Placement Results Are in!

Hey everyone! I'm just gonna talk about today, even though I know I missed a lot. I'll go back and recount those stories later.

Today I got the results of my placement test, and I ended up in N3, which is basically intermediate. The N levels go from 1 to 5, with N5 students knowing next to no Japanese and N1 students being able to take Japanese college level courses.  Most of my friends were placed into N4, but since I've arrived here I've made new friends as well, so thankfully I'm not alone in my struggle! But that means no convenient English translations for me anymore...

Class registration was rather frustrating and confusing, but in the end I have my standard Japanese language classes and then a class for kanji/vocabulary, a class for Japanese history and culture, and a test prep class for the JLPT. I don't really want to take the JLPT, but what can you do. I guess it might come in handy sometime!

Anyway after all of that, some of my friends planned to go to Daiso and the nearby stores to get some dorm stuff, so I went with them. The Daiso there is pretty big! It's similar to the ones we have at home. I got a lot of household stuff from the surrounding stores as well. In one store in particular, we found a bunch of interesting clothing...

 Japanese stores really like to use English, but not always correctly, so we found quite a few gems in the store. My favorite is "Kustom Screams SO-CAL, Hot Rod Heaven Every Sunday" (the one in the middle). I decided to buy it to show off my SoCal pride.

After buying a bunch of stuff that I had been sorely missing, we went to Baskin Robins!! They have AMAZING flavors there. I got caramel ribbon and Oreo matcha (green tea). The caramel ribbon was amazing! The Oreo matcha was good too, but the matcha flavor was a little strong for me. Still, the combination was delicious.

Now I'm back at the dorm, and I decided to put my recent purchases to use! So voila, view my room's transformation! Originally, I wasn't going to buy anything new for the bed, but the futon is kind of scratchy (definitely not comforter material) and my friend told me that it's not very clean, so it's better to be safe than sorry. Either way, my bed is much comfier and more inviting now! And finally I can get a little organized on my desk... That was really starting to be a problem. Of course, I still haven't put up my posters. That's a task for another day.

Before:

After:

Starting now, I have a three day weekend. Maybe I'll actually be able to updated this blog a little in that case!