First Day of School

Today was our first day at Keiwa College. We met Doctor Hayabashira outside at 9:45 and walked together to the school. Once there Professor Brown brought us up to a meeting room and we went through some basic information. The president of Keiwa College came up an introduced himself and then Brown took us on a tour of the school. Keiwa is about the size of a large American high school, or a small American community college. The tour was rather quick, but we got to see many of the Keiwa students. In Niigata there aren't many foreigners, and the only white foreigners are Russian (Niigata International services Russian airlines). So, for the students and the college, having a group of American students is kind of a big deal. That being said, everywhere we go in the school, we seem to attract a ton of attention, even more so then we do just being Americans in Japan.

Our first sunny day in Shibata afforded us a beautiful
view of the local mountain range.

After the tour we went back to the conference room where we went over some more information such as schedules and field trips before we were served a light lunch. The lunch consisted of many traditional Japanese foods, such as sushi and fried shrimp, all of which was absolutely delicious. In America I was very hesitant to eat any sushi, but all the food here is so delicious that I'm almost never afraid to try new things. As we ate several of our professors came in and introduced themselves. We each told them our majors and what our hobbies were and several pictures were taken of the group. The first day filled us with a bit of celebrity status with so much positive attention being directed at us.

After the lunch we were given the rest of the day off so those of us who volunteered to help out in the English classes (that is, classes for Japanese students learning English, the opposite of what we are here to learn) came back to school and attended the class. The professor teaching the class brought us up front and introduced us while many of the students took pictures of us with their camera phones. We watched the end of What's Eating Gilbert Grape (they had already seen the first part) and then discussed it a bit. We actually ran out of time early because of the introductions so we'll finish those up next week. It was a fun experience getting to see the opposite side of what we'll be doing, and I hope to help out Japanese students as best that I can.

After class I went out with some of the study abroad students to a local sushi bar. This is a great place to try new things in my opinion. I didn't eat much, but considering I couldn't read the menu, everything was an experiment, and it was all very good. I went out again later with some other study abroad students to a local Ramen restaurant and got to try some real ramen. Its definitely not the insta-crap I used to make at home. After dinner we came back to the apartments and hung out in me and Alex's place for a bit before one by one everyone called it a night. Our bodies still haven't adjusted to the massive time change, every afternoon feels like 3am for us. It feels like I'm fighting every night just to make it to 10pm. Also, sunrise here is 4:30am, we haven't figured this out yet, it must be something with the time zone.

Tomorrow we start actual classes and meet our language partners. I don't doubt that it will be a fun time for everyone.

Panorama of Shibata from ontop of the apartments.