Weekend fun

So it’s time for another post. We’ll see how long this one becomes. I have not really planned it out, so it will probably turn out long and unorganized (sounds like some old British guy writing a letter).


I went to Osaka yet again with some friends. We headed to a district called Den-den town (not sure if I’ve mentioned that place before) but it’s basically known for its large abundance of used game-stores. I personally can’t really buy anything because I don’t have any Japanese systems. However, my friend Amy does and she usually goes crazy when we go shopping. It’s a lot of fun though, we go look at games that I haven’t seen since I was 8 years old for the good old Super Nintendo. Anyhow, we decided to take a detour and we ended up finding a bunch of small stores that had a bunch of things that I have wanted to buy. I ended up buying a pair of Geta (the picture of the shoes are Geta). There are a lot of different kinds, and I’m thinking about getting a pair that has even higher “teeth.” Japanese high school students, especially male cheerleaders(?) are known to wear them since it gives them a bit of height and it looks awesome. So I’m thinking about purchasing that. However, first I need to practice in my Geta, which are a lot easier to walk in :D.


Then I also found several stores that sell Noren (picture of the red thing), That I would basically use as the entrance of my room when I get back to the states. It gives a nice feel to the room, but those things will range from $20 (the very cheapest, silky and you can basically see through them) to $500 if you want a nice hand-crafted one. I will probably not spend more than $50 for my purpose, but still, some are so pretty that I have to bring friends to carry me out of the store before I spend $200 on them :D.


Other than that we went to a place to try out all of Amy’s new-bought games. It is a place where they have a console connected and a TV that you can use, and they threw us into the smallest booth possible where we sat for a good six hours going at each other. It was fun though, and since I haven’t been playing games in forever, it was a good use of time. Afterwards we headed to a bar and meet up with some other friends. Had a few to many drinks but a great time, meeting new people and what not. Barely made the last train home though :)

Yesterday my host-mom thought it was so insanely warm outside (it’s about 26degrees Celsius right now) so she opened up her regular beer (that they have for almost every dinner) and asked if I drank beer. Since I have started drinking beer in Japan I accepted and then my host-dad joined us. Soon she asked me if I like “Umeshu” and I had no idea what that was. I said I’d try it and she poured me up (to my terror) a full glass. It turned out to be Plum-wine (which I should have figured out since I know both the word for Plum (ume) and wine (shu), but for some reason I did not connect it). So we had that, and then we started talking about different types of alcohol and I told them that I was very fond of the Japanese Sake, which surprised them. Upon which they broke out a new bottle of Sake and started serving (I guess at this point they though “Oh well, we started it, might as well just keep serving alcohol I guess”). It was a lot of fun though and they were surprised about the fact that I enjoyed Sake since most of the other foreign exchange students they’ve had has totally detested it :).

Oh well, that’ll have to be it for now. I have a presentation due in an hour and a half about Karaoke that I have not yet prepared for. So, time to do that.

Thanks for dropping by :D

One month later

Okay, so it’s been a little over a month since I last posted. I’d be impressed if anyone is interested enough to still be checking it. Nonetheless, sorry about all that. It gets difficult to keep the posts up when things begin to become routine.

Nonetheless, what’s been up? So many things, yet almost nothing at all. I visit Osaka and Kyoto almost every weekend now and usually we walk around, finding a game-center every here and there, a thrift store every here and there, and then the occasional sight-seeing. What’s fun though is that I’m almost always on the move. It’s rare for me to sit down for any extensive period of time right now and do “nothing” (that also includes studying :P). Just this weekend we went to a Zen Temple and had a presentation by a Zen caretaker in English, then we had meditation practice, which was a lot of fun. I have studied the religion for quite some time now, but there sure is a difference learning the academic version of it and then having a person actually telling his personal views/feelings on it. Fascinating to say the least.

