Happy new year! (aw dammit).
So I've been planning this entry for quite a while, and now it's finally time. In one hour, the most important decade of my life will be over. One hour after that, I will make a Skype call to everyone partying at home, that will be fun.
Before I get all caught up in this, I should say thanks to those who commented in my last entry, your words were of value and I'm not really sure of how to express my appreciation (especially about the complete stranger who decided to sit down and write a long message just like that. Such kindness is almost unimaginable).
I'm not sure where I should start, whether to convey my nostalgia for these last ten years or tell you how I feel about having passed the mid-mark of my Japanese stay. Here goes nothing.
Five months, dude. That's a long time. Yet somehow it passed faster than ever before, that's weird. During this time, I've felt cut off from the "real world". A part of me is still left in the summer of '09, the most eventful summer of my life. Another part of me is still that young Swedish guy who just came to Japan, nearly scared witless by the alienation but lying to himself in order to become overconfident. The method was unorthodox, I'm sure, but it worked. Gradually I dropped the lies one by one as I accepted the truths that were in front of me.
And here I am, facing the next half of my adventure with a new vigor, ready for round two. This time without the need to put enemy level to three (it's level nine, three Meta Knights, In a team. Hardcore).
My Japanese hasn't improved at the speed I'd been rooting for. I'll see if I can amend that by working harder next year, as well as hope it improves at a faster rate the longer I've been here.
Yeah, that's good enough.
Leaving that, time to turn the nostalgia amp to eleven and get this train rolling! (*tuff tuff tuff*)
Just about ten years ago, I was seven years old, at a new year's party in the house of some friends of the family. I don't remember much of the details, but I know I knew something big was happening. I also know I was kind of let down when the big thing was revealed to be entirely subjective, and not a real event. (I mean, wouldn't it have been cool if it started raining purple and green fire from the sky while a giant bearded figure appeared in the heavens, letters in lightning appearing as he roared "Happy new millennium, future's coming, yo!"?)
Either way, the evening was pretty exciting, with the sound of fireworks all around non-stop.
(huh, just ten minutes left. This is taking more time than I thought)
A little more than nine years ago, September 2001, I got to school as usual. When suddenly the teacher told us all to gather in the mirror room (big mirrors on the wall, hence the name). She then asked if any of knew what had happened and proceeded to tell us about what had happened in far off America. America, it had been the coolest country on earth once, everything that was awesome was imported from there, they had cowboys, Disney, actors, skyscrapers, all the big things and much much more.
After that day, my innocent image of that country was replaced by tales of ridicule, embarrassment and stupidity. By the end of the decade, I barely have any respect for that particular part of the world. Let's hope the future changes that.
December 2001, more or less nine years ago. The family went to the theaters to see the movie adaption of a book my father had read to me and my brother when we were young.
The Fellowship of the Ring blew my mind just as much as it blew everyone else, I'd had no idea you could do that, with a book, in a movie, using fantasy.
In the fall of 2003, I started hanging out with a classmate of mine more often, sometimes doing stuff together during recesses and eventually visiting his house after school, playing Worms Armageddon. That classmate of mine ended up being the best friend I'd ever had, ever have and ever will have. My life would never have been as cool as it is if it hadn't been for him. Thanks man.
Moving on to 2004, I started sixth grade. New school, new class, new life. I still remember the first day, doing the opposite of everyone else by hanging out in the schoolyard with my friend, instead of staying inside (and staying inside was totally rad at that time, since in the prior grades we'd been required to go outside).
Starting from the sixth grade, I slowly evolved as a person over the four years I would spend at "Södra Ängby Skola". The change would sometimes happen in obvious steps, like after the first lesson when I had been sitting right next to Emil. I just knew I wanted to become friends with him (but shyness prevented me from just doing it the easy way). An opportunity presented itself when Niklas, Vilgot and I talked about how we could use a fourth member in our group (we'd started a "magazine" in fifth grade, but lost some members when the class split up. Maybe I should've made the creation of that magazine as an important event.. Oh well, can't have them all) aaanyways, I suggested we introduce Emil to our project during a class trip to "Skärsön". He thought it was interesting and the rest was history. Tidbit: During said school trip, my mom appeared on her motorbike (I'd forgotten something, I think) and impressed everyone, that was awesome.
During summer 2007, I went to a confirmation camp (fear not, tasteless jokes have already been made and gone old) for ten days, the longest amount of time I had spent from home so far. My fellow campmates (is that a word? ... It is now) were all of the "typical teenager" variety.
Before that camp, I had been reluctant as to whether I was okay with being nerdy and therefore different from the "normal" guys, or if I should have tried to be more like them.
After seeing their behavior during those ten days, I knew I would never want to become like them (The rules clearly said "No smoking" and "No drinking", yet those guys couldn't keep off from doing it for just ten days, I mean just come on).
During the school year past that summer, my class got an assignment in Swedish class. We were supposed to make a speech about something. I can't even remember what my subject was, but I'm quite convinced I did well. However, what a classmate of mine talked about changed my life.
She told the class about her language trip. I don't even remember where she went, but she told us all about how fun it had been and what interesting things she had done. I was hooked (though I was unimpressed by her implied partying). All in all, it is thanks to her speech that I gained the desire to make a language trip to Oxford for three weeks in the following summer, it was the longest time I had ever spent away from home. If I hadn't taken that language trip, I would never have had the courage to go all the way to Japan for ten months, the longest time I've ever spent away from home.
Thinking back to all events that have happened during these ten years, all the things I don't have the time to tell you about. I see how my life is shaped by random events, occurrences and coincidences, it's an interesting way to live, and I'm grateful for that.
Happy new year to all of you, as I'm sure you will have catched up to me by the time you read this.
torsdag 31 december 2009
torsdag 10 december 2009
Truth be told
I'm going to take this moment and backtrack a little bit, return to the origin of things.
About 1 year and 2-ish months ago I started this blog. Normally I'd be giving the exact numbers, but that's not on my mind this time (a relief?). I'll go ahead and give you the facts now, so that further confusion might be avoided:
This entry will not contain any information about recent events that might've occurred here in Japan, but rather what is on my mind right now.
That is in essence the reason I started writing here, a way to let my thoughts and feelings take shape in letters and words, and a great way to feed my ego by letting other people read this and agree that I am pretty awesome.
I quite quickly lost my way though. Now all I've been doing is writing exactly what I'm doing or have done recently, unoriginal for sure, but the information is also interesting (for some).
This entry is a way to look back at my roots, relieve me of this nostalgia, and have a good time.
Writing here has been an experience. At first trying out my wings, find the right pace. Then finding an upwind from where I could just stretch out my limbs and glide upon the current.
As you can tell, I'm all about the metaphors right now (yeaah, dude).
The root of things is key here, as all my brain seems to be doing is searching back to why things are like this, how this all came to be. Sometimes it's all obvious to me, this lead to that which lead to that other thing and then the chicken crossed the road. At other times, it's all in a veil, part of a concept I am simply too young to understand.
I've matured at a fast rate these last months (this year, even?), which might be the reason for my mind's apparent origin-research. However, thoughts and feelings are not entirely intertwined, of that I am sure (otherwise things would not be as fun). Thus, I still need to come up with a reason, an origin of these feelings.
It should be pretty obvious by now, of course.
I've been going back and forth in the amounts of honesty I've shown on this blog. During this long time, I've gotten lots and lots of new secrets to keep, making me feel dishonest to my readers but reliable to my friends. I've also seen many new things, like the different effects honesty can have, sometimes good, sometimes bad. There's also the factor of my current opinion, feelings, laziness and other details. Either way, I try to be as honest as can be.
Try being the keyword.
I have lots to say about trying, everyone does. All the time we hear the words "you should at least try" and in some cases "just try your best and have fun".
Trying my best has never made sense to me, in a way. "best" as a word is actually quite confusing when you think too much about it (thinking too much used to be my specialty, as well as thinking too little. Paradox much?).
I don't want to try my best, it's such a pain if it doesn't go well. I always keep a little bit of energy to ensure that not all is lost in case I fail.
It's probably (partially) thanks to that nature that I've managed to get here. Failures cause me so much pain and regret, if I didn't keep any reserves, I would just despair and lose myself at the very first failure.
Yes, people do fail, all the time (there's a blog dedicated to it). It's hilarious, it's sad, it's life.
However, I always try, make no mistake of that.
I try to improve my Japanese, I try to mature as a person, I try to gain more friends and confidence. And I really did try keeping my very first relationship, so no regrets there.
Alright, this is what it all summed up to. The reason I write about origins and trying, thoughts and nostalgia, honesty and failures. This is what I'm trying to say.
My very first girlfriend broke up with me back on Saturday. There are a lot of things I could elaborate upon that with, I could grant details. Like reasons, thoughts, feelings and overall whining.
But I won't. I believe this is the line I set when talking about my personal life here.
Or well, the line I set when I've had a few days of thinking, gotten to chat with a few people, kept a few secrets and recently had two cups of tea and two bars of chocolate.
And I feel good about it.
Since now I only miss you, friend.
About 1 year and 2-ish months ago I started this blog. Normally I'd be giving the exact numbers, but that's not on my mind this time (a relief?). I'll go ahead and give you the facts now, so that further confusion might be avoided:
This entry will not contain any information about recent events that might've occurred here in Japan, but rather what is on my mind right now.
That is in essence the reason I started writing here, a way to let my thoughts and feelings take shape in letters and words, and a great way to feed my ego by letting other people read this and agree that I am pretty awesome.
I quite quickly lost my way though. Now all I've been doing is writing exactly what I'm doing or have done recently, unoriginal for sure, but the information is also interesting (for some).
This entry is a way to look back at my roots, relieve me of this nostalgia, and have a good time.
Writing here has been an experience. At first trying out my wings, find the right pace. Then finding an upwind from where I could just stretch out my limbs and glide upon the current.
As you can tell, I'm all about the metaphors right now (yeaah, dude).
The root of things is key here, as all my brain seems to be doing is searching back to why things are like this, how this all came to be. Sometimes it's all obvious to me, this lead to that which lead to that other thing and then the chicken crossed the road. At other times, it's all in a veil, part of a concept I am simply too young to understand.
I've matured at a fast rate these last months (this year, even?), which might be the reason for my mind's apparent origin-research. However, thoughts and feelings are not entirely intertwined, of that I am sure (otherwise things would not be as fun). Thus, I still need to come up with a reason, an origin of these feelings.
It should be pretty obvious by now, of course.
I've been going back and forth in the amounts of honesty I've shown on this blog. During this long time, I've gotten lots and lots of new secrets to keep, making me feel dishonest to my readers but reliable to my friends. I've also seen many new things, like the different effects honesty can have, sometimes good, sometimes bad. There's also the factor of my current opinion, feelings, laziness and other details. Either way, I try to be as honest as can be.
Try being the keyword.
I have lots to say about trying, everyone does. All the time we hear the words "you should at least try" and in some cases "just try your best and have fun".
Trying my best has never made sense to me, in a way. "best" as a word is actually quite confusing when you think too much about it (thinking too much used to be my specialty, as well as thinking too little. Paradox much?).
I don't want to try my best, it's such a pain if it doesn't go well. I always keep a little bit of energy to ensure that not all is lost in case I fail.
It's probably (partially) thanks to that nature that I've managed to get here. Failures cause me so much pain and regret, if I didn't keep any reserves, I would just despair and lose myself at the very first failure.
Yes, people do fail, all the time (there's a blog dedicated to it). It's hilarious, it's sad, it's life.
However, I always try, make no mistake of that.
I try to improve my Japanese, I try to mature as a person, I try to gain more friends and confidence. And I really did try keeping my very first relationship, so no regrets there.
Alright, this is what it all summed up to. The reason I write about origins and trying, thoughts and nostalgia, honesty and failures. This is what I'm trying to say.
My very first girlfriend broke up with me back on Saturday. There are a lot of things I could elaborate upon that with, I could grant details. Like reasons, thoughts, feelings and overall whining.
But I won't. I believe this is the line I set when talking about my personal life here.
Or well, the line I set when I've had a few days of thinking, gotten to chat with a few people, kept a few secrets and recently had two cups of tea and two bars of chocolate.
And I feel good about it.
Since now I only miss you, friend.
tisdag 24 november 2009
This Rainbow Can't Fly
My titles have ever so slowly moved from slightly related to the subject matter at hand to the weirdest stuff I can come up with right before writing, I should improve that.
To use slight profanity: Well, damn. It has already been two weeks since my last yadda yadda yadda (it feels weird using that expression now that I know what "yadda" means and I'm fully aware of how poorly it fits as an expression in that manner) and today makes 108 blah blah blah 15 weeks a derp derp derp.
The last two weeks have been pretty darn bad. After getting back to school on Tuesday, things continued normally. But it was all quickly interrupted by me becoming sick (just a cold, calm down) on Friday, for an entire week.
I had felt pretty bad about taking Monday off, getting one week of sick leave did not make me feel any better about it. But it all kept going down from there.
The very same day I had fallen ill I got to know my girlfriend had been hurt and was in a worse shape than me (though she recovered quickly, thank god). Being all the way over here and unable to properly comfort her, I felt like a horrible boyfriend (and I have yet to make up for it, gah!)
That thing plus the fact that I was more or less limited to a house with very little to do except sleeping (in a cold room), while also at first not being trusted by my host family (they thought I was just avoiding school until they had me go to a hospital for a checkup. You might have heard of my fear of hospitals.) Made me feel more homesick than ever before (or not exactly homesick, just an incredibly strong desire to be where my girlfriend is, which happens to be Sweden).
Wow, this entry seems so depressing, I should probably counter with some happy stuff before you all think I'm emo or something (and that would be simply awful!).
Today was a really good day, back in school and all.
Which brings me to a funny story.
The very same day I got back to school (last week's Friday), the entire 11th grade was sent home due to severe cases of the flu. So I got myself a full weekend plus a red day on Monday, awesome. The awesomeness started instantly as Truls and I went to Shibuya (school is like 20 minutes on a train from Shibuya) since we had gotten time on our hands anyway (we were sent home in the beginning of lunch break). In Shibuya I found the perfect store to buy Christmas presents in (no spoilers though). However, I did not have enough money to go wild with so instead I bought something I had needed myself for a while (a mug, the most awesome one ever. Pictures some other time) and promised myself to return later.
I've also managed to become great friends with Santtu and I'll be joining him on his shopping spree before he returns home to Finland. Which gives me a great opportunity to buy the other kind of Christmas presents (the cool kind). He also showed me that there is a Hard Off in Machida (the store chain I bought my awesome electric guitar in. Said guitar is also up for name suggestions, by the way).
Another fun thing to mention is that the local supermarket often has sales on candy (chocolate in particular), making shameless export of Pocky (and other sweets) a much cheaper effort.
Friday did actually host another positive event. During the short recess before homeroom would start and we would be given the fateful announcement, I was sitting in my seat (number 2 from the back, next to the windows. Kyon's) playing Pokemon on my DSi (I actually happened to beat the pokemon league just today, on the first try). When the two girls who sit in front and behind me, took out their DS' (pronounced: "dee-ess-ess", it's plural) and started having fun in pictochat.
On a brave impulse, I saved & exited pokemon and joined their chatroom.
Long story short: I now have two new friends, that I can easily talk to every day.
Awesome.
