First Three Days in Japan (before Keio University)
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My first two days was super hectic. Apparently it takes about 3 hours from Narita Airport to Omori Nishi which is where my dorm is. I’m pretty sure it would have taken longer if my friend from Waseda didn’t meet me at the airport. I felt bad though since at the airport, I had to show my visa and I turned in my form to be able to work in Japan. If you come to do the student exchange in Japan then you should definitely turn it in at the airport rather than having to worry about it later and waste lots of transportation time.
On the first day that I arrived, I had to fill out forms and I was given a very long lecture in almost complete Japanese by the dorm owner. Oh and btw Japan was terribly hot…wayy more hot than Hawaii. After this long lecture that was from 6pm-7pm, I quickly called my friend who is from the University of Hawaii at Manoa but is studying at Nihon University to tell him to meet up at Mita Station. He was in Japan for a while now and he had a phone so my friend from Waseda University could contact him. We decided to grab dinner at a some what cheap udon restaurant.
The next day, me and some other international students went to try to get a bank account. Apparently if you make a mistake, you can’t cross it out in Japan. They give you a completely new form to fill out which is a pain since I rushed and messed up twice so I ended up filling the same form three times lol. Since the bank was close to Mita campus, we decided to check out where the orientation will be the next day. Mita campus is very nice but the map makes it look a lot bigger than it actually is. The campus is actually really small.
The third day was also busy since I went to the bank early in the morning to get my “passbook” with like 6 or more international students that also live in my dorm (Omori Student Dormitory). The orientation gave us lots of information and apparently there were like about 160 international students from all over the world (about 20 countries). We actually had to give an introduction in front of everybody so that was interesting. It got boring after a while and so I tried to make my speech funny and memorable. I was prepared to make my introduction and I wore my college shirt that day (I was the only person who wore my school shirt) and after stating my hobbies (anime, manga, sing, dance, etc.), I danced gangnam style which was able to get a lot of laughs and now people remember as the person from Hawaii who dances Gangnam style lol.
