Commute/University/Okonomiyaki

The first week of school is halfway over! Although, it really isn't actual school yet...only orientation week. So, in terms of classes, things haven't been the most exciting. However, new explorations and discoveries in Japan definitely made up for the lack of excitement in the classroom.

First of all, my commute to school - back in Vegas, I'm so used to living about 15 minutes of driving away from school that I'm probably pretty spoiled in terms of transportation. Here, my daily commute to school is about an hour there and another hour back. I have to walk ~20 minutes to go to the train station, take my first train, transfer to my second train, then walk another ~20 minutes to go to school. The last walk is also a steep uphill since the school I'm attending is at the top of a hill, so every day is leg day, basically.

The road to the train station

Beginning of the hike

Mid-hike

Thankfully, the scenery in Japan is pretty, so that makes the commute much easier. After doing it for a few days, I'm starting to get more used to the long commute. The weather is also really nice, especially in the mornings. These morning hikes are slowly starting to grow on me. Maybe in a few weeks I won't feel out of breath after walking up the hill...

My first day at school, I was just blown away by the campus. It's gorgeous, and I really wish my campus back in Vegas was this nice...

Campus on a sunny day

Greenery

Japanese pond

First day of school!

The campus isn't huge, but there are tons and tons of buildings compacted in the amount of space. Being someone who sucks at directions already plus my lack of Japanese understanding, it's been hard to find where things are on campus. But at least I have a lot of nice scenery to look at whenever I get lost. 

A famous Asian squatter toilet

Second day OOTD

Another quick OOTD

The first couple of days was spent getting a lot of the formalities and documentation done. Paperwork, handouts, packets, and powerpoints filled my days. 

On the third day, we started our library orientation. The library here is really nice, but I don't have much to say about the size since it's just about the size of my home university - 5 floors. However, everything is really high tech. Just to enter, you have to put your student ID card in front of a sensor and automatic gates will open to let you through. There are huge touchscreens around the library that allow you to browse reference materials such as newspapers and magazines throughout many, many different countries in the world. Also, the bookshelves are electrically operated! All the bookshelves are compacted together right next to each other with no aisles in between. When you want to access a bookshelf, you press a button, and the bookshelves will move apart. If you press the button again, the lights in that aisle will turn on. I felt like a muggle at Hogwarts.

For lunch, my friend Christian and I visited 7-11 to grab some quick food. Japanese 7-11s definitely live up to their hype.

All the snacks are cute

There's even a large selection of 3DS games

This is only about a fourth of the amount of prepared food options

In the end, I settled with a bowl of rice with tofu and beef over it (mapo tofu), a natto and kimchi rice ball (onigiri), and a bottle of lemon-lime yogurt drink. 

All of this was about $6

Needless to say, I left 7-11 very satisfied.

Afterwards, Christian and I went to a bookstore at a train station to kill some time, where I found my favorite manga series.

Hunter x Hunter!!

Japanese bookstores have so many different genres and categories and so many notebooks and stationeries. They are an enigma.

Christian and I were going to hang out at his host family's house and eat. On the way home, it was raining, so we decided to take the stairs down to this wash-river sort of thing. 

hi

Yaaaay

Boooo

Since it was raining, the middle of the wash was flowing with water. There were these stepping stones that rose above the water level and allowed you to cross the river. Of course, this was an adventure opportunity not to be passed up, so Christian and I walked across the stepping stones and back while the water was running beneath our feet. 

A residential area in Nishinomiya

After much delay, we finally made it back to his host family's house. His host mom made us okonomiyaki, which is sort of a Japanese pancake-pizza-like thing popular in the Kansai region. It has dough with eggs, green onions, chicken, cabbage, fish, and sometimes more seafood and more vegetables to each cook's liking.

いただきます!

Flips pancake-pizza

It was delicious, and we were even served plum sake and pears with it, which was not an opportunity to be passed up. Afterwards, I had some Japanese strawberry ice cream, which was also delicious.

By the time we were done eating, it was already dark outside, so I started on my commute back. After getting off at the last stop, I decided to check out yet another convenience store by the train station. I discovered that they also sell underwear and socks at the convenience store...how convenient..heh...heh...

And on that note, I will end this blog post. Hope you enjoyed the read!