Orientation Day 1

Today was a busy busy day. It began when I woke up at 4 in the morning and couldn't manage to get back to sleep despite the jet lag I was still experiencing. So I basically decided to get out of bed at six and answer emails, check out today's schedule, and basically get ready at a leisurely pace. Around 8:30, I made my way down to the lobby, tote bag filled with wallet, dictionary, camera, laptop, ipod, and many other necessary day to day accessories, and was greeted with a variety of choices from a traditional japanese breakfast, one of which included some tiny intact fish, fried and served as tempura or something...(definitely did not look appetizing). I eventually settled on some tofu, miso soup, tamago (egg sushi), and a cup of green tea. All in all, good choices.

After breakfast, we were given subway/bus passes and we began to make our way across the city towards Doshisha University (where we are to be taking our classes). On the way, our program director stopped us and pointed out a few sights necessary to see/know.

Most notably, as seen above, is The Kyoto Museum. Granted, there are apparently 133 museums in the city but this one decided to give itself the official name. Here, I believe are artifacts from the Meji period on display. The building itself is very pretty as the architecture is very old. That's a very cool thing about Kyoto; you can see the various stages of the city through it's architecture. Some buildings have existed since the Ancient Japanese eras, some buildings are indicative of the move towards "modernization", meaning modern style architecture with lots of straight lines, and then there are the styles of the in between. The city itself is a walking museum.

But I digress. After taking a crowded subway where we were told to form buddy groups (I'm pretty sure I passed this assignment in kindergarten but okay) and make sure we got off at the right stop (which was only two stops after we got on). But then we reached the university and it's so beautiful. You get this feeling of peace when you first walk onto campus. I didn't even realize were were on campus until someone told me! I felt like I was walking in a park or something.

As you can see, it feels like a residential area. When we first arrived, there wasn't anyone walking around so I assumed we were still in a residential area. FALSE. Apparently, this is only one of the campuses Doshisha University has. All the way across town there is another campus, but that, from what I've gathered, is mainly space for the extracurriculars to take place. And then we walked to the Stanford Center and were basically given a rundown of the facility.

(Yay!)

Then we met the Center's staff, learned about what to do in emergencies, were given the rundown on groping and trains and chikan (japanese for perverts), and then released for lunch (which we were finally given our stipends for...yeah for extra $$). Lunch however, was only an hour, and subsequently we were rushed back into a classroom (suprisingly it fit all 35 of us) and we learned a little bit about the field trips we might be taking etc. And then we had a long interminable hour of setting up our laptops to be compatible with the Doshisha University wireless connection. First off, the initial instructions were only for PC users. UM...HELLO, half the students at least have macs. No PC users, do not unite over this, because in fact, despite the specific instruction given to the PC users (even though the guy who was giving the instruction was talking entirely in Japanese and so the computer science majors of the group basically figured it out themselves and then tried to show everyone else), not all the PC users got access. And then they gave out instructions for the Mac people. However, these were instructions for a 10.4 operating system. Guess What? I have 10.5, which, while it is cooler in terms of its interface, now forced me to kind of figure out on my own how to set up things. But I have my own techie streak in me and I eventually figured it out. :) The irony of this situation is that you'd think Japan, which we classify stereotypically as on top of their electronic genius, was having these issues inputing us into their wireless; strange.

But when that hour was over, we were released to go in our groups to visit certain sights of the city (because apparently we're making presentations to our fellow students to encourage them to go see these places). In my group I had Austen (whom I had Japanese with these past 2 quarters), Yan (who exclusively speaks in Japanese), Kevin (who suffered through Econ 52 with me last year winter quarter), and David (a first year japanese student). Surprisingly, we are all juniors. It was a blast though. We went to Sanjusangendo Temple, in which there are 1000 Buddhas carved out of wood and painted with gold, each bearing a unique expression, 28 guardian dieties (whom are Gods in hinduism and whose function has changed slightly in Buddhism), and a large Buddha. We were required to take off our shoes at the front and walk through the temple in silence since some people were actually there to pray etc. Too bad we weren't allowed to take pictures...

After though we spent a little bit walking the grounds of the temple. Pretty pretty stuff.

Between the bus and the subway, getting a little lost in the streets of downtown Kyoto in the rain, we made it back to the hotel. The boys ended up getting hungry so they went to dinner a bit early and Austen and I found some other SCTI students and we hit up dinner and dessert soon after.

And now I'm back here and about to fall asleep on the keyboard. Day 2 of Orientation is tomorrow...but for now I'm headed to bed to hopefully catch up on well needed sleep! Sweet dreams!