It was very hard to get out of bed this morning. The neighbours were doing something with a power saw until after midnight last night, and moving furniture around. Or something, I don't even know. Wth, they're Japanese, they're supposed to be quiet and polite. Way to break racial stereotypes, guys.
Anyway, my sister had prepared awesome Japanese breakfast for me: rice (with bimimbap furekake!), very awesome pickles and natto. Still took a while to get going though.
I had to go to city hall to register as an alien. This seemed very daunting as everyone kept saying how you need a Japanese person to go with you or you won't be able to understand what to do. This is total bollocks. I took my sister instead and between us we figured it out easily. The station was actually called "in front of Itabashi city hall station", which simplified things, and it said in English in the lobby which floor you had to go to for foreigner registration. My sister located the handy form I had to fill out and we gave it to the nice lady, who gave us a number. A man came back out after about 5 minutes with a sheet to say I had to come back in the first week of May to collect the actual card. I asked him where I had to go to sign up for the national health insurance, which is compulsory, and he told us what floor and the 8th window. Lucky my sister was with me, coz I totes didn't catch the 8th window bit.
The nice lady at the 8th window gave me the insurance form and a form to waiver the pension scheme, then we waited a bit and she gave me my insurance card. I can go and get all my teeth done for free now, yay!
Because we'd thought it would take much longer than it did, we went to the nearby Cafe Veloce. The boy behind the counter (he looked about 16 but was probably like 30) was looking at Kathryn like he was terrified of her, but then he started speaking English, so it seemed like he was just trying to work up his courage to practice for English talking. He was so adorable, when he said a word wrong he went really red, he was so sweet. Then after he'd successfully taken our orders he looked so proud of himself! I had a very delicious strawberry cake and that was good too.
After that, I took the stuff in to the international office at school, and Tomoko-san said I didn't have my Certificate of Registered Matters, which I also needed. I knew I'd had to get 3 copies of something but I thought it was the thing the guy had given me. It wasn't!!! And I had to get it in to school by today! Zoinks! I told Tomoko-san I would go after the talking test, which was fine as she was there til like 6pm.
Then I headed to the speaking test room. We all had to wait in this room together, and I met another Australian girl who was talking about going to Korea with the girl I was sitting next to at orientation, so we talked about the awesomeness of Korea for a bit, and Liam introduced me to this really sweet Chinese girl from his dorm as well. And I met my buddy, Saori-san, who seems lovely.
They called the people for the speaking test really fast. Our group wasn't supposed to start until 1.30 but by about 1.20 they called me. Saori-san took me to sit outside the room where the examiners were and we chatted a bit, but I was too nervous to make much conversation so I probably seemed quite rude and stupid.
Once I got in the room, the examiners were really nice. They asked me why I wanted to study Japanese, and I said I like Japanese TV shows and Jpop, and I love Arashi. This would've all been better if I'd thought to use 〜たり〜たり form instead of saying it all in separate sentences like a moron, but oh well. Then they asked who was my favourite from Arashi, and the lady who looked like my grade 3/4 teacher Mrs Pettett thought I was weird for liking Nino. The other lady likes Jun and I said he had very strong eyebrows. Except I forgot the word for eyebrows and just pointed, I should've just said strong face. Japanse Mrs Pettett asked if Arashi were popular and I said among people who studying Japanese they are (quality noun!) and then she asked if I thought they were more popular than SMAP. LOL, she was awesome. Then they said there was a lot of homework at Rikkyo, how would I go with that, and I said that's fine, because the reason I'm here is to become more skillful at Japanese. And that was it! I didn't say anything all that clever, so I'm still expecting to be level 2.
Once that was done, I had to go back to city hall and get my other thingie, which was fairly easy as Tomoko-san had highlighted the part from the uni handbook where it said I needed it. I got 3 copies because you need one to get a phone and the school needs 2, so it ended up costing nearly 1000 yen! Then I needed to go back to uni again, which was a lot of running around and I started getting a headache. I popped into Bic Camera on the way to the station because my headphones were broken and got this really cute pair of over-the-head ones which are white and green for under $20, yay!
My train was delayed 5 minutes on the way home! Super shock! I was going to go to the karaoke near our station for a while because it's only 100 yen per half hour of a weekday, but my headache was really bad by then, and I was freezing as I'd forgotten to take a jacket, so I just came home.
Now I am going to cover myself in pain strips and have a nap, and it's going to be the most awesome thing ever!
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