Well my today seemed like a really busy day, but in actuality, it was not. Woke up around 7 or 8, got ready to head out to Kanda U campus. Oh but today is Wednesday, and there is no class. So what did I get to go out there for? A TEST. Yep. Kanji Placement Test, so that I can take a kanji elective class. Note: For those who don’t study Japanese, kanji = “Chinese characters.” Japanese uses these characters in addition to their two phonetic writing systems. Mainly for names, verbs, nouns, and pretty much anything. There are something like 2000000000 kanji. (OK not really, but there might as well be).

Finally got to campus, after riding 20 minutes of trains and walking about 20 minutes in mind-blistering heat and humidity. Get to building #2 and who is there to greet us students? Why it’s Ichikawa! But we heard through the rumor mill last night that he was fired. And yes, we got an e-mail this afternoon confirming he is no longer with IES. What was he doing at Kanda today? None of us know. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that he’s been canned. Or he’s going crazy…

On to the test. There were 4 levels. Once you take the first, you can move on to the next. First exam was easy. Second was kind of tough, but I think I did OK. Got the third one…. it seriously looked like Chinese to me (written entirely in kanji, and I had no idea what it said). I flipped through it, gave it back to the proctor with a “akiramemasu” (I give up), and left. That was that. I’ll probably be in Kanji level 2 or 3. Fine with me, I need to learn this stuff.

After the kanji massacre, bummed at the IES Center for about 3 or 4 hours. Nothing like wasting time with everyone there. Finally got a group together to go to Tokyo. It was me, Derek, Seth, Dan, Bryan, Adam, and Mii. Met up with Yuuji, Ari, Mike, Annie, and Merry along the way. We went to Ikebukuro for a Yakiniku Tabehoudai, which means All-you-can-eat Korean BBQ. Man it was good. About 2400 yen for 2 hours of all the food you want. You get plates of raw meat, vegetables, etc, and cook it on your table (has a little gas grill built in). I was so full.

Wandered about Ikebukuro for a while afterwards, nothing really going on. Came back home, and now I have to write another fun 600 character report for tomorrow morning’s class. Plus at 4PM tomorrow in Tokyo I have my “interview” at the high school where my field placement is at. I’ll be helping the English teacher there I believe. I don’t really need an interview as I already have the position, but I guess it’s just procedure. Time to get writing this report…