Arrival in Kyoto and Orientation at Ritsumeikan University (立命館大学)

On Thursday 22nd I took the night bus from Tokyo to Kyoto and arrived in the early morning. It was a rainy Friday and finding the right way from Kyoto Station to my student dormitory was quite challenging and took longer than expected. But eventually I had arrived there and the facility manager and his wife gave me a warm welcome.

Kyoto is a nice city that is less confusing than Tokyo and has a lot of traditional buildings. The public transportation system is actually a bit expensive (220 円 for a bus ride) and students have to pay the full price. Consequently, like many students here, I chose the bicycle as my daily vehicle.

After one week of adapting to my new environment and relaxing, our orientation started on April 2nd. Orientation was sometimes interesting, but most of the time the explanations were too long. In the end of the orientation week I could finally create my schedule. I took eight classes and additionally two lessons of Japanese per week. This is the maximum I’m eligible to enrol and unfortunately I can’t take more Japanese classes per week.

During our orientation week the Japanese students also started going to the university again. And as the campus got more crowded the student clubs and circles were looking for new members. Ritsumeikan University has more than 30 000 students and these students formed over 700 clubs and circles on various activities and topics.

As the student clubs promotion seemed for me to be quite interesting I attached some photos of that.