Day 2: getting around, orientation and such

Getting up at 7:30 was surprisingly easy (even with my jet lag), but probably because my sleep schedule is so messed up anyways, I really didn't even notice that I had slept only 6 hours in the past 42.  I called home using Skype in the morning, and it works very well (as an alternative to a cell phone).  Breakfast was difficult, so all I had was a bit of milk and a granola bar.

The morning was the placement test, which mostly consisted of a short written exam and oral interview.  It went about as well as I thought it would, with a few mistakes here and there, but I'll just have to wait and see what my results are in the morning.  It's only then that we'll know which texts we'll be using, who's in our class (module), and what our level of speaking and reading are (even though not too much emphasis is placed on kanji here, I'll still be purchasing the optional workbook).

In the afternoon, after a lunch I had at this one restaurant that I can't quite remember the name of, though was so tasty that I'm sure I'll be back more than once, we had our official or

ientation and tour of the campus given (in English) by one of the administrative heads of Yamasa, Declan Murphy.  He provided plenty of dry, witty humor, and a thick Irish accent to top it off.

Then what?  I had a monetary issue to work out, which really proved to be nothing at all, and paid for part of housing.  Then, everybody sat around, talked in their native languages for about 1-2 hours, and then we went our respective ways, back to our dorms or homestays.  I, afterwards, thought I'd make it down to Seiyu and get that program for my DS (that kanji dictionary), but they didn't have it.  Instead, I just got a few more things from the Daiso.  Surprise, surprise.

More tomorrow afternoon, I'm either going to have something to eat or just go to sleep to get some rest before the first day of classes.

Again, a picture with which to leave and amuse you: this is the sign for the "びっくりドンキー”, which I mentioned in my other post (so I'm not going to talk too much about it here) (just refer you to the first one).