All Things Japanese

Okay.

Before that job recruitment last Saturday, I didn't want to work for EPSON. After all, I don't (or didn't) want to be a programmer. But after they presented their compensation package, well... I drooled! I don't exactly know how much their entrance pay is (they only told us it was above average),but their benefits are great! Plus, they have added incentives for people who can speak Japanese because EPSON is a Japanese company and they send people to Japan all the time. Isn't that just great for me? Also, their office is located in a swanky area in Cebu. Cebu! Not Manila! Perfect, huh? But... I still don't know what will happen to my application. I don't even know when I'll get the results.

I was pleasantly surprised with their exam, however. It was in 3 parts: a psychological exam, Numerical Reasoning, and Abstract Reasoning. For the first time in my life, I found the Numerical Reasoning section the easiest. That was a real surprise, considering how lazy I am with Math. The first part was not very good because there was a time limit, but the third part was, in my opinion, the most difficult. The crazy thing is, in all exams I've taken in the past, my highest scores are in English and Abstract Reasoning, even if I always find the latter part difficult. So, really, I have no idea how that exam turns out. Apparently, they'll just contact the people who qualify for the interview. Ohhh, I'll have to cross my fingers real tight. Just imagine how great it would be if you had a job waiting for you even before graduation!

Anyhow, Uchida Sensei and some Japanese girls from Ferris are in the Philippines right now. They came to my house last night, and we had lechon because Sensei really loves it. They also cooked Japanese food, which was really nice. They brought me Japanese foods that I missed, too! So I am ureshii.

Aya, one of the girls who was here as an exchange student last year, was with the group, and she gave me a copy of her pictures of Ferris. I wanted to share them with you...

So here are the pictures of my school when I was an exchange student in Japan--Ferris University, in Yokohama:

The main entrance.

One of the classrooms.

The swanky computer room.

My favorite rest room.
It's big, and the lights automatically turn off if there's no one in the room. Each stall also has a noise-emitting device so your neighbors won't hear whatever sounds you're making.
No kidding!

The multimedia section of the library.

And they even have a fitness gym now. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, if you know a Japanese, ask him/her about Ferris. He/She probably knows about it. It's seriously the most sophisticated "all-girls" university in the country. That's how lucky I am to have been given the opportunity to be there.

lechon - roasted whole, young pig
ureshii - Japanese term for happy

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New Semester

I'm in school today because it's that time of the school year where everyone has to be in long lines and do all these stuff that thankfully, you only have to do once a semester. Yep, I guess you call it enrollment. For us this time however, since we're just exchange students, we're kinda like the students who don't belong. Well, not really. It's just that we don't really need to enroll, because we're already in the school list. We just have to do certain things. Like today is physical examination day. Yay--not! In fairness though, they're very efficient here and we came early so we didn't need to go through very long lines, luckily. And it's not like back home in Silliman where you have to walk like a kilometer (Registrar to Medical Center) just to get a PE. Here, they brought the hospital to us. They made a some classrooms into the testing centers. There's even an X-ray van. (Yes, it's kinda like a delivery van but you can have your x-ray taken inside it.) LOL.

We also got our grades for the last semester today. For my 9 subjects, I got 3 S' and 6 A's. In lay man's terms, S is 90-100 points and A is 80-89 points. My S' are in those Programming & Excel classes (thank God, else I would totally be an embarrassment to my course), and in our Japanese Affairs class. Phew. Yokkata.

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"Sugoi, nee?~~~"

Miss Nippon Grand Prix 2004 Yuriko Saga

Okay, to give you an idea of how fancy the girls at Ferris University are, let me tell you this. The girl who got crowned as Miss Nippon Grand Prix 2004 is a student at Ferris!!! Her name is Yuriko Saga, and she's 21 years old. I don't know if I've seen her around campus, but she's a sophomore student here, and we have the same course, International Relations (which is what the exchange students here are taking). Heh heh. I walk among beauty queens.

Title means: Great, isn't it?

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It just dawned on me.

From nowhere, an idea came to me tonight. Well, I can't say that I didn't have inspiration, because I did. A really negative inspiration it was though, but nevertheless, it helped me decide. I now want to do something, and I'm determined to do it. I can't go on telling people what it is yet, but I hope luck will be with me. Heh heh heh. Ganbarimasu!

Ferris University

Anyways, vacation official started at Ferris yesterday. Yes, our last day of class was a Monday. Isn't that really weird? Well, never mind, that's how it is here. I also hear that the next semester's class will start on a Tuesday. O.O Hahah. Well, no use pondering about it. The problem now is, what to do until class starts again on April. Yes, people. That's two months! Back home, this piece of news would have been heaven, but here it's not. What in the world am I going to do? One consolation is that, the IT center at Ferris will be open all throughout the break. And hmmm... how about that part-time job Sasaki-san was talking about? Another thing really weird though is that classes are over but we still have papers due. Until Monday. That's something which would never happen back home, but I can't say that it's a bad thing! =P

Ferris and Silliman are really alike in some ways. For example, well you all know I have been taking British Poetry class right? Well my sensei is really good. He's British, he's written a lot of books about Britain, and he's been teaching in Ferris for 20 years! Last Monday, during our last meeting, I asked him if he was going to have the same class next semester. To my surprise, he told me that it was his last semester at Ferris! The reason is, he's also teaching at WASEDA (probably the top university in Japan) in Tokyo, and will be transferring to a new department there, so he's leaving Ferris. That was really too bad. I really liked the class! So, it made me remember SU and all the teachers moving on to CVPC to teach. Hehehe. Another British teacher, Annie and April's sensei in one of their classes together also had his last semester at Ferris. Hmmm. Whot's happening? Mass Briton migration of some kind? But guess what the all-girls schoolgirls are thinking? Ahehehe. Maybe some hot, young teachers are going to take their place?!? Bwahahahahahah!!!

