Weekly Update #2: First Week at Keio~

Heya folks, time for me to write another update! If you didn't read the header, the theme of this week is a peek at Keio University! O= This week was mostly spent running around doing orientation things for getting settled down in Keio, and in Japan in general. It was kind of a pain though... do countries normally need this much paperwork to settle in?

Ah well, whatever, what's done is done. Besides doing Keio things, we also did a little bit of shopping and peeking around at cool stuff, so I'll talk about some of that too! For now, let's look at Keio:

Welcome to Keio! I didn't take the shot well because I was walking, but this was the
first picture we took walking into Keio~

So... Keio's a pretty cool place so far! Not sure what I was expecting going in, but the campus is quite nice! The scenery is very nice and pretty, and the buildings look good (well, on the outside at least)! The place is on a bit of a hill, so there's some climbing here and there which is a bit tiring, and the layout of campus is a little confusing (and the naming is silly - why is there a South School Building and a South Building? :<), so it's a little hard to navigate sometimes, but it's pretty good otherwise. The campus is small anyways, so you can't possibly get that lost. =P

I suppose I should talk about orientation itself a bit, though... I'm not really sure what to say. ^^; It wasn't particularly scintillating of an experience anyways... mostly just listening to a bunch of info sessions and trying not to miss anything important because they said half of them in Japanese. Oh, and there were placement tests! I did okay on them - there was a crazy difficulty spike between the first half and the second half for each part, so I feel like the test might not have been a good indicator of my ability...? But I can live with it, I still placed reasonably okay - no use crying over spilled milk anyways. Hey, you know what's good for moving past stuff like that? Food!

Steph's miso ramen (I think?) from one of our lunchtimes over the week. And
some complimentary tea, which is apparently real tasty.

My lunch! Katsu curry and an extra katsu (fried pork cutlet) filled with cheese.
Also Qoo for drink.

The cafeteria food is actually pretty good here! I've been eating katsu curry for lunch pretty much every day I've been on campus, and I'm still not getting tired of it. Curry is delicious. It's only been a week, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss this stuff when I go home. Also the ramen is pretty good here too! Not as good as the ramen place from last week, but that was a specialty location, so no surprises there.

As for how the cafeteria works - pretty much the same as it does in the US, you go up to the lunch line and order what you want, and you get stuff. Though there were some subtle differences. First of all, there are two sections, one for rice dishes and one for noodle dishes. In the rice dish line, they would pre-make a lot of small dishes and put them up for people to take without needing to order. You could probably make a meal out of just 2-3 small dishes and a bowl of rice! Also, when you're ordering big dishes (like curry!) you can pick sizes, which is pretty good, though the "size" for curry seems to just dictate the quantity of curry you get. Now for the noodle line, the weird thing is that you need to pick up a ticket from the beginning of the line for what you want to order and then they'll take it at the lunch line to make it. I didn't realize this the first time, so I had to get back in line again just to get a meal ticket... whoops. =( Well, anyways, I'll end this rant with more pictures of the cafeteria lol.

A showcase of the highlight dishes. Too zoomed out to see individual entries,
but I didn't feel like taking pictures of parts of the case. ^^;

Katsu curry! If you couldn't tell before, I love this stuff.

Well, that's mostly about it for things to talk about regarding Keio. Classes registration is this week (seriously), and classes begin the week after, so... I'll have more to say on that front in the next update. Lastly, I have a mountain of pictures of campus itself and a little of the nearby area! Big credit to Steph for most of these because I'm not so good with the camera. ^^; (also the camera died one of the days we were taking lots of campus pictures, so it's not a complete scope of campus yet ehe)

East Gate entrance! It's freakin' grand.

Keio, Mita Campus: First Building! The central building on campus, and where
we had our first orientation event.

Inside peek of the First Building.

A snapshot of the Keio school grounds during a busy day! It's quite picturesque.

Another angle of the grounds!

To the side of the First Building. College guys really like to just wear suits it seems.

How about some more nature stuff? Some nice and pretty red flowers~

Don't remember which building this is, but it's real nice looking.

Sakura trees near the East Gate that we enter from. They're so pretty! Springtime
is a good time to come here.

Outside of the South School Building. It also serves as a gate of sorts to the
Main Gate, so it's quite impressive.

Another casual peek of the First Building.

This one's... the Post-Graduate Building I believe. There's computer clusters in
the basement.

Namco truck! Out of amusement.

Corridor between First Building and Post-Grad building.

Side of the North Building! It's where a lot of professors have offices apparently.
It looks like an apartment almost for some reason.

Here's more corridors between buildings. Nice and scenic!

