For a level 1 quest, honestly, this beats killing ten boars and collecting their tusks.
On the 17. our young adventurer (i.e. me) set out to new lands (Japan)…. ok, let’s not take it too far.
And sorry for the late post, I didn’t really have a lot of spare time on my hand, so before there is TOO much to write about I shall give a brief overview!
Well, not much happened on the way to the airport, I went with my parents by train. The flight was at 2 PM and took 11 hours. I arrived ~8 AM. In the plane I had really nice Japanese neighbours and we talked a bit (impressed them with my Japanese *cough*). But they were really kind, I’m really bad with landings, so when we arrived at Osaka I was feeling aweful and from sitting the 11 hours without sleeping my blood circulation was crap. My kind neighbours escorted me out of the landing area and when I was feeling better helped me with devising a route to my dormitory (after telling me that I should NOT take the subway with my two large suitcases, which I originally planned). So they told me to take the bus from the airport to Umeda (center of Osaka) and the local train from there. I actually experience my first trafic jam in Japan right then, because around Umeda”事故が多発しています。”, i.e. multiple accidents happened (but I had only to wait ~40 minutes extra). A by the way, it was raining the whole day, mostly slight rain. But the whole day… and the climate, well, describing it as “hard to tell the difference between the sweat and the rain” is not taking it too far. Anyway!
Ticket! I had to ask how to buy a ticked for the train, which a nice old man told me. You actually have to put in the money before you select a ticket, which defies common sense. And you don’t select where you want to go, but how expensive it is to go there.
After arriving at my final station I walked the 15 minutes to my dorm, past the park which is REALLY NEAT. I’ll probably go jogging there this evening. Anyway, I found the dorm right away and was greeted by an army of Japanese staff asking me for my luggage and we handled all the move-in paperwork in maybe 15 minutes. I was REALLY surprised by this. There is staff present everyday from morning ~7 AM to 10 PM on weekdays and you can ask them pretty much anything. There was also a “tutor” a Japanese inhabitant of the dormitory who showed me arround. There is a washing room and a dedicated room where you can hang up your clothes to dry (again awesome, because I don’t want them hanging in my room). There is a tennis court and you can get rackets etc from the staff. The showers are perfect, no slow, weak trickling of water and you can actually CHANGE the temperature…. anyway. My room! The description of my room I initially received in my notification email…. “chest, bed, desk, chair, Air Con”, 8.1 m². The room looks actually bigger, I haven’t meassured it yet. I have a desk, an additional shelf, a friggin’ decently sized refrigerator (which wasn’t mentioned at all). There really is no wasted space. ^___^
I’m also pleased with the view from my window, there is some green! The next supermarket/shopping mall is only a 10 minute walk away and you can get most everything there. And god! You actually get to talk with Japanese people. Doesn’t sound particularly cool when I write about it, but I had a great conversation with the lady from the second-hand bicycle store (gonna buy one tomorrow probably)…
Other than buying some neccessities (adapter) and walking around (a lot), no major event beside that. 🙂
Today I went to the post office and opened a bank account and to the city office to register my insurance and the address where I live. And bought a lot of stuff not worth writing about (nothing suspicious, cuttlery, chop sticks, food, cooking stuff, etc pp).
There are a lot of German people here… and a lot of physicists in my dormitory. びっくり.
Ok, now I shall try to upload photos…
More coming later and I hope I figure out how how to add descriptions to the pictures. Well then, またね！
Nippon Quest 