Purikura, Karaoke and Baseball

That's the gist of the last two days. On the 29th I had my first Inbound orientation on the hotel. There were three other exchange students; Lindsey and Tiffany from the USA and Emmi from Finland. I was introduced to my Japanese tutor, who I'll be seeing every Saturday from now on in a little restaurant. All four of us also had to do a little introduction speech in Japanese, which wasn't as difficult as it sounds. I took the liberty of going first.

After the orientation came the fun part. The other inbounds as well as the two aussies, Jono and Simon, and Sachiko as well as one of girls' host mother and brother went to do purikura. Purikura is a big thing Japan. Basically, some people go into this photobooth-like thing and take a bunch of pictures, then you choose four you want to keep. After you choose your pictures, you get to draw on them/add animations or characters/ make borders/ or do whatever you want with them, really. After you can send two to your phone (keitei) and the rest are printed out. You stick them to things.

After purikura, we got a bunch of junk food and went to karaoke. (You're not allowed to bring outside food into the karaoke building, but since the food there is heavily overpriced, we do it anyway). It was pretty fun, except I got hit with horrible migraine, and wasn't able to sing. Next karaoke night I'll sing.

Yesterday my host parents took me to see the big baseball game in Sapporo. The Fighters against the Hawks. We cheered for the Fighters, but unfortunately lost 3 to 2. Would have won if the Hawks didn't get two home runs in the top of the eighth inning. It was a good game though. The Japanese are crazy about baseball. The only time the crowd wasn't singing or cheering in unison was in the eighth inning. And no one bashes the other team. There is no booing when the opponent gets a home run. They only cheer on their own team. Which I think is wonderful.

Tomorrow I start school. That should be interesting, since my Japanese is still incredibly limited. We'll see.