Official entrance ceremony to APU. Apparently I was meant to dress in my traditional national dress. Even if I knew about it I wouldn’t what to bring (crocks, shorts and a bush hat?)
Several super lame speeches – everyone ignoring the tiny oriental tree sitting next to them on a table as they speak.
Then The FLAGS showed up. Taking the stage with matching red jackets and speaking passionately and with big smiles about the glories of joining them. Their “family” as the called it will apparently make sure i am not lonely, grant me friends, help me with University procedure and rush me to hospital if i hurt my ankle while dancing in the city. Honestly i don’t have the words to explain how creepy and cult-like they were. And if i did you wouldn’t believe me. I will attempt get a video of the ceremony – for this and for the highly skilled Korean, Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese dances that followed it.
BTW. The locals burned a mountain… (will upload proof after I post this up.) it appears to have something to do with a festival of sorts. Nobody could really tell me why they do it. But it was pretty. This country is so so very strange. i don’t even have time to recover from one cultural shock before another arrives
For example. Every day at 9:50 a message goes off telling non-residents to leave the uni. This message was going off even during the study break when hardly anyone was here. Every. Day.
But they are efficient. We had health checkups. So efficient. From one station to the next in perfect precision and in record time.
on the way back i saw what i thought was a dinosaur themed theme park. it was later explained to me it is a “Hotel”. they exist all across japan in different themes and the idea is that you go there with your partner and fuck in a different atmosphere. dinosaur themed, underwater themed ect. creepy creepy sods
Found alcohol sold in milk cartons. Vending machines with cigarettes and alcohol. Bananas coated in chocolate. A shop (in the middle of a normal shopping centre) that sells socks. All the socks were finger socks. One day i will find an explanation, perhaps, to why an Asian country had such a large proportion of its adds consisting of white people.
turns out anime is mainstream Japan. One piece, Dragon Ball and Pokémon are strong themes in the arcade in the local mall and more generally.
Had my food aggress upon me. See after the small black octopus wasn’t so bad i tried the large pink one and the clams. Both were quite not to my taste but the clams has a bloody thing inside them. I don’t know how the little eight legged crab like creature survived being frozen but i find myself in an almost endless state of shock and surprise here.
considering how this entire university is host to only 5700 students the library facilities are downright phenomenal. Certainly surpasses the services at my uni (where we have over 22,000 students) .
i was treated to a show by the Japanese government. Fireworks exist in every country essentially but here it was something truly special. A very large crowd sitting in silence along a beach as 2 or 3 ships fire fireworks into the air in coordination with the songs playing on speakers. In addition over 50 coordinators walking around creating easy paths of access to the seating and after the show getting the street ready for the influx of pedestrians by stopping traffic. The whole thing was done with such curtsy, order and atmospheric wonder that i was most certainly impressed by this different way of doing things. It reminded me of an idea I had a while back of using federal coercion and the internet to force global sharing of ideas, solutions, tactics and problems between local governments around the world.
Last point is about the beauty of trust economies. buses here are quite expensive. certainly at-least twice the cost of Australian bus rides. and still payment for the ride is done at the end of the ride as one gets off the bus. the front doors are for exiting and the back doors are for entering. tickets can be purchased in many places but if you lack one money suffices. the white gloved driver has no part in the process. the tickets are placed in a machine (i will attempt to photograph this) that swallows them into the bus. the magic here is that there is literally nothing to stoping me from saving meself some money and not putting anything in the machine. imagine how much more efficient transportation would be if the level of societal trust enabled people got on at the back and exit from the front…
p.s correction – rubbish can be taken down everyday but only in the designated 30 min with the room number visible on it.
razipilli 