Picture time! :D

I know that you are supposed to combine text with pictures... but it's currently 10pm and I'm totally beat. So, here's just a lump of pictures that I took of the city!



Here's a small and pretty river that flows through our so-called Japanese Garden. (It's really just a river and some flowers, but pretty nonetheless)

Here's just another part of that river. Nothing fancy, just pretty. :)







This is from the streets of Hirakata. It's kind of the way most the houses looks. Very small and compact. It's not as spacy as in the States or in western europe, but it has a very different charm in my eyes :).





An old Japanase shrine from some time that I have no clue (since I couldn't read the sign) and for someone who I do not know who it was (since once again, I could not read the shrine). However, really fascinating. Almost just walked by it on the street while window-shopping.





A somewhat more narrow street and probably from a very long time ago. However, it's still there and people live there :) Every now and then you'll see a Scooter try to make their way through in order to find a short-cut through the traffic :D






Just another random street really. A picture tells more than a thousand words they say! :)







Okay, that's all for today folks. I have too much to tell, and way too little time to do it :). I'm heading to Kyoto tomorrow (hopefully anyway, the sign-up list was full so I made my own, but I'm sure they can't tell the difference :P). This place is truly amazing though. Classes begin on Monday and I'm meeting my host-family on Saturday. I'll try to return with more details soon :)

First couple of days in Japan

Now, I honestly have no clue to begin. I've been in this place for a good 48 hours by now and I slept away about half of those (curse you Jetlag) so honestly, that's not a whole lot of hours; yet this country has already made quite the impression. When I finally arrived at Hirakata, I was already sort of lost, just as most the other international students. They then sent us on a tour around the neighborhood to shop some basic supplies so that we could get dinner and breakfast on our own. Apparently the Cafeteria that they have is delicious, but so far I haven't had much of a chance to try it. We ended up buying a bento-box that was really dirt-cheap considering how much food it was. Furthermore, it was delicious :D.
They hand out chopsticks in the store for free, so my very first Japanese phrase was succesfull in that I managed to get chopsticks.
Took the language placement exam, which was nothing less of a nightmare. However, the good news is that if I feel that I was placed in the wrong group at the end, I'm allowed to retake it in like 3 weeks, so I have some time to get into it. We'll see what they say. Fortunately, it wasn't just me who thought the exam was hard, pretty much everyone there, even the people who've studied the language for years said that it was surprisingly hard.

I'll get to know more about the host-family this weekend. But until then I'm living in a dorm with two other people. It's sort of crammed, but then again, besides for sleeping, I've spent like 2 hours in there so I don't really care.
Walked the entire day yesterday around Hirakata. Beautiful city. Went downtown to get some food together with a friend of mine's Speaking Partners. I doubt that I'll get one, but fortunately she hit it off with her partner, so we were a party of six that ended up eating together and checking out the stores and other things. They had an Arcade, which I hear are huge in Japan. This one had a couple of sections, but we just spent like 20 minutes there so I'll have to return there at some point to explore it. I found it rather amusing tho. I only saw like one section of it, and it was a tuesday night and of about the 25 people who were there, at least 3 or 4 of them were about 50+, something that I doubt I'd see in Europe or the States.
Well, other than eating great food and what not, I'm not gonna bother too much more with this now. It's early, and I need to head over to the school for more lovely orientation *sigh*.

Over-all though, So far, so good Kinda worried about small things, but on the larger scale, I'm really enjoying this
PS. Sorry about the lack of pictures. No-time and not enough pictures :D Sorry They will be there, promise

One day left ^^

So here I am, it's evening and I'm departing early in the morning. Right now I'm really excited, been doing some packing but mainly been reading and trying to cram in a few more things before I go. Right now I actually don't think I'll pass the test to skip the first level of Japanese, but I'm not about to give up quite yet :).
Hopefully I'll make a new post within a couple of days once I get something to reflect upon, but I won't be moving in with the host-family until early February, so I've still got about a week. :D

Make-up

Well, here we are... 3 weeks before I depart - maybe I'm too excited about all this :P.

Anyhow, I am making up for all the laziness of not studying Japanese now. I sat down today and looked over how much stuff I need to know... and all that in three weeks will be a bitch. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how far I can go, I guess that's one of the reasons for why I'm pushing myself this hard... even though I'm normally perceived as a real slacker ^^

I guess there's not much else to add at this time, I need to get stuff done, although my brain is feeling like a melting pot. Speaking Swedish, studying Japanese with an English translation... <3

We'll see how much my efforts will be worth in the end.