Oh my goodness, it's already my second weekend here. ..But I still can't handle the heat and humidity very well.

On Tuesday was the Club Info Session. I expected it to be like freshers' fair where all the clubs set up a stall and try to persuade to become a member, sometimes by giving you freebies! We, the new students, were all excited to see what kind of clubs the student body had to offer since we'd been told numerous times that there are thousands of clubs. But we were all very disappointed as less than 10 had turned up (and without freebies). So after quickly walking past the tables to the computers by the window and unsuccessfully trying to check my mail, I went to that shady seating area outside Building 22 where I met Fee the other day to eat my lunch. There I found Chee Seng and sat with him and his friends. We talked until around a half hour before the SILS (School of International Liberal Studies, the school we're enrolled into for this exchange program) when we decided to take another look at the Club Info Session in case some more clubs had turned up. None had so we soon left  for Okuma Auditorium to get good seats. We took many pictures of ourselves with the building in the background on the way and, by the time we sat down, the start of the ceremony had been delayed for 10 minutes because people were taking too long to come in and settle down.

Somehow we all separated and I don't know who I sat next to but we were in the second row. Order of ceremony (as written on the programme, which has the Waseda song on the reverse so I think I'll keep it):
1. Opening words
2. Address by the Dean
3. Guest Speech by a Visiting Professor
4. Greetings from the Associate Deans
5. Introduction of the Faculty Members
6. Closing words

The Dean's speech was very statistical. He talked a lot about the relativeness/relativity (?) of distance with respect to travel and transport, bringing up Phileas Fogg and the dean's own experience of a 36 hour journey from Japan to London by aeroplane. It was, as the deputy dean described it, dizzying, but at the same time interesting, tough long winded. The visiting professor was very funny, actually they all seem very friendly and approachable, and seemed genuinely very excited about being in Japan for a year, so his big speech was to remind us all how lucky we are to be here and that we shouldn't forget how lucky we are. I think saw him today but I wasn't sure at first, so I didn't high-5 him; I hope he's enjoying time here.

After the ceremony ended, we were entertained by a very impressive acapella group. These 5 boys call themselves, or are part of, Street Corner Symphony.

Since I didn't know where my friends were or what they were going to do afterwards I went home. At least we'd arranged to meet the next day for Citibank's bank account applying seminar. However, I left late and was approaching the campus gates at 10 past noon and the seminar began at noon, so I stopped at a photocopying place to get my documents ready and coincidentally Chee Seng, Marion, Eszter and some other people turned up there too! The seminar had turned out to be very popular and a lot of people were told to come to the later ones, so we went to the 1pm session after a leisurely lunch. The bank accounts were explained and the form was straight forward but I didn't have a certificate for my Alien Registration Card.
Afterwards, Marion and I tried to find the NASIC office cos Marion needed to give them her photo but the office was probably just one floor in a building and we didn't know which of the 20+ buildings it was in. We tried asking at the info centre and they said to simply turn right, but that didn't lead us there.

At 3pm was an orientation run by a student club, they gave presentations on Shinjuku and Harajuku, and cafes and bars near campus. They were in Japanese, so I didn't understand much and missed all of the jokes. Eszter even fell asleep through cos she was so bored not being able to understand, but the presentation on cafes made everyone moan about wanting cake during the break. The orientation ended after they showed us a video they'd made about Japanese manners and things, and it was quite funny. The most memorable clip is the one about accessories people attached to their mobile phones. Three students were commenting on each others' as they took their phones out in turn. The first person had something small and cute attached, and they all liked it, whereas the second person was thought to have too many as she had three plush toys. The third person had attached her phone to an accessory, not the accessory to the phone. It was a plush toy about the same size as her head and she defended it by saying that at least it was just one and since it could fit into her bag it wasn't a nuisance but just soft and cute..

This student club had also organised a welcome party for us new international students at the cafeteria of the campus around the corner, Toyama. But Jessi had found that there was going to be a moon-viewing festival not too far away and we decided to go to that instead. It started at 6, so we had some time, and before we set out we decided to have dinner first. We ate at a small yakitori restaurant around the corner from the Nishi Waseda dorm. The guy running it asked how many of us there were, then rushed to the dining room to set up. He turned the lights on, set up a fan and laid cushions around the low table. Of course we had to take our shoes off before entering the dining room. He gave us cold tea and grapes to help us cool down as he prepared the food. There were other customers in the shop so we had to wait a while for the food, but we all agreed that we'd like to go there again as it's so cosy and friendly. For just 700 Yen each, each person got a bowl of rice, 6 sticks of yakitori of various meats and miso soup, and we shared a salad and beansprouts cooked in a delicious sweet sauce.

Soon afterwards we left for the festival but Marion decided to go to the party instead as she wasn't feeling well and wanted to stay near the dorm. It took us around 20 minutes to get to Akasaka-Mitsuke and we arrived around half 7, I think. When we came out of the station we were surrounded by glittering skyscrapers! I was in awe. After a short walk we spotted a huge, bright red torii. It's amazing how you can find jinja in the midst of this modern setting. After walking through the torii, we climbed some steps and came across a tall set of stairs, and this passageway was lined with many little torii (I imagine this has its own name that I'm not aware of). At the top of the stairs, I was surprised to find a vending machine, but I suppose I shouldn't have been since we are in Tokyo.

The first set of doors to the jinja were locked and there were people watching through the bars, so we did the same. But after the first performance we decided to go around the building to see if there were any other entrances. On the adjacent side a sign said that the doors were locked at 5pm, but someone decided that we should carry on walking around just in case and to our amazement we found a door open. We walked through and squeezed in with some people standing at the back.

One of my friends told me that they'd overheard someone saying that the door was being blown open by the wind and that we weren't meant to be there, but a short while later was the show's intermission and some people left their seats. We decided to take advantage of this and look for seats left unclaimed. Luckily all but one of us found seats, but one of the seats was in the path of a great stone pillar so two of us stood watching at the back. I don't know what kind of performances they were but on the fan I as given at the exit the website address printed is www.hiejinja.net The music seemed dissonant at first but after a couple performances, I felt that it worked with the slow, fluid dances.

Most of the people in the audience were dressed in suits, as if they'd come straight from work, with their colleagues too. Everyone also had programmes for the show and the seats that were free were those without a tag attached, so we think that to attend this concert you were meant to have bought a ticket.. While we'd just walked in halfway through.

Outside we met Marion who had turned up with a few other people that had decided they didn't want to go to the party. It turns out that you had to pay 1500 Yen to cover the food they'd provided and we hadn't been told this, plus she'd already eaten dinner. The others she'd arrived with had already left by the time we got out. As we walked back towards the station Jessi decided that she needed cake. In Japan cafés at coffee shops are, supposedly, distinct. If you want cake you must go to a café while coffee shops don't serve cake but they were more likely to be opening at this time than cafés. We found a café before the station but they were out of cakes, so we went back to the Waseda area cos Kaytlin thought that there might be one she knew of that was still open. And it was! Haru and Marion had gone back to the dorm but Jessi, Eszter, Kaytlin and I each had a coffee and a slice of cake. The girly chats we had that night were hilarious! I'm so grateful to Kaytlin for letting me stay over at her apartment, even though we'd just met that day, otherwise I would've had had to have gone back to my dorm to arrive in time for the midnight curfew.