Hey Hive/Steemit!
If you didn't catch the last couple of posts, this series is about our trip to Tokyo (again) way back in August 2016, when we went there for a short international exchange program called Promoting Asian Leadership (PAL) with Keio University! The program was a week long, but we went there a few days ahead of time to explore and revisit our favourite places.
Last week, we spent the day chilling in Akihabara! We went to eat some delicious yakiniku (Japanese bbq) at a random restaurant we found on the street, and spent the night playing at the arcade, where we won a cute neko atsume plush!
3 August 2016. Wednesday.
Today was finally the day for us to head to Keio University! We spent the morning packing up our luggage and checking out of our Airbnb. We then made our way to Tokyo Station to meet up with one of the students from Keio University who was gonna lead us there since we didn't know where it was.
By the time we got to relax (and I actually starting photos) it was lunch time! Unfortunately I don't remember where this is from, but I think it was a place that the Keio students brought us to.
The lunch was pretty alright; not exactly something we would eat normally, but it's good to try something different I guess.
This was what Sean ordered; which included a croquette!
After lunch, we headed to Keio! Unfortunately we had to drag our luggage along so it was quite tiring, but eventually we made it.
Aaaand the first thing we did was wait for at least half an hour in a classroom with sleeping students.
After a while we had to move to another room or something and they finally began the briefing.
Lemme just preface this by saying that this PAL program turned out to be quite a disaster, organisation-wise. It was a student-run program, and we kinda assumed that they would know what they're doing since it's been going for a few years, but nope. The activities and excursions they planned were alright, but we had close to no information about the program in between signing up and arriving here and didn't have much contact with anyone in the organising committee. And this was the first time we ever heard of such a program, so we didn't know what to expect.
So anyway, after waiting for quite a long time with nothing to do, we soon broke off into groups. Coincidentally, there was another Singaporean girl there who was from a different university from us. Luckily Sean and I were grouped together, and after some introductions we set off exploring the campus.
Their campus was alright, it was a decent size, and had the standard facilities, like the field, lecture halls and classrooms. I didn't have time to take a lot of photos because we were supposed to be doing... something. I can't remember what but it was probably some lame orientation activity.
After that, they brought us to this dark seedy restaurant for dinner where we had a buffet (that tbh wasn't good at all). They did have alcohol there, and since we pretty much paid for this we decided to get a drink.
I think this first dinner was a chance for us to mingle and get to know people, but like 90% of the people there were the Keio students. And there was only gonna be 8 international students (including us). I have no idea why they needed to have such a huge organising committee, and why they decided that having a dinner in this dark, cramped, noisy "high-end" restaurant for a bunch of broke ass students was a good idea.
So we just sat and ate as much as we could stomach.
We did meet a couple of nice people, but it was really hard to have a conversation since it was so dark and noisy and cramped. And there were a few other lame activities and games, which would have been better played in a larger area like I dunno, their school? Not to mention there were other customers there in the restaurant too, which made it so uncomfortable because I felt like we ruined their dinners by being so noisy.
Oh turns out the dinner was in this hotel, which just make it even worse, because a hotel is supposed to quiet and peaceful! Why the hotel allowed it I have no idea as well.
There were easily like 30 of us all crammed into a small dining area. I was basically just waiting for the night to end so we could go to our accommodations and finally not be surrounded by strangers.
Luckily, the night came to an end about 2 and a half hours later. We started making our way back to the campus to get our luggage and move to our accommodations.
Which we realised upon arrival, was just a "big" house (by Japanese standards) where a bunch of students from the organising committee and all 8 of us would be staying. And there were only 2 bedrooms in the house. And 1 bathroom. Oh gawd. Luckily the Keio students and some of the guys were fine using the bathhouse nearby.
I don't actually have pictures unfortunately, because I thought it would be rude to take photos with other people's luggage and personal property strewn about everywhere. But because there were 3 girls (among the 8 international students), we had to split the 2 rooms amongst the 3 of us. We were thinking that Sean and I could get 1 room and the other 2 girls would share one, but one of the other 2 girls wasn't feeling well so we let her have 1 room to herself.
So unfortunately, that would mean me sharing a room with the Singaporean girl (named Cherilyn) instead of Sean. Not only sharing a room, but sharing a bed mind you. With a complete stranger I just met today. Yipee...
That's Cherilyn in the front.
I mean we did get to know each other a little bit and she was actually really nice, but still. I had only known her a few hours and now we had to share a bed.
I don't even know how many people ended up staying in that house aside from the 8 of us. But all the guys were basically sleeping on the floor in the living room, which was big enough, and Sean got a couch of sorts.
But so far the program was really rubbing me off the wrong way. Everything was really disorganised and messy; there was a super unbalanced 10:1 organiser to participant ratio, and now we were stuck in a house full of strangers! Needless to say the whole arrangement made me really uncomfortable. It was definitely not what we were expecting that's for sure.
This was the only picture I had of the house.
I think the Keio students had a very different perception of what would be suitable accommodations and all the international students agreed that they should have asked us beforehand instead of booking this frathouse and forcing us to stay together. But oh well. I guess they thought it would be good for bonding, which is fair, but how much bonding do you really need for a week-long program with people you're basically never gonna see again.? It felt more like they were only thinking of themselves and what would be fun for them, instead of us.
Sorry this turned out to be such a ranty post. I'm actually quite an accommodating person, but that whole experience was too much even for me. By the end of that first night I wanted to just ditch the program and go off to resume our holiday, but we didn't. For better or worse, I'm not too sure.
Well, we did go on an excursion the next day so it wasn't too bad. I was gonna combine the 2 days together since there weren't much photos for today, but I think I ranted too much that it would be too long, so tune in next week!
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #64 (Japan 2.0): My First Claw Machine Win! 🎊