I love my bike!!!!

Hi everyone! These last few days at my university has been crazy and sooo different. On Oct. 1st my professor picked me up from the hotel and drove me to Aobayama campus (one of the five) which literally means 'up a hill/mountain'. Thats where all the engineering classes take place and It takes 20 mins just to climb up there because its too steep to ride a bike. Also Aobayama is 25 mins away from by dorm by bike. So I will have a loooong trip every day. Anyways I got to see the lab I will be working in and its really cool. I also got to meet the other students working for my professor. There's 15 total and they are really funny. After that my professor drove me back to Sendai Station to meet up with all the international students that were coming in. That was hectic because our meeting place was taken over by this weird game show. lol

So the MORI group (they help international students) drove us to the dorms and we had to fill out sooo many forms! After that I finally got to see my dorm and its amazing. Its only a year old and so high tech! The toilet has so many buttons on it and I'm kind of afraid to try them out! The dorms are arranged cluster-style so there's eight single rooms and we share this big kitchen/living area and bathroom.

The next day (Oct.2) The Mori Group took all the international students to Aboa-ward (alien registration), the insurance building, and bank to fill out many more forms. After that they took us out to a Japanese-styled restaurant. Very nice. We also went to a 100 yen store and that was incredible! It was five stories high and had everything you could ever imagine just for $1!!!!

Later in the day my friend Marti and I took a train from Sendai station to the north part of Sendai to find used bicycles. It was kind of weird because it was kind of in the slums and people would drive past and take pictures. Anyways we finally found some bikes (only $68!) and I think they are way better then American bikes . They are really easy to use and the wheels are much larger. Bikes in Sendai is a necessary. Due to traffic and small roads buses take way too long. Everyone and I mean everyone has a bike.

Later that night a bunch of the international kids and I rode our bikes from our dorms to downtown. Sendai is a really cool city because there's main streets that are really modern but go down a side street or other sections of the city and it's very traditional japan with temples and other cool things. We ate at a pizza place and the pizza is really soft, there's hardly any crust.

So the next day (Oct. 3) I went exploring the city with a few friends and we got lost so many times. lol We finally made it to the Kawachi campus and got even more lost there. It's hard when everything is in Kanji. Kawachi is right at the foot of Aobayama campus so after we were done exploring Kawachi we decided to be brave and climb up to Aobayama. Well long story short- it sucked. I can't believe I have to do it everyday. There must have been a 1,000 stairs. It was very pretty but really hard. After we were done with Aobayama we went downtown for a while and checked out more weird electronic stores. I was the only one with a bike so everyone took a bus (bikes aren't allowed in buses) back to the dorms. At that time it was very dark and I had no idea how to find my way home (it's about a 30min ride) so I called my Japanese friend I met the night before and he picked me up. Thank god because there was no way I could have ever found my dorm.

Overall everything is amazing!



Sorry for such a long post! I will make it shorter next time! Bye!


<---Picture of Sendai from my balcony