I haven’t written as much as I would like, but I guess this week I will talk about my school Kai, and some about the train system I pass through every day.

So I found my school through “GoGoNihon”. They are an agency specializing in connecting international students with language schools (Nihon means Japan, so this is their Japanese site). In there, they split their schools into numbers of intensity and other parameters.
I have been blessed by never having to struggle too much with school, so I decided to take a level 4 school (ranking is from 1-5). I thought it would make it fun, but also go at a pace where I wouldn’t be bored. I can tell you that I heavily underestimated how tough it would be.

My classes are from 13:40 until 17:40 and we have had what they called a warm-up week this first week, just to get used to the system, the class, and school, and so on. I barely could keep up even when practicing for an hour at home every day, and here at the end of the week we had our first test. Just so I felt like I weren’t the worst in class I practiced for 5 hours, before the test. I can’t remember when I last practiced for so long. Anyway, I ended up clearing the test, but man is it hard to hear the difference between つ (tsu), す (su), and ず (zu). It’s not impossible, but it takes quite a lot of focus, especially when you are looking out for the other things we have learned as well.

But all in all, it has been hard and taking a ton of mental energy, but you can feel yourself making progress. Though I must admit here in the beginner class, I would have preferred if our teachers at least understood English so that you could ask questions…

My school is placed in Shin Okubo, also known as Koreatown of Tokyo. It’s a busy street as the name would apply focused on shops and restaurants from Korea. So there is a ton of food around, when that is said Shin Okubo is near Shinjuku making me one of the 3.6 million passengers that DAILY pass through Shinjuku station. The Japanese have a talent for getting as many people as possible on the train. When you look at a train and think: “That is stuffed” the Japanese can usually fit roughly 20 more people in that train car. I have been so tightly packed that we were warming each others ar*es and not being able to lower our arms.

So with all that, some of my focus has been on my daily commute between Nishi-chōfu and Shin Okubo. Now that I’m somewhat gotten used to it, I have learned some of the few tricks about places people don’t shove when the usual rush hours are and generally be calmer about my route.

Therefore I only have one pretty picture for you guys with this post, a photo of Shin Okubu from the station. I’m still alive, and hopefully, I will find something awesome soon, like my good and cheap sushi place in Shin Okubu.