Now, this would probably be the best time to write that class schedule I promised about 10 weeks ago, or that diary entry I wrote 6 weeks ago. Or tell the story of the trip to Hakone I made 2 weeks ago.
But no.
Miss you so dearly.
I also miss the rest of you, in unequal amounts.
More to come (at some point).
To use slight profanity: Well, damn. It has already been two weeks since my last yadda yadda yadda (it feels weird using that expression now that I know what "yadda" means and I'm fully aware of how poorly it fits as an expression in that manner) and today makes 108 blah blah blah 15 weeks a derp derp derp.
The last two weeks have been pretty darn bad. After getting back to school on Tuesday, things continued normally. But it was all quickly interrupted by me becoming sick (just a cold, calm down) on Friday, for an entire week.
I had felt pretty bad about taking Monday off, getting one week of sick leave did not make me feel any better about it. But it all kept going down from there.
The very same day I had fallen ill I got to know my girlfriend had been hurt and was in a worse shape than me (though she recovered quickly, thank god). Being all the way over here and unable to properly comfort her, I felt like a horrible boyfriend (and I have yet to make up for it, gah!)
That thing plus the fact that I was more or less limited to a house with very little to do except sleeping (in a cold room), while also at first not being trusted by my host family (they thought I was just avoiding school until they had me go to a hospital for a checkup. You might have heard of my fear of hospitals.) Made me feel more homesick than ever before (or not exactly homesick, just an incredibly strong desire to be where my girlfriend is, which happens to be Sweden).
Wow, this entry seems so depressing, I should probably counter with some happy stuff before you all think I'm emo or something (and that would be simply awful!).
Today was a really good day, back in school and all.
Which brings me to a funny story.
The very same day I got back to school (last week's Friday), the entire 11th grade was sent home due to severe cases of the flu. So I got myself a full weekend plus a red day on Monday, awesome. The awesomeness started instantly as Truls and I went to Shibuya (school is like 20 minutes on a train from Shibuya) since we had gotten time on our hands anyway (we were sent home in the beginning of lunch break). In Shibuya I found the perfect store to buy Christmas presents in (no spoilers though). However, I did not have enough money to go wild with so instead I bought something I had needed myself for a while (a mug, the most awesome one ever. Pictures some other time) and promised myself to return later.
I've also managed to become great friends with Santtu and I'll be joining him on his shopping spree before he returns home to Finland. Which gives me a great opportunity to buy the other kind of Christmas presents (the cool kind). He also showed me that there is a Hard Off in Machida (the store chain I bought my awesome electric guitar in. Said guitar is also up for name suggestions, by the way).
Another fun thing to mention is that the local supermarket often has sales on candy (chocolate in particular), making shameless export of Pocky (and other sweets) a much cheaper effort.
Friday did actually host another positive event. During the short recess before homeroom would start and we would be given the fateful announcement, I was sitting in my seat (number 2 from the back, next to the windows. Kyon's) playing Pokemon on my DSi (I actually happened to beat the pokemon league just today, on the first try). When the two girls who sit in front and behind me, took out their DS' (pronounced: "dee-ess-ess", it's plural) and started having fun in pictochat.
On a brave impulse, I saved & exited pokemon and joined their chatroom.
Long story short: I now have two new friends, that I can easily talk to every day.
Awesome.
Now, this would probably be the best time to write that class schedule I promised about 10 weeks ago, or that diary entry I wrote 6 weeks ago. Or tell the story of the trip to Hakone I made 2 weeks ago.
But no.
Miss you so dearly.
I also miss the rest of you, in unequal amounts.
More to come (at some point).
måndag 9 november 2009
Something Musical
So I'm writing this in the dining room in my new host family, as it is the only place where internet works, but that might just be good for me.
I'm also writing this at 15.08 on a Monday, which is 12 minutes before school ends, this in only possible because I, actually, did not go to school today. I'm justifying this by having been stressed out lately, by adapting to a new family, being confused by the long distance train rides to school, International Week demanding a lot of my attention as well as the speech on International Day proving to be a nightmare, followed by not being able to sleep on the Sunday due to a trip to Hakone, which was very far away plus incredibly exhausting, albeit interesting and that I have taken on the mission of cooking dinner for 12 people today.
So I hope all of that is good enough reason to take one single day off (and I pray I'll never have to again), I'm also doing chores at home during this time anyway, since I finally have the time to get things done.
So what has happened in a week, you wonder? Let's begin by describing the new host family.
So as I said, the host parents are old and the father is American. There are in total 6 students living here, 3 of them being exchange students: Nuri (Korean, the sempai), Santu (Finnish, was apparently in the same car as me the day I arrived in Japan, though I was so insanely tired at that time so I had no recollection of the event) and me (Swedish, writing this blog). The other 3 are Japanese University students: Yunsuke, Name-I-Forgot and Maho, two guys and one girl in total.
Though I've only Maho once, yesterday. She's very busy, they tell me.
The house is very nice, lots of space and everyone has their own room, with a private bathroom, fridge and microwave (awesome). Breakfast is on the table from 6.00 and contains fruits, cereals and toast bread (awesome again), sometime my breakfast is eaten in loneliness, sometimes in company (it depends). Dinner is served at 19.30 and everyone eats together (though the Japanese students are usually a tad late, Maho never eats dinner with us) and the food is either some interesting Japanese cuisine or one of the exchange students' cooking. Also, this family has loads of English tea, free to be drunk at any time (more awesome).
There are only two downsides with the new host family; the distance to school is pretty far, so it takes about 1 1/2 hours by train to get to school (during rush hour, so no seats for me). It's also in a quite off location, so I need to transfer 3 times (still during rush hour, mind you).
The other downside is not nearly as alarming, but the house is located far up on a steep hill, requiring a harsh treck uphill when returning home (also, the nearest store is at the base of the hill). But there are several positive aspects of the hill to take in mind: Itsumo No Fuukei can make the entire hillclimb a fun procedure and going up a steep hill at least once a day (plus the usual 20 minute walk to school from the station) is probably going to improve my stamina. Also, it's easy to get to the station every morning, since walking downhill marginally minimizes the time it would take if the house had been located on flat ground.
International Week was fun, though it didn't really get started before the Wednesday. The activities on the Monday were delayed until Thursday because more than 100 students in the tenth grade had been ordered to stay home due to another flu outbreak, and the Tuesday was a national holiday (I slept).
But Wednesday was fun, a lot of my classes were canceled and instead I got to do things like introduce myself to students in an English class (and I noticed that I could now make a detailed introduction of myself with ease, as opposed to the trouble I had months earlier) and watch a performance by Indian dancers/drummers.
Thursday was even better, as we had a delayed Halloween event that day. Each of the exchange students were given candy of a different kind and the Japanese students were charged with the task of finding all of us and getting a piece of candy, those who had the complete set were given even more candy.
By the end of the day, I had more than half of my candy left in my hat (yes, I was giving it out of my hat, obviously). I could have rightfully gone home with all that candy and said that it was "their loss" that most students hadn't gotten any, but I decided not to. Instead I trotted through the corridors, handing candy to every person I met. The multitude of "ありがとう"'s and "thank you"'s I received made it totally worth it.
Friday was also plenty fun, the first two lessons were free and therefore spent in the library, alternating between chatting with Truls & Amanda and reading in a copy of Norweigan Wood I had found (it's an interesting book).
During lunch hour, we exchange students were supposed to have a basketball match against the 10th year's girl team (yeah, I'm not sure why either), It wasn't that fun to play and not really worth losing the time to eat for, but I did what the teachers requested and got a laugh out of watching the (very tall) German visitor students more or less hand the ball to each other, far above the girls' heads.
Later, Friday took a turn for the awesome when my Japanese teacher gave me a Dreamcast.
Just like that.
She said that since her son had stopped using it and I'd told her I liked games, I could have it. I was not one to complain. She did say, however, that it was a little broken. But after looking at the console myself, I doubt it is something I can't ask one of my friends to fix (especially if I bribe him with some goods from Japan).
To make this story even more amusing, imagine my surprise when I found this article the very same day I had been given the console. Coincidence must be laughing out loud.
Despite what you might think, International day was also great fun, despite my speech being horrible. The entire event was interesting, it started out with seven Japanese students giving speeches in a speech competition (in English), despite some difficulties it was interesting to hear what they had to say. After that we were treated some performances by the German and Thai visitors and a speech by a Japanese film director (though I have no idea of what she said). Then it was my turn.
My speech wasn't all that bad, they told me, the content was interesting. Really, it's mostly me beating myself up, knowing that I could do so much better. I'll just try to describe how it went for you:
I probably broke all of the rhetorical rules, I had my eyes stuck on my paper all the time as I could not remember a single word to save my life, I was also more or less bent of the table, barely showing my face while talking. I also had no proper pace whatsoever in my speech, along with stopping a few times, forgetting where I was and having to take a few incredibly embarrassing seconds to find where I had lost myself.
So yeah, more or less everything that could have, went wrong with that speech. But I made it and I haven't developed any stage fright because of it. Rather the opposite, as I asked if I could make a speech in English at some point in the future, just to show that I could do better (sadly, there was no possibility for me to do so, I'll have to do something like it when I get home I guess).
Seems like there was a lot more to tell than I had imagined, I've been writing for over an hour now and I'm far from finished in retelling all events, I'm going to have to stop here in order to have some time over for my chores. Be back as soon as possible, miss you.
I'm also writing this at 15.08 on a Monday, which is 12 minutes before school ends, this in only possible because I, actually, did not go to school today. I'm justifying this by having been stressed out lately, by adapting to a new family, being confused by the long distance train rides to school, International Week demanding a lot of my attention as well as the speech on International Day proving to be a nightmare, followed by not being able to sleep on the Sunday due to a trip to Hakone, which was very far away plus incredibly exhausting, albeit interesting and that I have taken on the mission of cooking dinner for 12 people today.
So I hope all of that is good enough reason to take one single day off (and I pray I'll never have to again), I'm also doing chores at home during this time anyway, since I finally have the time to get things done.
So what has happened in a week, you wonder? Let's begin by describing the new host family.
So as I said, the host parents are old and the father is American. There are in total 6 students living here, 3 of them being exchange students: Nuri (Korean, the sempai), Santu (Finnish, was apparently in the same car as me the day I arrived in Japan, though I was so insanely tired at that time so I had no recollection of the event) and me (Swedish, writing this blog). The other 3 are Japanese University students: Yunsuke, Name-I-Forgot and Maho, two guys and one girl in total.
Though I've only Maho once, yesterday. She's very busy, they tell me.
The house is very nice, lots of space and everyone has their own room, with a private bathroom, fridge and microwave (awesome). Breakfast is on the table from 6.00 and contains fruits, cereals and toast bread (awesome again), sometime my breakfast is eaten in loneliness, sometimes in company (it depends). Dinner is served at 19.30 and everyone eats together (though the Japanese students are usually a tad late, Maho never eats dinner with us) and the food is either some interesting Japanese cuisine or one of the exchange students' cooking. Also, this family has loads of English tea, free to be drunk at any time (more awesome).
There are only two downsides with the new host family; the distance to school is pretty far, so it takes about 1 1/2 hours by train to get to school (during rush hour, so no seats for me). It's also in a quite off location, so I need to transfer 3 times (still during rush hour, mind you).
The other downside is not nearly as alarming, but the house is located far up on a steep hill, requiring a harsh treck uphill when returning home (also, the nearest store is at the base of the hill). But there are several positive aspects of the hill to take in mind: Itsumo No Fuukei can make the entire hillclimb a fun procedure and going up a steep hill at least once a day (plus the usual 20 minute walk to school from the station) is probably going to improve my stamina. Also, it's easy to get to the station every morning, since walking downhill marginally minimizes the time it would take if the house had been located on flat ground.
International Week was fun, though it didn't really get started before the Wednesday. The activities on the Monday were delayed until Thursday because more than 100 students in the tenth grade had been ordered to stay home due to another flu outbreak, and the Tuesday was a national holiday (I slept).
But Wednesday was fun, a lot of my classes were canceled and instead I got to do things like introduce myself to students in an English class (and I noticed that I could now make a detailed introduction of myself with ease, as opposed to the trouble I had months earlier) and watch a performance by Indian dancers/drummers.
Thursday was even better, as we had a delayed Halloween event that day. Each of the exchange students were given candy of a different kind and the Japanese students were charged with the task of finding all of us and getting a piece of candy, those who had the complete set were given even more candy.
By the end of the day, I had more than half of my candy left in my hat (yes, I was giving it out of my hat, obviously). I could have rightfully gone home with all that candy and said that it was "their loss" that most students hadn't gotten any, but I decided not to. Instead I trotted through the corridors, handing candy to every person I met. The multitude of "ありがとう"'s and "thank you"'s I received made it totally worth it.
Friday was also plenty fun, the first two lessons were free and therefore spent in the library, alternating between chatting with Truls & Amanda and reading in a copy of Norweigan Wood I had found (it's an interesting book).
During lunch hour, we exchange students were supposed to have a basketball match against the 10th year's girl team (yeah, I'm not sure why either), It wasn't that fun to play and not really worth losing the time to eat for, but I did what the teachers requested and got a laugh out of watching the (very tall) German visitor students more or less hand the ball to each other, far above the girls' heads.
Later, Friday took a turn for the awesome when my Japanese teacher gave me a Dreamcast.
Just like that.
She said that since her son had stopped using it and I'd told her I liked games, I could have it. I was not one to complain. She did say, however, that it was a little broken. But after looking at the console myself, I doubt it is something I can't ask one of my friends to fix (especially if I bribe him with some goods from Japan).
To make this story even more amusing, imagine my surprise when I found this article the very same day I had been given the console. Coincidence must be laughing out loud.
Despite what you might think, International day was also great fun, despite my speech being horrible. The entire event was interesting, it started out with seven Japanese students giving speeches in a speech competition (in English), despite some difficulties it was interesting to hear what they had to say. After that we were treated some performances by the German and Thai visitors and a speech by a Japanese film director (though I have no idea of what she said). Then it was my turn.
My speech wasn't all that bad, they told me, the content was interesting. Really, it's mostly me beating myself up, knowing that I could do so much better. I'll just try to describe how it went for you:
I probably broke all of the rhetorical rules, I had my eyes stuck on my paper all the time as I could not remember a single word to save my life, I was also more or less bent of the table, barely showing my face while talking. I also had no proper pace whatsoever in my speech, along with stopping a few times, forgetting where I was and having to take a few incredibly embarrassing seconds to find where I had lost myself.
So yeah, more or less everything that could have, went wrong with that speech. But I made it and I haven't developed any stage fright because of it. Rather the opposite, as I asked if I could make a speech in English at some point in the future, just to show that I could do better (sadly, there was no possibility for me to do so, I'll have to do something like it when I get home I guess).
Seems like there was a lot more to tell than I had imagined, I've been writing for over an hour now and I'm far from finished in retelling all events, I'm going to have to stop here in order to have some time over for my chores. Be back as soon as possible, miss you.
fredag 30 oktober 2009
No, don't mention it
Right, so where do I begin?
...
Random statements! (With risk of being repetitive).
Some weeks ago, the entire 10th grade was shut down and not allowed to go to school due to the flu, they came back a few days later though, but now 10-4 has been shut down again. I'm completely fine though, don't worry.
