School of International Liberal Studies Opening Ceremony

We had lunch at a ramen shop near our university before attending the ceremony. It's roast pork ramen with bamboo strips and pickled vegetables in super flavoured pork stock. What was the taste? It was yummy but too be honest, the soup was salty. It cost around 9.5 aussie dollars, and the great thing was to be able to ask for double sized noodle with no cost.

Did I use my poor Japanese to order? No. Interestingly, there was a lunch ticket vending machine at the door for customers to order before seating. What you do is putting money into the machine and select the food you want, instantly a food ticket will be printed out. There was a special buttom to press at any time without putting any money to print off upsize noodle tickets.

This is the famous Okuma Garden Hall at Waseda University. The opening ceremony was held here.

Excited and looking happy to attend the ceremony! However, I was not supposed to dress like a tourist but was expected to wear formal clothes. Luckily you cannot see the shoes I wore, but I will tell you it was basically inappropriate!! I sort of knew students wear formal clothes to opening ceremonies, but I wonder why we weren't informed about the clothing?

More to be shocked, straight after this photo, I went into the hall and attended the ceremony because I didn't want to miss out this special occasion. You might wonder how it went. At the end we sat at the very back to mininise our appearance to the crowd and thankfully there were many foreigners who didn't know and wore casual, too.

Look how the professors are seated on stage seriously with VERY FORMAL clothing...(oops me)

They are from an acapella group in our university, performing the song "Pretty woman" at the end of the ceremony.

Can I say that the day went successfully? Probably not. However, it was a joyful and exciting day. It was the day that marked the official beginning of our journey and studies in Japan. Perhaps also a day of growth in our knowledge about the Japanese culture.