After that we went up the mountains in Kyoto which are famous for their monkeys. You pay a small fee to get in, then you walk up a small (treacherous might be a better word) mountain path, and at first you just enjoy the beautiful scenery; until all of a sudden, there’s a monkey sitting like RIGHT in front of you, looking at you. Plenty of fun, no joke. They all just run around there watching us walking up our little path, some of them are just flatly lying on the path and cleaning/eating whatever they can find in each others fur. Really cute. We obviously took a load of pictures (until my battery died. Bought a bigger battery, but what’s the point if you don’t charge it, huh?). We all sat down sort of close to the ones that were lying on the road, took some pictures, but a friend of mine decided she wanted a really, really good shot and decided to get really close. It was sort of funny, we kept saying “ehm, you should probably back off – ehm, aren’t you a little close?” until “BAM!” it was just too late and one of the monkeys got pissed and jumped at her J. It didn’t actually touch her, just chased her around for a bit until she tripped and fell down, upon which the monkey returned with what can only be conceived as a victorious grin. We spent the rest of the trip up the mountains imitating her and reminding her of her carelessness, ah, good times. The view up there was amazing though, you could see all of Kyoto and probably a few of it’s nearby suburbs, not bad at all.

It was also determined over the last month that my friend from Sweden is coming here for sure now, which I’m totally looking forward to. We’re spending almost a week in the Kansai region (where I currently live) and then about 10 days in Tokyo, which I’m probably even more excited about considering the fact that I haven’t been there yet. We’ll most likely spend our time sight-seeing, shopping, visiting arcades, and partying. It will be a good time, no doubt.

Oh, I’m almost forgot one of the most amazing experiences. Hanami, or flower-viewing. The Sakura trees have bloomed this month and it’s sooooooooo beautiful. It is only around for about 1-2 weeks (and only about 4 days of those are full-bloom. We’ve traveled quite a bit in order to get to some amazing spots. I’ve uploaded some pictures on facebook (for whoever can check that) but I still need to upload some here. It’s so difficult to select what pictures to put up though, considering I have about 150 of them from like two days^^. And if you don’t know what Sakura Trees are, google it now, it’s truly beautiful, especially because they are all over the place.

The last couple of weeks have been midterms, so that’s been sort of rough. Especially because of the fact that all the courses that I take are pass/fail, so grades don’t matter. Meaning that I don’t really bother studying, so my grades are sort of sub par, but oh well, getting an amazing experiences instead and nothing is really lost in the end. Still doing Kendo on a relatively regular basis, but since I decided not to buy the armor set (since I’m only staying here for one semester), I can’t really participate in the school-club Kendo. It’s alright, a good cultural experience if nothing else. We go to Karaoke quite a bit, but I’m starting to run out of money for this semester now so I’ll have to start thinking about my expenditures. Especially since my friend is coming over. That’s probably a good thing though, planning ahead a bit more :D.

I said in my last post that I was intending to write smaller posts more frequently, and I shall make a second attempt at that, but we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I will write more frequently than once a month at least. :D

Been a little bit too long now :)

Okay, now several weeks have passed and I barely made any inputs whatsoever. Sorry about that, but I suppose that’s just sort of the nature of a blog, huh? In the beginning a lot of new things happen all the time but after some time, even they begin to become mundane, and because of that, the incentive of making new posts are sort of reduced :P.

Anyhow, spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks doing random things. Been studying, partying, karaokeing (that’s a word!), and doing a lot of Kendo. So far I’m still having a blast, no doubt about that. Been traveling around with some friends in this region, finding more and more places that I thought only existed in my imagination. It is really funky, you’ll walk down a busy shopping street and then you realized you just walked by something, so you go back and check it out and there’s a serene temple right there, in between a Seven-eleven and a fashionable clothing store. Sort of amusing, but it’s really fascinating to see. We headed in there and took a look at the temple garden and all the sound from the busy shopping street just faded away… it was a really interesting experience. No doubt. We are probably heading somewhere this weekend as well, not quite sure where yet but there’s plenty of places to go see, and maybe we’ll actually do some touristy sight-seeing, haven’t done that in a while.

