of my head, but after 5 minutes I just called Naomi Hoka on my cell (it worked, thankfully), and a couple minutes later a guy in a suit came over, introduced himself as so-and-so from the Waseda Program, dragged my heavy-ass suitcase for me and proceeded to lead me around the corner about 300 feet to the OTHER desk, where a few other staff persons and one student were waiting. *doh!*

The other student and I were ushered outside and told to wait for the courtesy shuttle to the hotel. It came soon afterwards, and during the trip the two of us talked about school and how shitty our Japanese was. Turns out he's from UW, too. Huh.

The hotel was very nice, a little smaller than the image on the website made it appear to be, and inside we found a little desk with Waseda staff who gave us our orientation materials and our shiny new student IDs.

My roommate turned out to be a really nice girl from PSU, and we got along great - lots of common interests (like Gackt!).

At the orientation dinner down in the hotel's banquet room, I sat at a table with a few guys and couple other girls. Pretty funny how you can see people segregating into their own little cliques - one table had a bunch of Taiwanese guys, and the girl at my table was clearly the ringleader of a clowder of snot-nosed fashion-queens...not that I'm judging them on appearances or anything...

Dinner itself was really nice, lots of different kinds of foods, and the Waseda staff gave a nice presentation about the program.

First night in Japan: 成功！