Arrival

Hey ladies, gentlemen, other genders and floating three-headed hippopotamusses! First chapter coming up:

First, the long, long. yeah... REALLY long flight. Actually it didn't feel that bad during the trip, but since it can be uncomfortable to sleep in a plain, it didn't really work and I'm having a yetlag. Writing at four o' clock in the middle of the night right now. It kind of helps to get things that happened of my chest I guess. A lot of things are incredible and I definetely getting very inspired by this country, but it's also different from what I'm used to.

For example, the room where I stay: It's quite nice really, although the school apologizes for the old building and the small rooms. But the size is not that different from what I had in the Netherlands. The rest is though; outside you can hear bugs making suprisingly loud noises and the sight from my window is a wall of trees. I haven't seen the huge bugs from the rumors yet, but kind of looking forward to it. On sunday, at about, six, seven o' clock I arrived at my room, unpacked all my stuff, took a good shower, went to the convenience store and fell asleep.

Ah, by the way, the convenience is interesting. My Japanese isn't that bad according to Japanese people, but reading is still kind of difficult (well over a thousand characters). In other words, I wasn't entirely sure what I was buying. For example, today I bought a very large bottle of green-yellowish stuff, thinking it was apple juice, tasting like something completely else. So I started doubting whether I was drinking olive oil or not and decided to look it up after drinking about halve a liter of it. Turned out it was green tea. Well, I haven't drunken either of them before, so I forgive myself for my stupidity, being well aware that there's a good chance other people think differently.
Also, I wasn't entirely sure how much it cost. Last thing might seem weird, but if you know that I just paid by creditcard and that there's a huge difference in value between yen and euro, it may kind of make sense.

First night in Kyoto I slept just fine, being a matter of being tired from the entire trip. Tonight, there is too much tension in my body and too much of the usual stuff in my head (I'm picturing that normally, there are little purple squirrels with sunglasses running around in my brain in order to make it work properly). After I woke up and took a shower, it took me about two and half hours to buy breakfast. The convenience store is about five minutes away by foot. I don't really want to talk about and I'm not going to mention my lack of sense of direction...

After that it was time to meet with the academic supervisor and decide which classes to take, which went perfectly fine. I'm gonna explain about it after I actually take those classes. Tomorrow (actually later today now I think about it) the third year students of Illustration will be showed around and I will have to introduce myself to everyone. Something to look forward to, but I would be nice if won't fall asleep halfway. The part what happened after meeting with the academic supervisor is probably why I'm so tired right now. Walking around Kyoto for four hours in a row appearantly doesn't work very well. I wanted to get a better sense of direction and gave up rembering things after taking more than two turns. Tried to get into the forest, but found signs at each path leading to it, that I couldn't entirely read yet. Incredibly intersting to see the city though. Houses are different everywhere (don't worry, I'll make pictures some time). There were not to many people, but very friendly to show directions, which I did two times (and which was probably neccesary about 25 times).

Afterwards I went to the convience store again, ate dinner and now I will make another attempt to fall asleep. That way, I can properly fall out of my bed tomorrow, having difficulty to move because of muscle pain and decide to fall asleep again next to my bed. I'll probably just go to school though and decide on doing something else than walking a few miles.

To be continued!