Well, here we are in Kobe, Japan. The whole journey process was about as interesting as you'd expect a 26 hour plane-trip to be, though I can officially put in a good word for Japan Airlines' food service. Also, officially a bad word for its film selection: no, watching Transformers 2 dubbed in Japanese is not a prospect that particularly interests me. So, Angels and Demons dubbed into Japanese. Fun, fun. The entire journey went of completely smoothly, down to an almost total lack of turbulence on any of the flights. This has me worried since, according to the Law of Conservation of Disasters, I'm due for a real smiting.
But, leaving off the oh-so-fascinating transit part of the trip, onto the first few days of Kobe!
It's been a strange couple of days. They've been mostly taken up with various piecemeal shopping trips and bureaucracy stuff. I am probably the best-documented I've ever been in my life right now, between my Alien Registration and my various University-issued IDs and my national health insurance and the fact that everybody and their mother has copies of my passport. I'm starting to feel like I should commit some major felony or burn down the Golden Pavillion or whatever just to make all this paperwork worth it.
Kobe itself is really a lovely city. It's not quite huge enough to be intimidating, but big enough to have lots to do and see. It's wedged in between the mountains and the ocean, and while the waterfront is mostly industrial shipping, the mountains are beautiful, especially in the rain. Public transport is as good as everyone says it is, so no surprises there. The downtown Sannomiya and the surrounding areas are filled with interesting shopping and restaurants and such. And, yes, those huge, noisy arcades that are so neon-y they must be visible from space. You know their serious business when they've got ATMs inside them.
The residence is a concrete block. Charming, no? The room, however, is bigger than anything I ever had in Maryland, including the "double" in Freshman year. I have more space in the most stereotypically tiny country than at any point in my American university. Way to fail, Maryland, way to fail. Kobe university itself is partway up one of the mountains. The whole class registration process is still a bit of an enigma at the moment. We'll see how that mess works out.
Though most of the days have been taken up with fairly mundane necessities, there have been a couple chances to get out. Namely, visiting the Ikuta Shrine Saturday morning, and then the Ikuta entertainment area in the evening. The shrine was big and quiet and bright orange. The entertainment area was big and noisy and bright. Other than that, adventures have been limited to things like "Monica goes to the grocery store" (in itself, interesting in its vastness and the fact that the food, especially the fruit, is all gorgeous) and "Monica goes to one of Sannomiya's department stores for an electric kettle" (why did we let department stores die out? they're sort of awesome).
The point is, though, one has arrived.
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