My morning breakfast and lunch were about the same as always, to the point that I forgot to take a picture of either one. Neither was anything to write home about, but both were cheap as always.

My Japanese class today was held by the Mr Katsuki, the sensei that I said I didn’t like two days ago during his first class. Well, he turned around today and delivered probably the most fun and interesting and non-stressful class out of all the classes that we have had yet, so there was that. Maybe because he brought in a can of coffee today, or maybe because the last time was just Monday being Monday. It helped that the third class block was just us going through the lyrics of a song — Suzume by RADWIMPS feat. Toaka, from the Suzume no Tojimari anime movie. The English lyrics in the video are very, very badly translated, but the gist is there I suppose, Mr Katsuki went ahead and basically translated everything line by line for us and dropped a lot of information about the meanings of the verbs and the old adages used in the lyrics and so on.

We also had a test in the second period (it was supposed to be the first period, but he kind of forgot about it until Aurora reminded him of it), so that also ate up a little bit of time today and broke up any monotony from the lesson. The test was fine, although I wish we were given details on what was going to be in it so I didn’t waste my time studying some stuff that I didn’t have to in the end. It had a section where we were given kanji in a sentence and had to provide its furigana, a section where we were supposed to conjugate some verbs in the context of a sentence that we were given for each one, a fill-in-the-blanks section based on a list of options we were given, and a very short short-answer section with two questions relating to either the topic of the chapter we covered for the quiz, or using vocabulary from said quiz.

Outside of all those though, the regular class portions were still fun, and we blazed through the rest of the chapter so we seem to be about a day ahead of the schedule now. Tomorrow we get the Thursday/Friday sensei, Ms Hara, back again. We were given a worksheet to fill in as homework so I will need to go do that after this blog post as well, but it’s exactly the same format as the first one we did last Friday, just on a new chapter.

We had no afternoon activity today, so everyone scattered to the four winds after lunch with the Ritsumeikan Buddies. We were told that there would be more people joining us soon for lunch from different RSJP-like study abroad programs, from three different Universities from the USA I believe. And that we would have to help chat with them or something as well I guess, as their senpais. Sorry, but this sounds kind of weird. Our Japanese levels are nowhere near that and we would just either resort to English or not be able to correct them or help them find their correct words anyway. They’d also be joining us for some, though not all, future afternoon events.

I guess this is why our schedule, which had an activity every afternoon from the day that we started until now, empties out from this point onwards, giving us lots of free time in the afternoons on something like 2-3 out of 5 days every week for the rest of the program. Starting with today, as they were doing orientation for one of the other groups.

Anyway, Zian and I took the chance to walk around Ritsumeikan University, visiting their bookshop, two convenience store type places, and then their stationery shop. They had some interesting papers in the last shop:

Those are Ritsumeikan-branded resume papers, some just single sheets that one could write on and then submit to an employer, and others that came with envelopes and that could be folded and put into there and then those could be given to said employers. Depending on what format they wanted resumes to be submitted in. Imagine submitting resumes in anything other than electronic formats in this day and age! Even back in the early 00’s in Canada though, we never used specific branded paper for that, and I don’t think these existed in Singapore either. I didn’t buy anything from here, yet, but I likely will return at some point to do so, I like weird paper like this and want them for my collection.

And they had lots of other things for sale too, like hoodies, badges, and metal buttons, for some uniform that we have never seen and that they didn’t even seem to have on display. I do have a uniform blouse from Dunman back home that badges and metal buttons can be inserted into though!

I discovered much to my delight that the student co-op convenience store in Ritsumeikan sells that Sangaria Maroyaka Banana Milk bottle that I really like, though it’s a little more pricey than usual at 138 yen a pop. I still bought a bottle though. Basically all the stores on campus are owned by a University co-op that students can buy shares into when they first enter the University, and then get a discount on for their four years or whatever here, and then re-sell the shares once they leave the University. Weird and interesting system.

After this, Zian and I visited Tojiin Temple, a temple just south and west of the University that we had been eyeing for a long time. The cemetery that I had seen on Day 1 and commented about on Day 3 is called the Tojiin Cemetery, the train station just south of the University is called the Tojiin Ritsumeikan University Station, and apparently the neighbourhood our school (and the temple itself) is on is called Tojiin Kitamachi (Tojiin North Neighbourhood), so the temple name is very much ingrained into the identity of the school in various ways.

It was a fairly small temple though, all things considered, but still quite interesting, with a large garden and koi pond out back, and a tea ceremony room that overlooked that pond and garden rather marvelously.

There was also a room with statues of all the former shoguns of the Ashikaga Shogunate save two of them, the 4th and the 14th or something like that. Pictures weren’t allowed in that entire wing of the temple though, nor of the main hall itself. But we did pick up a goshuin on the way out, it wasn’t hand-drawn but wasn’t a separate piece of paper to be stuck on either, they just did a stamp directly on the book itself and added an insert sheet of some art of the garden on nice paper..

On our way out of the neighbourhood, we also stumbled upon Rokusho-Jinja Shrine, which was a little Shinto shrine that used to be attached to Tojiin Temple but that was separated during shinbutsu bunri, or the separation of Buddhism and Shinto, during the early Meiji period. It was really small and there was no one around so we basically read the sign out front (placed by the City of Kyoto, it said) talking about the separation, and then went in for a quick stroll around before leaving. Zian knows a lot of Chinese and that’s really helpful in decoding all the information on the temple and shrine information signs even if neither of us fully (or even mostly) understand Japanese yet, so she’s really helpful to have around when exploring old temples and shrines!

After this, we looked around for a place to have dinner at, and noticed a Singaporean restaurant somewhat nearby, about a 15 minutes walk away or so, so we headed that way. Restaurant was probably a bit of a misnomer for that place, it was a counter where the singular owner and cook stood around at, with a small eating space with two tables and four chairs set in it, and that was it. It was a very hot day and we were planning on buying food and bringing it back to our homes anyway though, as Zian had an online meeting to attend at some point after 6:30 pm, so we just ordered mochikaeri, or takeout, from the store. We still had to take the bus back from there, so I ordered a non-soup dish, Hainanese Chicken Rice, as did she.

Other things they had on the sign included Bak Kut Teh, Laksa, Nasi Briyani, and various curries. The chicken rice portion was a little small for 950 yen, and left me a bit hungry afterwards still. The taste was also close but not quite there, though the soup in particular was quite good. It was very much acceptable though, minus the small helping. Somehow, I had noticed a bit of leakage from my bag onto the floor even on the bus, but about 90% or more of the soup still made it home in its original packaging, its just that that styrofoam cup or whatever it came in had sprung a tiny leak even though it was wrapped in plastic clingy film.

I then actually fell asleep for a couple hours before waking up confused and realizing that it was only 8:00 pm or so. I did, happily, manage to finish this blog post in just over a mere hour though, which is about what I need to be able to hit to make a daily post schedule sustainable over a long period of time.