My host family arranged a little takoyaki (fried octopus) party for me, they apparently forgot about my dislike of all things marine (except turtles, those things are totally cool, though I wouldn't eat them either). But it was fine, I got a beef steak when I told them. The guests were nice too, just three people; Terui-san and two of my host mother's nice friends that I had met at the BBQ party before moving in (did I ever write about that?), I never got around learning their names though. One of them actually gave me a bunch of presents! They were all Pokemon-based. Pokemon pens, a Pikachu cellphone pocket, a Pikachu cellphone strap, a fabric Pikachu with a balloon in it (I don't really know what it's for), a Pokemon towel and Pokemon tissues (kind of an odd present but sure).
This party lasted until 23.00 in the evening and I actually had quite fun telling people about Sweden and stuff, though I had to use a lot of English. Then my host family decided to give Terui-san a ride home, there was just a slight problem in their logic with that; Terui-san lives in the other end of the City, and it didn't help that my host father took the wrong turn three times on the highway, resulting in massive delays. All in all the car ride took 2 1/2 hours, I was quite tired afterwards.
But I was fine with it, I got to see Tokyo Tower, with the lights on! It was simply fabulous.
One week later, my host family took me to a Halloween party (on the 24:th...), it was awful.
For some reason they thought that I would like to spend an evening in a darts bar, where the air was so full of smoke that I nearly suffocated and the other people there were at the very least 22 years old and drunk like a glass of water in the Sahara desert. To make things worse, I had not been given anything to eat before we left for the party and didn't get my dinner before 22 o'clock in some random restaurant while on the way home with my drunken host family (it was ten times worse than new years eve!).
Time for some happier news again. I've finally joined a club! The manga club has meetings every Monday and Wednesday and the members are really nice, we talk about manga and anime and games (in Japanese! I've gotten better).
Though since the manga club really is a manga club and not the Genshiken or anything, I feel kind of bad for not being able to contribute (my drawings are awful) and I'm nowhere near the level where I could translate my story ideas into Japanese. I'll have to find a way to truly earn my place as a member eventually.
I've also started talking a bit more to people in general, all thanks to the Thai exchange student イフ (I have no idea how to spell her name except for in Katakana), who started talking to me. After having nearly one whole hour of Japanese conversation with her, I got the courage to speak up a bit more in general. My goal of finding people to go to karaoke with is suddenly not so impossible anymore.
Next week is International Week in my school (that's Myojo's "thing" I guess), there are going to be lots of activities and I'll get to meet even more students from around the world (though they'll only be staying for that one week). The Saturday of International Week is called International Day and is the most special day of the whole week, I'll be making a speech about peace, in front of the whole school, in Japanese (boy does that sound familiar). I practiced on my speech today, despite sounding weird, most people could understand what I said, I just need to speak very slowly.
I'm going to change to a new host family tomorrow.
Finally! I can't believe it's already over, thank god (notice the lack of a capital G).
Oh right, tomorrow is also going to mark me having spent twelve weeks in Japan (I passed 25% a number of days ago), 84 days man. Time moves onward with incredible speed here (at least I hope it's because of the location, otherwise it means I must be growing old).
Back to the host family thingie. Back on Monday I was informed that I would move to a pair of old people living in the same area as the family before this one, I wasn't really thrilled but I figured anything would be better than this. However, yesterday I got to know that they had suddenly changed their mind and could not house me (second time that happens, I must truly be cursed with inconvenience when it comes to host families).
Instead I will be moving to a family where the host father is American and the house is really big, they already keep two exchange students and a number of Japanese university students there. One of those students is one of my former "sempais" from the Japanese language school. Sounds like my new family is going to be awesome.
That's about all I can remember to write about at the moment, now for something entirely else.
I have been thinking for some time whether to upload a picture of myself in my current state, in case people were curious as to how I might have changed in the last two (almost three, actually) months. Due to the request of a family member, I will now do just that.
Here's a picture taken with my computer's built-in camera (it's pretty spiffy, I could actually use it as a webcam if I so wished).
I really like my black T-shirt with gray stripes, thanks mom!
...
Random statements! (With risk of being repetitive).
Some weeks ago, the entire 10th grade was shut down and not allowed to go to school due to the flu, they came back a few days later though, but now 10-4 has been shut down again. I'm completely fine though, don't worry.
My host family arranged a little takoyaki (fried octopus) party for me, they apparently forgot about my dislike of all things marine (except turtles, those things are totally cool, though I wouldn't eat them either). But it was fine, I got a beef steak when I told them. The guests were nice too, just three people; Terui-san and two of my host mother's nice friends that I had met at the BBQ party before moving in (did I ever write about that?), I never got around learning their names though. One of them actually gave me a bunch of presents! They were all Pokemon-based. Pokemon pens, a Pikachu cellphone pocket, a Pikachu cellphone strap, a fabric Pikachu with a balloon in it (I don't really know what it's for), a Pokemon towel and Pokemon tissues (kind of an odd present but sure).
This party lasted until 23.00 in the evening and I actually had quite fun telling people about Sweden and stuff, though I had to use a lot of English. Then my host family decided to give Terui-san a ride home, there was just a slight problem in their logic with that; Terui-san lives in the other end of the City, and it didn't help that my host father took the wrong turn three times on the highway, resulting in massive delays. All in all the car ride took 2 1/2 hours, I was quite tired afterwards.
But I was fine with it, I got to see Tokyo Tower, with the lights on! It was simply fabulous.
One week later, my host family took me to a Halloween party (on the 24:th...), it was awful.
For some reason they thought that I would like to spend an evening in a darts bar, where the air was so full of smoke that I nearly suffocated and the other people there were at the very least 22 years old and drunk like a glass of water in the Sahara desert. To make things worse, I had not been given anything to eat before we left for the party and didn't get my dinner before 22 o'clock in some random restaurant while on the way home with my drunken host family (it was ten times worse than new years eve!).
Time for some happier news again. I've finally joined a club! The manga club has meetings every Monday and Wednesday and the members are really nice, we talk about manga and anime and games (in Japanese! I've gotten better).
Though since the manga club really is a manga club and not the Genshiken or anything, I feel kind of bad for not being able to contribute (my drawings are awful) and I'm nowhere near the level where I could translate my story ideas into Japanese. I'll have to find a way to truly earn my place as a member eventually.
I've also started talking a bit more to people in general, all thanks to the Thai exchange student イフ (I have no idea how to spell her name except for in Katakana), who started talking to me. After having nearly one whole hour of Japanese conversation with her, I got the courage to speak up a bit more in general. My goal of finding people to go to karaoke with is suddenly not so impossible anymore.
Next week is International Week in my school (that's Myojo's "thing" I guess), there are going to be lots of activities and I'll get to meet even more students from around the world (though they'll only be staying for that one week). The Saturday of International Week is called International Day and is the most special day of the whole week, I'll be making a speech about peace, in front of the whole school, in Japanese (boy does that sound familiar). I practiced on my speech today, despite sounding weird, most people could understand what I said, I just need to speak very slowly.
I'm going to change to a new host family tomorrow.
Finally! I can't believe it's already over, thank god (notice the lack of a capital G).
Oh right, tomorrow is also going to mark me having spent twelve weeks in Japan (I passed 25% a number of days ago), 84 days man. Time moves onward with incredible speed here (at least I hope it's because of the location, otherwise it means I must be growing old).
Back to the host family thingie. Back on Monday I was informed that I would move to a pair of old people living in the same area as the family before this one, I wasn't really thrilled but I figured anything would be better than this. However, yesterday I got to know that they had suddenly changed their mind and could not house me (second time that happens, I must truly be cursed with inconvenience when it comes to host families).
Instead I will be moving to a family where the host father is American and the house is really big, they already keep two exchange students and a number of Japanese university students there. One of those students is one of my former "sempais" from the Japanese language school. Sounds like my new family is going to be awesome.
That's about all I can remember to write about at the moment, now for something entirely else.
I have been thinking for some time whether to upload a picture of myself in my current state, in case people were curious as to how I might have changed in the last two (almost three, actually) months. Due to the request of a family member, I will now do just that.
Here's a picture taken with my computer's built-in camera (it's pretty spiffy, I could actually use it as a webcam if I so wished).
I really like my black T-shirt with gray stripes, thanks mom!And that's all for today, folks. You bet I miss you.
måndag 12 oktober 2009
No, it can't be
This is a modest attempt at being productive.
Modest meaning that this might not be such a long entry.
I'll just try to tie up some loose ends and write about anything I feel like. Did you know that this blog gets like 20 hits every time I make an update? That's insane man, totally insane.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while but I kept forgetting. Japanese TV is pretty fun, as we all know. While I don't spend that much time watching it in general, I managed to catch a few glimpses in my old host family (I did mention seeing an episode of One Piece, right?). For example I saw a part of an episode of DMC - the live action drama, and boy was there drama. There was a running scene which was more dramatic and drawn out than the Lion King running scene (now that's hardcore). It also contained more uses of the F word than adjectives (or it replaced adjectives), though it was alright, since the F word with Japanese accent is simply hilarious.
Another show I got to see was a very very weird show. Everyone in it was a freaking ninja! And bad ninjas at that, they had colourful clothes, ninjas with glasses and weirdest of all, most of the ninjas were kids! (that's just wrong, dude). It also had silly plots like "catch the cat" or "unmask the stranger", there's nothing ninja about that! Oh, and the opening music contained lots and lots of awkward English, as well as everyone in the cast jumping around looking happy.
It was like Naruto for kids!
Oh wait...
On an entirely different matter, I was informed that I had not written about Ryuuta.
He's kind of my best friend in class, I guess. We talk a little from time to time (though some days it's just limited to おはようー and じゃあねー). What's really cool about him though is that he totally shares my passion for games, he always brings his PSP to school and he let me play Dissida on it for a while (totally awesome, if I might add). He also once managed to arrange a Super Smash Bros Melee match during a lunch hour and also took me to Nakano Broadway (it's like a small Akihabara), you can see why he's cool.
Other than that, he's also really good at soccer.
This will be all for now.
Modest meaning that this might not be such a long entry.
I'll just try to tie up some loose ends and write about anything I feel like. Did you know that this blog gets like 20 hits every time I make an update? That's insane man, totally insane.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while but I kept forgetting. Japanese TV is pretty fun, as we all know. While I don't spend that much time watching it in general, I managed to catch a few glimpses in my old host family (I did mention seeing an episode of One Piece, right?). For example I saw a part of an episode of DMC - the live action drama, and boy was there drama. There was a running scene which was more dramatic and drawn out than the Lion King running scene (now that's hardcore). It also contained more uses of the F word than adjectives (or it replaced adjectives), though it was alright, since the F word with Japanese accent is simply hilarious.
Another show I got to see was a very very weird show. Everyone in it was a freaking ninja! And bad ninjas at that, they had colourful clothes, ninjas with glasses and weirdest of all, most of the ninjas were kids! (that's just wrong, dude). It also had silly plots like "catch the cat" or "unmask the stranger", there's nothing ninja about that! Oh, and the opening music contained lots and lots of awkward English, as well as everyone in the cast jumping around looking happy.
It was like Naruto for kids!
Oh wait...
On an entirely different matter, I was informed that I had not written about Ryuuta.
He's kind of my best friend in class, I guess. We talk a little from time to time (though some days it's just limited to おはようー and じゃあねー). What's really cool about him though is that he totally shares my passion for games, he always brings his PSP to school and he let me play Dissida on it for a while (totally awesome, if I might add). He also once managed to arrange a Super Smash Bros Melee match during a lunch hour and also took me to Nakano Broadway (it's like a small Akihabara), you can see why he's cool.
Other than that, he's also really good at soccer.
This will be all for now.
söndag 11 oktober 2009
It's time
I've delayed this entry for too long.
Why?
Laziness. What else?
I wouldn't say that a lot of things have happened since my last entry, it's more like I still have lots and lots to catch up with, and that's a bother. What is worthy of mention I can tell you now though.
I had my first lesson in Kendo this week, it was fun. I thought I'd be embarrassed when struggling just to hold my sword correctly while the others were training fervently, but my worries were proven wrong. The other students were more than happy to teach us (Truls and me) the basics and even cut some of their own time training to do it. The sensei was just happy that we were interested, so need to worry about his approval either.
I'd also like to think I looked cool in a Hakama.
A less fortunate part of the lesson was that I somehow cut the underside of my left big toe, which caused quite a lot of bleeding and forced me to end the lesson a tad early (I'm all OK now though, worry not).
...
I actually had very little "schooltime" in general this week. Monday and Tuesday were normal (or well, Tuesday being my first day of Kendo) but Wednesday was messed up. We were told that the midterm tests had started and Wednesday was the first day but we would still have extra Japanese classes half the day, so I got up and went to school as usual, only to be told we were free until third term, so Truls and I decided to sleep in the library (because that's what people do). I was actually really tired that day and managed to fall asleep pretty quickly on the comfort of three padded chairs put next to each other.
I was later awoken by the librarian (think female hot librarian stereotype, if you will) who at first thought I was a student playing truant (as to not do the test) since I had made a makeshift pillow/sheet combination by wrapping my jacket around my head. She quickly realized her mistake when she saw my face and let me be. I, however, was not to let myself "be" (as in go back to sleep) since I quickly noticed two peculiarities:
1. Truls was nowhere to be seen.
2. The clock on the wall said it was 12.20
"Oh shi-" was what I thought.
After walking around aimlessly for 10 minutes, not knowing where to go, I finally stumbled upon Truls again, who told me there had been no class and we were free to go. But he had let me sleep since he figured I needed it (thanks, I did). We then proceeded to use the time we were given to visit some stores.
That day, I returned home with a fabulous new headset (cheap, nifty and it included a bag to put it in when not in use).
Later the same day, my host mother informed me that the school had called and said that Thursday was free because of a typhoon closing in on us.
"Cool" I figured, not feeling the slightest bit of compassion for the people who did not think typhoons were cool.
The typhoon also caused the entire week to be rainy, so I finally got to put my umbrella to the test.
It broke.
It still kind of works though, despite having limited effectiveness.
After using Thursday to rest and power up, I faced Friday with "Mod i barm" (Swedish). And I finally solved the club question, I talked a bit with the leader of the manga club and she told me she'd take me to a club meeting after the midterms.
Oh right, I ended up switching back to Japanese (from Swedish) on my computer, so I can no longer write properly when communicating with some of you. The upside though, is that I can now write stuff like 忍者 (ninja), awesomesauce.
Aaand the last interesting tidbit from my week that proved to be a lot more to write about than expected is that tomorrow (Monday) is also a free day. Very delightful indeed.
So this is where I figured I'd put up some diary entries but since it took me so much time just to write about this week, I guess I'll wait until some other time (you know the drill by now, I suspect), sorry.
Miss you, bye.
Why?
Laziness. What else?
I wouldn't say that a lot of things have happened since my last entry, it's more like I still have lots and lots to catch up with, and that's a bother. What is worthy of mention I can tell you now though.
I had my first lesson in Kendo this week, it was fun. I thought I'd be embarrassed when struggling just to hold my sword correctly while the others were training fervently, but my worries were proven wrong. The other students were more than happy to teach us (Truls and me) the basics and even cut some of their own time training to do it. The sensei was just happy that we were interested, so need to worry about his approval either.
I'd also like to think I looked cool in a Hakama.
A less fortunate part of the lesson was that I somehow cut the underside of my left big toe, which caused quite a lot of bleeding and forced me to end the lesson a tad early (I'm all OK now though, worry not).
