Day 2: And So It Begins

I went to bed at 9:00pm last night and planned to wake up around 7:00am, but at 5:00am this morning (1pm in Seattle) I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. However, I wasn't tired, felt good, and the view that early was pretty great:

A while later there was this gonging sound that would happen about every 30 seconds. I have no idea why, but hopefully I'll eventually find out:

(^Look! I can post short videos too!)

After I got ready for the day, I went down to the vending machine in the lobby and got another (fantastic) iced coffee. This one is Hokkaido exclusive:

Then I studied for a bit until going down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast:

Breakfast voucher:

Breakfast (Japanese style option):

I made it through all the natto!

When I checked out of the hotel later it was raining:

And I used my umbrella for the second time ever:

On my way out I took this cute hard candy from a dish of candies on the counter:

But I haven't tried it yet.
I also bought this Apple Fanta from the vending machine:

I was quite excited to try this crazy new flavor of Fanta. It tasted like sparkling cider. I'm not sure why I didn't see that coming.

I walked from the Hotel Chocolat Hakodate to the Hakodate Kokusai Hotel where I met Alex, Carl, and Maria. HIF provided bento lunches:

Alex introduced me to her friend Hannah, and I ended up sitting next to a guy named Mason.

The SPOT test and essay were short (10 and 30 minutes respectively) but were sort of crazy. I don't know anyone who feels good about either one though, so maybe we're all okay. For the SPOT test we were given a long list of sentences, each one with a hiragana blanked out that we had to fill in based off a recording of someone reading those sentences. The difficult part was that the person in the recording was speaking very quickly and not very clearly. There was one sentence so hard to catch that everyone flat-out laughed after it played.

For the essay we had to talk about social media. The most difficult parts for me were trying to figure out what I wanted to say in even English, and thinking of ways to work in as many of the kanji, vocabulary, and grammar points I knew as possible.

After the exams we had a short break, then an orientation. Some of the main points were:

• This program is very intense, but we have a strong support system and should ask about anything we are struggling with as soon as possible because asking questions is how we learn.
• The school's motto is based around harmony and not fighting. If we see something different from what we are used to, we should stop and think about that difference and what might have caused it to help us learn to see the world from a broader perspective.
• Hakodate is very beautiful so we should try to stop and enjoy the scenery, especially if we feel overwhelmed from school.
• There are many cultural classes, workshops, exchanges, etc. available to us for free or for very cheap, so we should take advantage of as many of these as we can.
• It is good for us to try to bond with our homestay family, so we should find a balance between schoolwork, extra activities, and spending time with them.
• HIF has a large presence in the area and lots of connections, so if we want to do anything we should tell them and they can probably make it happen.
• People from Hakodate are famous for being incredibly kind, so we shouldn't be scared of them.

After the orientation, we got our room keys and I met my roommate Hayley who seems pretty awesome. She likes white fish but not red/pink fish which I don't understand (I'm the exact opposite), but we both like fresh, salted tomatoes.

New room stuff:

Around 6:00 we went with Peiyu (from my UW Japanese class) and Maria to go get dinner. On the way there, we stopped at the 7-11 and ran into Alex (not the same one as before) and Zach, and the six of us decided to get ramen.
Some things at the 7-11:

Hakodate is famous for its dairy products, so there are lots of butter and cheese products. These are butter candies.

Hakodate is also famous for its fresh seafood, especially squid. These are squid.

On the way to ramen, we saw this map:

and this tank of squid:

There is a famous dish in Hakodate called Katsu Iku Odori Don or Dancing Squid. It is made from very fresh squid tentacles which move and appear to be alive (and dancing) when soy sauce is poured over them (because of the salt). I want to try it, but I don't know if I'm brave enough.

Here is the ramen restaurant we went to:

 And here is the red miso ramen I had:

It had green bits on top, and there is half an egg that sunk a bit in the lower right which would have been in the picture if I had taken it before I started eating.

On the way back from dinner, Hayley and I stopped at the 7-11 again to get a melon bread to split later because I've never had one and she says they are amazing. We ended up getting the last one, but we are still both too full from ramen to split it tonight.
We also stopped at a store across from the hotel which I thought was a book store (the building with the yellow awning in the window view picture above) because it says "本店" on the front (the kanji for book/origin + the kanji for store/shop), but it was full of little hand carved figurines instead. There were lots of wooden owls and marimo themed items. I know Hokkaido has a lot of marimo, but I'm not sure about the owls. I think I'm going to stop by again tomorrow and get a tiny wooden owl.