Mizu

Mizu.

Epic

Epic.

Blossoming.

Blossoming.

Lunch

Lunch.

Shinkansen

Shinkansen.

Vending.

Vending.

Here

So I've made it here safely! I'm currently sitting in my apartment in Kyoto, it's 3 a.m., and I just woke up after having slept for about 5 hours, which means I have "jisa-boke" or, as we say in English speaking countries, jet-lag. This is experience has felt pretty different than my previous two trips here. There are two major differences between now and then. The first is that I speak a lot more Japanese now, which means I understand a lot more of what is going on around me, and that I am also comfortable in communicating with people. The second is that we don't have a host family or Japanese people always looking after us. That makes a pretty big difference without a doubt. We have had UC EAP people from Tokyo helping us along these first few days with orientations and taking us where we need to go, but at the end of the day they let go of the leash pretty much. There are ten of us living in my apartment building, and 30 UC students all together on this program. We all haven't really had any chances to make other friends (i.e. Japanese friends), so we stick together pretty well. This has been good for the first few days as we get to one another and get used to being here. The bummer is that we speak English to each other the entire time. We'll probably have plenty of time to practice our Japanese eventually anyway, so for now, it's no big deal.
My friend Adam gave me a cool idea to do with this blog. I'm going to post one picture a day and one word to go with that picture. I'm going to try my best to keep this up as long as possible. I'll also make longer posts like this one where I talk about things and post multiple pictures. Here are a bunch:

Advanced toilet.























Guess what those buttons do.




















The exit for my school and the imperial palace...



















The view from by the elevator of my apartment building.











Outside the window of our classroom yesterday. With all of its brick buildings, this place looks more like an American college that UCSC.
Last but not least, a video:



That was just to give you guys somewhat of an impression what it was like walking around last night here. I'll try to take a few more videos if I can sometime.
Well, I hope this was a good first post from Japan! By the way, I wrote most of this at about 3 a.m., but then my internet connection got lost, so I went back to sleep, woke up, and finished this up. Thanks for checking this out!

VISA

Wow....all the paper work has been done, except for the visa. They're not expected to arrive to us until next week, one week before I leave at the earliest, three days before I leave at the latest(!). It'll work out one way or another. My friend that has done this a few times before said that if I have to, I can figure it out once I'm over there, which is probably fine, but I'd definitely prefer to have all that business taken care of over here. Oh, and packing, I haven't started yet. We'll see about that...