Day 2

6-14-08

I’ve just spent over 12 hours in school. With classrooms and teachers and a schedule and everything. I’m even literally in a school.

Hey look, a school!

And I’ve been having a damn fine time of it too, despite the totalitarian schedule and cafeteria meals. Re: lack of organizational skills mentioned in the last entry: I have come to the conclusion that such lack was entirely an anomaly. Since then, everything has been very scheduled, down to the last minute of Free Time in Washburn Hall or Lights Out at 10:30. It’s a lot like camp, actually, what with all the close-to-you-age Alumni Advisors or the curfew of exactly when you have to be back in your room. The classes--covering everything from Survival Japanese to Current Japan to Cultural Workshops about calligraphy or Japanese fashion--are only about 30 minutes to an hour, so that works well with my inability to stay in the same classroom for very long.

My calligraphic skills.

We spend all of our classes, except for languages, with the same group: our “kumi.” My kimi is the Pink Kumi, a color that, of course, automatically makes it the best. The fact that the orientations are beign taught by young people who went to Japan with YFU who can now impart words of comfort and hi-larious anecdotes is fantastic, and said anecdotes are quickly erasing my worries.

Classes with my kumi.

So far, besides the alumni stories, I think I like meeting the other travelers the best. I hate to use the camp metaphor again, but it’s accurate. We’ve been thrown together, and though normally you probably wouldn’t hang out with the people that you do, you just latch onto the first person you can and stick with them. There’s the girls I met at the airport: quiet and scholarly Eda from the East Coast; bubbly, swing-dancing, wire-thin Larissa; Alex, one of those fashionable, mature-seeming types; and Faith, Catholic school girl and classy Capricorn. And then there are the people in my kumi: adorable Kylie from the suburbs of Detroit, and our alumni leader Kristina who told us about her first disastrous dinner on her exchange trip to Japan last year. There’s the two girls I dorm with: bespectacled, curly-haired Tasha with her anime sweatshirt and Syndl, who has blonde streaks in her dyed black hair and flaming dragon wrap-around pants and blasts the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. I don’t think they could get a more diverse group of people if they tried. (Which, now that I think about, I’m sure they did).

My dorm’s rec room.

Just tonight I spent an hour playing pool in the rec room with a girl whose name I never did find out, but we got along like old friends. (And I played quite well, if I do say so myself. Five balls in a row at one point). It’s really amazing how quickly you can bond with people.