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.

July Developments

Alright, so since my last update, a lot of things have happened. So, I'll go with them in order of when I figured them out.

COE

So, here's the details of my particular case. As I live in Rochester, NY, my local consulate is the New York City Consulate in which... well, it's not particularly local for me and I wasn't exactly looking forward to buying airfare, hostel stays, and food just to apply for my visa. So, I contacted IES, who redirected me to the NYC consulate. They were VERY helpful, and I was especially impressed when I realized that most of the information was already on their website and they could have just redirected me there. However, for your information, I'll post it here as well.
First of all, if you live outside of NYC, you DO NOT have to report to the consulate, which is very nice for saving time and money. Here are the instructions for obtaining your visa:

1) Complete and Sign an Application Form (Download). Note that even lines that have NOTHING to do with you must have "n/a" or "none" written on them. If you have court records, they must be included.
2) Download the release of liability form (Download) and fill it out completely
3)Buy a U.S. Express Mail self-addressed stamped envelope with completed express mailing label and the postage
4)Take your valid passport (that is fine for 6 months past when you are leaving Japan), a 2 inch square photograph taken within the past 6 months, your self labeled envelope, liability waver, and COE (the original and one photocopy)and ship them the materials through the US Postal Service (and ONLY through USPS) to:

Consulate-General of Japan in New York
299 Park Avenue 18th Floor, New York, NY 10171

5) At the moment, we are exempt from Visa fees and processing is estimated to take 4-7 days.

Yep.

PicCell

IES requires all students to have a cell phone. Well, getting a cell for Japan is a little bit of a headache, but what I found is that PicCell actually offers a pretty good deal... that is, if you're not bent on getting something fancy. In that case, you could still rent a pretty cheap SIM card from them. Personally, I'm only going to get the cell to make IES happy and really don't intend to use it. It's Skype for me. =] The 30 dollar one time activation fee is really all I intend to pour into this thing. But, here's where I got my phone.

Dorms and Strict Vegetarianism

Well, I got to thinking about how strict of a vegetarian I am and how odd it would be if they could actually place me in a homestay without placing a strain on some generous family or a strain on my diet. So, I let IES know that I am close to being a vegan. I received a frantic call from IES the next day, asking if that meant I didn't eat fish in any form. I found this interesting, since I thought expressing that I was a vegetarian on my application would have made this obvious. However, it apparently is not obvious. So, if you are applying through IES and do not intend to compromise, tell them you are a vegan. If you are a pescetarian or are willing to eat fish, noting vegetarian is not such a bad idea.
Their first solution to this was that I obviously could not be placed in a homestay and they immediately placed me in the KUIS Women's dorm. In ways, this was a cool situation to land in, in other ways, not so much. Suddenly, I had to budget 3,500 dollars for food and I had a strict curfew to return by 11 pm every night. I understood that it was different than America, but just the fact that the Get Set! handbook noted that they were very stringent with women annoyed me something awful. While the private room, bathroom, and kitchen were all nice assets, I cannot say that I was particularly hurt when I received news from Beth on Friday that they couldn't place me in KUIS, as it's for Society and Culture students only. Now it looks like I'll be in endo-ryo. If the pictures I have found of endo-ryo are accurate, I think I would rather be there anyway.

E-Pal

Oh! I applied for the e-pal program and got an email from Maika Sato, my epal. She sent me a short email and I kind of responded a little epically... I think I might have overwhelmed her. haha. Still, it was very nice to get an email from Japan! The closer I get, the more real it feels to me. It's crazy to think that in a little over a month, I'll be back in the country I left 6 years ago.

Well, that's it for now!