Doing a lot of Kendo right now, and I’m even considering buying a Bogu Set (the armor that you use in Kendo), but it’s insanely expensive, and I’ll end up spending about $450 to get a set that won’t have my bones break at every impact. Well, we’ll see what happens on that front. All I know is that if I want to join up with the club on the school, that’s basically my only option. I’ve been there a couple of times now but I can’t really participate since I can’t take a hit without the armor. They train 5 times a week though and then moreover I can train together with my friend Jes that’s been doing Kendo for a while as well. Maybe it’s worth the investment, and if nothing else that’d be a souvenir if I ever saw one. The funny thing though is that everyone in that club have been training Kendo for like 5-10 years and then there’s me with my whooping 1-month experience. Oh well, good practice huh? :D

I am finally getting more comfortable with putting sentences together in Japanese. It’s really fun now, I’m not dead-shy whenever I try to form a sentence, which might not sound like a lot, but means the world to me. Ended up chit-chatting with some of the people from the kendo club, and although they might be thinking “omg, this guy can’t speak whatsoever” but at least I’m getting my point across. I’m just doing my best to think in Japanese and so on, but it’s really difficult because in the end, you speak a lot of English with all the other foreign students. All the Japanese people are on break until april, so there’s almost nobody here. However, when that time comes my Japanese should be good enough for at least some basic communication. Moreover, I have the kendo club now, so I can definitely make a lot of friends in there, and it’s not exactly hard to talk to them.

Moreover I realized that I really love this country though. The culture is kind of a mix between the American culture and the Swedish one. I’m not really sure of how to elaborate on this point, since that’s a very general statement and quite a heavy one, but ultimately, that’s just sort of the feeling that I’m getting. We went to a night club last weekend which ended up being a lot of fun. My group was like the only foreigners there, which was rather amusing. The public transportation stops around 00:30 every day so we ended up taking like the last train there and staying out until the first train started going again. It was fun, no doubt, but very different from Swedish or American clubbing. I’ll be doing that again though, that’s for sure :).

Classes are still going well. The English-speaking classes are really, really easy and I’m sort of bored to some extent. I’m liking the Zen class because of the discussions, and the history is allright, except for the 500 handouts every class-period. I’m finally relatively caught up for my Kanji class, and I don’t feel like I’m the slowest one anymore. We had a test today that I felt fairly good about. Moreover my speaking class is going better and better, it really helps to practice with the other students here on campus. My grammar is by no means perfect, but I don’t have to think 5seconds before each word, which is a good feeling :D.

Guess this is a rather general post, but felt that was sort of needed since I haven’t posted for a while. I’ll try to keep up my posting, but it sure isn’t easy :). Maybe I should just aim for smaller posts more frequently :D.

Feeling sick :(

Oh well, now yet another week is about to end. Time is passing really quickly here, even though every day seems really long (makes no sense, but still). School is shaping up fairly well and I'm even managing in my Kanji class (believe it or not) my teacher is letting me stay in my current level with the promise of me working extra hard since I started on a level far behind the other students. However, right now I feel that I'm basically on the same level, so I should be okay with a little bit of motivation.

Feeling like crap right now, and this cold that pretty much everyone has been walking around with finally hit me. Trying to rest a lot but can't really sleep. Oh well, not much of interest to say here, except that I hope I'll get better.

I was/am intending to head to a field-trip tomorrow (Saturday) but in my current condition I'm not sure if I should be going or not. It's a really interesting trip and I'd love to go... but we'll have to see. Maybe what I should really do is just rest, but that's no fun at all.

Went to Osaka last week and went to the shopping districts there. Woooaaah they are huge, and omg do they have a lot of stores. It was a lot of fun just walking there. We forgot to take enough pictures, but before you entered the huge stream of people, it looked like it would be impossible to move through the enormous crowds. Well, definitely had a lot of fun and we found everything you could possibly imagine. Definitely a great day and I have to return there sometime soon. When I get better I should definitely head to Kyoto as well to go shopping there :D.

Been looking more into the Kendo club and I'm totally loving it. I've ordered my training wear and bamboo-sword and all that good stuff and it should arrive next Wednesday. It's a little bit expensive, but I guess that's only to be expected under the circumstances. He is, after all, letting me train for free so I'm not complaining :).

I am really starting to feel settled in here and I don't feel like a stranger everywhere I go all the time. I've found a few places that I can go to and relax and I've also made good friends and I feel relatively settled in. Although it's fun to come to a new place, it's really nice when you can feel that you are starting to make sense of the place as well, in order to get a stable ground to stand on.

Well, morever, meeting my speaking-partner today again with some friends. She's a really sweet girl but very shy. We managed through one lunch already by talking about random stuff and today we'll be there with a few friends so it should be a bit more comfortable and language barriers should be okay. If nothing else, it's a great way of practicing my Japanese.

