Orientation days

-          My room is perfect. Big bed, fridge, bathroom, BALCONY, ton of storage space, air-conditioning. Everything is clean and new and I have the room for myself.

-          9-3 Hirose Kita-machi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima City, 〒730-0803. If you want to send me a postcard.

Orientation days

-          Placement test went well, I ended up in the second of the three levels. I guess UPOL expected me to do better but when doesn´t it.

-          Signed a ton of paperwork in Japanese, I think we all must have sold our soul to satan.

-          The 国際センター is huge and I love that all the staff and many teachers take the time to introduce themselves and make sure we have all the information we need and all the paperwork done correctly. But oh my goodness it is so exhausting to listen to japanese information from 8am to 4pm almost without a break.

-          Every 留学生　has a Japanese buddy. They basically make sure we understand what´s going on with all the international center staff. They sit with us during the whole day and if we get confused, they translate in a simpler Japanese. So basically there is a teacher talking in front of the whole class and then there are around 15 Japanese students trying to repeat the most important parts in a simple Japanese.

-          I am really really grateful for all of this though. I have no idea how I would do all of this alone.

-          I stopped being nervous about speaking terrible Japanese after several hours in Japan but that does not mean the conversations are easy now. There is this thing about Japanese people trying to make a sentence easier to understand by making it as short as possible. Like, by leaving out subjects and verbs and basically all the context I need to understand the sentence.

-          After 8 hours of information, I was told to go visit two teachers who speak some Czech. And so it happened that Yatabe sensei was trying to ask me something about kimono but I didn’t understand what. But he just repeated the word kimono and since I did not understand this simplification, he thought I don’t know what a kimono is. And since my Japanese is terrible I couldn’t get across that of course I know what a kimono is. And so, I SWEAR, he started drawing a kimono to show me what it is.

-          Then I went to visit the second teacher, Soma sensei. After an embarrassing meeting in Olomouc in February, when I couldn’t answer the most simple questions because I was so nervous from Watanabe sensei hearing all the mistakes I make, I was happy that I´d meet Soma sensei again and show him that I am not completely incompetent. Well never mind. I don’t know why after successfully communicating the whole day in Japanese I did not understand a single question he was asking me. After about three-hour sleep and 8 hour of intense focus, I was SO close to crying from exhaustion at Soma´s office. I only managed not to when I imagined how absurd it would be if he told to Watanabe. After some embarrassing minutes of confusing misunderstandings, Soma sensei took a picture of us together and sent it to Watanabe.

-          The way back to my dorms was better. Charged my bus card in Japanese without any problems and casually walked back to my dorms. I can´t believe I am really here.