The 3 Musketeers & SILS Orientation

The only plans I had for the day was going to the SILS orientation from 130-330... but first breakfast!

No way you can mess up spaghetti

 I made some for myself and Michael, a fellow American from Ohio. In America I'm used to spaghetti being dirt cheap. You buy like 2lbs of noodles and a huge jug of spaghetti sauce and it won't even cots you 10USD and will last for at least a week (I eat two bowls for one meal and if I ate it every day for every meal it would probably only last me a 5 days hahah) but at Santoku the noodles were kind of standard price but the sauce was a tiny can that I used in one sitting and was like around 3USD... so expensive.

Then we sat around and chatted like usual and I Skyped with my mom. We were all mildly freaking about signing up for classes and what not because their process is so much different than our respective countries. In America classes are on a first come first serve basis as long as you have cleared the prerequisites. Here it's like "applying" for a class so whatever order you are in line for the class is irrelevant. I'm unclear on how they choose which students for a class but having some backup classes would be ideal. I think they give you like 4 days to pick classes and then the class "results" are announced.

Thank god our presenter was lively and entertaining

 So this SILS orientation was only 2 hours compared to the initial orientation that was 7 hours. Unfortunately it could definitely have been condensed into one solid hour and still felt grueling and unnecessary. Luckily our presenter was a lively Frenchman that would include anecdotes of his own experiences with SILS and he had a sense of humor. No more reading 18 pages of monotone dorm rules in 3 languages.

this is what I did with my time during orientation

Lillian's University. I really like their mantra

Yeah no I'm not bored

IDK my BFF Rose?

After orientation Joanna and I had decided to go to Harajuku and Anne, Sasha, and another Russian girl wanted to tag along. Our plans didn't work out though because Joanna, Anne, and I planned to meet up with another group from Hoshien for dinner and by the time we hit Takadanobaba it was like 430 and we had to meet them at 6. Not enough time to truly enjoy Harajuku and get some quality shopping time in, but we will be going today instead at 12PM.

COME BACK TO ME!
Just wait I'll buy you cat treats tomorrow and then you'll love me!!!

Got some sweet potato taiyaki on our way to Takadanobaba

So many XY banners... I WANT THEM

We've never venture past Takadanobaba station before but apparently GRAND TOKYO proposes prosperity and abundance to a city.... what city they're referring to I have no clue

Sasha showed me the bank that she went to to exchange money but unfortunately they were somehow closed at 430PM... So I need to exchange some traveller's cheques today so I have some money for Harajuku. Hopefully it won't be a long process. After this Sasha and her friend split from our group and they went to Harajuku while the 3 Musketeers headed off to find a cafe.

Everything looks so carefully made

Choosing what they want

Told her to pose hahah

I'm really not used to how crowded every cafe is
You walk into almost any Starbucks in America and you can usually find a place to sit

I look really uncomfortable XD Anne what are you doing?!

My eyes can see into your soul

America wins. USA! USA!

The 3 of us pretty much sat around and had country wars again with AmericaVSCanadaVSAustralia. I don't know why they even bother because America always wins. Hell yeah world's only superpower! Though Joanna did tell me a funny Canadian meme about the band Nickelback. Apparently Comic Sans is the "Nickelback" font because Comic Sans is just.... ITS COMIC SANS. Please never use this font. Even Papyrus is better like come on people!

View from Takadanobaba

We waited for a while because well... Takadanobaba station is pretty large but we didn't pick a place at the station to meet so we were just standing there

Anne decided to lean on me so she gets this awkward photo as punishment!

Blend is Beautiful. Also schoolgirls.

 We ended up finding Masami from Niji no Kai and after 20 minutes of more waiting with him we found Akari (?) and her Hoshien group. We went to eat at an Okinawan style restaurant.

Sup

Our group had 8 people so it was fairly cramped in a tiny Japanese restaurant

Algae-ish stuff? It grows with seaweed but I cannot remember the name for the life of me

Fries made with purple potatoes I think? They were really good!

Left to right
Aud (France), Akari (not sure if that's her name... she from Niji no Kai, a club at Waseda), Cant remember her name, sorry! (Germany), Masami (also from Niji no Kai)

Left to right
Me (America), Joanna (Australia), I can't remember her name, sorry!, Anne (Canada)

Our whole group! It was really fun and the food was delicious!

However for whatever reason Joanna insisted on feeding me and for this picture everyone kept pulling me down into their laps!? So I'm sorry I take up most of the photo hahah.

Ice cream mochi dessert

My favourite dessert of the night! Vanilla ice cream on the side and I think it's a Taro tart?

Parfaits! Yeah we tried a lot of different things!

Our bill came out to almost 16,000JPY and Joanna being the kind and smart person she is took she check from Masami before he could pay for most of it. He was only going to ask 1,000JPY from each of us and front the rest... which is really kind of him but also unfair for him. There is a very strong "kouhai"- "senpai" social... figure? Not sure the word but there is a lot of social pressure on the "senpai" (or oldest group member) to take care of his "kouhai" (younger members). Thus they will usually pay for meal or most of the meal but on the other hand there is a lot of pressure on "kouhai" to follow and listen to whatever their "senpai" say. It's a big enough deal that during our SILS orientation we were warned not to pressure younger students or even underage students (no one IDs you in Japan... though we may just look old enough) into drinking.

Why so serious

We debated going to Karaoke after the meal but some people decided against it. To be honest I kinda wanted to because I feel it's something I need to experience at least once while I'm here.

I had woken at 4AM this morning and then had a nap from 6-9AM but by 9ishPM I was dead tired. I was actually fairly tired in the middle of our meal. The consequences of a messed up sleep schedule. Oh well, I headed back to the dorm with Anne who needed to FaceTime her sister.

my first package... it's beautiful!

When I got back I ran into Aya and she handed me this! I was floored! I ordered some things off Amazon Japan like 11AM this morning and it wasn't even 12 hours and somehow it was already here. I whine about the 2 days it takes Prime in America but here its just lighting fast. Granted this was only half of my package but still! Expedited shipping is so much faster when your entire country is the size of California.

Any ways I had to force myself to write this blog... I think I'm getting lazier and lazier about updating. I'll try my best to keep up this daily blog and even if I don't I will still be taking tons of photos. Till next time.