...with quite a jetlag, but otherwise relatively unscathed. Wednesday morning (last week) my dad saw me off at the airport, where everything went quite smoothly: my luggage was a little bit over the maximum weight limit but this pointed out not to be a problem, and there was no queue at all at the customs. Because my ears on past flights have often gotten quite painful after the airplane started descending, I decided this time to try 'earplanes', which are basically earplugs with a small hole in them that makes sure the changes in air pressure enter your ear more gradually. They did make a difference, until at about 3km the one in my right ear fell out, which resulted in sudden massive pain in my right tear duct (yes that's right), near my eye and nasal bone. On the flight to Tokyo I felt pain in the same place again despite the fact that this time the earplug stayed put, though my ears were much better than they usually are, so I guess in that respect the earplanes did work. A painful tear duct sounds strange, and it probably is, but it's happened to me more often on flights during the past years... maybe I should ask a doctor about it someday.

Anyway, enough about that. Other than these ear issues both flights went quite well, and once I arrived in Tokyo my tutor, a graduate student, was waiting for me to take me to the dorm on the university campus where I would live. Since the airport is quite far away from the city, it took about 1.5 hours to get there by bus. By the time we got to the dorm I was very tired and still not feeling too well, but since it was only noon and I didn't want to sleep (that way I'd never get rid of my jetlag), I decided to stay up. My tutor gave me a small tour around the campus and I met my 'academic advisor', who seems like a very nice person even though he probably can't really help me with my research, seeing that he's specialised in Indonesia and Islam which isn't really related at all to what I'm doing. I hope he'll be able to give me some good pointers on how to go about doing research in Japan and getting the resources I need though.

There are only two dorms on campus, both of which are 'International Halls', meaning they're intended for use by foreign students only. The two dorms are quite big (about 7 floors high) and located right next to each other all the way in the back of the campus (the dorms are the two buildings in the bottom right). Because this campus was only built a few years ago, the buildings are quite new and relatively clean. Unlike the dorm I lived in during my year in Osaka I now have a small bathroom with a shower (and even a bath!) to myself, and I also have a mini-kitchen that consists of exactly one sink and one electric hob, so who knows I might actually start cooking occasionally. I am a bit disappointed though about the fact that it is a dorm for foreign students: my dorm in Osaka was also for foreign students only, and while I made some very good non-Japanese friends there, it did cause me to speak English much more than Japanese, which is something I was kind of hoping to avoid this time. The campus itself is unfortunately situated in the middle of a not so very exciting residential area (maybe I'll post some pictures of the campus and the neighbourhood next time). There are a few small shops and places to eat nearby, but nothing special. If you want to go out or if you need something like a department store or a proper supermarket, you'll have to take the train. Although the dorms here are advertised as being 'located in the peaceful surroundings on the TUFS campus', when I look out of my window I can in fact see an airport about 500m away where every hour or so a Cessna lands or takes off. Luckily there haven't been any flights at night time so far, so it's not really that bad I guess.

So far I've spent my days getting rid of my jetlag, buying food/stuff for in my room and discovering the campus and neighbourhood. Meeting new people up to now has proven to be quite a bit more difficult than I initially expected (certainly more difficult than it was in Osaka). I guess one of the reasons for this is the fact that after my arrival I have pretty much been left on my own, save for a small tour through my room right after I got here. My tutor has however been kind enough to show me around the area, go to the city hall with me to register as a foreigner living in Japan (the infamous 'alien registration card') and apply for national health insurance. She even took me to the Ghibli museum which is just three train stations away from the TUFS campus (unfortunately not many pictures of that though, you're not allowed to take any inside). Other than my tutor though, interaction with both Japanese people and other foreigners up to now has been virtually non-existent, which is disappointing to say the least. My classes with Japanese people haven't started yet (nor have the ones with other foreign students), so it's been difficult so far to get to know Japanese students here, as they all live off campus. During the orientation and placement test for new foreign students (the vast majority of whom are undergraduates) it became clear that from almost every country (or even university) there is more than one person here, and people from the same country/university so far unfortunately have very much tended to stick to each other in their own little groups, speaking their native language and doing everything together. Since I'm the only Dutch (speaking) person here however, I don't have a group of people from my country or university to fall back on. In Osaka this was also the case, but there it worked out perfectly because most other people in my dorm back then were the only ones there from their country or university as well, which kind of pushed everyone to (literally) look beyond their borders from the very beginning. Hopefully though, when classes begin next week the people here will start to open up a bit as well, and there will be more interaction between foreign students from different countries. In an effort to give a boost to my social life, I've asked around about university clubs and how to join them, but a person at the exchange student division told me that some of these clubs have quite strict rules on who can and who can't get in, and they might not let me join because I'm only here for one year. There appears to be a 'Holland and Belgium study group' though, which I'm going to try to get in contact with, if it still exists. Although you can't major in Dutch here, they do offer a course in Dutch of which classes are every Wednesday, so yesterday I went there to ask the teacher if there was anything I could do to help. The tearcher turned out to be quite eccentric (so far all Japanese teachers of Dutch I've met here in Japan have been a bit strange... I wonder why), but he was ok with me being there during class, though unfortunately he didn't let me introduce myself or do anything. In any case, I'm doing my best to make my social life get a bit more a bit more exciting, and I hope it will do so soon as I don't plan to spend the entire year in my room being bored.

