First Day High

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Atarashii Kotoba

O hisashiburi desu ne - It's been a while... Typically an expression used when you haven't seen someone, or something in a while.
Konnichiwa - good day. Generic greeting for anyone. Usually used from 10 am till there is daylight.
Hanami - sakura (cherry blossom) viewing
Zairyuu card - Residence card issued to us when we first landed in Japan as ryuugakusei.
Ryuugakusei - Foreign exchange student
Yakuba - Town hall
Kokumin Kenko Hokenshou - National Health Insurance card
obento - packed lunch
arubaito - part time job

First Day High

Konnichiwa!!! O hisashiburi desu ne!

Wow, seriously, it has been a long time. Hahaha! Sorry for not updating you guys in a long while. Life as a working student here in Japan can be quite time consuming and basically, tiring. But, all in a day's work. Now, a lot has gone down since the last entry. We've experienced snow (for a day), our first hanami, we've also taken the JLPT N4 exams back in July, we experienced the Oarai summer, and a lot more. I will probably make entries on those, hopefully once a week. (Or once in two weeks, if time permits.)


So going back to the 711 crew series.

After arriving and settling and exploring for a day in Oarai, we went to school for the first time. We had our bikes and we set out to retrace the way to school after being shown where the school was, exactly once.

Since we girls lived together and since it was our first day, we all agreed to go to school together. Using our super sharp memories, we set out in search for our school and where it was exactly. Needless to say, we nearly ended up in Hitachinaka because, well we forgot to turn left at the 711 corner.



So after a bit of struggle with the language barrier and such...Leizel was able to ask for directions and got us to school with ample time to take a picture.

Us on our first day.
I wouldn't say it was our first day of school exactly, it was more of an entrance exam of sorts. We were made to take a Japanese language aptitude test to see which student goes to what class. Thankfully enough, and since there were only 7 of us, we all ended up in the same class. After the exam, we had a quick interview to asses our speaking skills.

With all the assessments done, we were then whisked away to the Yakuba to have our zairyuu cards stamped with our addresses and for the issuance of our Kokumin Kenko Hokenshou.

We were then given the rest of the day off.

The next day, we had the opening ceremony where the officers of the school were introduced, as well as short speeches from each officer. There was also a garbage disposal orientation (Japan is very particular with garbage disposal. Schedules, sorting, etc.) picture taking for the school ID, and a quick round robin of introductions from the students. Our particular batch of students is quite small so we were all asked to make self introductions in Japanese.

With the whirlwind of events all done, we then had to fill out bank application forms to open our very first Japanese bank account. In preparation for this, our names were written one by one on the board by our Japanese teacher and we had to copy these for our bank forms.

And that's how our first day of school went.

Again, we were given the rest of the day off with the reminder to bring obento for the next day because we start with arubaito after class.

See you next time for the next episode. ^___^


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