Second Half of Week 2- Entrance Ceremony, Vegan Healing Cafe, and Lazy Saturday

Thursday

Today ended up being quite the photo-op and the Entrance Ceremony was actually pretty cool. Mindy got to give the speech at the Ceremony (we all suspect that she got the highest score on the exam-- which wouldn't be a surprise! She's very amazing! =]). Post ceremony, we all went to our usual food court hang-out, this time with a few others in tow. Eventually, conversation turned to one on religion and, although it was very comfortable to discuss with the majority of the table, one girl left me feeling rather uncomfortable. Not wanting to start an argument, I went back to the house and started to watch an anime I heard about from Shanis at the Entrance Ceremony, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. That pretty much shot the rest of the day for me.

Friday

Everyone was more than nervous today- the day that we got placed. The teachers guided us through a mock class and finally, about 2 and a half hours of this, they announced our placements. Five students got into 5, none into 4, 10 into 3, and 10 into 2. I was most relieved when my name was called for 3, the class I am supposed to be in, anyway. It's a little scary, though. Shanis, who is a year ahead of me at UR only got into 3 as well. It makes me wonder about how well 200 advances one back home. Very nerve wracking. I hope I can compare. Hannah will be in 3 with me, though, so it will be nice to have someone to study with.

After Japanese, we were supposed to start Architecture, but, due to Instructor illness, the class was cancelled. Thus, I decided, today would be a good day to go buy the Vegan Restaurant handbook that Vegan Japan puts out. But, in order to do so, I had to go to one of the restaurants that they listed on their website. Thus, Nancy, Hannah, and I went to Shibuya to "Vegan Healing Cafe."

Well, by the time we got there, we were very hungry, because, as I'm sure you can guess, I got us lost on the way again by pointing us in the completely opposite direction... yeah. >>; I felt really bad, too, since Hannah was in heels. Well, when we got there, I was really excited. It was a small cafe and it promised to provide me nutrients and... well... uh... I don't know why I ever imagined that "Vegan Healing Cafe" would taste delectable... or even terribly edible. In fact, if I wasn't starving, I think I would have sad. The hot chocolate was... bitter... and the blueberry cake was... dry? And the meal was... alright? It was very... wholesome? It was very... healthy? Overall, interesting exprience, I must say. Hopefully, the places with fake meat will be a little better.

Parked outside was a PETA van, which was terribly amusing to me-- although I'm not a big PETA fan myself. They have bad tactics. Then, we saw a guy dressed as a candy bar, walking around... with a man, giving out flyers. So strange. @_@

Saturday

Today was the upmost laziest day I had here. I seriously sat around watching Higurashi no naku koro ni for most of the day and finally went to Seiyu Gyotoku for a change of pace (It's the Wal*Mart branch that's a 20 minute walk instead of a 10 minute one...). I went in hopes that they would have a more extensive selection of, well, everything. What I did find is that they had quart-sized cartons of acerola juice and, really, apart from that, not a horribly impressive selection. I did get quite a few vegetables, though, and prepared a soup with them. The soup ended up making a mean topping for the rice. Another thing I ran into at the store was this- peanut butter... it's practically odd here. They have this stuff called "peanut cream" which is pretty cheap, but I really had little interest in trying. The peanut butter that they did have was smaller than an average Skippy jar and about $4. It was a little disheartening.

Endo-san came over after all of us had eaten, took nail polish that prior IES students had left behind, was her usually rough self, and left. She seems to really like SeungYe, which is funny, since SeungYe seems to tune her out the most and respond to her the least. haha.