There's more cherry blossoms on this campus! Wonderful~

And more! 

Close up of a brush of flowers. It's a lovely hue of pink.

The aforementioned brush!

Red flowers this time!
 

That red flower bush from above!

Another profile of school grounds, looking at the South School Building.

Here's the outside of the First Building again.

Sakura trees with a backdrop of the East Gate.

Walking up the path after entering the East Gate

Benches and a mini nature grove

First Building again I think. There's so many pictures of this one, but I guess it's
because it's in the middle of campus haha.

Vending machines on campus! Sorry Matt, this
is all the vending machines for this update.
 

Bicycle rack on the edge of campus, overlooking the city.

This was taken on a lazier day it seems.

And this one too. In the back you can see the West building though!

Another angle of the post-grad building!

A sunny day, the North Building

Flowers!

And now for something completely different. This was an
advertisement in the University Store's copy center. =P

Here's a peek inside one of the lecture halls! Kinda blurry because I took it just
before an info session thing.

Picture taken as we left campus. Another shot in motion, so quality not
so good... my bad. D=

A shot of the city right around campus! Busy salarymen about as always.

Close-up of the advertisements. One of them's for SMAP's new single, but
I couldn't tell you what the other one is.

KFC in Japan! Right across the street from campus.

The text in the box reads: "A Kentucky made for adults". I have no idea what
that means, but I'll never not be amused at Japanese advertising mindset.

KFC Krushers... some kind of coffee drink maybe? I'm kinda interested if Japan's
KFC menu has any local flavors, like this drink.

A men's store on the way home. Maybe I should get a suit...

A picture of the side street that we take on the way back to the station from Keio.
It's kinda charming.

Maybe for one day we need better afternoon.

Saw this on a building on the way back to the station... I guess there's a Filipino
place somewhere nearby? Kinda interested just out of curiosity...

Look at the school kids laughing on the way home. I love picturesque shots.

A playground on the route home. Maybe we'll pass by a bunch of kids one day.

Mita station! This is the station we take to go home. 

At the platform. Felt like taking a glimpse of the Japanese train system. It's
really, really a lot cushier than any I've seen in the US.

Train incoming! There's a nice wall there to make sure you don't get hurt,
how nice!

Whoosh~!

Inside of the train. It's so clean! It gets really packed in rush hour though,
really not a pleasant experience.

And so ends the Keio adventure. As for the rest of the week... well, we didn't adventure too much because Keio orientation things occupied pretty much every day, and we wanted to rest on the days we weren't running around doing errands. But we did check out the local shopping a bit! Highlighted here are a shopping mall near the station and a gaming store called Chameleon Club.

About to go out on an adventure! Outside of the dorms in Hiyoshi.

Hallway within the mall! Pardon me for not taking a picture of the building
itself though. >_>

The Daiso! It's basically the Japanese equivalent of the dollar store, but more
magical. They sell a pretty wide range of stuff needed for daily life, so it's
pretty convenient. I got some lovely flower print cloth from it for sewing too! =D

This thing amuses me. Condensation remover using a PET bottle... only in Japan,
with their zealous drive for recycling and environmental conservation.

And here's Chameleon Club! They have card games too lol. Here's their wall of
Yu-Gi-Oh singles. I'm not complaining. :3;

JP Stardust Dragon! I almost want one, except they cost a lot, unsurprisingly.

Duel Terminal! Never thought I'd see one of these.

It's basically a Yu-Gi-Oh arcade game that gives you cards for your trouble.
Not a bad deal, if you enjoy it. XD

Gotta take a picture of the control panel. Not sure what's going on, but oh well.
Also don't mind the reflection from the glare. ^^;

And here's a snapshot of their PS3 games! DmC, Arcana Heart 3, mmm fighters.

Water pizza, hype.

This game! I posted about it on Facebook awhile back- it was like this weird
anime crossover featuring such beloved favorites as Darker Than Black, Orphen,
and Scryed. Shout-outs to the people who remember this thing.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3. As a Tales fan, I am very happy about this.

Speaking of Tales fandom: Tales of Legendia!! It's my personal favorite. It's
not really the best, but it has a charming place in my heart. =3 I should've bought
it... maybe it's still there...

Lastly, here's their figures case. Nothing too interesting to me but Madoka's
pretty hype I guess.

And here's the conbini again. Now we're looking at special promo
merchandise though!

Familymart (a particularly profligate conbini chain) has a promo this month for Senbonzakura-
a famous Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid) song, featuring the PV's art.

And also Vocaloid stuff in general. By the way, speaking of Senbonzakura -
they played the song in the store, along with other Vocaloid tracks. Man,
I love Japanese stores.

