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.