Bonjour, mes amis. Oh, to know French and never use it. Oh, to not know Japanese and never know what is going on.

Hello from Yapan! I know this is only my first post and I have been gone for a long time, so it seems. How can I calculate the hours, as I am in a time warp here? To my surprise, I have survived the first rough days of exhaustive travel and the awkwardness of adaptation. The plane ride was okay; it felt like a terribly boring 12 hour long sleepover party where everybody slept but me. I sat across the aisle from a Japanese woman who sat perfectly still with her jacket over her head for at least 10 hours of the flight. Suffocation must not be a threat to her, this superhuman. I sat next to a boy named Corey who giggled at his comic books, and the other man in our row sat basking in his laptop light for 12 hours. This man and I did not sleep.
Hai. Japan is wonderful in its own way. Almost everything they said about it turned out to be true. Rachel-san was a great help to us on our first night; we did not know her before but she allowed us to stay in her apartment somewhere south of Tokyo. Her Japanese roommate cooked us dinner and was very excited to meet and speak English with us. We had a great time just talking with them. The beer I can now legally drink was a somewhat unpleasant addition to my 28 hour sleep deprivation, however.
So now I am at Kansai Gaidai University. It is orientation week and thus I am very busy sitting in auditoriums listening to people on microphones. Campus is about a half-hour walk from the dorm, something I am very unused to at Wooster. Here I am always walking and always hungry (rice only seems filling). New diet: living as a Japanese. My roommate is 25 years old and Svedish. I have been interested in Sweden because I always learn in sociology classes how much it contrasts with America in many good ways. Japan, also, is a society that so impressively contrasts with my own homeland.
The first thing I noticed on my arrival here is how quiet it is. Though there may be many Japanese compacted in a small environment, they will not talk to each other or they will talk very softly. Most of the time it would only be Rachel, Corey, and I saying anything when on trains. Sometimes young children will screech in excitement in public, but the older they get, the less likely this is to occur. About the children: Japanese children are hands-down the cutest in this world of ours. It takes a very beautiful American child to impress me, but every Japanese kid I find adorable. This is the only reason why Japan is better than the States.
Kidding. There are many interesting aspects to this culture, and yet living here even for so short a time has proven how frustrating an experience it is trying to fit in. As is everywhere, unwritten rules govern the people, but I am only slowly learning these rules and thus always embarrassing myself. The Japanese are so polite, however, that they will never say anything about it. I wish they would, though! They are so polite that they will listen to me speak English to them and nod and say "Hai" ("Yes, that's right, I understand...") and then end up not knowing anything I said. They will pretend to know, though. They will always be content with my answer to their questions, even if I do not answer it how they meant for me to. This is not how I believe communication should work, but that is how it works here.

Well, there is much more to talk about but I am not on my own computer. There's a computer lab very close to my room, which is convenient considering how the internet does not work on our computers until we register them. I am sorry for not being in touch more.

Hope all is well with everyone.