Another week

Okay, so yet another week is reaching its end and lots of fun things have happened. We've spent this week doing all kind of random things, including studying ^^. After we cooled down from the sugar-kick that we received from the giant chocolate bar (ref. previous post), we decided to spend more of the week studying in a more mannered way :).

I went to the Kendo club, and it seems amazing. The teacher there speaks surprisingly fluent English, which I guess is both a benefit and a con, depends on how you look at it. It is really helpful right now in the beginning, and I'm very happy that he helps me out so much, but perhaps in a month or so I'm hoping that he can start instructing in Japanese or that I will at least understand it. Anyhow, he's currently training me and my friend separately (considering most the other students are about 11 years old and have done this since forever). He's very strict with the small kids, but he's so relaxed with me, which I hope we will get past soon, because I want him to point out every detail he can find :P. He's very happy to have a foreigner there though, no doubt about that. He's even planning on translating a piece of a Kendo handbook in order for me to read it in english and really understand. That's so nice, he's really taking his own time to do what he can to teach me both Kendo and the Culture around it.

Oh, for something completely random, this time of the year is chocolate season (my weakness) and they have Chocolate Pies at McDonald's... I'm gonna turn fat, no doubt. A dollar and they are the best things since chocolate was invented. Well, enough of that, picture is now posted :D.

Went to the Arcades! Amazing experience, no doubt. I mean, I headed to a small one in Hirakata, and it was allright. This one was in Neyagawa (where my host-family lives), and it was this smoky place with lots of sounds and packed with machines. They had the funniest fighting games that I've ever seen. Not so much photo-booths and music games as one might imagine, I guess they're really hot for fighting games. Unfortunately most of the ones that I love and know, are not available here. I'll have to settle of Tekken and Virtual Fighter and keep learning those along with all the anime-games :P. Me and my friend sat down at a game that was basically "Type or Die" and it was like a game where enemies would pop up with a text under them and you type it. All was in romanji (roman alphabet) so it was sooo easy for us, we annihilated that place. Well, until all of a sudden there was "Question Time" and the questions where in Japanese and you had to attack the targets in the right order... well, nightmare for us and we got squashed. Other than that, lots of fun! :D.

Now, as for this weekend, we're planning on heading to a Mall in Hirakata later today, I'll probably buy a new bag and a pair of shoes for the work-out (they violently rejected me while I tried to enter the gym without proper shoes). Furthermore, tomorrow we'll probably head to Osaka and hit the big shopping/gaming districts, that'd be fun! :D. I can't wait to try to Arcades
there, it'd be so much fun :D.

Classes and stuff

Well, besides karaoke and a sushi-night, this weekend ended up being a lot of studying in order to maintain the level that I was placed in by the placement test. I had my Speaking test today and it actually went fairly well. I managed to score like an 89% on it, which for studying for two months (unlike the others in the class who’ve been doing Japanese for at least one year) is fairly okay. At least it’ll keep me in this level (I hope) and I can keep working on getting ahead.

What I’m more worried about is the writing class. My Kanji knowledge is just waaay inferior to the others in the class, and although that serves as an inventive in some ways, it’s really demoralizing in other ways. I guess I just need to practice a crapload more, but she’s a really difficult teacher and she’s very strict. During our first class she said that we’ll have a homework due today, and frankly, I didn’t understand a word of what she was saying that time, and obviously, had no idea we were supposed to do it ^^. She gave me a look saying “who the heck do you think you are coming to class without your homework done?” and I felt horrible. Well, on the other hand it’ll make me work twice as hard to prove her wrong (I’m stubborn that way) so maybe my dislike for her will serve as yet another incentive, big enough to do well.

On the more positive side, I’m starting with Kendo tomorrow! My Okaasan took me to the kendo clubs meeting two days ago (Sunday) and we talked to the sensei there and he was so excited that there was a gaijin (foreigner) that was so interested in Kendo that he decided that he’ll let me train this remaining period for free. Sweetness! J. Moreover, he seemed really nice, however strict, and it’ll probably be a lot of fun. Currently I’ll probably be put with the children while learning the basics, but in a month or so I should be allowed to train with the rest of the group. It all depends on how quickly I learn this stuff.

