Brian: Kyoto, Day 1

Again, a backdated blog entry, this one was written on 4/20/2007.

4/20/07
Expenditures for the day:
¥350 Alien registration card
¥210 fare to Kyoto station
¥220 bus fare to downtown
¥320 lent to friends
¥2500 dinner, nomihodai (all you can drink)
¥1000 karaoke
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¥4600 total

Our first full day in Kyoto started with buffet breakfast in the hotel with both western and Japanese choices. I started with scrambled eggs, sausage, ham, and pasta, then moved on to Japanese cuisine – rice, with pickled vegetables. The orientation started in earnest at 9AM. We traveled as a group by subway to the Doshisha campus and went on a tour of the Stanford Center, which is in the very center of the campus. It is a very well-equipped place, and furthermore, as the director informed us, Stanford is receiving it rent-free and utilities provided. So, it makes sense that Stanford went with Doshisha University rather than a more well-known institution. The orientation itself was somewhat boring, just reading rules and such from handouts they gave us. One of the other things we received was our monthly allowance, which includes lunch money and a stipend for transportation that varied depending on how far away from campus you were. The total allowance I received was about ¥30000 (approx $250), which included about ¥4000 for my commute.

After orientation, a student volunteer for Doshisha took us to a ward station to complete the mandatory alien registration. The registration needs to be done in the district where we will reside, so for example, I had to go to Ukyo-ku, while some students who lived very near the campus did not even have to take public transportation.

Today was also Friday night, which means party night in Japanese. I was part of a group that decided to go to karaoke, and, led by Keisuke-kun, we had dinner with nomihodai (all you can drink) for ¥2500 per person. I had a mango chuu-hai, which is similar to a wine cooler, and after I finished that, a pint of Japanese beer. The alcohol wasn’t that strong, luckily, and I even managed a shot of sake without any problems. The food was interesting, though none seemed to be a main course. There were little trays of food that came continuously, and of those, I remember eating daikon, soybeans, dried pork skin, 3 bowls of soup, and some sort of omelet with lettuce. But the best part about it wasn’t the food, it was the conversation. One of the Japanese people with us was Min, who was actually only ¼ Japanese and somewhat of a foreigner himself. He really broke the ice and made good conversation in English and Japanese. In the end, he even came with us to karaoke as well. We sang the night away until about 11:30, and then had to leave so that we could catch the last bus back to the hotel. The whole experience of drinking and singing together with friends and strangers was new to me, but one I found to be really a great part of Japanese culture.