New Beginnings at JCMU

Now that I am more awake, I can write more. Like I said, I moved in on Monday and had orientation on Tuesday. Today was just a normal class day, which means 3 hours of Japanese Language in the morning and then I have the rest of the day to study and wander Hikone and what not. Yesterday I went to some stores around the area. The first area was A.L. Plaza, which is like a huge department store with a grocery store in the basement. The best part of A.L. Plaza is the Hyaku Yen store (100 yen store). It's pretty much the Japanese version of a dollar store, expect is has pretty much everything you could think of, and its not like shoddy quality like American dollar stores. I ended up getting a bunch of cool stuff for school and such. Then we went to the biggest grocery store I have ever seen. It was like the size of two of our Meijers! It was a little overwhelming because of course all of the labels were in Japanese. Luckily I was with a lot of the students who have been taking Japanese for at least 4 years and knew it well, although there were times I would go down an aisle and just grab a few random things to try. I think the best thing I have found via this method is green tea chocolate chip cookies. They are so good! I hope I can find a recipe so I can make them in the States. On the way back to JCMU, we stopped at a McDonalds. I was mildly surprised that they had them here but the menu is different. For example, my friend got a shrimp burger. I wasn't hungry at the time, so I didn't get anything but my friend offered me a bite of hers and it was weird but really good. On a side note, some other stores I found in Japan that surprised me: KFC, Pizza Hut, 7-11 and Big Boy. Once we got back from our adventures around Hikone, it was time to hit the books and study for the quiz I had today. I just finished up with classes today and I made fried rice for lunch. I think I will try and go on another adventure with some of my classmates.

Photo Note: If you check my Facebook today, I am going to post some pictures of my room and around JCMU. If time permits, I might try and go around Hikone and take some more pictures. Also, for those of you following without a Facebook, I am going to open up a Photobucket account and post all of my pictures there as well.