Consider this your [ironic] mass email

icu
Originally uploaded by sillyhapa.

Week three in Tokyo has come and gone, marking the official halfway point of the summer. Exciting, ne! I live in a dorm at the International Christian University, where there are about 125 foreign students in my intensive Japanese course. We study Japanese from 8 -12 every morning (which is far too much, if you ask me, but I'm sure it's good for me), and then have the rest of the afternoon and evening to ourselves.

The campus is very green and pretty for being in Tokyo, which I guess is one of the perks of being on the outskirts of the city. The downside is that we have to take a bus to get to the train station, and then most of the cool areas of the city are about a 30-45 minute train ride from there. Public transportation in Tokyo is amazing, and we certainly take advantage of it.

On the schooldays we generally take the bus to Musashi-Sakai for dinner, but then come home to study (or watch movies, or read, or go to bed early) since it's time-consuming and tiring to go out much more than that. But on the weekends we've been doing our good share of sightseeing, shopping, clubbing, karaoke-ing, and walking around.

Living on campus in the dorms means we don't get much interaction with the locals, but in the fall I'll be with a homestay, so that should change. I've also been trying to get involved with groups on campus that are run by the Japanese students (hiphop club, taiko drumming, working at the Japanese equivalent of the Women's Union).

Mostly I would describe my time here as quiet, thoughtful. It's not the party-central study abroad experience of the Prague-ers, the academic powerhouse of the Oxford-ites, or the roughing-it immersion of the Cameroon-folk...it's something else. I can't wait to hear about everyone else's abroad experiences once they begin.