.022 - from cali to kansai to kyoto

The wait was forever but I've finally arrived! Me and about 15 other people in SCTI decided to take the same flight to Osaka. I honestly don't think I would've enjoyed my trip from Kansai to Kyoto had I not had the others with me.


I've been here about 3 days so far. The first few days we stayed in a pretty nice hotel near the Kyoto tower. It was a pretty good place to be since there were tons on internet cafes(which are kinda pricey compared to free internet :)), a McDonald's(you know I was there), a very large train station, and various Japanese restaurants ranging from cheap to ridiculously expensive.



We still had to commute about 10-15 minutes via subway to the Doshisha campus for orientation on these first three days. So my guess is that the Stanford program wanted us there so that our jet lag didn't irritate our host families too much.

The Stanford Japan Center at Doshisha was pretty sweet and well located in the heart of the Doshisha Imadegawa campus(there are 3 others nearby as well). Our center is above a San Francisco Coffee shop(go figure). Inside there's nothing too special, just a few classrooms and program staff's offices. I won't go too much into the details about the center as I'm sure more interesting details will come up later.

Anyhow, yesterday(the last day of orientation) we took a tour with some pretty cool Japanese students(mostly girls and one really tall guy). Even though I understood very little of what they said they were pretty funny nonetheless. I really wish I got some pics with them...

Yesterday afternoon I met my host mother, Kiyo Ito(the wait was so nerve racking). She was remarkably chiller than I thought she'd be. She's a retired real estate agent and apparently she's been hosting students for the past 15 years or so. She could also speak a little English! In fact that's pretty much the way I communicated with her yesterday. Though that's definitely gonna change since there's no point in staying with host family unless you try to speak their language.

Her house is soooo big(comparable to Texas houses) and beautiful. There are about 3 European style bedrooms and a Japanese style one, which I'm staying in right now. Check out the pics:



Unfortunately, I'll be staying in a different room after 10 days since one of the other students will be moving out soon.

There are 2 other students staying in the house with me. The one moving out soon, Scott, is from NYU and the other, Ren Chan, is a business student from Taiwan. Both are down to earth and have been acting as a translator between me and Ito since I've arrived.

This post is getting pretty long and scattered so I think I'll stop there for right now. I promise to write more focused entries in the future, I'm just a little behind right now.


As I'm writing the sun is slowly coming up behind the mountains around the Ito house. I keep pinching myself to remind me that I'm in Japan. Even my dreams are taking place back in the States. I guess that just means I need to what Professor MacDougall told the group, "forget [my] 'American-ness' for a minute and learn to be Japanese".