Time for a new blog update. In our first week after settling in we had a lot of things to take care of.
First of all we needed to get our alien registration for a long term stay in Japan. This isn't difficult to do but unfortunately it took (a lot) more time than anticipated.
Secondly, we wanted to buy bicycles to make our travel in Tokyo easier, and cheaper. Public transportation is very efficient in Tokyo but also expensive. So, after school we walked the whole way (about 4 km) to the bike shop, only to discover that the store was actually closed that day. A friendly lady helped us and showed the way to another super big bike store. The day was saved! After choosing two bikes we liked we went to the counter to register them. Registration is mandatory to prevent theft and "bike pollution". Imagine that all commuters who'd travel to/from Shinjuku station each day (almost 4 million!!), would travel by bike to the station. That would certainly create a madness of randomly parked bikes. Therefore, you can only park your bike at designated areas or else it will be removed by the police within few hours, and they need your registration number to inform you where you can get your beloved bicycle back.
Meanwhile our school started as well. We enrolled in the 'Yoshida institute of Japanese language' and it's quite different from Keio University, where we studied Japanese before. The students are mostly pre-college/post-high school people, so suddenly we're the oldies among our classmates!
Each day we cycle to school through the narrow streets of Tokyo where it is easy to get lost because of all the 'hey,-I-think-I-found-a-shortcut!' alleys. We still get lost everyday but hopefully next week will be better... We did get to see parts of Tokyo that we would never have seen otherwise. Another thing that became very, very clear to us now that be have our bikes, is that Tokyo has lots, and lots of hills. We expect to be thoroughly trained for the Tour the France after get back next year. The rules for cycling are somewhat confusing in Japan. Sometimes you are supposed to cycle on the road, sometimes on the sidewalk. In practice, we feel that the Japanese are just as confused as we are and just cycle where there is enough space, whether this is the left, right or middle of the road. This leads to lots of evasive maneuvers around pedestrians or other cyclists.
We have also cycled (and found the way) to hombu dojo. We were very much looking forward to training there again. It was very nice to be back, and to meet all our aikido-friends. It will be great to train here for another year!
First of all we needed to get our alien registration for a long term stay in Japan. This isn't difficult to do but unfortunately it took (a lot) more time than anticipated.
Secondly, we wanted to buy bicycles to make our travel in Tokyo easier, and cheaper. Public transportation is very efficient in Tokyo but also expensive. So, after school we walked the whole way (about 4 km) to the bike shop, only to discover that the store was actually closed that day. A friendly lady helped us and showed the way to another super big bike store. The day was saved! After choosing two bikes we liked we went to the counter to register them. Registration is mandatory to prevent theft and "bike pollution". Imagine that all commuters who'd travel to/from Shinjuku station each day (almost 4 million!!), would travel by bike to the station. That would certainly create a madness of randomly parked bikes. Therefore, you can only park your bike at designated areas or else it will be removed by the police within few hours, and they need your registration number to inform you where you can get your beloved bicycle back.
Meanwhile our school started as well. We enrolled in the 'Yoshida institute of Japanese language' and it's quite different from Keio University, where we studied Japanese before. The students are mostly pre-college/post-high school people, so suddenly we're the oldies among our classmates!
Each day we cycle to school through the narrow streets of Tokyo where it is easy to get lost because of all the 'hey,-I-think-I-found-a-shortcut!' alleys. We still get lost everyday but hopefully next week will be better... We did get to see parts of Tokyo that we would never have seen otherwise. Another thing that became very, very clear to us now that be have our bikes, is that Tokyo has lots, and lots of hills. We expect to be thoroughly trained for the Tour the France after get back next year. The rules for cycling are somewhat confusing in Japan. Sometimes you are supposed to cycle on the road, sometimes on the sidewalk. In practice, we feel that the Japanese are just as confused as we are and just cycle where there is enough space, whether this is the left, right or middle of the road. This leads to lots of evasive maneuvers around pedestrians or other cyclists.
We have also cycled (and found the way) to hombu dojo. We were very much looking forward to training there again. It was very nice to be back, and to meet all our aikido-friends. It will be great to train here for another year!
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