...
I actually had very little "schooltime" in general this week. Monday and Tuesday were normal (or well, Tuesday being my first day of Kendo) but Wednesday was messed up. We were told that the midterm tests had started and Wednesday was the first day but we would still have extra Japanese classes half the day, so I got up and went to school as usual, only to be told we were free until third term, so Truls and I decided to sleep in the library (because that's what people do). I was actually really tired that day and managed to fall asleep pretty quickly on the comfort of three padded chairs put next to each other.
I was later awoken by the librarian (think female hot librarian stereotype, if you will) who at first thought I was a student playing truant (as to not do the test) since I had made a makeshift pillow/sheet combination by wrapping my jacket around my head. She quickly realized her mistake when she saw my face and let me be. I, however, was not to let myself "be" (as in go back to sleep) since I quickly noticed two peculiarities:
1. Truls was nowhere to be seen.
2. The clock on the wall said it was 12.20
"Oh shi-" was what I thought.
After walking around aimlessly for 10 minutes, not knowing where to go, I finally stumbled upon Truls again, who told me there had been no class and we were free to go. But he had let me sleep since he figured I needed it (thanks, I did). We then proceeded to use the time we were given to visit some stores.
That day, I returned home with a fabulous new headset (cheap, nifty and it included a bag to put it in when not in use).
Later the same day, my host mother informed me that the school had called and said that Thursday was free because of a typhoon closing in on us.
"Cool" I figured, not feeling the slightest bit of compassion for the people who did not think typhoons were cool.
The typhoon also caused the entire week to be rainy, so I finally got to put my umbrella to the test.
It broke.
It still kind of works though, despite having limited effectiveness.
After using Thursday to rest and power up, I faced Friday with "Mod i barm" (Swedish). And I finally solved the club question, I talked a bit with the leader of the manga club and she told me she'd take me to a club meeting after the midterms.
Oh right, I ended up switching back to Japanese (from Swedish) on my computer, so I can no longer write properly when communicating with some of you. The upside though, is that I can now write stuff like 忍者 (ninja), awesomesauce.
Aaand the last interesting tidbit from my week that proved to be a lot more to write about than expected is that tomorrow (Monday) is also a free day. Very delightful indeed.
So this is where I figured I'd put up some diary entries but since it took me so much time just to write about this week, I guess I'll wait until some other time (you know the drill by now, I suspect), sorry.
Miss you, bye.
torsdag 1 oktober 2009
Smile for me
I'm hyperactive right now, I know that because I can't stop shaking my right leg, this is almost like that night in November last year, when Wrath of the Lich King was released and I was jumping in anticipation (I'm a nerd, remember?).
This hyperactivity also makes me uncertain of what feelings I have right now, but I'm positive that they are certain feelings (see what I did there?)™.
I'll use this burst of inspiration to just write about anything that comes to mind and then top it off with several entries from my diary.
I was free from school today, due to some kind of day called "Tokyo day" or whatever, I didn't really clamor for details (I lost attention when he said "free tomorrow"). I used the free time to take care of several things:
I finally got that Alien registration thing done, it was a pain to fill the form and then wait but I feel good having it done. Though they called me later in the day, being all panicked over whether to transcribe my Ö as "O" or "OE" (OE sounds retarded to me, O is better, but they settled for OE anyway). Now I just have to wait for three weeks and then go back (alone, but it was really close, apparently).
Then I sent a package with stuff home to my family, it was mostly packed with presents for mah bro (apologies, elder brother, I'll never say that again, it was horrible) along with a card (in which I promptly forgot to write "happy birthday", d'oh! I'll write it here instead) Grattis på födelsedagen, broder! (lite sent men whatever).
After that adventure, I went shopping with my host mother. But not the kind of (admittedly) irresponsible shopping I usually do, but shopping for laundry soap and foodstuffs (and maybe some snacks...), I felt so grown up paying for everyday things at a supermarket. I really like supermarkets in Japan, they play music all the time, good music. Like, the ending theme to Bakemonogatari (repeatably).
Talking about stuff, I've gotten these weird bumps on my arms, turns out they're called muscles. Seems like all the P.E in school is paying off. By the end of this year, I'll be a Japanese-mastered, beard grown, responsible and strong adult (NO). That's fun.
Man, I can't really remember what I've written before, I might risk repeating myself. Which is a new turn for this blog (it's like a bad spin-off of my usual "contradicting myself").
So I take it I've told you about Ryuuta already, give me a heads up if I haven't.
That gives me a brilliant idea, if you want me to write about something - anything here, just throw me a comment and I'll be happy to write about it (don't worry, I'm finally writing more about school below). You'd be surprised if you knew how easily flattered I am by comments (and discouraged by the lack of them. I'm human after all).
Anyway, about Ryuuta, I haven't talked to him much at all this week, but from today on, I feel inspired to change that.
If you were wondering why I'm so hyper, it's because of a quasi-good reason called MyLifeIsG, I spent a good two hours reading the entries and it made me realize something about political correctness.
Oh and by the by, I got Fay's Booke (haha) a few weeks ago (did I write this?) and I resolved to uploading all of my pictures over there if you desired them. Though I might put one or two of them up here if I feel like it (which would be the first time I'd upload a picture on my blog). However, I do not want to become the kind of guy who goes around saying "Oh, just check my Facebook page" (similar to how I swore not to become the "Daaah, read my blog!" type. I might have tread the lines on that one though). So I won't make any vital information exclusive to that site, everything interesting will be posted here, see it as an extension of my internet persona (which has more or less melded with my real identity by now, that's something I should worry about).
...
By the way, I stole the "..."-thing from Neil Gaiman, though I haven't read his blog in quite a while (you can find it to the right).
I figured I should test the image uploading thing now and give you guys a treat. And to avoid having to pick between the many bad photos of Japan I've taken, I'll upload the picture I drew for the Art Café, the one I spent so much time filling in the white on.
Listening to "Paint it black" really helped in the making of this
Well, that's good enough, time to add the (very long) diary entries.
Thursday 10/09/2009
I'm 15 minutes early for homeroom and my only company is a sleeping guy and a girl who's just studying (another girl just entered but she doesn't seem talkative either).
I'll just start right where the last entry ended.
Ise-sensei told us some of the rules and that we should come to the English department (Eigoka) instead of having homeroom for the first two weeks (as of right now, we've been doing this for way longer than two weeks), except Thursdays. After hearing that, we were supposed to meet our classes, we got separated and Ise-sensei took me to my class, 11-6.
11-6 is located on the top floor in the south (or it might be the west) wing. The class has got 38 students, plus me. When I entered the classroom, all of those 38 students turned their gaze towards me, all I could do was to sneak onto a nearby seat with no hopes of actually being subtle.
Luckily the teacher needed to go through some papers with the class. So all the attention I had gathered was quickly abandoned in favor of the blackboard.
But soon the teacher (who is female and quite a serious person by her looks) called me up front and told me to introduce myself. For the task of introducing myself (in Japanese) in front of 38 Japanese students I'd never seen before, I'd say I did pretty well.
Aaaand there was the second bell, homeroom starts now.
Friday 11/09/2009
Oh hey it's the same date as that day when lots of people died in a terror attack, and two American buildings were destroyed, oh God no!
Being an insensitive jerk aside, I'm in the library, listening to my revived cellphone, it makes me miss you.
I just found out that the library had a Japanese copy of "The hungry caterpillar", a book I've loved since childhood. I read it with glee, and to my pleasant surprise, I could understand almost everything that was written. Go me!
Final Destination (Brawl) just started playing, inspiration comes to me.
Continuing from the last entry:
After the introduction, I made it back to my seat and faded into the (pale yellow) background, while the teacher started talking about stuff again. But fortunately I didn't fade too much (pretty hard in bright environments) as the girl sitting in front of me turned around and started talking to me. After a few minutes of complicated but amusing conversation, the teacher approached me with a box of folded notes in hand. Apparently it was time to arrange the seating. I picked up the first piece of paper I noticed, it had the number 4.
I was unamazed by this regular number, but then I looked up at the (green) blackboard and suddenly I couldn't stop smiling.
Number 4 is the second seat from the back, next to the windows.
Kyon's seat.
When all had gotten their new seats, the teacher dismissed us and it was the end of my first day in school. I was happy, I just knew my time in this school was destined to be good.
"Simple and Clean", the Intro to Kingdom Hearts, is playing. I need to find some KH fangirls to hang out with (haven't found any yet).
I actually need to find some friends in general, I'm starting to feel lonely (not anymore! To an extent).
Oh, Death Note music just started playing, and here I sit with a pen and a notebook, it can't be a coincidence! Mwahahaha!
This one's for you man
...
Goddammit, why won't it work?!
I think I'll skip the chronology when writing about school from now on, just so you know.
No more school stuff right now though, I don't feel like it.
What I do feel like (and have felt like all day) is playing brawl, I think I'll try to force myself to muster the courage to ask if anyone in my class knows about it, maybe even owns it (And that eventually lead to me playing Melee with Ryuuta & friends during a lunch break, awesomesauce).
Looking back through the pages, I see my handwriting has changed between every paragraph, it looks funny. But at least it's quite readable, that's a great achievement for me.
Oh and obviously my handwriting is the most screwed up when I write about it, I'm blaming it on the fact that I'm listening to "Hito Toshite Jiku Ga Bureteiru".
Whoa, it's becoming hard for me to avoid using Hiragana when writing Japanese, that's mostly good.
Looks like my self study hour is over (though I had no homework), thus I end this diary entry here and now.
If any of you were interested in the whole "handwriting" matter, I'll just go ahead and put up a picture of the page here.
See if you can spot the changes made during transcription
This hyperactivity also makes me uncertain of what feelings I have right now, but I'm positive that they are certain feelings (see what I did there?)™.
I'll use this burst of inspiration to just write about anything that comes to mind and then top it off with several entries from my diary.
I was free from school today, due to some kind of day called "Tokyo day" or whatever, I didn't really clamor for details (I lost attention when he said "free tomorrow"). I used the free time to take care of several things:
I finally got that Alien registration thing done, it was a pain to fill the form and then wait but I feel good having it done. Though they called me later in the day, being all panicked over whether to transcribe my Ö as "O" or "OE" (OE sounds retarded to me, O is better, but they settled for OE anyway). Now I just have to wait for three weeks and then go back (alone, but it was really close, apparently).
Then I sent a package with stuff home to my family, it was mostly packed with presents for mah bro (apologies, elder brother, I'll never say that again, it was horrible) along with a card (in which I promptly forgot to write "happy birthday", d'oh! I'll write it here instead) Grattis på födelsedagen, broder! (lite sent men whatever).
After that adventure, I went shopping with my host mother. But not the kind of (admittedly) irresponsible shopping I usually do, but shopping for laundry soap and foodstuffs (and maybe some snacks...), I felt so grown up paying for everyday things at a supermarket. I really like supermarkets in Japan, they play music all the time, good music. Like, the ending theme to Bakemonogatari (repeatably).
Talking about stuff, I've gotten these weird bumps on my arms, turns out they're called muscles. Seems like all the P.E in school is paying off. By the end of this year, I'll be a Japanese-mastered, beard grown, responsible and strong adult (NO). That's fun.
Man, I can't really remember what I've written before, I might risk repeating myself. Which is a new turn for this blog (it's like a bad spin-off of my usual "contradicting myself").
So I take it I've told you about Ryuuta already, give me a heads up if I haven't.
That gives me a brilliant idea, if you want me to write about something - anything here, just throw me a comment and I'll be happy to write about it (don't worry, I'm finally writing more about school below). You'd be surprised if you knew how easily flattered I am by comments (and discouraged by the lack of them. I'm human after all).
Anyway, about Ryuuta, I haven't talked to him much at all this week, but from today on, I feel inspired to change that.
If you were wondering why I'm so hyper, it's because of a quasi-good reason called MyLifeIsG, I spent a good two hours reading the entries and it made me realize something about political correctness.
Oh and by the by, I got Fay's Booke (haha) a few weeks ago (did I write this?) and I resolved to uploading all of my pictures over there if you desired them. Though I might put one or two of them up here if I feel like it (which would be the first time I'd upload a picture on my blog). However, I do not want to become the kind of guy who goes around saying "Oh, just check my Facebook page" (similar to how I swore not to become the "Daaah, read my blog!" type. I might have tread the lines on that one though). So I won't make any vital information exclusive to that site, everything interesting will be posted here, see it as an extension of my internet persona (which has more or less melded with my real identity by now, that's something I should worry about).
...
By the way, I stole the "..."-thing from Neil Gaiman, though I haven't read his blog in quite a while (you can find it to the right).
I figured I should test the image uploading thing now and give you guys a treat. And to avoid having to pick between the many bad photos of Japan I've taken, I'll upload the picture I drew for the Art Café, the one I spent so much time filling in the white on.
Listening to "Paint it black" really helped in the making of thisWell, that's good enough, time to add the (very long) diary entries.
Thursday 10/09/2009
I'm 15 minutes early for homeroom and my only company is a sleeping guy and a girl who's just studying (another girl just entered but she doesn't seem talkative either).
I'll just start right where the last entry ended.
Ise-sensei told us some of the rules and that we should come to the English department (Eigoka) instead of having homeroom for the first two weeks (as of right now, we've been doing this for way longer than two weeks), except Thursdays. After hearing that, we were supposed to meet our classes, we got separated and Ise-sensei took me to my class, 11-6.
11-6 is located on the top floor in the south (or it might be the west) wing. The class has got 38 students, plus me. When I entered the classroom, all of those 38 students turned their gaze towards me, all I could do was to sneak onto a nearby seat with no hopes of actually being subtle.
Luckily the teacher needed to go through some papers with the class. So all the attention I had gathered was quickly abandoned in favor of the blackboard.
But soon the teacher (who is female and quite a serious person by her looks) called me up front and told me to introduce myself. For the task of introducing myself (in Japanese) in front of 38 Japanese students I'd never seen before, I'd say I did pretty well.
Aaaand there was the second bell, homeroom starts now.
Friday 11/09/2009
Oh hey it's the same date as that day when lots of people died in a terror attack, and two American buildings were destroyed, oh God no!
Being an insensitive jerk aside, I'm in the library, listening to my revived cellphone, it makes me miss you.
I just found out that the library had a Japanese copy of "The hungry caterpillar", a book I've loved since childhood. I read it with glee, and to my pleasant surprise, I could understand almost everything that was written. Go me!
Final Destination (Brawl) just started playing, inspiration comes to me.
Continuing from the last entry:
After the introduction, I made it back to my seat and faded into the (pale yellow) background, while the teacher started talking about stuff again. But fortunately I didn't fade too much (pretty hard in bright environments) as the girl sitting in front of me turned around and started talking to me. After a few minutes of complicated but amusing conversation, the teacher approached me with a box of folded notes in hand. Apparently it was time to arrange the seating. I picked up the first piece of paper I noticed, it had the number 4.
I was unamazed by this regular number, but then I looked up at the (green) blackboard and suddenly I couldn't stop smiling.
Number 4 is the second seat from the back, next to the windows.
Kyon's seat.
When all had gotten their new seats, the teacher dismissed us and it was the end of my first day in school. I was happy, I just knew my time in this school was destined to be good.
"Simple and Clean", the Intro to Kingdom Hearts, is playing. I need to find some KH fangirls to hang out with (haven't found any yet).
