After 16+ hours in the air I was very relieved to stretch my legs and see Tokyo. The flight arrived at Haneda airport about an hour early, so I got my bags, got through customs, etc. super awkwardly by smiling, nodding, saying "hai, hai" and "sumimasen deshita" a bunch, and neglecting to fill out most parts of the forms I was given since I can only kind of read 300 of the approximately 2000 most commonly used kanji. But somehow I made it through, bought some yen, and met Kaseda-san, a Tokyo University student who came to pick me up from the airport.
Some quick background: Tokyo University, or Todai (from Tokyo Daigaku), as it is known, is widely regarded as Japan's best university by far. To get in almost 100% of the students attended juku, or entrance exam cram school, alongside attending their high school, and studied their butts off to earn the kind of entrance exam scores necessary to get into Todai because, unlike American colleges, Japanese schools base their admissions almost entirely on high school grades and entrance exams. In any case, these students are wicked smaht.
My Japanese teacher for this MIT Japanese class (shameless plug, take 21F.562+21F.563, aka Very Fast Track Japanese, or VFT! Yes, it's 21 units, but it's definitely worth it and you get an entire HASS concentration in one semester), Yuka Akiyama, managed to get us in contact with a handful of Tokyo University faculty and students. In fact, one of the course's requirements was to Skype with a Tokyo University student every two weeks, which was a great experience and incredibly useful. Thanks to this relationship Todai students and faculty came to visit us at MIT in March, and now we get to spend time learning Japanese on their campus getting a little taste of their life.
In any case, I had met Kaseda-san when he came to MIT in March and was very excited to see him again, not to mention incredibly grateful that he came traveled 40+ minutes to pick me up from the airport. Besides helping me traverse the maze of the Tokyo train and subway system, Kaseda-san also pointed out a few things that I should be mindful of when I'm going to board the train, seeing as I was all over the place: when riding the escalator, stand on the very left so people can walk past on the right (is this a thing in America? It should be lol); when a train arrives, you must stand in the marked areas (away from the door) until no more people are getting off the train. Seemingly small things, but being the complete ditz that I am, I'm sure I will continue to be oblivious to such things for the remainder of my stay, and thus hope not only that I can actually get used to them, but that being a spaz won't get me into any trouble.
After an hour or so of riding a variety of trains, Kaseda-san dropped me off at my hotel. It was super cool! Take a look: (actually, I'll post pictures and videos later, taking off to explore now)
Having purposely not slept on the airplane to try to avoid jet lag, I went to bed exhausted at 2:30am and woke up quite naturally at 7am, at which time I packed my things and carried my 100lbs of luggage a few blocks down to another hotel, where I will be staying until the 9th. Of course, I got lost and managed to turn a 10-minute walk into an hour walk. I asked a lady for directions and understood her directions, but then failed to understand the rest of what she was saying at 100mph. Seeing my perplexed expression, she said "wakaranai", said something about English, then showed me to the door of the hotel. The front desk, however, was nowhere to be found, so I asked a random guy in the building in very awkward Japanese something along the lines of what I should do with my luggage. Of course I didn't understand any of what he said, so I freaked out for a few minutes, then decided to find some internet and try to get my bearings. Miraculously, I found an open WiFi network, of which there aren't many in Japan, and got a hold of my sensei on Skype.
Having purposely not slept on the airplane to try to avoid jet lag, I went to bed exhausted at 2:30am and woke up quite naturally at 7am, at which time I packed my things and carried my 100lbs of luggage a few blocks down to another hotel, where I will be staying until the 9th. Of course, I got lost and managed to turn a 10-minute walk into an hour walk. I asked a lady for directions and understood her directions, but then failed to understand the rest of what she was saying at 100mph. Seeing my perplexed expression, she said "wakaranai", said something about English, then showed me to the door of the hotel. The front desk, however, was nowhere to be found, so I asked a random guy in the building in very awkward Japanese something along the lines of what I should do with my luggage. Of course I didn't understand any of what he said, so I freaked out for a few minutes, then decided to find some internet and try to get my bearings. Miraculously, I found an open WiFi network, of which there aren't many in Japan, and got a hold of my sensei on Skype.
Sensei came to my rescue, took me to the front desk, helped me find a convenient store to get breakfast (holy cow, 7-Eleven food here is delicious!!), and walked with me to class on Todai campus. ありがとうございました!
Japanese class was fun; it seems like it'll be a lot of work, but at least I can now legitimately focus all my attention on Japanese (as if that's not what I did all semester anyhow, har har har...). We're doing 3 hours of class every morning at 9am, then we're free to do whatever in the afternoon.
Japanese class was fun; it seems like it'll be a lot of work, but at least I can now legitimately focus all my attention on Japanese (as if that's not what I did all semester anyhow, har har har...). We're doing 3 hours of class every morning at 9am, then we're free to do whatever in the afternoon.
Today, for example, a handful of Todai faculty and staff, all of whom came to MIT in March, treated us to lunch, which was very kind of them. It was great seeing them, and the food was great!
Now we're taking off to go explore Akihabara, the nerd capital of the world. Couldn't be more excited!
Now we're taking off to go explore Akihabara, the nerd capital of the world. Couldn't be more excited!
