Today many of us woke up early and decided to check out some of the town. Me and my roommate Ted from Rose-Hulman walked around town for a little while. The SGE students had given us a nice hand drawn map of places they suggested that were close to our place in the Nishikawa Heights building, including grocery stores, amusements, electronics stores, convenience stores. We walked down to the supermarket / 100 yen store (dollar store) they recommended, but it was like 6 or 7 AM so they weren't open. We went to the "Family Mart" right down the street from our place instead. I bought some melon bread and a big orange juice.
After that we came back for a meeting with the professors from japan at 11. Our baggage delivered from the airport to the KIT Office of International Studies had also been brought to the meeting place by some of the students, so I brought mine back to my room. We packed into the tiny lounge room, and our shoes filled up the shoe holder and poured out the door. It was a living orientation for the apartments mostly. All of the teachers were young Japanese women who had studied in America for sometime, except the culture teacher Debra Solomon (sp?) who was American but who had lived here for at least 2 years previously working on her doctorate.
One of the first things they told us when we first met them, and then again today was to be quiet in the building, because the professors, other students, and some researchers all live here, and noise carries well here. They also told us we cannot have any visitors, which is a rule that dates back to the 90s when a cult group recruited college students to create a chemical attack in a subway in Japan. It was big news back then. I think this is the event they were referring to. Apparently some of the cult members were recruited from around this area.
We're also not supposed to drink the water because the pipes are really old in this building, but there's a faucet with a water filter in the lounge we can use. We can still use the water in the apartments to brush our teeth and such because, to quote one of the professors, "it's not Mexico." We also have cleaning duties for the lounge and laundry rooms on a rotating schedule. They are giving us computers to use on Monday, and there's only one internet jack in this building. The computers we brought wouldn't work because the connection is MAC filtered to only allow the KIT computers.
Because of this, Professor Solomon offered to bring her laptop back later in the day so we could email our families and let them know we're ok and we won't have internet for awhile. While she was here, I talked with her for a long time about Japanese history regarding the democracy that formed in Japan after WWII and the role the emperor plays in the government here today, and the treaties that Japan and Korea signed that require them to help the US in any wars we are in. Apparently Korean forces in Vietnam suffered much higher casualty rates than US forces, and the first time Japan has been able to send troops abroad was for the current war in Iraq.
When we were using her computer, we also noted her MAC address, and later set up a wireless network with one of the routers a student had brought, but the connection is still pretty iffy, especially if a lot of people are using it.
Afterwards, I went with the one student from the University of Hawaii to shop at the 100 yen grociery store. He knows a lot of Japanese and is currently planning on living here somehow until he starts another study abroad program in Tokyo in October. At the store I bought cereal, milk, bread and butter to eat until I can figure out what sort of Japanese foods I like, because this stuff was expensive here.
Afterwards we gathered in the lounge where everyone was playing cards. After they started playing Spoons and another game that requires slapping cards, it got very noisy, and even though some of us were telling them to quiet down, the teachers had to come and complain that they were being too loud, and I felt pretty bad that even though they had requested about six times since we got here to be quiet in this building that we were still making such a racket. I hope it isn't going to be a problem going forward.
When I went back to my room at 5, me and Ted decided we wanted to take a nap because we felt really tired all of the sudden. We didn't end up waking up until 4 or 5 the next morning.
After that we came back for a meeting with the professors from japan at 11. Our baggage delivered from the airport to the KIT Office of International Studies had also been brought to the meeting place by some of the students, so I brought mine back to my room. We packed into the tiny lounge room, and our shoes filled up the shoe holder and poured out the door. It was a living orientation for the apartments mostly. All of the teachers were young Japanese women who had studied in America for sometime, except the culture teacher Debra Solomon (sp?) who was American but who had lived here for at least 2 years previously working on her doctorate.
One of the first things they told us when we first met them, and then again today was to be quiet in the building, because the professors, other students, and some researchers all live here, and noise carries well here. They also told us we cannot have any visitors, which is a rule that dates back to the 90s when a cult group recruited college students to create a chemical attack in a subway in Japan. It was big news back then. I think this is the event they were referring to. Apparently some of the cult members were recruited from around this area.
We're also not supposed to drink the water because the pipes are really old in this building, but there's a faucet with a water filter in the lounge we can use. We can still use the water in the apartments to brush our teeth and such because, to quote one of the professors, "it's not Mexico." We also have cleaning duties for the lounge and laundry rooms on a rotating schedule. They are giving us computers to use on Monday, and there's only one internet jack in this building. The computers we brought wouldn't work because the connection is MAC filtered to only allow the KIT computers.
Because of this, Professor Solomon offered to bring her laptop back later in the day so we could email our families and let them know we're ok and we won't have internet for awhile. While she was here, I talked with her for a long time about Japanese history regarding the democracy that formed in Japan after WWII and the role the emperor plays in the government here today, and the treaties that Japan and Korea signed that require them to help the US in any wars we are in. Apparently Korean forces in Vietnam suffered much higher casualty rates than US forces, and the first time Japan has been able to send troops abroad was for the current war in Iraq.
When we were using her computer, we also noted her MAC address, and later set up a wireless network with one of the routers a student had brought, but the connection is still pretty iffy, especially if a lot of people are using it.
Afterwards, I went with the one student from the University of Hawaii to shop at the 100 yen grociery store. He knows a lot of Japanese and is currently planning on living here somehow until he starts another study abroad program in Tokyo in October. At the store I bought cereal, milk, bread and butter to eat until I can figure out what sort of Japanese foods I like, because this stuff was expensive here.
Afterwards we gathered in the lounge where everyone was playing cards. After they started playing Spoons and another game that requires slapping cards, it got very noisy, and even though some of us were telling them to quiet down, the teachers had to come and complain that they were being too loud, and I felt pretty bad that even though they had requested about six times since we got here to be quiet in this building that we were still making such a racket. I hope it isn't going to be a problem going forward.
When I went back to my room at 5, me and Ted decided we wanted to take a nap because we felt really tired all of the sudden. We didn't end up waking up until 4 or 5 the next morning.