robbieinjapan.com

I’m not the only one from Middlebury College who lives in the dorm here. Tyler arrived here from spending some time in Osaka with his old host family from his homestay in high school. His room is sort of across the hall from mine. It is off to the left, but very close.

So, yesterday, he and I decided to get our Gaikokujintourokushou which means our alien registration card. Every foreigner in Japan that plans on spending more than 90 days in Japan has to register him or herself with the local district. After three weeks, we will receive our cards which we will have to carry on us at all times in Japan.

We took a train to get to the office. The area there seemed different from the area where our dorm is. There were no tall buildings and it did not seem as lively. There was even grass and trees in various places. Though, this was not a suburb, it was simply an illusion since the area is surrounded by urban areas.

After making some wrong turns and mistaking the correct building, we finally made it to the correct office and went through registration. I was surprised that I was able to understand the Japanese the worker there was saying to me so well. I haven’t really spoken Japanese over the summer, so it is a bit rusty when I try to speak it. But it seems that I can get by for most things. I hope that in the next couple of weeks I’ll be able to adjust again to speaking Japanese fluidly.

After doing registration for the card and getting a temporary slip of paper for it, we tried to get cell phones. The slip of paper we got from the office was necessary for getting a cell phone. I suppose this is because it is proof of residence in Japan and so they know they can find us if we try to run off without paying. We could have gotten cell phones yesterday but unfortunately, we don’t have our student IDs yet from Keio University. Thus, we could not get the gakuwari (student discount) which reduces the rate of the cell phone plan by 50% which is definitely something we don’t want to pass on. So, we’ll just have to wait until Tuesday at registration to get our cards and then apply for the cell phone.

Recently we’ve eaten at a few places which are interesting in that they seem to be common here in Japan but don’t really exist in America. Basically, just inside the restaurant or right outside, there is a machine with lots of  pictures of food or the names of the food and a price. You then put your money into the machine and press the button for the food you want. You get a ticket and take it inside where a worker will take it and begin to process the order. These places are nice because they usually get your food to you quickly and once you’re finished you can simply leave since in Japan, there is no tipping custom at restaurants and you’ve already paid at the beginning. No waiting around for a waiter to pick up your money and then return with change or your credit card.

This morning, I went into campus with the rest of the Japanese language students to take the placement test. It lasted for a few hours and wasn’t so bad. In typical Japanese fashion, they had us sit in prearranged seats in the lecture hall. They had a map of where we sat at the doors into the lecture hall, however they showed us on that sheet of paper where we sat by our ID numbers which I did not have on me nor cared to remember from before. Eventually someone brought out some sort of packet which had our names and our corresponding ID numbers, so I made it to my seat. The room was full of foreigners from everywhere. There was a group of girls speaking Korean off to my side, two guys  in front of me speaking in some Scandinavian language and some people to my right speaking Chinese. I spoke English with Tyler who turned out to have his seat behind me and the guy to my right, Lance from Seattle. Seeing as there are so many students in this program and he lives in a different dorm, I’ll probably never see him again.

Now I just wait to see where they place me. Hopefully, they’ll put me in a level that is slightly below my actual level so I can have it a bit easier with the homework and have time to study on my own and also go out. Afterwards, I explored the campus for a while with Tyler and then we left with another student from Middlebury, Brian, who is staying here for only a semester.

After talking to my fellow Middlebury students like Brian who live at a different dorm, I realized that Tyler and I have it pretty good at Willing Setagaya. Brian told me about this meter in his room which monitors his utilities. At the front of the building, there is a vending machine looking thing (Japanese people love vending machine type things apparently) where you put money in and then select your room number and that amount is credited to you. The meter in your room then shows the amount of yen in your account and as you use your utilities, it begins to decrease.

Brian wrote all of the Middlebury students in Tokyo going to Keio University an e-mail with a few questions about registration and other things, but concerning this meter, he wrote:

“this isn’t really a questions but that stupid box in our rooms that tell us how much money we have left for water and electricity is driving me nuts. i just sit in the dark all day and brush my teeth in the lounge sink, and i STIll went down 200 yen.”

Needless to say, I’m glad I don’t have an electronic big brother monitoring me everytime I decide to charge my digital camera. Also, it seems that at Brian’s dorm, when they leave the room the electricity automatically goes off (since they need to put a card in a slot to turn it on and that card is attached to their keys). So basically Brian has no chance of charging his laptop if he’s out of the room. And according to the meeting he recently attended about his dorm, he is not allowed to have any visitors anywhere inside the dorm or he will face the punishment of eviction from his room.

I guess I have it pretty good here, huh.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 4:31 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.