I'm really here.

I almost can't believe that in two weeks, I will have been back in Japan for 5 months. I mean, I can but I can't.

Tomorrow is the last day of class for the intensive Japanese language program I have been in for the past 5 months. I have my final exams next Wednesday through Friday and then SPRING BREAK!!!! As I said before, they are on a trimester system here in Tsukuba so spring break comes just before the end of the school year. Graduation is March 28th but March 6th is the last day of exams. So we have 3 weeks off. I really wanted to go home for a refresher but that looks like its going to be out of my reach financially so I'm thinking about taking a smaller trip somewhere much closer to Japan.

Calling a few travel agents today so hopefully they can find something WARM and within my budget. I may even be going on this trip alone so I'll need to be someplace safe for a lone female traveler...which is where I believe the problem may come in.

I passed!

After all the worrying, test taking and praying...I passed the entrance exam!!! I went to the board today outside the Administration Office to see if my number was there and to my delight it was. I'm in! B-School starts in April. YAYYYYYYY!

True Story

I have a part time job teaching an English language class and today I heard a story that almost made me pee on myself.

After the lesson was over, I hung out for drinks with my students who are all co-workers at the same company. While we were talking one of the students told me he had something he wanted to get off his chest. He said (in Japanese), "I don't mean to offend you, so if I do, I'm sorry but (in English) You're a heart breaker!"

So everyone kinda looks at me, to see if I was going to get upset. I actually chuckled, said "Aww, Thank You". I told them that the phrase is a compliment, something nice you say to someone you like, but not something you would usually say to your teacher. I told them I wasn't upset at all. Relieved, the student decided he wanted to tell the story of how he learned this phrase.

He continues: "You wanna know how I know that term? Well, I was in Indonesia and this New Half* comes up to me at a bar and snuggles on my arm. (At this point dude grabs the dude sitting beside him and snuggles up to him then looks around the room for dramatic affect and to be sure everyone is paying attention) So she snuggles on my arm and looks me in the eye and says to me in English "You're a heartbreaker." I told her I didn't know what that meant, so she explained it to me.

(*Translation: New Half -also commonly called Ladyboys- is the Japanese word for tranny men. Usually these New Halfs are performers but very often they are prostitutes as well. Don't google the term at work!)

At this point, I'm in stitches and he must think that I think he's making it up, so he goes "True Story! True Story!" and everyone is chuckling but not really laughing.

Does anyone else not think a "straight" Japanese man, who just moments earlier was talking about his wife and two kids, snuggled up with a tranny hooker in Indonesia who is looking him in the eyes hitting on him is friggin' hilarious? I mean could YOU imagine sitting in a room of your co-workers telling that story? No one else seemed to find it quite as humorous as I did but as Steve Harvey said on the Kangs "You can kiss my a$$ that's funny!" .

And Now We Wait...

So, Day 2 was actually a bit more nerve-racking than Day 1. Since there were so many applicants this year we were told to prepare for a 15 minute interview. In the past, they have asked applicants 3 sets of questions:
#1. Why B-School? Why Japan? Why Tsukuba?
#2. What topic would you like to research? Describe your plan in detail.
#3. Questions directly related to the previous day's test and portions that were answered incorrectly were targeted.

Cool. This is in my mind when my number is called and I head into the interview room. I walk in and see as panel of three professors, two men and a woman, seated before me to conduct my interview. I say "Hello" to which the response is "Right, so we need to check your name and test ID number. Read it for us, in Japanese"

(Inside voice: Nice way to start an interview, make me feel right at home why don't you folks?)

I read my name and number, they check it against the picture they have of me on my application and finally they tell me to sit down. Originally, I was also told by my tutor and advisor that the interview would be in English. Now, I can speak Japanese of course but I sound much smarter in my own language. I'm working on my Japanese daily but when given the choice between being interviewed for Graduate School in a language I've spoken all my life or one I've studied (sporadically at times) for about 7 years...I chose the former.

Anyway, the interview begins and as I suspected, they want to proceed in Japanese. I told them that I preferred to answer in English and they said that was fine but they would ask me the questions in Japanese. (Inside voice: Okkkay) As expected the first question they asked was the "Why B-School, Why Japan" to which I feel I answered well. Next they asked me what I wanted to do once I finished school. No problem there either. Then they told me that my classes would primarily be in Japanese and asked how comfortable I was with that. I told them I was able to understand everything they had asked me thus far and would continue my Japanese studies throughout my time in Japan in hopes of attaining true fluency. (Inside voice: Excellent! We're on a roll!)

And that my friends was where interview ended. They said a polite thank you and asked me to send the next person in. I was baffled. They didn't ask me about my research plan or anything about the test and I was out of there in less than 8 minutes! I literally walked down the hall away from the interview room feeling like I had a cartoon bubble over my head with like 9 question marks in it. Like, "What????"

So, I called my tutor and spoke to a few other people in my research lab and everyone's reaction was mixed. I wanted a drink. I explained to my Japanese friends that an interview that ends abruptly and quickly in the States is definitely not a good sign, but I was assured (and I used that word very lightly) that here it could go either way. We talked about it until I was tired of talking about it and we drank and talked about the strange and seemingly odd way in which the Japanese do things.

The best part is, that experience is over and I have the future to look forward to. That test night I allowed myself to moan and be uncertain and ho-hum but the next day I celebrated moving past that milestone. Feb. 17th the results will be posted so until then I'll just hope for the best.

Entrance Exam Day 1

Okay. So today I took the first and second part of my entrance exam for business school here at Tsukuba U. The entire process consist of 3 parts. Foreign Language Exam, Course Specific Exam and an interview. First of all, the Foreign Language Exam is an English Exam. God only KNOWS why an applicant from America has to take an English exam...but I'm trying to get in, so I'm not bucking the system and I need all the points I can get. They gave us 90 minutes for the English exam I was done in 50 minutes. So when I was finished (I was the only non-asian taking the test and finished first) I raised my hand so I could turn in my exam and packed my back to get out of there since we had a 2 hour break for lunch between exams.

When I first handed him my test and started to get up, he gave me this look like I was doing something wrong. So, as not to disturb the other test takers I whispered "Is everything OK?". He was like you can't leave. I looked at the clock and there was still about 35 minutes left in the allotted test time. So I say, "What? Why not? I'm finished" He told me to hold on, went to the front of the class and did the japanese group think thing with the other 2 proctors in the class and came back and said it was alright for me to leave. I get up and quietly make my way to the door, when a hall monitor (yes yall, they have hall monitors outside each classroom door and people at the stairwells and door exits!) stops me and asks me if the proctor of my room said it was okay for me to leave. I told her yes and went on my way. Then got stopped by another hall monitor who JUST saw the other lady stop me and ask me if I had permission to leave and I told her yes and asked her if it was normal for people to say until the end of the allotted test time even when they were finished and she said YES! I really don't get the Japanese process. that's just dumb.

So I went to lunch and talked with a friend from Serbia who was taking the Physics Master Course entrance exam and didn't have such an easy foreign language test and thanked my lucky stars mine had gone so well.

The second part of the test was very similar to one of the sample test questions that I had written up earlier in the week so again it seems as though I lucked up. The only problem is a got a little long winded on the first essay question and wasn't able to wrap up my arguement on the 2nd essay as well as I had hoped.

The best part is that it is now behind me. Tomorrow I have my face-to-face interview with some professors in the business school where I have 5 imnutes to present my research plan and state my case for attending school here. Then they will have 10 minutes to drill me with all types of questions. I feel like I'm as ready as I can be! Wish me LUCK!

Tuesday night, we party!!!