9th post: sorted!

So the day finally arrived... It didn't start well, as I splattered moisturiser all over my new dress and was running late from trying to get it out (dress is fine now, so crisis averted) - and had to stop to take pictures of me in my new dress, which involved figuring out settings on my camera, which are all in Japanese.

Anyway, so I was a few minutes late for class and fully prepared to get placed in level 2.  Last night while watching Arashi, Aiba Masaki told me that you don't have to smile because you're happy but if you should smile no matter how you feel and then happy things happen to you, so with an Aiba-like attitude I decided to face whatever disappointment was awaiting with a smile, but when the lady handed me the paper, it was all 3s!  I couldn't believe it!  All of the other Australians I'd met had been put in level 4, so I'm all alone in my level except for this American guy Oma (Omar?) who seems nice.    There will probably be other people who already go there in our class too and not just the two of us, I guess.  Anyway, we decided to go and celebrate with breakfast and shopping.  Jessica's iced coffee did something weird and it looked really cool, so I took a photo.

I went to Uni Qlo and bought a black cardigan because I'd left my long-sleeved one at home and it was going all crap anyway because it was from Cotton On.  I also bought a "room set" which is basically a tracksuit but it's freaking awesome and comfy and warm and I am wearing it now.  Went to ABC Mart to look at shoes and they were playing Arashi, yay!  Didn't see anything that struck my fancy but Liam bought a pair of Chuck Taylors.  Vincent was trying on shoes still, so I went outside for a ciggie and we talked to these German guys from orientation who came shopping with us and were really lovely.  Across the road was this cafe and the name amused me.

Then Jessica took us to this spot she'd found on the roof of one of our school buildings.  It's all lawn with little archways and you can look through the suicide barrier down at the main buildings of our school and through to Shinjuku.  In the very far distance you can even see Tokyo Tower!  We are going to hang out there in our lunch hour.

This is me and Liam with Vincent.  I like how my sunglasses match my new dress, even though I look like a canteen lady a little bit.  Also like a midget next to those two.

This is Liam, Jessica and Vincent.  We are clearly the cool kids at Rikkyo.

Liam's new shoes - おしゃれ、ね！

We sat up there and worked out what subjects we wanted to do - the level 4 guys couldn't do any of the subjects they'd intended to do because their Japanese classes are on at the same time, but we got it mostly figured out.  My Japanese classes are 9.00 - 10.30am every day, then Mondays I have Modern Japanese History (the one where you do walking tours of Tokyo) from 1.15-2.45, Wednesdays 1.15-2.45 I have a seminar in Japanese Culture (or something, it's in Japanese but for people in level 3 so we can understand it, and it's about movies and manga - the level 4 people have to do novels and poetry hahahaha!) and Thursday 1.15-2.45 I have another Japanese Culture subject which is about haiku.  We don't have to officially enrol until Friday, so we can go to classes over the next few days and see what we like, so because I have picked one subject more than I actually need, if one of them sucks, I don't have to do it.  That means that at least 2 days a week I'll be finished at 10.30, yay!

After that I went to meet my sister at Ikebukuro West Gate Park.  I was starving, so we went to a nearby cafe and I had Hayashi Rice - yummmmmmmm!

We did a spot of shopping and tried this foot massage machine, where the nice man was clearly bored and proceeded to explain all about reflexology on your feet to us in Japanese.  This mainly made me realise how sore my feet were but lucky then we passed the Swimmer shop, where I got these amazing Vans-type shoes with PANDAS on them... I can't really describe them but they are amazing!  We were actually intending to go to Tower Records to pre-order the Arashi DVD, but we got distracted...

Sweets Paradise is awesome, it's like $15 bucks for all you can eat cakes (and really random other stuff).  They are super delicious cakes, though I almost choked to death on tiramisu, which meant Kathryn had to think up puns to put on my gravestone (Anita, we'll tira-miss you).  There were these teenage guys at the table beside us and they ate mountains of cake, and seemed to instinctively know when something new had been put out.  Because of them, I got a heads-up on the wedges and the karaage!

I couldn't get the jelly on my spoon, it kept slipping away from me!  I think it was actually trying to tell me I couldn't fit anything else in my stomach.  Jelly is wise.  Kathryn decided to film my struggles with jelly.

Anyway, today has been awesome - I'm not in Hufflepuff and I got to eat delicious food and buy panda shoes.  My life is golden.  This is clearly because of the wise advice of Aiba Masaki!