I actually need to find some friends in general, I'm starting to feel lonely (not anymore! To an extent).
Oh, Death Note music just started playing, and here I sit with a pen and a notebook, it can't be a coincidence! Mwahahaha!
This one's for you manGoddammit, why won't it work?!
I think I'll skip the chronology when writing about school from now on, just so you know.
No more school stuff right now though, I don't feel like it.
What I do feel like (and have felt like all day) is playing brawl, I think I'll try to force myself to muster the courage to ask if anyone in my class knows about it, maybe even owns it (And that eventually lead to me playing Melee with Ryuuta & friends during a lunch break, awesomesauce).
Looking back through the pages, I see my handwriting has changed between every paragraph, it looks funny. But at least it's quite readable, that's a great achievement for me.
Oh and obviously my handwriting is the most screwed up when I write about it, I'm blaming it on the fact that I'm listening to "Hito Toshite Jiku Ga Bureteiru".
Whoa, it's becoming hard for me to avoid using Hiragana when writing Japanese, that's mostly good.
Looks like my self study hour is over (though I had no homework), thus I end this diary entry here and now.
If any of you were interested in the whole "handwriting" matter, I'll just go ahead and put up a picture of the page here.
See if you can spot the changes made during transcriptionI think I like to upload pictures of my notebook...
There's actually another entry (which is a lot newer), I should get it on here too but I've had enough for today, I'll do it tomorrow (have you noticed how I never keep those kind of promises?).
Bye for today people, I still miss you.
There's actually another entry (which is a lot newer), I should get it on here too but I've had enough for today, I'll do it tomorrow (have you noticed how I never keep those kind of promises?).
Bye for today people, I still miss you.
lördag 26 september 2009
Skoo(l)
Interpret the title in any way you want, it's multi-layered for your inconvenience.
It's been, what? 18 days since my last update, which was a delayed one on top of that. You guys must be at least 3 weeks behind me (hells, it's been 4 weeks since I started school and I've barely written about it).
I could tell you about how awful my current host family is, but it's not interesting and would probably be misinterpreted as whining, since most of you don't have a frame of reference. Instead I will just tell you about other, happier, things.
As of today, I have been in Japan for 7 weeks, which means tomorrow will be my 50:th day in this place (7x7+1 do the math yourself). Which can count as quite a lot if you consider that I will be in Japan for more or less 300 days, however, it is also just 1/6:th of my total stay (16.5% if you will), which in a depressing point of view makes it obvious that it's far from even halfway. My opinion on this matter varies greatly depending on my mood (and with the prior statement about my family, guess which mood I'm mostly in right now).
That aside, today was a great day for another reason, it was the first day of Bunkasai (school festival). It was great fun.
To be more specific, it all kicked of with a blast when the opening ceremony consisted of traditional Japanese dancing. The dancers were all dressed up (some even had make-up, one guy looked like a girl, fun times) and the drums were overpowering. The dance itself was amazing, it looked like a random madman's dance, but it was all coordinated and fit so perfectly to the drums' beat, I was enthralled.
After that, I mostly walked around the school area (occasionally with or without Truls and/or Amanda), looking at things (and talking about them, too). I did not have the time to visit my class' attraction, for which I had spent 2.5 hours the day before drawing a picture (of space!) which would be displayed. I did, however, see my picture framed before the opening ceremony. They had misspelled my name (Jorkim is the ugliest name ever, how did they even get that? They usually just call me something with an A and without the O, how the fook did they manage to switch the A to a consonant? Silly Engrish-speakers).
Some of the many places of interest I visited include: A stand selling Chocolate bananas (yummy, though they were out of bananas before I had the chance to eat another). A stand selling Ramune (tasted OK, cool thing with a glass ball in the flask). A booth where we were given a number and asked to find another student with the same number (I was 63, it took me all day, but eventually I found the girl who had it and we could then return to the booth to have our picture taken and be rewarded with candy, sweet!). A train model display, by the Train Spotting club (a freaking Train Spotting club. Suddenly the Butt Monkey from Katteni Kaizo is suddenly a lot more believable). And loads of other places unworthy of my mention.
A place I never got the chance to visit (despite standing in the queue for 15 minutes) was the Obake Yashiki (Ghost House), the queue was really long (the most popular of all attractions) and it must have been good, since I could hear the screams from the other side of the corridor.
While standing in a queue mostly comprised of Junior High students (this was before 12 o'clock, they had obligatory attendance and nobody else visited that early in the day), I was quite obviously identified as a Gaijin. I brought a lot more attention from these people since they are not at all as used to foreigners as the High School students (the Junior ones don't have exchange students, nor have they had any classes on other countries to help them eliminate the stereotypes and assumptions that still float in their tiny heads). So after a while of standing there, catching everyone's gaze, I was approached by a group of girls, who asked me if I knew Japanese and what my age was, which was then followed by a raised pinky-finger and the question "gaarufurendo imasuka?" (that is always one of the first questions I'm asked, have they no sense of tact?). After telling them so, they were shocked (the most common reaction to my answer) and one of them answered with "No, you should me".
I laughed.
Oh, my wonderfully beloved and awesome host family is back (Sarcasm brought to you by GOD himself), I need to leave the computer now, I'll make a follow-up later tonight.
It's been, what? 18 days since my last update, which was a delayed one on top of that. You guys must be at least 3 weeks behind me (hells, it's been 4 weeks since I started school and I've barely written about it).
I could tell you about how awful my current host family is, but it's not interesting and would probably be misinterpreted as whining, since most of you don't have a frame of reference. Instead I will just tell you about other, happier, things.
As of today, I have been in Japan for 7 weeks, which means tomorrow will be my 50:th day in this place (7x7+1 do the math yourself). Which can count as quite a lot if you consider that I will be in Japan for more or less 300 days, however, it is also just 1/6:th of my total stay (16.5% if you will), which in a depressing point of view makes it obvious that it's far from even halfway. My opinion on this matter varies greatly depending on my mood (and with the prior statement about my family, guess which mood I'm mostly in right now).
That aside, today was a great day for another reason, it was the first day of Bunkasai (school festival). It was great fun.
To be more specific, it all kicked of with a blast when the opening ceremony consisted of traditional Japanese dancing. The dancers were all dressed up (some even had make-up, one guy looked like a girl, fun times) and the drums were overpowering. The dance itself was amazing, it looked like a random madman's dance, but it was all coordinated and fit so perfectly to the drums' beat, I was enthralled.
After that, I mostly walked around the school area (occasionally with or without Truls and/or Amanda), looking at things (and talking about them, too). I did not have the time to visit my class' attraction, for which I had spent 2.5 hours the day before drawing a picture (of space!) which would be displayed. I did, however, see my picture framed before the opening ceremony. They had misspelled my name (Jorkim is the ugliest name ever, how did they even get that? They usually just call me something with an A and without the O, how the fook did they manage to switch the A to a consonant? Silly Engrish-speakers).
Some of the many places of interest I visited include: A stand selling Chocolate bananas (yummy, though they were out of bananas before I had the chance to eat another). A stand selling Ramune (tasted OK, cool thing with a glass ball in the flask). A booth where we were given a number and asked to find another student with the same number (I was 63, it took me all day, but eventually I found the girl who had it and we could then return to the booth to have our picture taken and be rewarded with candy, sweet!). A train model display, by the Train Spotting club (a freaking Train Spotting club. Suddenly the Butt Monkey from Katteni Kaizo is suddenly a lot more believable). And loads of other places unworthy of my mention.
A place I never got the chance to visit (despite standing in the queue for 15 minutes) was the Obake Yashiki (Ghost House), the queue was really long (the most popular of all attractions) and it must have been good, since I could hear the screams from the other side of the corridor.
While standing in a queue mostly comprised of Junior High students (this was before 12 o'clock, they had obligatory attendance and nobody else visited that early in the day), I was quite obviously identified as a Gaijin. I brought a lot more attention from these people since they are not at all as used to foreigners as the High School students (the Junior ones don't have exchange students, nor have they had any classes on other countries to help them eliminate the stereotypes and assumptions that still float in their tiny heads). So after a while of standing there, catching everyone's gaze, I was approached by a group of girls, who asked me if I knew Japanese and what my age was, which was then followed by a raised pinky-finger and the question "gaarufurendo imasuka?" (that is always one of the first questions I'm asked, have they no sense of tact?). After telling them so, they were shocked (the most common reaction to my answer) and one of them answered with "No, you should me".
I laughed.
Oh, my wonderfully beloved and awesome host family is back (Sarcasm brought to you by GOD himself), I need to leave the computer now, I'll make a follow-up later tonight.
onsdag 9 september 2009
Liar Liar
So here I am, writing, after just making a whatever-they-call-it on Facebook stating I wouldn't.
But then again, it's Facebook, so who gives a damn? (I don't, if you were asking).
However, to stay true to the post title (for the first time since ever), I will turn a statement from my prior post into a lie, namely the one where I promise to write about my first school day and so on. That was a lie, haha, fat chance.
Instead I will talk about random things I actually feel like writing about.
I've managed to successfully connect my (old) mobile phone into the laptop, and therefore once again gaining the ability to charge it (I haven't had access to an adapter since my roommate left my last host family). So I can listen to my wonderful library of music (according to my own singular opinion, because I am so sickeningly politically correct).
One of those songs in question happens to be a little tune called Moonsong, I've listened to it a lot during my stay here, and even coined a new catchphrase of mine: "Shut up, I'm listening to Moonsong dammit."
Of course I have never let that phrase be uttered by my own lips, but I say it in my mind whenever I deem it appropriate (the appropriate time usually ends up being while I'm listening to Moonsong, for some reason).
Talking about Moonsong, play Cave Story and get a free pass to be my third best friend (first place occupied by the coolest guy ever, dude. Second place reserved for any random Japanese person I hope to end up befriending during my stay).
And now for something entirely else.
Tuesday 08/09/2009
So right now I'm in English class, having nothing to do since the today's lesson is about learning the names of different body parts (I've known those words since... Fourth grade?), anyway the English teacher is really nice and he let me write in my diary during the lesson.
...
The guy next to me just asked if I could help him (cheat) with a few words. I did (and I'll probably go to hell for it). But wouldn't it be fun if the teacher happened to read this? (he's walking around between the desks) That would be interesting.
Spoiler: He didn't.
Today I had Geography class for the first time (I barely understood a single thing) and the teacher was happy to point out that today is the ninth of the ninth o-nine, fun fact.
Thinking about it, next year just won't be the same (the tenth of the tenth year ten just doesn't work out for me). However, in two years time we'll have the eleventh of the eleventh year eleven. Awesome!
Actually, my entry written during English class was longer, but from that point on I wrote about my first day of school. And by writing that in my blog now, I would turn my statement about my prior blog post being a lie into a lie. But that would actually make sense, since this post is named "Liar Liar", implying that I'd lie twice.
But that would be too easy, Since I bet you considered the possibility "maybe he's lying about lying" when you started reading this post, didn't you?
So I'll stop writing now.
...
.....
Are they gone?
Good, that mindless drabbling ought to have scared of all the weak-minded individuals reading this.
If you hadn't thought about it enough, you wouldn't have realized that if I lied about lying, that would make the first statement a truth, effectively making the number of total lies in this post one. I needed to lie once more to increase the number to two, allowing me to do this:
Tuesday 08/09/2009
I guess this is the entry where I write about school, I've delayed it long enough already (there is an awesome word for doing so, but a certain individual connected to the blog used it recently and I don't want to seem like a copycat).
So, on the Tuesday one week ago, I went to to school in the morning. It was the first time I'd walked from the station to the school (we'd taken a taxi the day before because of the rain), so I had reason to be nervous. But anything named nervousness quickly left my heart when I noticed I could just follow the stream of students, all moving in one general direction.
After arriving at the school 40 minutes early, I ended up waiting in the cafeteria for a period of time (namely 40 minutes), but it was alright. I was quite content just watching the many different students passing by, or I could turn my head towards the window facing the courtyard, where the dancing club seemingly celebrated their post-summer reunion with a dance-off (it was rad).
Though I was slightly embarrassed when they just kept stopping and giggling every time they noticed I was watching (I ended up being sneaky by turning my head the other way, looking at the window on the opposite side of the room, where their reflection was crystal clear, a perfect target for my gaze without them noticing).
Time went on and then I eventually got to meet the other exchange students.
First off there is Truls, from Norway.
He looks like what you would think of if I told you to imagine a cool Norwegian teenager. I'm pretty sure he'll be very popular. He's a nice guy too (which just adds to the popularity, I assume), though he's a bit hard to talk to. Our conversations tend to silently die after a few minutes, but that will probably fix itself in due time.
The other exchange student is Amanda, from Germany.
Apparently she is a friend of Louise (or was it Louisa? Sorry if I remembered your name incorrectly) from my 3-week camp. Amanda is also a rather friendly person, so we get along. An interesting fact; her German school is actually the sister school of Myojo (my school) and therefore almost everything is paid for her by her school, nice.
After joining up with Truls and Amanda, we went to the staff room to introduce ourselves to the teachers (second time for me). After doing that with little to no drama (unless you count slight stuttering as drama), we continued onwards to the English department. It's kind of our base of operations here at the school. There we got to meet Ise-sensei, the teacher responsible for us (kind guy, sounds funny when he speaks English) and Anthony ( "-sensei" not necessary), the American English teacher (funny, has awesome pink pimp glasses).
Whoops. English class is over now, I'm off to the library.
And that is all for tonight (today for most of you). If you consider the fact that this was just about the first hour of the first day and it still took me 45 minutes to transcribe it from my notebook, you might be able to understand why I've procrastinated (see what I did there?) the whole "write about school"-thing for so long.
Oh, and if anyone of you is still not confused/distracted enough already, please make an attempt to analyze my text and count all the lies. You may also be amazed by my astounding use of my vocabulary in this post. I feel really proud of myself for it.
Catch you some other time, Pokémon.
But then again, it's Facebook, so who gives a damn? (I don't, if you were asking).
However, to stay true to the post title (for the first time since ever), I will turn a statement from my prior post into a lie, namely the one where I promise to write about my first school day and so on. That was a lie, haha, fat chance.
Instead I will talk about random things I actually feel like writing about.
I've managed to successfully connect my (old) mobile phone into the laptop, and therefore once again gaining the ability to charge it (I haven't had access to an adapter since my roommate left my last host family). So I can listen to my wonderful library of music (according to my own singular opinion, because I am so sickeningly politically correct).
One of those songs in question happens to be a little tune called Moonsong, I've listened to it a lot during my stay here, and even coined a new catchphrase of mine: "Shut up, I'm listening to Moonsong dammit."
Of course I have never let that phrase be uttered by my own lips, but I say it in my mind whenever I deem it appropriate (the appropriate time usually ends up being while I'm listening to Moonsong, for some reason).
Talking about Moonsong, play Cave Story and get a free pass to be my third best friend (first place occupied by the coolest guy ever, dude. Second place reserved for any random Japanese person I hope to end up befriending during my stay).
And now for something entirely else.
Tuesday 08/09/2009
So right now I'm in English class, having nothing to do since the today's lesson is about learning the names of different body parts (I've known those words since... Fourth grade?), anyway the English teacher is really nice and he let me write in my diary during the lesson.
...
