ICU Matriculation Ceremony

Today was the Matriculation, or Introduction Ceremony, for ICU.  We received an email last night saying that it might be cancelled because of an approaching typhoon heading towards Tokyo, but it turns out that it went south-west instead and hit the Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, etc).  Even so, it was a rainy old time during my 15 minute bike ride to the campus (I still need to do a blog post about my new bicycle), so I was thoroughly wet through by the time I arrived.  

The ceremony itself was in the (un-air conditioned) university chapel, and ran from about 9 until 11.  We picked up our new student cards going in.  The picture on mine is terrible, but oh well.

We also received various information sheets and pamphlets, like when I started at the University of Leeds.  

The ceremony itself consisted of a variety of speeches about the university and its founding principles, a performance of ICU's anthem by the university choir , and a roll call of every new student there.  When our name was called, we had to stand up and shout "hai!".  At the end of the ceremony we were made to sign the student pledge, whereby we 'solumnly pledged' to abide by the International Declaration of Human Rights.  I thought that sort of thing was a given, but there you go.  

After the ceremony, we stood out on the lawn in front of the chapel for a commemorative photo.  The sun was in our eyes the whole time, so there will be some very interesting expressions indeed in that photo!  From there we went for a welcome lunch in the cafeteria, where we all chatted, and I met a few nice new people!  Towards the end we were told a little bit about the Japanese placement test, which will be held on Monday, in order to decide which level of Japanese class we get put into during the year.  I'll have to do lots of revision this weekend!

Predictably, whilst the sun and humidity had been out in force since I got off my bike after arriving at the university, making the whole ceremony uncomfortably hot, the rain greeted me as I went back towards my bike to go home. Sod's law.

James