Friday April 8, 2005 - First FULL Day!!!!

View from my room balcony

I woke up at 7:45 and took a shower. I opened my balcony curtains to see a train of little Japanese elemetnary school students in yellow hats walking to school. It was super cute. I woke Ana up and met up with the others. We left for Lawson's convenient store to buy a phone card and we all, FINALLY, successfully called home. Ana and I ate some nikuman (meat buns)... they were cheap and yummy. At 1:00 pm we met up again with Yokomatsu sensei and he took us to a photo booth to take passport photos to register for a Japanese Alien photo ID card. Afterward we left for the Japanese federal government offices to register for our ID cards. We then left for Yamada, which is similar to Future Shop, to purchase an adapter. The power outlets in our dorm rooms are only two prong (without the ground) and we couldn't plug in our laptops.

The Waterloo Systems Design gang: Teresa, Will, Richard, Arthur, and Ana


McDonald's!!!!

we then left for Tottori university for a short visit at the International Affairs Centre to do some paper work. We were told about the supplementary Japanese language and culture programs and the opportunity to teach English, as a part time job, to Japanese university students. ttWe are also having an overnight orientation next weekend to the Tottori sand dunes. its going to be awwwesome... cause we are being fed. Since we wont have our bank accounts set up until sometime in the next week. We are basically almost broke.

The Tottori campus is 100 x more beautiful than the WAterloo campus. Well if you think about it, all campuses are nicer than UW.

Tottori University Campus

We then went to the SOCIAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING (the department that Tottori came to UW and duplicated) office, the department which we will be based. Each of us will be placed in a professor's research lab. There we will do our school work and the grad students in the labs will act as our individual TA's. These grad students will also be the students are gonna take us out partying and drinking. The six different research areas in the department are

- Information systems Laboratory: Richard
- Basic systems theory Laboratory: Ana
- Systems Design and Planning Laboratory: Teresa
- Regional and Urban Planning Laboratory: Will
- Coastal Engineering Laboratory: MYSELF
- Environmental Planning Laboratory: a Korean exchange student already occupied this lab

I'm excited about the coastal engineering laboratory. Supposedly its the most 'engineering' out of the six. Suppsoedly there are wave simulators and other exciting machinery in the lab. We are visiting our labs on Monday. A Japanese student, who was also an exchange student to Waterloo, named Yuichi, (who happened to be on the same flight as us from Toronto to Vancouver to Osaka... but we didnt see him all 16 hours), took us out to dinner in this little Japanese restaurant. The food was AMAZING. We then went back to the residence.

Arthur (looking very tired.. jet lagged) at a Japanese restaurant


Ana enjoying her meal

There we met lots of fellow international students. There are students ranging from graduate to post Ph.D. (we are the only undergrads) from

• Nepal
• Kenya
• Costa Rica
• Egypt
• Sudan
• China
• South Korea
• Myanmar

Us Waterlooers are the only Canadians.

so I passed out at 8 pm. I told Ana to wake me up at 10 hoping for it only to be a 'small nap'. Instead I slept all the way till 1 am. I woke up and did some work term report research till 4 in the morning.

Inside joke:
- Sakana flowers ('Sakana' is 'fish' in Japanese. It should be Sakura flowers instead --> Arthur being silly)