Welcome to Waseda

This is to be the beginning of many new entries, if not tonight then tomorrow, when I will have more time to write.

And, considering that this is about the Opening Ceremony for Waseda SILS students, I find it fitting.

On Friday, April 2nd, 2010, the Opening Ceremony for the SILS students of Waseda University was held at Okuma Auditorium at 10:30 in the morning. The day was slightly dreary, raining a bit, as new students walked to Waseda with their friends, host families, and police escort.

Wait, what?

Let's rewind that and go over a few things, shall we?

All this week, meaning the week that Waseda SILS students had no class and simply time to bounce around Tokyo and check out Waseda, the campus was positively swarming with students. Current Waseda students, I mean. As in, every club you can think of standing to represent with tables, candy, fliers, posters, and, in some cases, dance routines. The first day was kinda intimidating, walking through a street positively swamped with people enthusiastically shoving papers into your arms. I swear there are trees crying somewhere over this. And so, it all built up to this. The Opening Ceremony.

Waseda, being a University, has many different schools, all with separate opening ceremonies. The day before the SILS opening ceremony, apparently the Police had to be called in for crowd control. I don't mean overenthusiastic new students, I mean every group and his friend swarming the new students as they left Okuma Auditorium. Apparently, the police had to explain to the clubs and student groups that they had to stay back because the students were too afraid to leave the building.

Thus, arriving with my host mother after an extremely cramped train ride, we were greeted with a mass of shouting eager students, several stern police men, and my friends waiting for me. Getting into the ceremony was a piece of cake, the students waiting until after to pounce. So, with a few pictures shot on the auditorium steps, we went inside the beautiful building and took our seats.

The ceremony was both in Japanese and English, making it easy for us non native kiddos to understand what was going on. The fact that the dean of SILS is a British professor from Cambridge also helped a bit. He talked about trains.

Trains (sadly, the quality is terrible, but I figured you might enjoy it anyway)

And so, after a ceremony which was pleasant and humorous (that aspect goes to my friends), we got to listen to both the Waseda Glee Club and the Waseda Orchestra (Glee club is also on that Youtube page, the orchestra isn't, but the quality was so poor you don't miss much. Video quality I mean, the Orchestra itself was great).

After the ceremony, we attempted to leave the auditorium. Note the word attempted. Because, like the previous day, the place was instantaneously swamped with students, all yelling at us and brandishing fliers. It was a mad house to be blunt. An extremely exciting, loud, and interesting madhouse, but a madhouse none the less.

The day was a rainy one, and after breaching the mass of students all yelling excitedly, my friends and I went separate ways, mainly to get out of our fancy pants clothes before later that day. Which would be consisting of going to a group or circle gathering where we had already made some friends. This was the same group that I had gone on the Tokyo Tour with, Niji no Kai, and already knew some people.

The gathering turned out to be about 100 people large, taking up the entire top floor of a restaurant where all of us newbies got introduced, made friends, and chatted over Japanese American style food and beer. This meaning that it was the Japanese version of American food (pizza, fried chicken, french fries, and some edamame to be cool), and Japanese beer (cheap, but whatever). It was basically a fun end to a long day of beginnings. Friends, fun, and a pleasantly cool evening constituted as a good start of the year.

Well, almost start, considering classes don't start until the 6th (tomorrow. Ack.), but a start none the less.

Ai out-