２０１４年４月８−９日

April 8th:

I slept 12 hours and woke up around noon, which was very late for a change. I Skyped Maika for a while to touch basis.

Here is the view outside my bedroom. My very own sakura tree. 

Next, I headed to the bank to cash in my traveler's cheques so I could pay the rent. The first bank I went to did not accept traveler's cheques, so I was a little lost. Luckily, this middle-aged Japanese woman noticed my perplexed body language, interrupted my conversation with the banker to tell him that she will take me to the right place. And so, I followed her while keeping up some simple conversation about where I am from and what I am doing in Japan. This is the third time somebody has gone out of their way to walk me to a destination. This act of kindness is a little bit unusual in America. I suppose quality service is in the blood of the Japanese. Such wonderful people.
After taking care of business, I decided to pick up a bunch of food and hit the park for a hanami picnic. Here are some pics from the walk there.

The petals are starting to fall. So sad. 

Children playing everywhere. Clubs from schools came with big blue tarps. California weather.

I made eye-contact with the pink orange haired dude as I found my spot. They kept looking at me, so I invited them over and before I knew it, we were all good friends.

The girl even made a Facebook status about meeting an American exchange student at the park. (Nice translation Bing..)

After they left, I laid down and enjoyed the sakura from underneath while the sun set. 

Overall, a successful day. 

April 9th:

Another orientation!!! Geez.. I went to Osaka University's most popular campus, Toyonaka this time. We decided to take the monorail there. Here's a pic of it coming into the station.

 The orientation was basically a big library, campus and cyber media center tour. I've been taking all the tours in Japanese (we have the English or Japanese versions of the tour). Proud to say I understood over 90% of what the librarian told us. The campus tour was a bit trickier because he was using slang a lot more. But my language proficiency is making progress.. Now if only I could get myself to sit down and relearn my characters.
Anyways. I came back to the dorm around 3 and played about 3 hours of tennis, soccer, and basketball. My friend Jason turned out to be a pretty good tennis player, so I'm looking forward to hitting more often with him. I'm super sore now.
I owed my friend Samantha a #jamnomination so here is what I came up with. Some cool voicings I learned over Autumn Leaves, and me trying to sing in a register much too high. The falsetto will come along!

And tomorrow is my first full day at the lab. 9 AM - 6 PM. Gonna be brutal.