東京②

7/26

Bright and early for our campus tour and orientation.

They hearded the lot of us down to the International Building, which shall be referred to as B-22 for the sake of brevity, and we all met in one room on the 5th floor for a quick introduction of program coordinators, teachers, and another sneak peak of our upcoming homestay.

After that they split us up into several groups headed by Japanese students from the International Club and something called "The Rainbow Club"...which I'm sure is nothing to do with gay pride, but...heh

The campus is pretty nice - sadly, until I can steal photos from the other peoples on Facebook, there will be extremely limited stills during the period before my charger arrives.

So, as we were walking along, I managed to get Mr. Awkward explain the whole "Lion Cash" thing on video - those of you with video access can find it on my YouTube channel - and in case I have not yet done my part to spread the good word on Blogger, let me take a moment to do so here: "Lion Cash" has its roots in (supposedly) the American expression "That's so cash", which effectively means, "That's so awesome/cool/etc" and which Mr. Awkward has contrived to take one step further by adding the very powerful sounding "Lion" as an adverbial. The ultimate goal is to spread the expression to Japanese people in the hopes that it will one day find its way back to the U.S., as an experiment in sociolinguistic manipulation. In other words, just because we can [try]. "Lion Cash" has, since its birth during our stay in Kamogawa, undergone two transformations: a literal translation in Japanese as "ShiShi Okane", and further distortion for the sake of making it sound more hip, as "ShiShi Okan" - you'll notice the last "e" mora has been dropped.

*ahem*

Anyway, that's all on video for posterity...just remember, you heard it here first =)

We had a nice lunch in the cafeteria, which I fear will be too far from B-22 to be a practical option during school, but it was nice to see.

Later, we found a pretty large bookstore and I bought this awesome 'science through MANGA' type book on Steven Hawking's life and times - pretty interesting, and very readable even for a lowly gaijin such as myself.

That night Tara, Anne and I went out shopping in Shinjuku. Or, rather, Anne and I tagged along behind Tara who had already scoped out a multi-floor Lolita/Emo fashion bananza...

Pretty elaborate clothes they were selling, though. Some of it, if take one at a time, might even have been stuff I would wear myself. Tara, on the other hand, picked out a $800 dollar pants/shirt/purse ensemble which, quite honestly, was mostly black raggs sewn together and embellished with various zippers and rings. Tara wears that kind of thing well, but its...just...not for me.

We ended up leaving a little early to meet up with Evelyn and Eri for a birthday celebration at this nice Italian restaurant just a couple blocks from our dorms. Really good food, especially the nori-noodle thingy I had.

Afterwards, we ran into some of the guys, and that one Brit whom I don't much care for invited us all out to go clubbing in Roppongi. I wasn't too hot to go out with *him*, but I figured as long as other people were coming I could take it. I rather wanted to hit the clubs in Roppongi...

We made a stop back as the dorms to fetch our stuff, and on the way out I ran into a group of the guys I thought were supposed to be heading our way. They were carrying grocery bags seemingly filled with cartons of sake and such, so I very quickly came to the conclusion that they would not be joining us =(

Mr. Awkward was with them, and I talked him into coming along with us because, while I have no problem with the girls, I really needed to ensure there was better male company than Jay/whatever-he-calls-himself. Mr. Awkward, being the bright boy that he is, also realized within a block or so that the only other guy with us was Jay. He wasn't very happy about that, but stayed with us till be got to Takadanobaba Station.

Everyone (myself included) had already bought our handy-dandy Suica cards (like a reloadable train/bus/metro ticket)except Mr. Awkward, and by that time I was already having second thoughts about wasting money to go out to Roppongi with...well, friggin' Jay. Jay, Eri, Evelyn, and Taylor went ahead on the train and I waited while Mr. Awkward got his card, intending to catch up with them. After a brief moment of indecision, we both decided to bag the outing to Roppongi...plus we couldn't figure out how to get there.

JR Yamanote Line is great - it goes in a big circle around almost every major stop (except for Roppongi and such)in Tokyo, so as long as I can get on the Yamanote, I can to and from a lot of places reliably. Since Mr. Awkard had is brand-new Suica in hand already, we decided we might as well go somewhere.

"Somewhere" ended up being Shibuya, which was pretty cool to just walk around. Really crowded, being as it was a Saturday night, but we wandered about for a couple hours, checking out the bookstores and some other places. It ended up being a pretty nice night.