Dorm beginnings

Konbanha minna-san! (good evening everyone)
A lot of stuff has happened, and a lot of information has been mentally processed within this time so I'll try to write as much as I can without being boring.

So I've been in my dorm for around 48 hours and I already feel pretty comfy at home. After staying at the Shin-Osaka hotel I easily managed to get a taxi to go to my dorm. The taxi driver was incredibly nice. He new a few words in English but not much. He mostly spoke to me in Japanese, but we had a pretty good long conversation in a beautiful hybrid of Japanese and English. He even gave me his personal number and told me if I ever get in trouble, I'm lost, or need to go somewhere, call him and don't worry about paying. Ridiculously nice, right? Well, of course my dumbass lost the number.

The dorm manager, Fujiwara-San (I have named him The Fujj, and I've also decided that he will become my new best friend) is also a really nice guy, and definitely a character. Though only knows a few words in English, but he is pretty easy to understand. In fact when he was going over dorm rules and regulation with us Julie and I were able to understand about 80% of what he was saying. THERE ARE TONS OF RULES. Its kind of crazy. Boys are only allowed in the lobby and NEVER in your room, you must always change your name tags on the bulletin board if you go out, curfew is 11pm, you have to record in this giant food planner book thingy if you're going to be there for meals or not, switch shoes when going to the bathroom, leaving, or walking around, no wearing PJs outside your room unless going to the bathroom, you must tell The Fujj if you're staying out for the night or if you're bringing a friend to stay the night (and there is paper work for that), and the list goes on.

Oh man, funny random story time: when I was filling out the dorm room checklist (whether things were good or bad, clean or there) some of the translations were kind of interesting. My two favorites Door Rock, and Rocker. There was certainly no rock or rocker in my tiny room. Ah, they meant door lock and locker. lol. ruv.
 Oh, also the toilets in our hall have sinks built into them (the big square shelf part behind the seat) and when you flush the toilet the sink automatically turns on... and keeps running... and keeps running.... so after flushing the toilet 4 more times to try to get it to stop I walked away and came back a few minutes later to find it had stopped. Basic appliances overall have proven to be challenging.

The single room I'm in is not only small because its a dorm, but Japanese apartments/dorms are stereotypically small. But everything in here seems pretty new and nice. The bed is a very basic Japanese futon (not gonna lie its uncomfortable, but manageable), and as foretold the pillow is small and full of beans. I made my bed right away, but Julie (who had stayed with Japanese friends the past week) told me theres a specific method for doing it. Basically the . I'll post pictures soon. The dorm doesn't have WiFi, which sucks so I can't upload my pictures from my ipad.

As the night progressed more American girls arrived (all from St. Louis). One of whom told me today that she stumbledupon my blog and linked to it! :D Thus far everyone seems very chill and nice. Our floor is mostly all Americans, but there are a few others (all from somewhere is Asia, with the exception of one girl from France. Her English is really good). Most of the girls from Asia speak Japanese pretty fluently, so we can talk to them that way.

Today we had fall semester orientation. We had two student volunteers (Fuka and Mai, both of whom speak pretty good English, are super amazing, and I love already) walk us to the university. The campus is BEAUTIFUL, possibly being on of the most beautiful campuses I've seen. The entrance gate is super fancy with a really good giant metal sculpture that looks like 20ft silver metal grass with a clock at the top. The cafeteria is food is amazballz and has a large selection of food with Japanese and English names printed (thank you sweet baby Jesus). Never has cafeteria food tasted so good.

Orientation took for.fucking.ever., because everyone who got up to talk not only had to speak in Japanese, but English too. And a lot of information we already had received was repeated. We also got A LOT of papers. Most of which are in English and Japanese. It was cool though seeing all the other foreign exchange students though. They said it was the biggest group of foreigners they've ever taken in (I think they said around 64..?) and ranged from America, Europe, Asia to Egypt, Haiti, Australia, and other parts of the world. Totally cool.
 Have I mentioned by the way that there are LOTS of attractive men here? >u<

More adventure time to come (I've had that theme song stuck in my head all day). Tomorrow I have the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) which will determine what language level classes I will/can take.

As always it makes me super happy to know that people are actually reading the blog. Comments and questions are much loved.
So till next time folks, Oyasuminasai~~! (Goodnight)

Erii