The guy next to me just asked if I could help him (cheat) with a few words. I did (and I'll probably go to hell for it). But wouldn't it be fun if the teacher happened to read this? (he's walking around between the desks) That would be interesting.
Spoiler: He didn't.
Today I had Geography class for the first time (I barely understood a single thing) and the teacher was happy to point out that today is the ninth of the ninth o-nine, fun fact.
Thinking about it, next year just won't be the same (the tenth of the tenth year ten just doesn't work out for me). However, in two years time we'll have the eleventh of the eleventh year eleven. Awesome!
Actually, my entry written during English class was longer, but from that point on I wrote about my first day of school. And by writing that in my blog now, I would turn my statement about my prior blog post being a lie into a lie. But that would actually make sense, since this post is named "Liar Liar", implying that I'd lie twice.
But that would be too easy, Since I bet you considered the possibility "maybe he's lying about lying" when you started reading this post, didn't you?
So I'll stop writing now.
...
.....
Are they gone?
Good, that mindless drabbling ought to have scared of all the weak-minded individuals reading this.
If you hadn't thought about it enough, you wouldn't have realized that if I lied about lying, that would make the first statement a truth, effectively making the number of total lies in this post one. I needed to lie once more to increase the number to two, allowing me to do this:
Tuesday 08/09/2009
I guess this is the entry where I write about school, I've delayed it long enough already (there is an awesome word for doing so, but a certain individual connected to the blog used it recently and I don't want to seem like a copycat).
So, on the Tuesday one week ago, I went to to school in the morning. It was the first time I'd walked from the station to the school (we'd taken a taxi the day before because of the rain), so I had reason to be nervous. But anything named nervousness quickly left my heart when I noticed I could just follow the stream of students, all moving in one general direction.
After arriving at the school 40 minutes early, I ended up waiting in the cafeteria for a period of time (namely 40 minutes), but it was alright. I was quite content just watching the many different students passing by, or I could turn my head towards the window facing the courtyard, where the dancing club seemingly celebrated their post-summer reunion with a dance-off (it was rad).
Though I was slightly embarrassed when they just kept stopping and giggling every time they noticed I was watching (I ended up being sneaky by turning my head the other way, looking at the window on the opposite side of the room, where their reflection was crystal clear, a perfect target for my gaze without them noticing).
Time went on and then I eventually got to meet the other exchange students.
First off there is Truls, from Norway.
He looks like what you would think of if I told you to imagine a cool Norwegian teenager. I'm pretty sure he'll be very popular. He's a nice guy too (which just adds to the popularity, I assume), though he's a bit hard to talk to. Our conversations tend to silently die after a few minutes, but that will probably fix itself in due time.
The other exchange student is Amanda, from Germany.
Apparently she is a friend of Louise (or was it Louisa? Sorry if I remembered your name incorrectly) from my 3-week camp. Amanda is also a rather friendly person, so we get along. An interesting fact; her German school is actually the sister school of Myojo (my school) and therefore almost everything is paid for her by her school, nice.
After joining up with Truls and Amanda, we went to the staff room to introduce ourselves to the teachers (second time for me). After doing that with little to no drama (unless you count slight stuttering as drama), we continued onwards to the English department. It's kind of our base of operations here at the school. There we got to meet Ise-sensei, the teacher responsible for us (kind guy, sounds funny when he speaks English) and Anthony ( "-sensei" not necessary), the American English teacher (funny, has awesome pink pimp glasses).
Whoops. English class is over now, I'm off to the library.
And that is all for tonight (today for most of you). If you consider the fact that this was just about the first hour of the first day and it still took me 45 minutes to transcribe it from my notebook, you might be able to understand why I've procrastinated (see what I did there?) the whole "write about school"-thing for so long.
Oh, and if anyone of you is still not confused/distracted enough already, please make an attempt to analyze my text and count all the lies. You may also be amazed by my astounding use of my vocabulary in this post. I feel really proud of myself for it.
Catch you some other time, Pokémon.
måndag 7 september 2009
Summon More Ziggurats
Today I got Swedish pancakes for dinner, my host family really is the best. It really is too bad that I will have to leave them next Saturday.
I think I'll describe my host family in greater detail right now and go with the school stuff later, it'll be easier for me then.
My host mother is a nice lady in her late thirties, she told me to call her Emiko-san, and not oka-san (she's too young to be my mother). Her English is far from perfect but just good enough to understand what I mean when my Japanese vocabulary doesn't last.
The father is rarely home, his job description was simply "office worker" on the family information sheet, and he is staying true to that stereotype. He does seem like a good guy too, judging from the few times I've met him.
Something I also must comment on is the area we live in.
You remember that time back in sixth grade when you were in the school library and supposed to do something but ended up looking in a book with pictures from the Japanese nature and were mindblown by the pictures of incredibly vegetated hills with clouds flowing down the valleys in between?
You do? Holy shit, get out of my memories!
Anyways. This place is just like that, built in a valley with green hills on the sides and clouds in between, it's awesome. I can't believe this place is actually part of Tokyo.
The home itself isn't bad at all either. It spans half of the first floor in a 3-story apartment, it's actually pretty roomy (however there are children's toys taking space everywhere, they must be more spoiled than Dudley in Harry Potter).
So my days here are pretty simple. Wake up at six, get up at 6.05 when the goddamn snoozer starts, Eat breakfast, usually egg with ketchup on it (okaaay...) and toast with jam (not homemade, not poisonous), take a shower, brush teeth, use the ill-sized "American" toilet (strange fact they don't tell you about Japan; the squares on the toilet paper are like half as thick as those back home, so you need to use twice as many squares as usual and try not to rip them apart while you pull it out of the dispenser, it's actually quite annoying), change from pajamas to real clothes, decide which T-shirt to use for the day (emotional black or daring red? hm...), get the bag and put on the hat, say "Ittekimaaaaasu~" and go out the door (remember to put shoes on beyond the shoeline before exiting) and head for the station, stand at the red light 1 minute later and curse your bad luck, arrive 3 minutes later at the station and use the awesome month-card (that was bought on the day of visiting school) that had only cost 7000 yen, take the second train for Tokyo (first one is always full), take a seat (preferably at the end of the row) and try to gain some makeshift sleep from the coma that always comes with the Japanese trains, come back to life when the words "Mitaka" are uttered from the speakers, squeeze out of the vehicle between the masses of people when the train arrives at Kichijouji (try saying that three times in a row), keep with the flow and start walking towards school, pass the Book Off to the left (there is a Book Off at the station near my school, thank you god), stand at the massive red light and then move towards the alley with all the weird stores and foreign restaurants (I want to try eating at "Der König" sometime), go down the stairs with broken steps, pass the vending machines and the place where all street performers hang out, start walking on the bridge, look at the huge fishes (like this big *arms held wide*), the swan boats, the pretty lake and keep an eye out for the turtle (live turtles are awesome by default), get to the stairs with the far too wide steps (you have to like, take one and a half step each time, it's a pain for the legs), go through the house area, pass under the black gate (it's massive and imposing), go into the alley to the right of the konbini, proceed towards the forest and walk through the trail there, watch what might be happening on the open area to the right (usually some kids running about), exit the forest and keep a straight line until the road is reached, pass the road and enter school, remember to ignore to use the disinfectant spray on hands (it stinks and nobody does it anyway), get to the locker located on the top floor on the other side of the school and leave stuff, hear the bell ring and do school stuff, when school is over, get home.
Oh, apparently they aren't simple at all.
Well I successfully avoided writing about school today too, next time, I promise.
Unless I make my promises like Sora (and therefore won't get back to you until about a year has passed... God I love Kingdom Hearts)
Be back tomorrow, I hope.
I think I'll describe my host family in greater detail right now and go with the school stuff later, it'll be easier for me then.
My host mother is a nice lady in her late thirties, she told me to call her Emiko-san, and not oka-san (she's too young to be my mother). Her English is far from perfect but just good enough to understand what I mean when my Japanese vocabulary doesn't last.
The father is rarely home, his job description was simply "office worker" on the family information sheet, and he is staying true to that stereotype. He does seem like a good guy too, judging from the few times I've met him.
Something I also must comment on is the area we live in.
You remember that time back in sixth grade when you were in the school library and supposed to do something but ended up looking in a book with pictures from the Japanese nature and were mindblown by the pictures of incredibly vegetated hills with clouds flowing down the valleys in between?
You do? Holy shit, get out of my memories!
Anyways. This place is just like that, built in a valley with green hills on the sides and clouds in between, it's awesome. I can't believe this place is actually part of Tokyo.
The home itself isn't bad at all either. It spans half of the first floor in a 3-story apartment, it's actually pretty roomy (however there are children's toys taking space everywhere, they must be more spoiled than Dudley in Harry Potter).
So my days here are pretty simple. Wake up at six, get up at 6.05 when the goddamn snoozer starts, Eat breakfast, usually egg with ketchup on it (okaaay...) and toast with jam (not homemade, not poisonous), take a shower, brush teeth, use the ill-sized "American" toilet (strange fact they don't tell you about Japan; the squares on the toilet paper are like half as thick as those back home, so you need to use twice as many squares as usual and try not to rip them apart while you pull it out of the dispenser, it's actually quite annoying), change from pajamas to real clothes, decide which T-shirt to use for the day (emotional black or daring red? hm...), get the bag and put on the hat, say "Ittekimaaaaasu~" and go out the door (remember to put shoes on beyond the shoeline before exiting) and head for the station, stand at the red light 1 minute later and curse your bad luck, arrive 3 minutes later at the station and use the awesome month-card (that was bought on the day of visiting school) that had only cost 7000 yen, take the second train for Tokyo (first one is always full), take a seat (preferably at the end of the row) and try to gain some makeshift sleep from the coma that always comes with the Japanese trains, come back to life when the words "Mitaka" are uttered from the speakers, squeeze out of the vehicle between the masses of people when the train arrives at Kichijouji (try saying that three times in a row), keep with the flow and start walking towards school, pass the Book Off to the left (there is a Book Off at the station near my school, thank you god), stand at the massive red light and then move towards the alley with all the weird stores and foreign restaurants (I want to try eating at "Der König" sometime), go down the stairs with broken steps, pass the vending machines and the place where all street performers hang out, start walking on the bridge, look at the huge fishes (like this big *arms held wide*), the swan boats, the pretty lake and keep an eye out for the turtle (live turtles are awesome by default), get to the stairs with the far too wide steps (you have to like, take one and a half step each time, it's a pain for the legs), go through the house area, pass under the black gate (it's massive and imposing), go into the alley to the right of the konbini, proceed towards the forest and walk through the trail there, watch what might be happening on the open area to the right (usually some kids running about), exit the forest and keep a straight line until the road is reached, pass the road and enter school, remember to ignore to use the disinfectant spray on hands (it stinks and nobody does it anyway), get to the locker located on the top floor on the other side of the school and leave stuff, hear the bell ring and do school stuff, when school is over, get home.
Oh, apparently they aren't simple at all.
Well I successfully avoided writing about school today too, next time, I promise.
Unless I make my promises like Sora (and therefore won't get back to you until about a year has passed... God I love Kingdom Hearts)
Be back tomorrow, I hope.
söndag 6 september 2009
We All Live in a Yellow Submarine
I really should'nt have waited this long before making a new entry, but looking back, I realize I did'nt actually have any time for it anyway.
Loads of stuff has happened this week (and unfortunately I did not write in my diary), I'll see if I can fill you in on the details in an efficient manner. Back on Monday I moved to a new host family, but before that I visited my School.
But first I should talk about the whole "moving out of my old family"-thing.
That morning was pretty stale, though I did get a chance to use the computer (which was the time I wrote the first entry with the diary, I think). But the last two hours were just filled with bored waiting.
Oh and all the time it was raining, as it had the day before, there were talks of a typhoon and stuff (though I did'nt really care much for it).
So then I eventually got a ride to the second-nearest station (so I did'nt have to transfer) and waited there, in the rain. But my host family had been so kind to give me an umbrella, so I was unfazed.
And since I was so tired when the train arrived, I did'nt even care to think of the implications when I sat down between two obviously "mean guys". They had ragged clothes, pointy shoes (with metal parts) and insane hair. Not to mention that they had left one seat open between them just so they could sit down with mirrored poses.
Fast forwarding to the time when I had to wait at a metro station for 50 minutes just because the person who was taking me to the school & family was waiting at the wrong entrance. But it was alright.
The visit to school was quite awkward. I got to sit down and introduce myself to a teacher (I was completely unprepared) and then there was a lot of paperwork I did'nt understand.
Then I had to introduce myself in front of all the teachers, who seemed very unimpressed. I had actually thought that my arrival would be a special occasion, but their mentality seemed to be "oh, another one of those exchange students...", so I felt pretty let down.
I did regain my hope after the guide through school anyway, so it worked out and I left the place with a positive outlook.
As you might have gathered, my host family proved to be awesome. I was convinced of it immediately, since I spent the first evening with my family by playing mario party against the kids, they were impressed by my incredible skills at throwing ropes.
By the way, the kids are named Kota and Yui, they're 5 and 6 (7 in 2 months) years old. They're insanely adorable.
Uh, I had intended to write everything and catch up with the present today, but it's kind of too late and I have things to do before I go to bed. Sorry.
Loads of stuff has happened this week (and unfortunately I did not write in my diary), I'll see if I can fill you in on the details in an efficient manner. Back on Monday I moved to a new host family, but before that I visited my School.
But first I should talk about the whole "moving out of my old family"-thing.
That morning was pretty stale, though I did get a chance to use the computer (which was the time I wrote the first entry with the diary, I think). But the last two hours were just filled with bored waiting.
Oh and all the time it was raining, as it had the day before, there were talks of a typhoon and stuff (though I did'nt really care much for it).
So then I eventually got a ride to the second-nearest station (so I did'nt have to transfer) and waited there, in the rain. But my host family had been so kind to give me an umbrella, so I was unfazed.
And since I was so tired when the train arrived, I did'nt even care to think of the implications when I sat down between two obviously "mean guys". They had ragged clothes, pointy shoes (with metal parts) and insane hair. Not to mention that they had left one seat open between them just so they could sit down with mirrored poses.
Fast forwarding to the time when I had to wait at a metro station for 50 minutes just because the person who was taking me to the school & family was waiting at the wrong entrance. But it was alright.
The visit to school was quite awkward. I got to sit down and introduce myself to a teacher (I was completely unprepared) and then there was a lot of paperwork I did'nt understand.
Then I had to introduce myself in front of all the teachers, who seemed very unimpressed. I had actually thought that my arrival would be a special occasion, but their mentality seemed to be "oh, another one of those exchange students...", so I felt pretty let down.
I did regain my hope after the guide through school anyway, so it worked out and I left the place with a positive outlook.
As you might have gathered, my host family proved to be awesome. I was convinced of it immediately, since I spent the first evening with my family by playing mario party against the kids, they were impressed by my incredible skills at throwing ropes.
By the way, the kids are named Kota and Yui, they're 5 and 6 (7 in 2 months) years old. They're insanely adorable.
Uh, I had intended to write everything and catch up with the present today, but it's kind of too late and I have things to do before I go to bed. Sorry.
tisdag 1 september 2009
So I did update after all
And there I was, happily surprised by the host family allowing me to use the computer for more than one hour, when the host mother asked something about a laptop. The next thing I know, I'm sitting in my room with a laptop borrowed to me for the entire length of my stay.
