大阪にはじめてすんでいる時

Being in Japan so far has been an entirely surreal experience. I didn't even register until the very end of the flight that I was actually on my way. It just seemed as though I were flying back to Brandeis or someplace familiar and not at all new, until I got off the plane. I was so over-tired, hungry, and dehydrated the first evening to fully realize where I was either. But Thursday morning, I woke up feeling refreshed and in wonderment about where I am and what I'm doing. For the next four and a half months, I'm soaking up all that Japan has to offer!

KIX ひこうじょ

The plane ride was nice. I watched Brave in Japanese and in French and got some Japanese studying done. The plane wasn't packed--actually nearly 1 of every 3 seats was empty, including the one next to me. On the other side of the empty seat was a twenty-something american woman going to Kyoto to teach English this year. We got to chat a bit, and then this cute little Japanese lady came up to us and offered us some California plums she had picked that day, but wanted to get eaten before customs declaration. They were delicious. All in all, it was a good experience, but like I said, I wasn't entirely cognisant of the fact that I was traveling over 5000 miles to an alien land.

相川えきのまえの高校の学生

We are living in what is technically Osaka city proper (though on the final outskirts before smaller cities like Suita--where the university is--emerge), in a neighborhood called Aikawa. I personally think that the neighborhood is adorable. It's just homey enough not to be super overwhelming, but it's still a bustling little area.

えきから家まであるいて行く時

There are cute more traditional Japanese houses, too, which I really like, because if I lived any closer to downtown, I would likely be in a HUGE apartment building complex where I wouldn't see places like this one, which is right across from our house. 

となりの家

This next picture is our apartment/house. I live with 5 other girls, who are super nice and so far awesome people to hang out with!! So there are two other Americans, Amber and Ishani, and our three Japanese counterparts, our roommates Ai (my personal roommate!!), Haruna, and Iyo.

私たちのアパート

This is my own space! There are kitchenettes in each room in addition to a kitchen in the living area, which is neat because I don't have to make a lot of noise when I cook myself breakfast and pack my lunches in the morning. Each of us has a single, so the "roommate" is really more for our support system and bonding, though I hope to get closer with all my housemates, because everyone is super cool!

私のアパート

We had a busy day of orientation on Thursday, and then Amber, Ai, and I went out to eat at a conveyor-belt sushi place. It was quite the experience. We had so much fun, and everything was so new, not to mention tasty. Then on Friday morning, we had to trek to the Higashi-Yodogawa Ward Office to get alien registration dealt with. After dealing with all the bureaucracy stuff (still so much better than say, the DMV), we went to this store that was filled to the brim with CDs, DVDs, and clothing. I was particularly impressed with the sheer vastness of the anime section. I had no idea so much of it existed.

アニメがたくさんあるね

Then, yesterday afternoon, we headed into downtown Osaka (Umeda) for the CET program welcome dinner.

梅田のえきはとてもいそがしんです

We went in early so that we could go shopping, and oh boy! do I understand now why the Japanese are so fashionable and trendy. If I had grown up near malls like theirs, I would for sure be somewhere in the fashion industry right about now. Everything about the mall was just so EXCITING. All of the boutiques were definitely well-marketed because I just wanted to buy everything I saw (not the case for me in America...).

かみのもの

After shopping for a bit, we went to the top floor of the mall to Print Club, which I had never heard of before coming to Japan. So, Print Club, or "Purikura" for short, is a photobooth shop that puts all photobooths in the US to shame. When I entered my first purikura booth, I was immediately struck dumb by the lighting set-up. It's practically full-scale Hollywood lighting. The next thing to note is just how high-tech these booths are. They're not only (duh) all touch-screen, like everything else in Japan, but each booth photoshops (in real-time) the user's features to cater to a particular look or style. We used a kind of "baby face" machine, which automatically adjusts the size of your eyes to a more doe-eyed anime look. If you're REALLY into it, you can rent costumes (like Japanese anime/video game characters, disney characters, and kimono, etc) to take the purikura pictures, but we didn't quite get that far last night.

プリントクラブ

The next step after taking a variety of purikura pictures is to decorate them on the screen in the next booth over. Here, you can add stamps, borders, backgrounds, give yourself kitty ears and glasses like I did, and write cute messages.

プリクラをとっている

The final step is of course to print. The machine is equipped to work with Japanese phones so that all you have to do is tap the phone up to the touch screen and the machine sends you an email that includes the pictures. You also get print-out sticker sheets of the photos, which come in nice little arrangements like this one.

私とロームメート

Overall, this was really fun bonding time with my new housemates, and a new, totally Japanese experience for me to have. I hope that for the rest of the semester, there continue to be awesome things like purikura that I'd never heard of before, but that are really amusing like this pre-dinner housemate bonding was.

私とハウスメート

After the purikura excursion, we headed out to the dinner. The sky was tumultuous and grey, though, and large drops started to come down one by one, harder and harder until finally, a deluge of Osaka rain made the city smell even sweeter (I don't know why, but Osaka definitely smells sweet... comparatively Boston smells like exhaust fumes).

大阪のま天ろう

It was near-perfect timing, because even though we had to cross the street in the downpour a couple of times, we were just heading into a covered pedestrian alley as the rain really started.

雨がつよいふる

Just walking down this kind of alley I felt an absolute cacophony of sensory input. There was the pouring rain hitting the roof above us, vendors yelling out prices and deals, Japanese arcades dinking and ringing to either side, not to mention all of the visible advertising with mixing color-schemes, kanji characters galore, and flashing lights up the wazoo.

いざかやのちかく

 But in the middle of this hustle and bustle was the traditional izakaya (bar) where we were to have dinner. And as soon as we descended stairs through its doors, the noise stopped, and all was tranquil and restorative as we all sat down to a wonderful meal of sashimi, Japanese vegetables, and other small plates.

いざかや

Please leave your comments to let me know what you think about this so-far absolutely wonderful time I'm having in Japan on my honeymoon period of culture shock. I hope you all are having as good a time as I am all over the world, wherever you may be.

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