Hatsune Miku sakura themed candies. Apparently they were only okay,
but Vocaloid rep is worth. =3

Uh... I have no idea why it's sideways. Anyways:
Layton Chocolate! Apparently comes with a puzzle, naturally. =D

I have no idea why this one is sideways either.
Senbonzakura wafers! Pretty tasty apparently.

Melon ice pop with Senbonzakura theme!

 I saved the best tidbit for last though... guess where we went at the end of the week?

Akihabara!

We bought quite a bit of merchandise, so the wallets are recuperating a little, but it's probably worth it. We didn't go around much because I was too tired to go on, but let's see... we walked past the AKB48 cafe and giggled to ourselves a little, and we went into the Gundam Cafe's side store for a brief second. The cashier was in Amuro cosplay, and it was really hard not to laugh in amusement.

After that, we went to the Tokyo Anime Store, which was having a Vocaloid themed special, so TONS of Vocaloid merchandise. For my share, I bought a Vocaloid deck of the TCG called Precious Memories. I'll probably never play it ever, but the art on the cards were absolutely fantastic, including some illustrations by the original artist, KEI, so well worth it. Also one of the cards I got inside was signed by the card artist, which is really hype! Oh, and there were gachapon machines. I used two of them, one for Uta no Prince Sama mini figurine keychains, and one for Sword Art Online character status screen keychains. I got... Hijirikawa for UtaPri and Yui for SAO. Apparently Yui was the secret goodie, so I guess I should feel lucky? At least Yui evokes memories of happy family episodes, so that's pretty good.

Our next stop after the Tokyo Anime Store was to the Animate store... and hoo boy was that a doozy. 2 hours in a pretty crowded, 7 floor store chock full of enough merchandise to stock an anime convention's dealer's room. Now this is where our wallets really did some work. I walked in thinking, "There's not much in particular I want to buy besides Tales things, so I probably won't buy that much..."

... I was wrong. I actually didn't buy much besides Tales and Sword Art Online stuff, but... it turns out that this store packed enough stuff just for those two to punch my bank account in the gut. Oh, and some souvenirs for folks, but I'll keep most of those a surprise, so I'll just talk about Tales and SAO.

Seriously, my heart skipped a beat when we found a shelf of Tales merchandise, I was ecstatic. I got some of the most mundane things, but they were Tales themed, so I'm really happy about them: A pack of Tales of Friends folders, a Milla Maxwell pencil case, and an Asbel Lhant cup. Also, we bought tons of collectible boxes, but we didn't get the characters we wanted, so we might buy more... dammit Japan, stop making your goods so buyable. ._.

Okay, and that was all Tales stuff. Now for the Sword Art Online slice of the pie. I bought a collectible pin (which turned out to be Heathcliff... not nearly as cute as I ever wanted, boo), a small tote bag featuring chibi Kirito and Asuna which is absolutely adorable, and a Sword Art Online deck for another Japanese TCG called Weiss-Schwarz. Again, not a game I'm going to play very often if at all, but I'm a sucker for card games. =D; Also the way the cards pay homage to the show make me smile, and some of the Character cards are so cute - there's a Yui card that gives attack buffs to Kirito and Asuna cards. ^^

It was a lot of fun, though I'm really sorry but we don't have any pictures. D= The camera battery died earlier in the day, unfortunately. ;_; What we do have however, is pictures of the aftermath!

A little picture of some of the collectibles boxes we got.
Fingers crossed for getting the characters we wanted!

Overhead profile of allllll the stuff, me and Steph's stuff mixed together.
Akihabara, take all my money plz.

Maybe it's easier to see with this portrait shot. So many things!

Here's a partial picture.Some articles include Story of Evil notebook (Vocaloid),
Vocaloid deck for Precious Memories, Dangan Ronpa 2 collectible phone straps,
and a Tales of Friends folder.

Precious Memories booster pack, Shirokuma folder, Vocaloid folder,
Karol Capel ruler (holy shit, Karol merchandise - Steph was pretty happy for that),
canned bread.

Shirokuma plushie! It's so cute. =D And canned bread. Mysterious!

Metal Upa that Steph got from a gachapon! Steins;Gate viewers will understand
the glory of getting a Metal Upa on the first try. =3

 And well, that's how this week went! Hope you enjoyed this batch of stuff - I kinda did! (well, mostly the Akihabara part, but). Next week will probably be about... Keio classes and possibly more adventures - I kinda wanna go back to Akihabara and buy more merchandise again... aha. But anyways, see you then! I'll leave a nice picture of some of my favorite purchases to wrap this up.

=)