Anyway, thank you for all the nice comments - I'll be fine, in the coming weeks I just need to somehow find some cool people to hang out with!

Well, almost. Tomorrow (or today, if you will) morning I'm off to Japan, and save for a few last things that I'll do right before I leave, I think I'm more or less set to go. It seems to me I should've been busy with all sorts of things during the past few days, but in fact I really wasn't. Even though I'll be gone for almost a year, preparations didn't really seem to have taken much longer than they would have if I'd just be going on holiday for a couple of weeks (save for perhaps the whole university and visa application process, but I completed that weeks ago). It's in fact quite like going on a holiday - you just take more of everything with you (making it fortunate that the ticket I have allows me to bring 30 kilos of luggage instead of the usual 20).  I've kept a list of things that I shouldn't forget to pack, which of course doesn't mean I'm not going to forget things because I tend to be quite good at that (last year when I went to South Korea to do a summer course I even managed to leave my passport at home, only to find out about it on the train to the airport)... it just means that this time I might not forget my passport.

It's difficult not to draw parallels between this time and last time I went to Japan for a year. Saying good-bye to friends and family, and not seeing them for a year is of course never fun, so the week leading up to my departure has been one with mixed emotions, just like last time. But like last time I'm sure that this time as well the homesickness will be gone quite quickly after I arrive in Japan and start to settle. On the other hand though, unlike last time there is now a new addition to the family who I'm very fond of and who will have completely changed by the time I'm back in Holland next summer. Having to miss a year of her growing up is probably the thing I regret most about going abroad. Luckily though I bought my sister a massive webcam, so hopefully I'll at least be able to keep track of her progress via the computer screen.

After the initial week of acclimating, my year at Osaka University of Foreign Studies turned out to be an amazing experience, which was mainly due to the many very good (admittedly mostly non-Japanese) friends I made there. In that sense the bar is set pretty high, as I imagine it will be quite difficult to meet so many similarly interesting people again (though who knows!). With regard to actual studying, I didn't really do a lot that year because there wasn't a lot I had to do (although my Japanese did improve significantly), but that will be different this time as there is an MA thesis that needs to be written. I did do some preparatory work for that in Leiden already, which will hopefully make my research in Japan go (relatively) smoothly. Because I intend to graduate as soon as possible after I get back to Holland, I can't really afford to do nothing all year long this time.

Regardless of the whole saying good-bye thing, I'm not looking forward to the airport and the flight itself at all, as these things usually are accompanied by long waits interspersed with occasional stop over stress (Zurich this time), feeling tired but being unable to sleep, very painful ears upon descent, and finally the inescapable jetlag. To make matters worse, today I've actually staryed feeling somewhat fluey; my nose is running and my throat hurts a bit. I hope it doesn't get worse the coming hours, especially now that everyone's panicking about the Mexican flu at airports. If I could I'd probably just skip tomorrow, but it takes some to get some, I guess!

Well, that's it for now, my next post will be from Japan (though I'm not sure when exactly, because I don't know how long it'll take me to get access to the internet there). Let the adventure begin... but first three hours of sleep.

Welcome!

As part of my MA Japanese Studies in Leiden I will leave to Japan at the end of this month to become a research student at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies for one year, with the aim to improve my Japanese language skills and do research for my thesis. To keep those who might be interested to know what I'm up to in Japan informed, I have created a weblog where I will try to write stories and post pictures of my activities. I would like to emphasise the word "try" here, keeping in mind the fact that all of my previous attempts to maintain a weblog (including the one I had during my previous year in Japan) ended in failure because at some point I would just stop writing... but I'll do my best to make sure that that won't happen this time. So stay tuned and who knows! (I haven't really decided yet on whether I want to write this weblog in English or Dutch, but for now I'll probably stick to English.)

On a side note, this summer I traveled through England for a month, where I saw too many places and took too many pictures. I uploaded the photos that turned out best to my photo gallery, which is also the place where I will post the pictures that I'll take in Japan.