After a relatively painless hour-and-a-half flight, I arrived at the Kansai International Airport. Immigration took a while, but I met another student studying in the same program as I am in line, so we chatted as we waited, and it wasn't so bad. After I got my luggage, which was waiting for me by the time I got out of immigration, I struggled out the door and managed to find my shuttle. Speaking of luggage, I'm so glad my dad flies a lot. Because he was with me when I was checking in, I got to skip the line, and I didn't have to pay any overweight fees. Thank goodness for frequent flier! I had to split up with my newly-made friend because we reserved different shuttles, but since all the students studying at the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (KCJS) were staying at the same hotel, it wasn't too much of a problem.
The shuttle ride took longer than I expected; I think from the airport to the hotel took roughly an hour and a half, but I wasn't paying close attention. I sat next to another person going to KCJS in the shuttle. It was so exciting to semi-coincidentally meet people who I'll be spending the next three months with! After checking into the hotel, I met a bunch more people who were just chilling in the lobby and talking. I dropped off my bags in my room and came back down to introduce myself and be introduced to some more study abroad students.
We went for a walk around the area, and we stopped into various departments stores and oogled at the cool stuff. Before we went anywhere, however, I requested that we all find me an authentic Japanese Calpico/Calpis in Japan. We all went to the convenience store, and I bought a bottle. I hadn't had one since the day I left the states, since Korea, for some bizarre reason, doesn't have Calpico, so I was extremely satisfied.
Earlier, another student had taken the initiative to email everyone about perhaps grabbing dinner together, so we returned to the lobby before six and met yet another group of people. More self-introductions occurred, this time in Japanese, and then we went to dinner. Since our group was so large, we split up into different parties. My group of seven went to a restaurant called Janome, which the shopkeeper translated to "snake eye" for us. Although I had ramen in mind, when I saw kitsune udon on the menu, I couldn't resist! I sure love kitsune udon. The shopkeeper answered all of our foreigner questions quite patiently and thoroughly, and he taught us some phrases in Kansai dialect, as well as a tongue twister, at our request. Because one member of our group was very outgoing and unabashed at asking questions, we got to learn all this neat stuff. It makes me think that I should try to interact with others more freely as well. I'll definitely learn Japanese much better if I do so.
I carry around a small notebook so I can jot down things I learn or ask someone I don't understand to write down what he or she said so that I can look it up later. My great aunt gave me the advice to carry a notebook in a foreign country, and I figured it wouldn't hurt. On my very first day, it's proved useful. While someone else asked all the questions, I recorded all the answers for future reference. I felt slightly inadequate writing, however, because I really couldn't distinguish what the man at the restaurant was saying. Even after asking multiple times, I still couldn't quite figure out if the vowel made a long sound or short sound, and I had to rely on everyone else, who managed to get it quite quickly, to dictate the phrase to me. I hope that I'll get used to hearing fluent speech by the time my time here is up.
I read through half of my pocket guide to Japanese grammar on the flight here, and I realized how rusty my Japanese has gotten. I could barely remember all the characters of the alphabet. I'm worried about my kanji (chinese character) recognition, but I'll deal with that later. I was stressing earlier about the placement test, but since I should be going into level three, and level three is the lowest level they offer, I'll be put into the right class even if I fail the test, so I'm less stressed out. That's sort of a pessimistic way to look at it, but hey, I don't want to be stressed out and studying to death while I'm in Japan. That's not what I came here to do. I'm here to breath in the culture, and that's what I plan on doing. Sure, my main point is to become fluent in Japanese, but that will definitely be accomplished much better by relaxing and interacting with native people, rather than shutting myself up all day with a bunch of textbooks.
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