Fun day!

Today was opening ceremony, which was long and sort of dull, but was preceded by and followed with fun stuff! Also pictures!

Before the ceremony I walked around with a friend, Misa, and found where the ceremony would be. There was a rather cool clock tower:

Afterwards, I was called over by a friend, Jesse, who wanted to check out the social circles (clubs). We ended up putting our names/e-mails on a mailing list for (what I think was) a Kanji circle, and exchanging phone numbers with someone from English club. Basically the hope is to find members of the club that want to do a language exchange sort of thing.

Afterwards I sort of ran off to meet Ben for the open ceremony. I met his host mother, Kazama-san! She is very nice, and invited me to hang out at her home sometime. I sat near her, Ben, and Leo -- I let him take some photos during the thing. He took like, 4 of himself, and some weird ones of the auditorium. I'll put the more interesting photos up. Though, unless noted otherwise, assume I took each photo.

Me and Leo. He didn't seem happy with this one, but I think he looks fairly cool in it. I believe Leo took the first.

Most of the pictures of the stage are fairly washed out, unfortunately. Leo took the first. The ceremony was basically every professor on stage giving a speech...pretty long and dull.

Waseda Glee club! They were pretty good! Apparently they have a lot more members (over 100). They sung 3 songs after the ceremony. The Alma Mater, a song played during soccer games when Waseda scores, and the song sung when Waseda wins. The latter is almost a hymn, it was very entertaining to hear!

The Waseda Symphonic Orchestra played after the Glee club. They were great and played like, 3 opera overtures so I loved them! Very hard to see.

After the ceremony, Ben, Kazama-san, and I took some photos (I don't have copies of them, unfortunately), and Kazama-san went home. Ben and I chatted a bit with some people, then wandered around, and finally met with a group for dinner. We went to a curry place! It was pretty cheap and delicious. I just got a Crocket curry, but they had an "Otoko Karii" or Man's Curry. I have a picture of it, it was apparently really tasty (I didn't notice it or I would have bought it too!).

Otoko Karii!Group shot! From Right to Left: Ben, Abby, Alex, Damon, Don't know, JiHaen, Yaz

After dinner we stopped at a McDonald's so some could get desert, than phone shopping. Everyone but Abby, Damon, and I left at some point. The three of us wandered around and got Taiyaki, and then some ice-cream...and some more phone shopping. It was pretty fun. I couldn't pick a favorite of these shots (They are actually in reverse order here, but it looks like the right order, doesn't it?):

Anyway, while phone shopping Jesse called so a group of us will be going to some International Communications club tomorrow morning. Could be fun!