Day 2

I went to town with some people I met who are in the program. It's a pretty small town, I'd say maybe the size of Flagstaff. It's pretty long, though. We went to a bookstore called Book-Off that had a bunch of different books, manga, music, dvds, and games. I know where to go if I need to get people gifts!

We also went to a sort of fast-food restaurant called Oita Karaage (大分からあげ). They had the tempura-fried chicken that Oita is famous for. It was delicious! We also saw a takoyaki (fried octopus balls) stand, and I want to try it. One of the people I met on the flight went to town to get some ramen, so I'll have him tell me what's good and report back on that, too.

I ended up not taking as many pictures as I would have liked. Got too distracted. I also noticed how loud Americans are, when we were on the bus. Maybe it's just because we were a group of 9 people.

I also met my room mate/next door neighbor. His name is Hideto, and he's from America but is Japanese, and is a more permanent student than me. He's the floor's RA. I think he moved when he was little. His English is very good, and he likes all sorts of music. He seems really nice.

It's still hard, since I don't know the language well enough to know what's going on at all, but hopefully I learn fast. The placement test for what Japanese class we get into is tomorrow. Hopefully I don't place badly and have to take Japanese A and have to sit through learning all the Hiragana and Katakana again. All the people I met seemed to have about 1 year of Japanese on them, some a little less, some a little more. My guess is most of the people will get into the Japanese B class (which is the class I hope to get into).

~M

Picasa album (day 1) https://picasaweb.google.com/106211306392551862915/Jun12011#

Picasa album (day 2) https://picasaweb.google.com/106211306392551862915/Jun22011#

No videos today D: