On my new adventure: Arriving in Japan!

It has been a long while since I have been able to write. Mostly due to my summer job, but lately also because I had to pack and arrange everything properly for my exchange–student program that started this september! As many of you might know, I am studying for a bachelors degree in Japanese language at the university of Oslo! And as a part of that, it is mandatory to spend 5 months in an exchange–student program in Japan! ^^ (not complaining haha)

Well, I have been in Japan for a couple of weeks by now (I arrived on friday the 4th of September), so I thought it was time to write a bit about my adventures this far! (I am sorry it has taken so long >.<)

Leaving Norway, I and four other students from my class took the same route to Japan:
We flew to the Helsinki airport from Oslo, and onwards to the Narita airport in Japan. It is the longest time I have ever spent in an airplane, so it was really exciting for me! I could hardly sleep at all, even though I had been traveling since the middle of the night on the day before, and had to travel well 24 hours in total to reach my goal! It was my first time on that kind of an airplane, so I was really excited about there being screens to watch movies and stuff hehe ;v;
I saw a chinese movie (with subtitles) called "20 once again", it was a really nice one so I would definitely reccomend it! ^^

 

 

 

 

Arrived in Japan, we were met by some representatives from our designated international university, and we waited with them for a couple of hours before the school bus came to pick us up, to go to Josai International university. There we got a quick briefing about things, before we were handed our apartment keys, and drove off by the same bus to our new living places! 

The place I live is situated in the country-side, so I guess you could call it a sort of village or small town. It´s called Tógane, and it lies in the county of Chiba, just over 1 hour by train to the Tokyo main-station. I have lived in the countryside most of my life so I really didn´t mind being situated here. In the past couple of weeks I have come to find Tógane to be a rather calm and charming town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quite tranquil, isn´t it?

And about the apartment: it is surprisingly big! I must say, it is quite bigger than the place I used to live in, in Oslo! But then again, in Oslo I only had my own sleeping room, while I had to share both bathroom and kitchen. Here in Japan I have an entire apartment, with both kitchen and bathrooms. 

I took a few pictures when I had just arrived and packed out my suitcase.

 

It was so nice, because upon arrival, we got this really big care–package with everything we could possibly need for starting out living in the apartments. I won´t mention everything, but amongst other things there was a few towels, toilet-paper, bedding and bed cover, tableware, soaps and even some really cute slippers! You could say it was a really nice experience over all hehe.

Well, as I have been living here for almost two weeks, I can mention that the first week was just a general orientation week. We had a few sessions at our school with information about this and that, and also we attended the opening ceremony last friday, but the first week was generally a week off so we could pretty much do what we wanted. I used the time to go to Tokyo as much as three times, both the first and second day (since it was a weekend) and also the following wednesday! I had quite a few adventures, including getting really ill and fever–ish due to jet-lag,
but I think I´ll save that for my next updates ;-)

I hope you enjoyed this update about my current living-situation!

I´m still quite excited about everything, and even though I´ve only been here about two weeks it feels like months allready! wow!

Please stay tuned!