travelling cupcakes: 21 years and 7 days

Sorry it's been a week since I last updated (on my 21st birthday). It's only been 2 weeks but it feels like I've been here for much longer.

I finally bought a mobile phone on my birthday. When the salesperson at au was putting in freebies (2GB microSD card, tissues), Ross strategically mentioned that it was my birthday so the salesperson got really excited, "oh I'm so sorry I didn't realise! Congratulations!..." (in

Japanese of course) and gave me an extra freebie (a tissue box cover). It was pouring with rain and we wanted to go somewhere for a cheap dinner. We walked by a sushi restaurant so we thought we could have a look at the menu and check out the prices. As soon as we walked in I saw it was a 回転すし (sushi on a conveyor belt) and everything was 105 yen! I screamed with joy inside my mind. The quality was obviously very mediocre, and the マグロ (raw tuna) was untouchable as it looked more like a plastic slice of a transparent red pepper. Anyway we had fun with ordering things on a touch screen and seeing our order coming out onto the conveyor belt.

This is the Toshiba "biblio" phone I bought. It's quite pricey (60,000 yen) but I really wanted it and thought I could buy it for myself as a birthday present. The contract is about 2,000 yen per month, but because I'm also paying for my phone in instalments it's now 7,000 per month. Although now I'm quite sure that I've gone over the e-mail/internet limit and might be paying an extra 4,400 yen this month...there goes my scholarship! The phone is really cool though, it has an electronic dictionary, camera, wi-fi, touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard. I can even watch TV on it (so do many other Japanese mobile phones) for free.

So as I mentioned in the last entry it was raining on my birthday, but it wasn't till later in the evening that the typhoon landed. Very strong winds and heavy rain, although I'm pretty much

used to the rain anyway (similar to Manchester). The wind was howling so loud throughout the night that I couldn't get much sleep. Even though there was a typhoon, the dormitory was like a party house, everyone enjoyed themselves with chatter, alcohol and gams as if we knew classes would be cancelled the next morning. I spent a couple of hours in my neighbour Jana's room chatting to a Croatian, a Slovenian, a Czech, a Romanian and 2

Bulgarians.

I also received a few birthday presents from different parts of the world. This is why I like living in this dormitory, it's a like mini-UN and it reminds me a little of GYLC. Fiona from Macau got me some Cantonese snacks and a magnet writting in both Chinese and Portuguese. Elena gave me a handkerchief with roses and "Bulgaria" embroidered on it. My Vietnamese neighbour gave me a little embroidered pouch. The madeleine cake in the top right corner is from Ross.

The next day we found out that the orientation stuff in the morning was cancelled. The weather was gloriously warm and beautiful that you couldn't see any signs of a typhoon aftermath. After lunch we had a library orientation, then afterwards

we just couldn't help ourselves but to go out into town.

On Friday I played badminton with Jan, Fiona and Tommy - I hadn't play for ages! It felt good although it was just hitting the shuttlecock and nothing too tiring. I'm looking forward to this Friday's session already.

Later that night there was a huge party going on on the ground floor of the 会館. There were all the 留学生 and many Japanese students who live on (and off) campus. It was so chaotic I couldn't recognise 90% of the people. Jan got drunk over 2 cans

of beers (can't believe he's actually Belgian); Ivan got his head shaved (privately, not publicly); and apparently there were some young Japanese girls (first years, only 18) who were trolling and hitting on the gaijin guys. According to Daniel, they just went up to him and asked if he had a girlfriend; he said "yes" and they just left and went on to find the next guy.

While the party was still going on I went down to the front gate to pick up Rachel and Cayley, who arrived at the university at 1am. Over the weekend we went out to Umeda, Nanba and Kyoto, and we met up with John and Paulina. Did all sort of Japanese things - karaoke, okonomiyaki, izakaya, Geisha-spotting in Gion, and had green tea in Kyoto.

After the extravagance over the weekend, I'm now struggling with expenses. The food and ingredients here are simply too expensive. I've been living on cafeteria food and okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is easy to make, tasty, and it's cheap. The food in the cafeteria is pretty good but they have too much deep-fried stuff there.

Tomorrow I have to go to the post office and pay 8,600 yen for internet for 1.5 months. Maybe I'll have to survive on bananas and instant noodles for the next 2 weeks until I get my scholarship. (Even then I'll have to pay 2 months' rent, mobile phone bill and 4,000 yen for a 2-day university trip to Wakanyama). I hope I won't have to use my UK bank account and pay those extra charges to get cash from a Japanese ATM.

A short photo tour of the university: