Fake earthquake in Ikebukuro and cool cell phone features.

I skipped yesterday because I was really tired when I got back, so this will be for both days.


Yesterday was kind of interesting. On my way to orientation I was riding the train with two people sitting near me. They were probably around the age of 17-18. They were talking pretty much the whole ride. At the end of the ride I wasn’t exactly sure If I was at the right station so I turn and said “excuse me, is this Ikebukuro?” in Japanese. The funny thing is he pulls back from me and puts up his hands in from of himself right below the chin as if to protect himself. He looked incredibly surprised. He answered me that this was Ikebukuro. I said “thank you very much” in Japanese and left the train. The thing is Japanese people don’t really ever just randomly start up conversations with people. They are a very clickish society says my orientation director. I asked my Japanese friend why he looked scared and surprised but she didn’t have a really good answer. She said maybe my good pronunciation surprised him or that I was really tall. I don’t really know why but I kind of found it a funny reaction. I’ve asked for help before and I didn’t really have any problems, but those times I asked people that are pretty much there to answer questions.

After that I went to orientation and we had a bento for lunch. A bento is like a boxed lunch but they are sold all over the place. After lunch we went to Ikebukuro for safety instruction. In the safety instruction we fired a fire extinguisher filled with water at a fake fire on a screen. It was like a game to put it out. We were all having fun and laughing. However, we weren’t supposed to be having fun. Our instructor was the first Japanese person that was blatantly looking down on us as foreigners. By the time we got to the earthquake simulation, my friend even commented on it to me that she was really looking down on us from the way she talks. You can tell a lot easier in Japanese when someone is being rude from the words they choose than in English. Despite her attitude, I had a lot of fun. We experienced a fake 6.0 earthquake, a smoke filled maze, and a simulated fire extinguishing exercise.

Getting home after the Ikebukuro event was troublesome. I got lost for probably an hour and a half going down the wrong line, and missing my turn walking back home. I’m getting better now though. I don’t think I’ll get lost doing more normal route to school anymore.

Today was a lot of fun. We first went on a group scavenger hunt. It was the first time I really experienced a mob of people in Japan. We went down a normal street and we were shoulder to shoulder. We almost lost several of our group members going through a street in Harujuku. We also ate at an all you can eat pizza place. The pizza were really weird. There were tuna fish melt pizzas, pizza with corn, pizza with all kinds of stuff on it. It was a really good scavenger hunt.

I’m sure Japan attracts a kind of person with some characteristics. I pretty sure almost every member of the ciee program is a little otaku even if they don’t admit it, and with that normally comes some introvertedness. Not only that but the program I’m in, in Tokyo, isn’t very cheap. With that it can attract specific personalities that can clash with others more easily. This is what I kind of think when I study the communication styles of the students around me. I really like my major. It actually helps me to analyze why people communicate and interact with others. For the most part though, I can get along with all the CIEE students. There isn’t very many of us, only probably around 35.

We got our cell phones today, and let me tell you, they have the best feature on them. I don’t have a clue why they don’t have this in America. They have a little infer-red communication area on the phone that allows you to send your profile over to a phone that’s next to it. In the profile you can have all kinds of information. One bit of information I thought was weird was blood type. They take blood type seriously here in Japan. A lot of people here believe it affects personality and relationships.

Times I’ve hit my head: 4

Times I think heard people comment on my height: 5

Times people has just stared at me like a deer: 1

I’ve heard foreigners are sometimes stared at very intensely but I almost couldn’t believe it because the Japanese don’t like to look you in the eye for very long. But today this girl maybe 16-18 years old was just staring at me intensely. I’d stare back for like 10 seconds to try and let her know I knew she was staring at me but she just kept staring. Haha, I thought it was kind of funny. She looked just like a deer in caught in headlights.

This was a really long blog...