Other than all the activities we've been doing to meet new people like karaoke and outings for hamburgers, we had orientation start on Tuesday. I'll give you a quick day by day run down as to what that entailed. Try to stay awake, I had to.
Tuesday:
General Rikkyo orientation. This was just a basic 'Welcome to Rikkyo' type thing that somehow took 2.5 hours. Then in the afternoon we had the placement test to determine which level of Japanese class we'll be taking. The test is split into 3 parts, and unfortunately all 3 parts are taken separately, so you can't refer back to what was on a past paper if you forget how to write a kanji or something haha. In saying that though, the test takes about 3 hours so it's probably good that it's split into 3 separate papers. The first part is grammar, which is multiple choice. Second part is a writing test/essay. The topic that beginners were given was 'give your opinion on studying a foreign language'. Needless to say my Japanese isn't really good enough to express my opinion, so after I wrote 'I study Japanese and it is difficult but interesting' I ended up writing 3/4 of a page of nonsense just to show that I knew some vocab. The third part is a reading test, which again was multiple choice. There are 2 different reading tests, and the one you're given depends on how well you did on the grammar test. SO DON'T FALL ASLEEP LIKE ANGELA DID.
Wednesday:
We had the interview part of the placement test. Of course, I got completely freaked out and froze. It took me 3 attempts to work out that they were asking me when I arrived in Japan, and after that I panicked and couldn't answer any more questions. Good one Anthea. Anyway they said they want to put me in a lower level, which I agreed with because I need to revise pretty much all of the sentence structures that I already learned. I just hope that they will put me in the 3 day a week class instead of the 5 day a week class like I requested, because while I need to revise, I'd rather be doing it in a fast tracked version rather than a slower version where I'll be bored silly. Plus who wants to be at uni more than they need to be? :p We'll find out the results on Tuesday morning.
Then in the afternoon we had the orientation for the College of Business. If I wasn't already stressed enough after my failure of an interview I was stressed after this orientation. Some of the subjects that I was planning on taking (including one of the ones that I HAVE to take to fulfil the requirements of one of my QUT subjects) are limited placement, meaning that there are only about 5 spots available to those of us in the College of Business. I've had to fill in a form for the subject that QUT needs me to do saying that I need it for my course at home, but there's still no guarantee that I'll get in. A couple of the other classes that I wanted to take aren't available to CoB students at all so I'll need to have another look over the class schedule and work out what I want to do before class registration on Tuesday afternoon. We also met our buddies who will help us out if we have any questions about uni/Japan in general.
Thursday:
In the morning we had orientation for the dorms. This was pretty much a waste of time because they just told us the rules that we were told of when we moved in. In the afternoon we had computer orientation and library orientation. Once again, a waste of time. We didn't even get to visit the library. I think this was the most painful day of orientation and I was having serious trouble keeping my eyes open.
Friday:
Friday was a little more interesting. We went to the fire station where they have fire, smoke, and earthquake safety training. We got to use a fire extinguisher (the water-filled sort), crawl through a few rooms filled with the fake smoke stuff you find at theme parks (which actually does make it hard to breathe by the way and I was coughing on the way out despite having my shirt pulled up over my mouth), and experience an earthquake similar to the one that hit Japan in 2011. What we experienced was a 7 on the seismic scale, and while I have to say that it was probably more fun that it should have been because it was a controlled simulation I wouldn't want to experience one in real life. We had to get under a table and hold a cushion on our heads and hold on to the leg of the table, but it was really quite violent and if you weren't holding on to the leg of the table you could very easily have been thrown across the room a bit. The table moved a good metre or so in some of the simulations even with 5 people under the table holding on to it and some people came out of it with carpet burn on their knees. Let's hope I never experience an earthquake of those proportions.
So that was orientation so far. The only orientation related stuff left is on Tuesday, when we get our placement test results and enrol for classes, and then classes start on the 23rd (although I'm not sure how that works because we don't get our schedules until October 1st. We also don't get our student ID cards and wifi passwords until the 25th, which is really annoying because at the moment we're all paying adult prices for trains. That's 600 yen a day (or about $7 Aus) just to get to Ikebukuro where the uni is and back.
I'll leave you with this photo I stole from Lauren of most of the Shiki dorm family outside of Rikkyo. I'll try and take my own photos of the campus soon! Oh and I now have my mobile up and running. If anyone wants the number just let me know on facebook or by email. I also have Line (an app used widely in Japan as a replacement for text messaging/calling, it uses your data allowance rather than your call/text allowance).
Anthea xx
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