Did I mention my new host family is awesome? (no I did not).
It would be a pain to explain everything without detail so I'll just keep transcribing my diary until you guys catch up with me.
29/8/09
Saturday (Cont'd)
I actually had access to a computer for some time today, the host father offered me to use theirs after taking me home from the restaurant. But I did'nt make an entry on what I wrote yesterday since, unfortunately, I did'nt bring this notebook. Instead I used the oppurtunity to check my mailbox and answer a few, along with reading some manga. (Bleach was surprisingly not as awful as usual this week, One Piece was awesome as always, with loads of two-page panels, Naruto contained blasphemy).
By the way, as of today I've been here for exactly 3 weeks, that's approximately 7% of my total stay here in Japan. It's either good or bad, depending on the perspective.
...
Two songs from FLCL have been played in a row from my cellphone. What are the odds? (Seriously, somebody must clear that out for me, I've got 322 songs on my mobile and 12 of them are from FLCL, what is the chance for two FLCL songs to be played in a row?)
This diary keeping thing is going pretty well for me (so far). This way I might actually be able to write about every single thing I experience over here
Now, half an hour after starting to write, my inspiration is leaving me. I'll probably put down the pen (which is red and has a nice grip) and find something else to do until dinner (which I think is in 1 1/2 hour, but I'm not sure). I might gather the courage to ask if I can borrow the computer. But won't do that until it's at least 6 o'clock so I can say "Konbanwa" without hesitating.
Joakim, signing out for today.
PS. Final Destination just started playing, totally miss those good ol' times dude.DS
30/8/09
Sunday
I'm in bed again (seriously it's a good place to write from). It's about 10.30 in the evening.
To my pleasant surprise, today actually passed quite quickly. That's because yesterday at 9.30, a Norweigan (albeit Chinese-born) guy arrived, so I had someone to talk to.
He is the kind of guy that says "like, dude that's so totally sick" five times per minute, but we get along quite well. I felt pretty proud of myself for mentoring him in how things work around the house and in japan in general. Later on we ended up talking about manga and anime. He did'nt have the same interests as me (for some reason he kept claiming that One Piece sucked, silly man) but at least he watches Bleach. So I gave hime the usual "why we all must hate Ulquiorra"-treatment, he agreed.
It's funny, while showing him around the area, I felt a tinge of nostalgia. I've just been here for three weeks but I feel kind of connected to this place already. I wonder if this will happen a lot during the year.
Oh right, before I forget. Yesterday, a few things happened after I wrote my last entry.
I did'nt get access to the computer at six since there was nobody to ask inside the house. But while walking around aimlessly I met the host mother in the garden. After a minute of not understanding what she meant, I realized she offered me to go up on the roof, I obliged.
The view from the roof was not stunning at all, since most of it was blocked by the trees. There was not much of interest to be found up there, except for a stone with the text ”子ども わし” (Child I). It was confusing.
After a short while of me doing some unamazed gazing, the host mother came up to join me. She pointed out a walking route between the trees, so the next thing I knew, I was on a walk between the rice fields. It was quite pleasant (but not much to see). After the walk I tried killing time by sitting in my room doing nothing (time survived the attack).
Eventually it was dinnertime and I gladly ate.
When I was done, I was offered to sit by the computer for an hour, I gladly accepted. But I did'nt take that chance to write on my blog since I figured that one hour was not enough time, especially since I would have to go to my house to get this notebook first.
Instead I took my time to write a mail and visit that anime forum that I like so much. I wrote a few posts but did'nt get the chance to see the replies.
I also managed to get MSN up and working, but there was nobody of close relation to me online. But after a while, Erika logged in and I could spend my time chatting with her, though the chat came to an abrubt (is it spelled like that) stop when the newcomer arrived and I was no longer allowed to use the computer.
Tomorrow is the day I leave this place, visit school and move into a new family. It's going to be exciting, but also tiring. If I am lucky, I might actually get some time in front of the computer before I depart (I did), then I could actually get the chance to post all of this (I did'nt).
It's just about 11.15 now I want to go to sleep so tomorrow arrives faster (and so I'm not tired on such an important day).
I missed you today too.
*End of diary*
Though I'm still alive (one more Mirai Nikki reference for the counter!).
So yeah I intended to write about what happened on monday and today (tuesday) too, but It's getting late and I need to sleep well before tomorrow (second day of school, but now it's the real thing). I'll see if I can get the rest up by then.
This message has been brought to you by: Joakim.
Did I mention my new host family is awesome? (no I did not).
It would be a pain to explain everything without detail so I'll just keep transcribing my diary until you guys catch up with me.
29/8/09
Saturday (Cont'd)
I actually had access to a computer for some time today, the host father offered me to use theirs after taking me home from the restaurant. But I did'nt make an entry on what I wrote yesterday since, unfortunately, I did'nt bring this notebook. Instead I used the oppurtunity to check my mailbox and answer a few, along with reading some manga. (Bleach was surprisingly not as awful as usual this week, One Piece was awesome as always, with loads of two-page panels, Naruto contained blasphemy).
By the way, as of today I've been here for exactly 3 weeks, that's approximately 7% of my total stay here in Japan. It's either good or bad, depending on the perspective.
...
Two songs from FLCL have been played in a row from my cellphone. What are the odds? (Seriously, somebody must clear that out for me, I've got 322 songs on my mobile and 12 of them are from FLCL, what is the chance for two FLCL songs to be played in a row?)
This diary keeping thing is going pretty well for me (so far). This way I might actually be able to write about every single thing I experience over here
Now, half an hour after starting to write, my inspiration is leaving me. I'll probably put down the pen (which is red and has a nice grip) and find something else to do until dinner (which I think is in 1 1/2 hour, but I'm not sure). I might gather the courage to ask if I can borrow the computer. But won't do that until it's at least 6 o'clock so I can say "Konbanwa" without hesitating.
Joakim, signing out for today.
PS. Final Destination just started playing, totally miss those good ol' times dude.DS
30/8/09
Sunday
I'm in bed again (seriously it's a good place to write from). It's about 10.30 in the evening.
To my pleasant surprise, today actually passed quite quickly. That's because yesterday at 9.30, a Norweigan (albeit Chinese-born) guy arrived, so I had someone to talk to.
He is the kind of guy that says "like, dude that's so totally sick" five times per minute, but we get along quite well. I felt pretty proud of myself for mentoring him in how things work around the house and in japan in general. Later on we ended up talking about manga and anime. He did'nt have the same interests as me (for some reason he kept claiming that One Piece sucked, silly man) but at least he watches Bleach. So I gave hime the usual "why we all must hate Ulquiorra"-treatment, he agreed.
It's funny, while showing him around the area, I felt a tinge of nostalgia. I've just been here for three weeks but I feel kind of connected to this place already. I wonder if this will happen a lot during the year.
Oh right, before I forget. Yesterday, a few things happened after I wrote my last entry.
I did'nt get access to the computer at six since there was nobody to ask inside the house. But while walking around aimlessly I met the host mother in the garden. After a minute of not understanding what she meant, I realized she offered me to go up on the roof, I obliged.
The view from the roof was not stunning at all, since most of it was blocked by the trees. There was not much of interest to be found up there, except for a stone with the text ”子ども わし” (Child I). It was confusing.
After a short while of me doing some unamazed gazing, the host mother came up to join me. She pointed out a walking route between the trees, so the next thing I knew, I was on a walk between the rice fields. It was quite pleasant (but not much to see). After the walk I tried killing time by sitting in my room doing nothing (time survived the attack).
Eventually it was dinnertime and I gladly ate.
When I was done, I was offered to sit by the computer for an hour, I gladly accepted. But I did'nt take that chance to write on my blog since I figured that one hour was not enough time, especially since I would have to go to my house to get this notebook first.
Instead I took my time to write a mail and visit that anime forum that I like so much. I wrote a few posts but did'nt get the chance to see the replies.
I also managed to get MSN up and working, but there was nobody of close relation to me online. But after a while, Erika logged in and I could spend my time chatting with her, though the chat came to an abrubt (is it spelled like that) stop when the newcomer arrived and I was no longer allowed to use the computer.
Tomorrow is the day I leave this place, visit school and move into a new family. It's going to be exciting, but also tiring. If I am lucky, I might actually get some time in front of the computer before I depart (I did), then I could actually get the chance to post all of this (I did'nt).
It's just about 11.15 now I want to go to sleep so tomorrow arrives faster (and so I'm not tired on such an important day).
I missed you today too.
*End of diary*
Though I'm still alive (one more Mirai Nikki reference for the counter!).
So yeah I intended to write about what happened on monday and today (tuesday) too, but It's getting late and I need to sleep well before tomorrow (second day of school, but now it's the real thing). I'll see if I can get the rest up by then.
This message has been brought to you by: Joakim.
måndag 31 augusti 2009
A journal, too.
Three days ago, I suddenly got the impulse to write down my thoughts in my notebook (I know, it surprised me too) for later use when I had access to my computer. Here's the results of three days of writing:
28/8/09
Friday
It's 10 o'clock in the evening, I'm laying in bed, doing nothing more than think of the one most dear to me.
Tomorrow the two remaining students living in this family will leave (Alex left today already). I've recently been informed that I won't be moving to my next family before monday, which is the same day I visit my school, the day before it starts. All of the other students already know which family they will move into and have already visited their schools. I feel kind of left out.
I made more friends than I thought these three weeks (which have passed with blazing speed) and now I realize that I won't meet the majority of them ever again. That's a pity.
It gets dark so early here, the days are short. The sun goes down before six and rises again by 5 (which makes it hard to sleep in the morning). There is not much time to get things done during the days, it's mostly travelling here and travelling there all the time. My legs ache every night from standing for hours on the train and my shoulder hurts a bit after carrying my bag while standing there (but I bet it's good for me).
*random whining part that was omitted*
Living in what's more or less a forest is pretty scary, there are lots of spiders here (and arachnophobia is not one of my good attributes) and I've seen quite a few other things, like lizards (tiny ones), a snake (though it was dead, but Alex once saw a live one), a mantis (those things are huge!) and loads of different creepy insects (not to mention the cicadas). Needless to say there is a lot of noise from the outdoors.
I've been writing for half an hour, which is pretty impressive since I've never managed to keep a diary in any form before (I did'nt even plan on having one while here), though my handwriting is still horrible as ever (it's a pain to transcribe this, by the way).
As inspiration is filling up my existance and I am in desperate need of distracting my thoughts from all the things I left in Sweden, I'll keep writing about anything that comes to mind.
Oh yeah, I wanted to write about this long ago: Last tuesday (18th), the organization took us students to a furin maker.
Furin are those Japanese wind bells you see every once in a while in manga and anime. We all got one glass bell each and then we got to paint it. From the inside, which was apparently a clever method to paint them with.
I did'nt really know what to paint so I just made a few random things, I will probably take pictures of it at some point (or just send it home, or both). I've been really bad with taking pictures while over here, I better shape up and do that more often in the future.
Japanese food is kind of a yay or nay to me, either I like it or I dislike it (there is no in between). For example, I really love the whole "pan" thing here in Japan, they've got billions of different tastes for their bread. So for lunch every day I used to buy two different pans and a random drink (they had loads of different drinks too, but I tended to buy a pineapple juice every once in a while, it was just so good), it was both fun, tasty and really cheap. Awesome.
However, I noticed to my great dissappointment that I don't like seaweed (and believe me, I tried), so onigiri and the likes are a no-no to me. But oh well, at least it seems like I'm able to eat enough of the Japanese food to stay alive.
Funny coincidence, the very evening of the day I wrote that long blog entry (that sunday you know) my host family took me and the others to a sushi restaurant, along with their son, his wife and his daughter (who is adorable, by the way). I gracefully avoided eating any raw fish while there and instead got some tamago sushi (egg sushi), ham sushi, a slice of honey melon and a big bowl of Japanese udon. It was all quite tasty.
The sushi restaurant itself was very interesting. The food arrived on a "rullband" (there is no English word for it, as far as I know) and you simply picked the food you wanted from it. The portions were very small so you could try many different things. You could also make special orders and the food would soon arrive on the band with your table's number on it (as with my udon). In the end, I had about six empty plates on top of each other in front of me, with a nearly empty bowl of udon by the side. However, the others ate like 12 plates each, plus three or four side orders. I was pretty amazed by their capacity.
This will have to be it for tonight. I can't belive I just wrote 3 1/2 pages just on impulse. I can see how my mood changed over time (which is pretty interesting). But now I must go to sleep, there is a busy day of cleaning, laundry and goodbyes tomorrow. I hope I won't have troubles sleeping.
29/8/09
Saturday
I'm in the bed again, listening to music on my cellphone. It's about 5 o'clock and I'm very lonely. The girls left today, they did'nt even say goodbye, they were simply gone. It was very mean of them to do that.
I finally got to know about my new family today. They're a family of four, the kids are five and seven years old and the parents are in their thirties (so they know English, yay!). They live in an apartment about 50 minutes from the school by train, not bad at all (by Japanese standards). I'll only be staying there for 2 1/2 weeks, so it seems like my family finding troubles are'nt over just yet.
This day has passed so much slower than any of the prior days. I've done all I can to make time pass but the pointers of the clock just won't move. At least I can proudly say I've done a lot of chores today, and I've taken enough pictures to please the entire population of columbia.
I also joined my host father for a brief visit to his restaurant (apparently he owns a restaurant, who whould've known). It was a nice place, with a display of old cameras in the window and Jazz music playing from an LP in the background.
*I must stop here, I just have 10 minutes by the computer left and I need to write some other stuff*
Today is monday and therefore the day I leave and the day I visit my school. That's going to be interesting. I'll be going with my (soon-not-to-be) host father to the station in 40 minutes and they want me to leave the computer in ten.
I feel pretty confident about the school and the host family even sent me a welcoming mail with pictures, so I'm not worried about that either.
Unfortunately, I don't know when I can reach a computer again, this might be the last you hear of me in a while. But know that I'm still here with exciting stories to tell as soon as I get the chance to.
I miss everyone so much, but most of all I miss you.
28/8/09
Friday
It's 10 o'clock in the evening, I'm laying in bed, doing nothing more than think of the one most dear to me.
Tomorrow the two remaining students living in this family will leave (Alex left today already). I've recently been informed that I won't be moving to my next family before monday, which is the same day I visit my school, the day before it starts. All of the other students already know which family they will move into and have already visited their schools. I feel kind of left out.
I made more friends than I thought these three weeks (which have passed with blazing speed) and now I realize that I won't meet the majority of them ever again. That's a pity.
It gets dark so early here, the days are short. The sun goes down before six and rises again by 5 (which makes it hard to sleep in the morning). There is not much time to get things done during the days, it's mostly travelling here and travelling there all the time. My legs ache every night from standing for hours on the train and my shoulder hurts a bit after carrying my bag while standing there (but I bet it's good for me).
*random whining part that was omitted*
Living in what's more or less a forest is pretty scary, there are lots of spiders here (and arachnophobia is not one of my good attributes) and I've seen quite a few other things, like lizards (tiny ones), a snake (though it was dead, but Alex once saw a live one), a mantis (those things are huge!) and loads of different creepy insects (not to mention the cicadas). Needless to say there is a lot of noise from the outdoors.
I've been writing for half an hour, which is pretty impressive since I've never managed to keep a diary in any form before (I did'nt even plan on having one while here), though my handwriting is still horrible as ever (it's a pain to transcribe this, by the way).
