international house

I moved into Hitotsubashi`s International House on the 29th. It was really sad leaving Junko, but I`m probably going to visit her from time to time. She helped call up a moving company to help me take my things from Mitaka to Kunitachi, and the `company` turned out to be an seventy year old man with a pick-up truck *sigh*. Not suprisingly, he was pretty strong and helped me carry my things up to the fourth floor of the dorm.

Despite not liking it at first, i-house is actually great compared to your average dorm at Penn. Sure the rooms are pretty small (this is Japan after all) but there are all sort of shelves and storage spaces to put your stuff, not to mention the fact that you have your own toilet and sink. One thing that really stood out was how clean the place was – just thinking of the grimy halls of the Quad…bleh. All this and the rent is about a quarter of what it is in Penn. Its too good to be true. I can`t help but feel that that the Hitotsubashi exchange students studying at Penn right now are getting the shorter end of the stick on this one.

I-house is a four storey building with the office and general common room on the ground floor, and a kitchen and tv room on each of the other floors. All in all there are about 60 residents in i-house, so everyone knows everyone. They come from all over the place; some are just exchange students like me, some are taking a six month intensive japanese course and some are research students, and thats what makes i-house such an interesting place to live. For example, the main language used in i-house is Japanese because not everyone comes from English speaking countries/backgrounds, so you are forced to use nihongo and it makes the experience more valuable of course.

random

– Junko has put a toy owl in the house`s main bathroom which hoots everytime you sit on and get off the toilet seat. Its the only reason I can think of to look forward to leaving tomorrow. Creepy just doesn`t cut it.

– A thirty-something year old guy tried to pick me up a few days ago. It was pretty funny because I thought he needed directions or something, but instead he asked me if I had “time to go somewhere”. It was so unexpected that I started to laugh – obviously not the smartest thing to do but I couldn`t help it. We were in a pretty public place anyway so I wasn`t too worried. When I finally stopped laughing and gave him a super how-darest-you glare, he switched tactics and asked me how to get to kichijoji.
Of course this sort of thing can happen anywhere, but getting picked up in japanese would certainly be considered a novelty for most people, no? If anything, I admire him for trying his luck out on a gaijin. Wierdo.

– I`ve met with Hitomi (from the Jazz club) a couple of times and it seems that she`s having boy problems. As much as I felt bad for her, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to give relationship advice in Japanese. She had supposedly confessed to a guy she works with and he turned her down twice already and when she wouldn`t let up, he told her not to call him ever again. Obviously once I got the gist of the story I was merciless. Stalker anyone?

annoyed

I`m really annoyed. Granted, it doesn`t take much to annoy me, but in this case its totally understandable. About two weeks ago I received an e-mail from Penn saying that fall course registration would begin on the 19th of this month. I also received a reminder from my study abroad advisor and a reminder on the day. Compare this to Hitotsubashi where believe it or not, they STILL don`t know when the spring semester is going to begin. Everytime I ask the answer is `sometime in April`. It completely baffles me that there exists an acadamic institution that does not plan its academic calender in advance. Even the crappy private universities I`ve seen in Egypt have planned their calenders at least one year in advance. The fact that I can`t plan ahead is incredibly frustrating.
When it comes to course registration, I will have to ask individual professors to allow me to take their class, as opposed to registering online as I would have done at Penn. This I don`t mind of course (the point of study abroad is…), but the whole calender thing just really pissed me off.

UPDATE: I was e-mailed an exchange student orientation schedule this morning. According to the schedule course registration begins after classes start. Huh?　
ミステリ。。。(mystery…)