School Has Begun...

So school has started and now that registration has ended my classes are set. I'm taking Intensive Japanese, two 1.5 hour classes everyday M-F (so that makes a total of 15 hours of Japanese class a week), History of the Japanese Language- a linguistics course of which the first lecture totally went over my head, and Nationalism, Citizenship and Democracy in Japan. I end at 4:45p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays and 6:30p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays so I'm a little bummed out but I guess it'll keep me on my toes to do homework and such in my free time between classes. I'm very lucky that my host family lives so close to the school- I only have a total of 4 stops and one transfer on the subway! I've found that I can get by with leaving home at around 8:40am to make it to school for Japanese at 9:15a.m. I'm also lucky that the transfer from one line to the other line entails a downward course through 5 or so escalators on my way to school rather than the other way around. (My commute home amounts to my daily exercise. I force myself to walk up them but I'm quite out of breath already only after the first huge monstrous one. Soon enough I'll master them and be like those Tokyo-ers who walk up all the escalators without being affected at all!)

I don't have many great pictures now that school has started so I'm sorry to disappoint!





Taken from the first section of the train- there's a subway driver to the side and he wears white gloves, which is about all you can see of him from inside the train.


Akihabara- electronic district in Tokyo. Interesting escalators/stairs..


More of Akihabara.. advertising for maid cafes..?


For the Kimura Takuya fans.


I went to the Koreatown-ish place here and was really happy to look at this menu. That day I had four whole meals because I ended up eating dinner before going out but it was all worth it.


~$30 worth of food. Expensive but worth it. I only made it a week and a half in Japan without having Korean food... But my host mom was so sweet though- she bought kimchi just for me! It was a little un- fermented? but still good.


Korean words on signs! No debilitating Chinese characters to worry about! There were Korean pharmacies, super markets, video stores, stores dedicated to all things korean actors/actresses, restaurants, etc. here! (G- remember that Doc.Donald we saw in shindang ddukbokki town? haha probably not a franchise but there was one here!)


Entrance to the main shopping street in Harajuku. I'm told and seen pictures where no inch of ground can be seen because of all the people here. Rainy early afternoon on a wednesday would probably explain why it wasn't like that on that day.


The center whilte building with red letters is where I got my electronic dictionary in Ikebukuro. 8 or 9 floors of just electronics! The buildings around are department stores.


Me and Teresa :)


I pointed at a picture and ordered. I was very happy with my dish. Don't ask me what it was because it was all in Kanji and I didn't know how to read it. -_-


Teresa's dinner and very fun to eat. Tonkatsu with udon noodles.


My dessert. We definitely splurged since this dessert and the other one pictured below cost more than dinner did, but it was definitely worth it. That center mound thing is ice cream filled mochi! Lots of fruit, mochi, sugar cookies, star and moon shaped jellies = happy Mia but empty wallet D:


kiwiii


Teresa's ice cream. You can't see it but it's in a long tall class so not seen are the scoops of vanilla ice cream, a slice of cake, cereal, and hot fudge at the bottom. The place was called Milky Way in Ikebukuro- just two stops away from my station.


Star shaped jelliesss!


I had said I was full after dinner. Apparently not...


This is what I'm afraid of in the mornings on my commute to school...


Battle wound from a tennis racket after four hours.


What's real and what's not?


I momentarily felt like I was in a different season when I saw this...



That's all for today!



(Oh and yup- it was that white figure in the window. It's a stuffed animal- dog but it's kind of leaning and it's tongue is sticking out so it always scared me because with a quick glance it looked like a dying dog squashed underneath a desk...)