Orientation!

In my experience, (which is a vast and all-encompassing 24 years) orientations have always fallen into two categories. The business orientation and the summer camp orientation.

In the business orientation, everyone is professional, organized and appropriately nervous. There is either a long table which everyone sits around, or rows of chairs facing the front of the room. 9 times out of 10 you can count on some sort of projector or video set up. The orientations are usually long and boring affairs, and you are expected to take careful notes (which I rarely do) so as to remember all the vital information imparted in however many hours you are expected to listen.

The summer camp orientation, on the other hand, is a light-hearted affair, often held outdoors, or at the very least, somewhere the outdoors is easily viewable. People are split into smaller groups and encouraged to play teamwork building games, and activities focused on familiarizing ourselves with each other in a relaxed atmosphere.

I was wondering for a few weeks which type the Tokyo Animator Institute would have. On the one hand, it's a manga school, and like the college I went to, might have tended towards the summer camp orientation. On the other hand, I thought to myself, this is Japan. And Japan is serious business. Which would it be?

Either way, heading towards that first orientation, besides my idle musings over the type of orientation to be held, I had two big thoughts in my mind:

1) Exactly how OTAKU would everybody be?

2) How many other foreigners would there be?

I soon found out the answers. Very and None.

As I sat down in the lecture room, pointed towards the closest vacant seat to the front, (I had arrived a little early) I quickly scouted out my soon to be classmates - or at least - schoolmates. Which ones are in the Manga school? One student caught my eye. He had bright red hair, wore reasonably fashionable clothes and seemed slightly /chinpira/-esque.

For those who don't know, /chinpira/ [CHEEN-peerah] is that Japanese word for a young gangster, or any of those tough thug kids that are always the strongest most bad-ass ones in the high-school. Nowadays they are easily picked out by their long flowing mullets. Do a google search and I'm sure you'll come across some amusing photos.

I also saw my share of who you would figure to be the regular Otaku- some overweight, some skinny, most extremely shy. Very few people in the growing crowd were speaking to one another, and I definitely got the sense that this wasn't going to be an A+ social scene. Still, I myself was too shy to start up conversations with anyone, and not having complete confidence in my Japanese, I figured the longer I kept my mouth shut, the longer everybody might assume I spoke and understood Japanese perfectly.

After a lot of shuffling, people coming, and extended silences, things finally seemed to be getting under way. Papers were passed out. And a teacher took the floor. The long, boring, but definitely essential never-ending slue of speeches was about to begin.