Brian: First day of school

¥200 train fare (on the chibidensha)
¥220 bus
¥340 lunch (oyakodon)
¥250 subway to Shijo
¥588 hair wax (loose shuffle)
¥250 subway to Karasuma-Imadegawa
¥220 bus to Hakubaicho
¥200 train fare (chibidensha)
¥0 getting lost and finding your way again? priceless
-----------------------------------------
¥2268 total

Isn't it hard to believe? Today's the first day of school. Like Alan said, they're almost halfway done at Stanford. Actually it's only been 3 full weeks, right? But still, those last 7 weeks until summer vacation will just fly by, I know. I hear it's time to do the draw again, as well (the lottery system for Stanford housing).

The commute to school was, thankfully, uneventful. I left around 9 AM and just barely caught the 9:06 train to Hakubaicho (the end of the line), then took a bus to Karasuma-Imadegawa. That is the intersection of Imadegawa, the east-west street, with Karasuma, the central north-south street. Doshisha is on the intersection, so it is another short walk from the station to the Stanford center. I was stupid and didn't bring a map or an umbrella, but wasn't punished for either. I'll bring a map next time, but still out of luck on the umbrella. I couldn't find a small one in the convenience store I visited.

I didn't have any class today but there was more orientation, from 10 until 2:20. They went over how to set up the wireless (we have to re-authenticate for every outside site we visit, how stupid), then Professor Duus (professor emeritus) gave a 1-hour introduction to the history of Kyoto. I took notes, if anybody cares to take a look. Some interesting things were that Kyoto was based on the Chinese template for capitols, with the emperor and palace facing south and the city arranged in a grid pattern. Also, he said that a lot of the geishas in the pleasure district are fake - office workers from Tokyo that pay money to dress up and get their pictures taken with gaijin (foreigners).

Lunch was a simple affair in the cafeteria in the basement. I had oyakodon - oya means "parent" and ko means "child", and don is short for donburi, or covered rice. That is, they put chicken and egg on rice (the chicken is the parent, the egg is the child). It's pretty cool that they print the number of calories on the receipt. My bowl was 740 Kcal, which seems like a lot. By the way, I haven't lost any weight here yet - I weighed myself on the bathroom scale today.

The orientation stuff was done by 2:20, whereupon we 3 boys started planning Golden Week destinations. We narrowed them down to 2 cities in Shikoku (the island just south of Honshu, the main island) and 4 or 5 in Kyushu (the southern-most island) - Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Miyazaki, Beppu, and maybe one more. We'll use our one-week JR rail pass so we'll only have to pay for housing, food, and entertainment. One of the things we want to do for sure is to stay at an onsen (hot springs) resort, which will undoubtedly cost a lot of money.

At about 4:00PM, I announced that I wanted to buy an electronic dictionary, so we went to Teramachi, the electronic district in Kyoto, to look for one. It turns out that all the dictionaries that have handwriting recognition, which I need, are over $200, so Patrick suggested an alternative. I could buy the Nintendo DS (a modern GameBoy) and a "dictionary game" that has handwriting recognition. The total cost would be under $200 for sure, and would also let me play other games. So, I think that is probably what I will do. The stores we visited in Teramachi were all sold out of that dictionary game, so I will search for it some other time. As for the DS, I think I will buy it online, since it is no cheaper in Japan.

Things started to get interesting when I tried coming home from Teramachi. I found my way back to school just fine, with a little spatial reasoning about north-south and by looking at the sun. From there, I almost took the bus in the wrong direction but corrected myself just in time. Then, I got on the train, but thought it was the wrong one so I got off, only to get back on just as it was leaving when I realized it was the right one. That is when I realized I didn't know what stop to get off at. Uh-oh. One by one, I looked at the stop names, and none of them sounded familiar. I ended up getting off at the last stop, and was relieved when the station looked familiar. I'm home free, I thought, as I left the station to walk home. After about 10 minutes of walking, I start to feel like something is wrong. I know that the street should end in a cul-de-sac next to a middle school, and then I take a narrow bridge to get to the house. However, the street just got busier and busier instead of terminating in a cul-de-sac. Then, I saw a fork in the road. I wonder which one I should take, I wonder. The one on the left was much narrower, but didn't look familiar, while the one on the right was busy, but looked more familiar. I decided to take the one on the right, but after 5 minutes of walking, I saw lots of things I would have remembered on my walk to the station, like a gas station. So, I decided that wasn't the right way. I walked back to the fork and took the other direction. After walking about 10 minutes, there is construction and an underpass I definitely know I didn't walk through in the morning. By now, it's getting dark, since it's about 6:30. I decide that I didn't give the right path enough of a chance, and maybe I saw the gas station but just didn't remember it, I tell myself. So I take a shortcut from the left path to the right path and walk even further down. It's almost dark already, and things are starting to look less familiar instead of more. This is when I realize I'm in trouble. It's time to get serious, I tell myself, so I took my glasses out of my book bag and put them on. I started looking all around for recognizable landmarks while walking back, but none of them were familiar. Distracting thoughts start to enter my head... what will I tell my host parents when I'm late for dinner? I don't even know the Japanese word for getting lost... I wonder if they'll wait for me to eat dinner? These thoughts ran through my head as I made my way back to the station. That's when I saw a woman putting child in a car seat in a car parked on the side of the road. I had already walked past when I decided I really needed help, and this was definitely the least intimidating person I could find. So I walked up slowly, and said "ano... tasukete itadakimasenka?", which is a really polite way to ask, "can you help/save/rescue me?" She turned around with a surprised expression, and asked something like, "what is it?", at which time I asked her if she could help me find this address, and held up a post-it note where I'd written the address for my host family. After struggling through the romaji, she gave me a helpless expression and said she couldn't help me, but then spotted the phone number and asked me if I should call it? I replied that I didn't have a phone, so... she got the hint and called the number for me. Unfortunately she then handed the phone to me, so I had to explain the situation, which was very difficult because I didn't know how to say "lost". Anyways my host father picked up the phone and I pretty much just begged him to save me. He asked me what station I stopped at and I told him I couldn't remember. Was it Arashiyama? he asked me, which I knew it wasn't - that was much further west (I took a walk there with my host mother yesterday). No... it was the last stop for the chibidensha, I replied. We agreed to meet back at the station. At that point I humbly thanked the young mother for helping me (she looked relieved that I was helped too) and then hurried back to the station. Anyhow, the reason I got lost was that I screwed up by taking the wrong set of stairs out of the station. The lesson is to bring a map! And of course, not to be afraid to ask for help. And maybe, to buy a cell phone.

Kyoto Day 4