Becoming the Schoolgirl

Okay! Quite a bit has happened in the last couple of days, so let me start from when I visited my school for the first time - Wednesday, I think. Yeah, Wednesday.

Anyway. School. Everyone calls it Nansho, even though its full title is something impossibly long (...Obihiro Minami Shogyou Koukou, my sheet says - don't ask me where the Nansho bit comes from, I haven't a clue). It's a big beige building, about four stories high. I went in Wednesday to meet my homeroom teacher, Suzuki-sensei, and the English language teacher, a very nice Wisconsinite college grad I am to call Lauren-sensei. Yes, no joke, she's from Wisconsin. No, I didn't laugh. Anyway, I also met up with Lisa, the Swedish exchange student from AFS, who was similarly treated to a round of introductions before we embarked on a tour of the school. Since I'm a second-year here (for reasons most mysterious - it's the equivalent of being a junior in RHS terms), I'll be spending most of my time on the second floor (whoa, a school with a logical layout!), and Suzuki-sensei showed me where my homeroom and seat was. Japanese classes don't actually move around; the students basically remain in their homerooms all day long while the teachers rotate to where they need to be. My seat was (typically) all the way in the back corner, right by the windows, so I had a great view of the baseball fields and some of Obihiro (I get the feeling I'll be looking out there a lot...).

Afterwards, it was - you guessed it! - unifooooorm tiiiiime! Since AFS is super-cheap, we (being me and Lisa) are borrowing uniforms from the school, though we have to buy our own blouses and socks. My uniform basically consists of a knee-length navy pleated skirt, a navy button vest, and a navy blazer, complete with a little dark green tie. It's very cute, even if it isn't exactly a sailor fuku. (Ah well.) So that was all right. Nothing else of interest happened on Wednesday, so for now, let's skip to...

...Thursday! Yesterday! The first day of the rest of my life! (Or som such crap.) But it was definitely rather awesome, if I do say so myself, because I finally got my parents' permission to go bicycling.

I need to say something about Obihiro: it's in Hokkaido. It's in Hokkaido, and it's got random fields all over the place because it is two gas stations away from being Wisconsin. A biggish city in Wisconsin, yeah, but still. Wisconsin. So it's flat, for the most part, but it's also got mountains. To the west, specifically. Most of the time you can see the mountain range really well - they're always there, snow-covered and imposing and awesome. I love mountains. Hate altitude sickness and nosebleeds and all that, but I love looking at mountains, and climbing mountains, and being on top of mountains. Freaking awesome. When I was a kid I wanted to live in Colorado partly 'cause it's got mountains all over the damn place. Gorgeous stuff.

So anyway? - these awesome mountains. They're to the west and you can always see them, which is a huge help for navigationally retarded little me. The city of Obihiro really starts about 4km away from the residential hamlet my house is in (sorry, no names), so, first things first, I have to bike to the city to really see things.

I ended up biking for about five hours. (But, again, since everything's really flat, not too much of an issue.) Getting to the city was easy enough - it's mostly a straight path, and a very nice path at that - but navigating the city? Hopeless. Kaa-san gave me this sort of pseudo-map that gives a rough outline of the city's layout, but most of the streets weren't even labeled, so it was kinda useless. I'm awful with maps, but I remember places and signs, so that was mostly what I went by as I repeatedly got myself lost, unlost, and lost again.

Surprisingly, I had a really good time. Sure, I didn't find the furuhonya I'd been looking for - turns out it's in east Obihiro, so even if I had known where it was I'd have been biking for hours - but I got fairly familiar with the stores in the area around Nansho and inner Obihiro. And then there was just the general feeling of freedom I got from it. I'd never have been able to go bicycling like that in 'Dolph, for one thing. Bicycling is actually a fairly common means of transport in Japan, so I didn't look odd or out of place at all. If anything, I had to get used to being given the right-of-way at stoplights and riding on the left side of the street (Japanese cars drive on the left side, and the steering wheels are on the right side of the car).

And, I don't know... being able to go wherever the hell you want? Not having to tell anyone where you'll be, how long you'll be there, who you're hanging out with, what you'll be doing - the whole Inquisition? That was pretty nice. I haven't felt like that since I was nine or something. Nine. Do you know how frequently I get to feel nine? Fantastic. And mountains. See? A win-win situation, like the agendas say.

Today was more of the same. Last night I asked Tou-san where I could find a furuhonya that wasn't in eastern Obihiro, so I went there today and went shopping. It's still kind of surreal to walk into a CD store and actually recognize the artists, though. I mean, I know something about American music, but the majority of what I've listened to for the last couple of years is foreign, which means CDs are always imports and always super-expensive. (And, yeah, some of the music here is still super-expensive. But, I mean, it's Suga Shikao, and it's Suga Shikao's ALL SINGLES BEST collection. It's not like I can say no to that.) I'm already regretting not coughing up 1300 yen for that Go!Younha album, so I'll probably be going out biking again tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And then the day after that.

...But not the next day. Oh, no. No, that's when school starts. And that's when I have to get up on a stage and introduce myself, in Japanese, to the whole student body.

...Yeah. Juuuuust peachy.