THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

TRAINING ROOM

     Beautiful sunny day in Tokyo. Today I woke up early as we were to meet Philipp to go to the training room together. Training room is a place on campus with different machines and weights, it is cheaper than a gym (300 yen per entry). 

     I had to wake up my buddy next door (Ondrej-san), otherwise he would sleep in our training. We left the dorm at 9:15 and at 9:30 were at the meeting point. Philipp didn't turn up for a while. But neither one of us yet had a phone and we didn't know where the training room was... So we had to return to the dorm and then go back out. 

     As it turned out, there is no way to get to the campus from the side of the street that we live in, you have to make a loop and go through the main entrance. This didn't stop us from climbing the fence and making our shortcut. 

Training room (in Japanese "tureiningu rumu") was found on the first floor of student union building. From the inside the building was full with posters. People were playing musical instruments in the hall and everything looked really fun. In a while we found the magic training room. We entered to ask some questions. The lady there spoke really good English and explained to us the conditions. However she said the training room will open in 7 minutes and we had to wait outside... That is exactly what happened! In 7 minutes she took of the sign "closed" and invited us to go in. We paid our 300 jpy entry fee and enjoyed a great workout. By the way, most of the visitors of the training room that morning were foreigners. 

SUPERMARKET OPENING

     Under Motosumiyoshi dorm building on the first floor there is a supermarket. To be more precise, there in from today a supermarket: it just opened. The opening day was something special. Many Japanese people gathered in front of the store, most of them dressed up in suited. Lots of habitants of local neighborhood came with their bikes for the store opening. Apparently, this occasion is promoted very well in Japan and many people gather to get the good discounts on the opening day. 

WELCOME CEREMONY

     1st of April for us is fool's day, in Japan it is the first day of University in spring-summer semester. Today many Japanese students gathered for the welcome ceremony. Some of them came with parents. 

     Interestingly, all male students wear suits with ties. 99% of the suits are black. I can hardly remember anyone wearing jeans or something else than a suit. This is definitely different from the countries I have lived in. Going through a crowd of Japanese students in black suites was quite funny, reminded me Matrix somehow. =)

JAPANESE CLASS

     There are plenty of Japanese classes available for exchange students. There are 2 groups of exchange students in Keio: Japanese Language Students and pert-time exchange students. The first group studies mostly  Japanese Japanese-related subjects, while other group studies subjects in English but is allowed to participate in up to 2 Japanese language courses.

     The timetables of available Japanese classless really bad... Many classes overlap with our regular CEMS classes, those which don't overlap, are simply held in another campus far away. 

     After deciding for a long time, I wanted to try Basic Japanese Conversation class. It seems, that my level is something in between 1 and 2: 1 seems too easy while 2 seems to hard... 

     We went to the class together with other CEMS students. The teacher (sensej) is a very nice lady with great sense of humor. The class was full of international people that never studied Japanese before (most of them) and many of the things seemed new to them. We discussed things like "my name is, I am from etc." It was pretty nice, but pretty basic... Now I am doubting event more, which class to choose. 

GREETINGS

      During the class the teacher we have rehearsed traditional Japanese greetings. Interestingly, for close friends and family there is a special word you use in the morning (short version of good morning), but during the day or afternoon you don't greet each other (family members and close friends). 

      This seemed quite strange to me, how can a husband in Europe come back from work and say nothing to his wife, and hear nothing back from her. Larry, our CEMS student from Taiwan and kanji-master, has explained, that in Taiwan it was the same. Once he said hello to his girlfriend and she got really upset, because she felt he had treated her as a stranger by greeting her. That's a WOW!

FEW RANDOM PICTURES

Office at metro station 

 Little screen showcasing a product

Keio University cookies set

RAMEN
Traditionally after school we headed to eat at some new place. Our master of Kanji has taken us to a very famous ramen place. As usually, at the entrance there is a machine which takes your cash and allows you to choose ramen and drinks you want.
The staff of the place was very hospitable in Japanese way, they even tried to speak English with us. We all ordered a bowl of ramen and rice as a side dish (for free). The plates were huge and full of food. Unintentionally I have ordered quite a spicy one so I had to swap with Larry, who felt it was absolutely normal.
If you would come to this restaurant for the first time, you would think that those Japanese people are crazy. When you enter they all start screaming at you (in reality they are just welcoming a guest). The same is when you leave, all the restaurant staff starts screaming "goodbye" which for a person from the outside would seem really strange. 

Photos by Larry Du

KANJI

     Today we had a talk wit our Kanji-master, Larry. He is from Taiwan and he started studying kanji from elementary school. Now he knows around 8000 symbols. This right away puts him on advanced level of understanding Japanese writing as Japanese kanji are completely the same as Chinese ones. 

     However knowing kanji doesn't allow Larry to read things in Japanese properly. However I heard it takes much shorter to learn Japanese for people with Chinese or Taiwanese origin as they don't need to learn kanji at all, only their pronunciation. 

     Another interesting fact I learned, is that learning Japanese is easier for Taiwanese that for mainland Chinese people, as there are many similar words used in Taiwan (similar to Japanese).