Today is a good morning.

I woke up today, rode my bike to Lawson's, a convenience store, and I got some vitamins...which are twice as expensive as they are over here. Uh...I think I'll be taking those every other day.

Anyway, picking up from where I left off yesterday, I got to Kansai airport, where I was dead tired. Luckily, everything was in English and Japanese. I went through Immigration and Customs, then I met the other students. I exchanged my money to yen, had my luggage shipped to JCMU, then bought a train ticket. Finally we got on the Haruka Limited Express, which took us through Osaka and Kyoto all the way to Hikone. It took about two and a half hours. I was conked out most of the way, but I was amazed at all the lights in Osaka. I saw karaoke bars and pachinko parlors and kids in school uniforms making their way home...it was really cool.

When we got to Hikone Station, I immediately got into a taxi with three other people, where they drove us to JCMU (we had to tell the driver "Mishigan Sentaa", which is what the locals call it). That wasn't too long, thankfully, and soon I was in my room, where I made up my bed, called home, and promptly went to bed.

My room is a Japanese-style apartment thing. I have my own room, as does my roommate, and we have a common room with a stove and sink and a bathroom. I'll take pictures after I've cleaned up and put away all my stuff, but my room has a sliding-style door. The bed is sorta Japanese style (read: low to the floor and really hard), and I have a modest closet, some drawers, and a desk. Ironically, this room is considerably bigger than my room at USC last year...

Anyway, it's all about conservation here. We have a spending limit on utilities and we have to pay any extra, so we cut corners wherever we can. You have to turn on the hot water with this little control panel (you can adjust the temperature), and the toilet has two ways to flush: if you push to the left, you get a bigger flush than the one to the right. (I thought it was cute that the ways to flush are marked with the kanji for "big" and the kanji for "little", respectively.) Air conditioning is really expensive here, so I try to keep it off as much as possible. Right now, all I have is a little fan. It's about as hot as it is in Columbia right now, but it's even more humid. I turn on the air conditioning when it gets too stuffy inside.

I went shopping yesterday at Beisiə (pronounced Bay-sha), which is almost like the Japanese equivalent of Wal-Mart... They had clothes, groceries, music, books, and magazines. I bought melon bread and a bottle of water... I also bought a drink called Dakara, which was kinda like sweet lemon water... (dakara means "so" or "therefore" in Japanese, so I'm not sure why it's called that.) Today's my free day, so I might go exploring with someone. We'll see. I need to study too...the placement test for language is tomorrow, and I seriously need to get into Level 2...