Developments

Wow, well, where to start?

Today was unbelievably busy. There was an early start to arrive on time for the interviews at Hosei University, which were supposedly going to last for a couple of minutes each, but ended up actually taking about 10-20 minutes each. There was initially one group of teachers conducting the interviews, but as time pressed on, they split into two to get through everyone quickly. Only issue was, this created two different interview patterns, which created the possibility of either being asked a few questions about yourself and your experience with Japanese, or questions relating to the application that was initially sent to Hosei. I received the former, and I'm not entirely sure on how well I did. I am aware that I'm in the intermediate bracket, but I'm not sure yet if I'm in the upper or lower tier.

After that, there was roughly two hours to kill between the end of the interviews and a welcome party for international students. I took the oppurtunity to wander around Iidabashi, the suburb that Hosei University is located in, and was quite pleased by the experience. I visited a couple of temples, and messed up the entrance procedure to the first one, but thankfully remembered what to do at the second one. Not a great deal of things to do there, as you might expect, but they're relatively quiet and secluded spaces amongst everything else. I also made sure to visit another arcade, as the oppurtunity to do so was there, and limited myself to one match on Street Fighter 4, which I didn't do quite as bad at second time around. I eventually made my way back to Hosei University, only to be slightly overwhelmed by the humidity, and I'm quite ashamed by how sweaty I became. Not just mildly, my shirt was genuinely damp and wet. What with the party approaching, I thought that it might be a poor first impression to make, so bought a Hosei shirt from the University shop, but then learnt that medium here is just too small for me.

So, yes, I met some lovely people at the welcome party, including a handful of Japanese students who have been to Sheffield previously, and thankfully didn't make a big deal about my sodden situation. Not a lot happened there aside from mingling, but I doubled my effort to speak in Japanese and can already feel my confidence gradually developing. After that, the plan was to go to an Izakaya, which is essentially a traditional Japanese tavern, but the sheer number of international students and prices which the majority considered a bit too much, we ended up going to a convenience store, buying alcohol there and drinking it in the park. Very classy times indeed.

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post, but I'm almost overwhelmed by tiredness tonight. I think I actually have to go to bed, much earlier than usual, but wanted to get this down before any details escaped me!