Me and my friend split a huge bar of Chocolate today (see picture) and it ended up replacing our lunch. At the end of it we were kinda sick of it, but still, a huge bar of chocolate is never wrong! I’ve been high on sugar the entire day.

Other than that there’s not too much going on. Right now I’m trying to get on track with my studies, but still trying to balance it with exploring this place. I’m meeting my speaking partner tomorrow, which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve gotten a lot more confident with my Japanese due to all the conversations with my host-family. I’m really enjoying this language, and I hope it won’t just end up being something that I forget later on. We’ll see.

First week of classes is now over :)

Now there’s definitely been some time since I last posted. Sorry about that, but since having like no access to the internet and being busy pretty much all the time, it’s hard to fine a spot where I can sit down and write. Anyhow, enough about that, here we go :P.

So far the homestay is working out great. I could not possible imagine the host-family being any better (with the possible exception of lack of internet) and they are so helpful. They asked me about things that I wanted to do here in Japan and I said that I really wanted to start Kendo here but that the school-club is apparently kind of shaky. Since there’s no teacher, it’s a lot up to yourself if you actually want to join the club. Hence, I wanted to join an “actual” club in Neyagawa or something (which is where I live). My hostfamily went through fire to find a club for me that I could join that wasn’t too far away. They printed lots of maps and called all their friends and guess what? They found one! :P Going there this Sunday to check it out. Apparently one of the teachers has been in Australia for three years, so he might actually speak pretty decent English, imagine?
Classes so far are going pretty well. They seem rather chilled compared to Westminster, I’m not gonna lie; at least the two that are taught in English. I hear from other students that since so many people come here for other reasons than to study, the teachers go fairly easy on us. The Japanese classes though are pretty intense. They are fun, no doubt about that, just intense. My reading and writing teacher is a Kanji-nazi, but then again, considering my lack of knowledge, it’s not surprising. Everyone else in both of my classes have studied for like 1-1.5 years, so I’m really on the lower end of the spectrum, but at the same time, I really enjoy the challenge. Furthermore, in my speaking class I’m not that far behind. My vocabulary is fine, but I don’t know the grammar well enough, so study study!
Got my cell phone now as well, it’s really sweet actually, I doubt that I’ll find these kind of cell phones in America or Europe. Maybe I’m wrong (considering I haven’t been on the cell phone market for years) but this thing has got TV, recording movies, dictionaries, and so on put into it. Furthermore it’s got this sweet thing that you can flip the screen around and watch it like a mini-tv. It wasn’t too badly priced either, at least not compared to Sweden (then again, is anything?).
We had lots of fun yesterday, headed to a Karaoke bar. I was kind of nervous considering I’m neither a great singer, nor do I particularly enjoy singing. However, no joke, this was soo much fun I’ll do it again any day. We rented a small room that’s basically sound-isolated, so it’s only the group that goes there that can really hear it. We were like 8 people, so it was pretty crowded. You pay like $25 for three hours and you can drink as much as you want during this time (!). It was great, my throat is actually really sore today, but no doubt that it was worth it. Yeah, totally going back there at some point in the future. Found one of my favorite Japanese bands there too, but I couldn’t read the Japanese fast enough to keep up with the song, so it ended up being all western songs :D (they had a frikking HUUGE selection, phone books after phone book of music).
Other than these events, I’m really having a lot of fun here. I’m trying to stay in touch with people, although that’s proving harder than I originally thought. Eating really well, and comparably cheap. My host-mother is a really good cook and she tries so hard to feed me more than I can eat. She thought I hadn’t eaten enough so she brought out some seaweed and wrapped rice in it, and served them as small snack-sized bites so that I could eat it whenever I got hungry :P. The Japanese itself is going well, having a review test on Tuesday to certify which class that I should be in, so I need to keep up with my grammar-studies right now. Going out tonight again, but Sunday and Monday (national holiday, so we’re off school) will be dedicated for that. Oh, and today it’s snowing for the first time, so I’m very c-cc-c-c-oooold.
I almost forgot! My speaking partner contacted me yesterday as well, so I'll try to get a hold of her. It's a program where you meet up for the purpose of talking english/japanese as much as possible in order to improve both sides language-abilities. That should prove to be a lot of fun!