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Money

Ok, let's see. Our allowance arrived last Oct. 31. And since then, I have withdrawn a total of 25,000 yen. In my wallet, I still have around 5,000 and at the bank I have around 55,000. I can't believe it! Money just slips through your fingers sooo fast, it's even faster than the proverbial "water slipping through your fingers".

If I were in the Philippines, I would probably be rich right now. My allowance in pesos is actually around 35,000 per month. Imagine that?!? My monthly allowance back when I was still at home would just be around 5,000 pesos max. *blink blink* See? But here, phew! You have to really scrimp if you want to save. Clothes are the ultimate downfall, coz the really good ones are soooo freakin expensive. Can you imagine I saw a 198,000 yen coat at the department store near Ferris. That was probably a real fur coat, which just makes it even more sad! Because, they had to kill a poor animal for the fur, and now they're targeting the pockets of vain people. Soooo sad! Where are the animal rights activists?

Oh wait, I haven't posted much about the Ferris Festival, have I? *giggles lots* Well, there's this really amusing thing they did here at the school. Of course, there were a lot of Japanese guys who came here during the festival. There was a "booth" where these guys could have their pictures taken, write their contact info at the back of their pictures, and then post them for the girls to see and contact them later. Actually, the pictures are still posted until now. Hehehehe. It's amusing, isn't it?

Sukiyaki

Last night, our coordinators at the dorm invited April and I for dinner with them. However, April couldn't come because her seminar class was having a welcome party for her (speaking of welcome parties, my seminar class with Haruki sensei is giving me one on the 12th). I was really scared with that, coz I thought I had to face them on my own! Imagine just one barely-Japanese-speaking girl in the midst of two non-English-speaking adults! Fortunately, I learned that the two Chinese exchange students, Kak-san and Tei-san, were also invited. *phew!* We had sukiyaki (which I ate for the first time), and it was absolutely, absolutely oishi!!! It's my favorite Japanese food now!

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Halloween and Ferris Festival

OMG I am so freakin' tired!!! Wanna sleep! But it's still too early. It's not even 7 pm yet...

Well, that was some weekend. So many things happened this week, but frankly, I don't have the energy to go into detail about it. So, to make it short, for halloween, we didn't go out because of our curfew and had a "party" at the dorm. Annie rented "scary" videos, and I dressed up as a cellphone. Haha. I cut off tin foil for numbers and stuck them on my chest and used a foil-wrapped chopstick for antenna and stuck it behind my ear.

Saturday, we went to Hiroko sensei's wedding... she's finally married! Funny things happened, but... I'll elaborate next time. And today, we had that presentation about the Philippines (including a dance haha) at Ferris. And so all these things made me as tired as I am now.

ZzzZZzz...

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Pumpkin Joint 2003

Today was English Students Society's (ESS) "Pumpkin Joint 2003". ESS by the way, is an organization of students from Ferris who want to explore the English language more. April and I joined it because we thought that maybe we could get something out of it, and we needed to do something with our time, too. Every Friday, we have luncheon meetings with them in one of the rooms at the University.

When they told me that there was gonna be a "discussion" today from 10:00 to 5:00, I wasn't very keen on it. You see, who would want to be in a single discussion which topic was about "wealth" for a whole day? But I dragged myself there, and to my surprise, it was a big deal! From the moment we came to the intersection near the campus gates, we saw girls holding placards saying "Pumpkin Joint". I thought it wasn't for ESS, but it was! It turns out, Pumpkin Joint is a yearly event hosted by Ferris ESS wherein they invite ESS members from other schools in Tokyo and Yokohama to come over and have a discussion. The venue was at a nice hall and there were more than a hundred students attending. All in all, there were representatives from 14 schools of Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba.

We were then grouped into six persons, and had one classroom for each group in the 7th Building. I was quite happy with my group. There were four girls and two boys. Our group leader was from Meiji Gakuin University, and she was an exchange student to the states for a year. Another member was from Ferris, and she also stayed in the US for two years. There was one girl from Tokyo University for Foreign Studies, a boy from a technology school in Tokyo, and another boy from Chiba University.

We had around an hour of introducing each other, had lunch, and then discussions about the topic. The girls were pretty good in English, and the boys could speak it, so I had no problem. It was a lot of fun actually. We had exciting "thinking" games afterwards, and I was actually a bit sorry when the joint ended. It was cool, and I made new friends. Contrary to what was expected, I really had a good time. Hmmm, sometimes that's the advantage of expecting the worst.

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