As inspiration is filling up my existance and I am in desperate need of distracting my thoughts from all the things I left in Sweden, I'll keep writing about anything that comes to mind.
Oh yeah, I wanted to write about this long ago: Last tuesday (18th), the organization took us students to a furin maker.
Furin are those Japanese wind bells you see every once in a while in manga and anime. We all got one glass bell each and then we got to paint it. From the inside, which was apparently a clever method to paint them with.
I did'nt really know what to paint so I just made a few random things, I will probably take pictures of it at some point (or just send it home, or both). I've been really bad with taking pictures while over here, I better shape up and do that more often in the future.
Japanese food is kind of a yay or nay to me, either I like it or I dislike it (there is no in between). For example, I really love the whole "pan" thing here in Japan, they've got billions of different tastes for their bread. So for lunch every day I used to buy two different pans and a random drink (they had loads of different drinks too, but I tended to buy a pineapple juice every once in a while, it was just so good), it was both fun, tasty and really cheap. Awesome.
However, I noticed to my great dissappointment that I don't like seaweed (and believe me, I tried), so onigiri and the likes are a no-no to me. But oh well, at least it seems like I'm able to eat enough of the Japanese food to stay alive.
Funny coincidence, the very evening of the day I wrote that long blog entry (that sunday you know) my host family took me and the others to a sushi restaurant, along with their son, his wife and his daughter (who is adorable, by the way). I gracefully avoided eating any raw fish while there and instead got some tamago sushi (egg sushi), ham sushi, a slice of honey melon and a big bowl of Japanese udon. It was all quite tasty.
The sushi restaurant itself was very interesting. The food arrived on a "rullband" (there is no English word for it, as far as I know) and you simply picked the food you wanted from it. The portions were very small so you could try many different things. You could also make special orders and the food would soon arrive on the band with your table's number on it (as with my udon). In the end, I had about six empty plates on top of each other in front of me, with a nearly empty bowl of udon by the side. However, the others ate like 12 plates each, plus three or four side orders. I was pretty amazed by their capacity.
This will have to be it for tonight. I can't belive I just wrote 3 1/2 pages just on impulse. I can see how my mood changed over time (which is pretty interesting). But now I must go to sleep, there is a busy day of cleaning, laundry and goodbyes tomorrow. I hope I won't have troubles sleeping.
29/8/09
Saturday
I'm in the bed again, listening to music on my cellphone. It's about 5 o'clock and I'm very lonely. The girls left today, they did'nt even say goodbye, they were simply gone. It was very mean of them to do that.
I finally got to know about my new family today. They're a family of four, the kids are five and seven years old and the parents are in their thirties (so they know English, yay!). They live in an apartment about 50 minutes from the school by train, not bad at all (by Japanese standards). I'll only be staying there for 2 1/2 weeks, so it seems like my family finding troubles are'nt over just yet.
This day has passed so much slower than any of the prior days. I've done all I can to make time pass but the pointers of the clock just won't move. At least I can proudly say I've done a lot of chores today, and I've taken enough pictures to please the entire population of columbia.
I also joined my host father for a brief visit to his restaurant (apparently he owns a restaurant, who whould've known). It was a nice place, with a display of old cameras in the window and Jazz music playing from an LP in the background.
*I must stop here, I just have 10 minutes by the computer left and I need to write some other stuff*
Today is monday and therefore the day I leave and the day I visit my school. That's going to be interesting. I'll be going with my (soon-not-to-be) host father to the station in 40 minutes and they want me to leave the computer in ten.
I feel pretty confident about the school and the host family even sent me a welcoming mail with pictures, so I'm not worried about that either.
Unfortunately, I don't know when I can reach a computer again, this might be the last you hear of me in a while. But know that I'm still here with exciting stories to tell as soon as I get the chance to.
I miss everyone so much, but most of all I miss you.
torsdag 27 augusti 2009
Well, crud.
So I actually intended to write something the last weekend, but I never got time for that. Then I thouht I could get some time to write yesterday, but that did'nt work out. So then I rooted for today but only ended up with a mere 20 minutes (or less) to use the computer.
So I'll be brief.
I've already been here for nearly 3 weeks, just a few more days before I move to a new host family and start school. It will be interesting.
I can't help but be reminded of my language trip to Oxford last year, how "done" I felt when the 3 weeks there were nearly over.
Now, however, I feel nowhere near done here. I said 10 months and damn, 10 months it shall be.
Unfortunately such devotion still does not prevent me from feeling homesick. I'm currently OK but some days ago I felt really down. It did'nt really help that I had just gotten my old cellphone working and therefore had access to my music for the first time since arriving in Japan. There was a lot of U2 being played through my headphones (Yeah, I like U2, stop judging me).
I also think I must be the first person to have tears in my eyes after listening to Final Destination (Brawl).
I recently bought 2 books, it was probably my best purchase in Japan so far (from a non-gaming point of view). They're 2 books in a series called "Kanji Starter". They explain Kanji using pictures of what the Kanji is trying to resemble, I think I've learned 30-40 new kanji in two days just from reading one of the books on the train to and from school.
Interesting fact: Some days ago my host mother demanded that the other students staying there and I would weigh ourselves. Though I was late for breakfast that day and did'nt actually get the reason explained to me (nor did I see the others' weight). All I know is that I won as the least heavy person by sporting a flippin' 53 kilos, I don't know what I weighed before I left home but I really hope I have'nt lost too much.
Though while I was slightly worried, the girls were envious. They're a bit silly like that.
Uh oh, it seems my time is up. Even though there is so much more to tell you, I'll save it for some other time.
Miss you all, bye.
So I'll be brief.
I've already been here for nearly 3 weeks, just a few more days before I move to a new host family and start school. It will be interesting.
I can't help but be reminded of my language trip to Oxford last year, how "done" I felt when the 3 weeks there were nearly over.
Now, however, I feel nowhere near done here. I said 10 months and damn, 10 months it shall be.
Unfortunately such devotion still does not prevent me from feeling homesick. I'm currently OK but some days ago I felt really down. It did'nt really help that I had just gotten my old cellphone working and therefore had access to my music for the first time since arriving in Japan. There was a lot of U2 being played through my headphones (Yeah, I like U2, stop judging me).
I also think I must be the first person to have tears in my eyes after listening to Final Destination (Brawl).
I recently bought 2 books, it was probably my best purchase in Japan so far (from a non-gaming point of view). They're 2 books in a series called "Kanji Starter". They explain Kanji using pictures of what the Kanji is trying to resemble, I think I've learned 30-40 new kanji in two days just from reading one of the books on the train to and from school.
Interesting fact: Some days ago my host mother demanded that the other students staying there and I would weigh ourselves. Though I was late for breakfast that day and did'nt actually get the reason explained to me (nor did I see the others' weight). All I know is that I won as the least heavy person by sporting a flippin' 53 kilos, I don't know what I weighed before I left home but I really hope I have'nt lost too much.
Though while I was slightly worried, the girls were envious. They're a bit silly like that.
Uh oh, it seems my time is up. Even though there is so much more to tell you, I'll save it for some other time.
Miss you all, bye.
söndag 16 augusti 2009
Obscure manga reference
I'm currently in an internet cafe in downtown Shinjuku, right after being laughed at by the owner for not understanding stuff, it happens a lot.
I've been in Japan for more than a week, now where do I start? From the beginning I guess.
The flight to Vienna was easy and pain-free, even though the two hours felt like a long time it was nothing compared to th following flight.
We did have some problems getting our tickets in Vienna at first (there was some stuff going on about our luggage) but it all got sortened out eventually.
The flight to Japan was 11 hours long and pretty darn tiring. And I was too tense to concentrate on something for more than twenty minutes (so no movie watching for me).
In what would be the middle of the night in Sweden, but in fact 8 o'clock in the morning in Japan. We landed.
The first obvious difference between Japan and Sweden is the heat. You don't notice it in anime and they don't mention it in books, but Japan is a country in the southern part of Asia.
Which makes it pretty darn hot.
And humid.
Like, really humid.
No, you don't understand, I'm talking big time humid here.
Anyways. We met up with our organisation, we are 20 students in total. 3 Swedes, 2 Norweigans, 1 Dane, 9 Germans, 2 Frenchies and 3 Finlanders. The Japanese lady who greeted us was called Terui-san, she's the one responsible for our group.
We then took a bus from Narita Airport to Tokyo.
I quickly spotted another pequliar thing they don't mention about Japan; there's vegetation everywhere. I guess the humid weather makes Japan the ideal place for plants to grow, and boy do they grow. all over the roads, houses and lakes, there are plants. They grow so easily, I bet you could just leave a spot of dirt open overnight and have your own shrubbery the day after.
Then we got into Tokyo.
They say Tokyo is big.
They lie.
Tokyo is waaaaaay big, too big. I saw it with my two eyes but I could'nt believe it.
It's a town big enough to house the inhabitants of a small country, or like 1.5 times the population of Sweden.
I won't waste my time trying to explain the size of Tokyo, It's simply too big to comprehend.
After about an hour, the bus arrived at the destination.
When we got out of the bus, I noticed yet another pequliar thing about Japan.
The noise.
The freaking cicadas won't shut up. And it's not your average annoying noise, It's a deafening noise made by thousands of bugs making a "Vraa-vraaa-vraaa-vraaaaaaaa" sound. And there is no end to it. (You get kind of used to it after a while, accepting the rythm of the sounds. But then suddenly they do it it wrong, like "Vraaa-vraaa-vraaaa-vraaaa-vraaaa-vraaaaaaa" and it drives you crazy).
I should hurry up, I've only got two hours and I've spent like 20 minutes talking about the environment.
The bus had taken us to a school, where we gathered in a classroom and got to present ourselves in Japanese, I did pretty bad (since I was freaking tired) but managed somehow.
Then we met another of our representatives from the organisation: Yuuki (unfortunately a woman and not Yukiteru, but it's still kinda close). And we got to meet Tom, Mica (Micchan) and Nuri. They're 3 other students who have stayed in Japan since February, they are really good at Japanese. I hope I'll be like that later on.
Fast forwarding, we took a train to Shinjuku (leaving our bags behind) and then the subway to Nakano-Sakaue and got to see the language school we'll be going to for the first 3 weeks.
Then we got back to our luggage and all of the host families were waiting for us.
Except mine.
And the 3 other students I'm sharing it with.
For some reason the family could'nt come and pick us up so we had to send our luggage by mail and then take the train and a car ride. It was actually nothing but at the time I was really tired and felt bad so for me it was a harsh adventure.
We finally arrived at like 7 in the evening, which would be like 11 in the morning in Sweden, damn I was tired.
I was however positively surprised by the host family.
They're rich, They live in a mansion.
I live with a german student in our own house on their lot, the girls live in another house in the same lot.
Both of our houses are big enough to host a family of four. The main house is big enough for 20.
So it's a pretty nice family, just a pair of 61-year-olds who grow their own food in a field and have chickens and stuff in cages.
And they have dogs, five of them. The nicest one is named Kuma, he's big and white and never barks. He's blind though, but he manages somehow.
We only get Japanese food, which is kinda cool. I've tried lots of new stuff and most of it is good, though I'm still not used to eating "real food" for breakfeast.
There is one major drawback living with this family though, it's over 2 hours pendling to school. We need to get up at six every morning, get ready and eat breakfeast and then leave the home before seven, walk for 15 minutes to the station and then take the train one station to Kuki, which takes 10 minutes, then we must hurry to get on the train to Shinjuku, where we have to stand for 55 minutes, then we walk from the station for 5 minutes to the metro, wait 5 minutes for the one to Nakano-Sakaue to arrive and then stand on it for 10 minutes and then walk to the school in 10 minutes. This is if we get there in time, miss no train and nothing is delayed. In that case we might lose 20-30 minutes.
I manage, somehow.
School is ok. On the first day we took a test to see which group we belonged to. Since I had'nt slept at all that night (the jet lag still haunted me), I did terribly and got into the beginner's class. Kind of a letdown after being the top student in my Japanese class in Sweden. But later on I've been asked several times by the teacher if I want to move up since this class is too easy for me, but I want to stay since I like the tempo and have made some good friends there.
Talking about friends, I've become good friends with the students sharing my host family. We usually do something togeather from time to time.
The first time we did something was on wednesday, we went to Shibuya. It was awesome. There were people everywhere and stores and stuff. I could'nt stop thinking about The World Ends With You. After some time wandering about, we went into a store called "Book off", naturally there were not only books but also games and anime.
Despite my better judgement, I could'nt stop myself and bought a game, it was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days. And only for about 3800 yen, which is nothing. I was (and continue to be) so happy.
Oh yeah, I bought my first Shounen Jump before that, I kind of did'nt understand a thing, but I was happy.
On the way home from Shibuya I also Bought Gangan, which is the monthly magazine that publishes Fullmetal Alchemist and Soul eater, awesome. I also got a cool cellphone strap with Edward by buying it. Which was perfect for my new Japanese cellphone. It's way more advanced than my old one, and it is a "basic" model! I might consider starting a diary on it.
I really fell in love with cellphone straps since then and I've got a whole bunch of them now. I feel nerdy (in a good way).
There is a 7-eleven near our host family's house and we went there once. As you know I live quite far away from central Tokyo, so Gaijin are not that usual in those parts. Which explains why during our visit to 7-eleven, we were confronted by three Japanese teenagers.
They had ragged clothes and bleached hair. They made quite some jokes at our expense mostly in Japanese but also in bad English.
They barely knew any English and I think their only knowledge about it comes from movies and posters. So they did things like pointing at my middle area and saying "bigg, bigg" and then laughing like kids.
It was amusing for about 5 seconds.
Talking about other things, the host family showed us the Japanese letters we had written 6 months ago (one of the requirements by the organisation). My Japanese has gotten way better since then and the letter is embarassingly bad. However I was the only one out of the four of us staying there who had'nt been helped by a teacher or a Japanese friend while writing it. So the host family was quite impressed. I'm shining!
We've made two trips with the language school, first we went to the Life security center and got to know what to do in case of a fire/earthquake and evacuation. The place itself was pretty boring but it was fun talking to people and I guess it's good to know what to do.
The other trip was to the Tokyo Edo museum. We got to know about the history of Tokyo which was very interesting. We also bought some weird candy from the gift shop, it was colourful and tasty.
Yesterday I went to Harajuku. There were'nt a lot of interesting people at that particular time but there were some para para dancers and a guy in a pikachu suit. We visited a few stores, including a gothic lolita store ( pretty clothes but now what I'm looking for).
Then we went to a toy store.
I can't remember the name (I think it was something like "Kiddy land" but I'm not sure) but it was like Hamley's, six stories tall and loaded with cool stuff. It was also a 60-year anniversary for Snoopy, so there was and entire floor dedicated to him. I bought a pretty cellphone strap to show my appreciation (Joe Cool hangs around the student union).
Today I was supposed to go to Akihabara, but I think I entered heaven by mistake. There was awsome stuff everywhere, every store was an adventure. I must get back there soon.
Of course, I could'nt help myself and bought a few things. I've got a great excuse for it though.
Since I bought Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Platinum version and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. Oh god yes.
I also happened to stumble over Final Fantasy IV, V and VI in their original forms, cheaply. I'll be rich when I take these home to Sweden.
There is a lot more that has happened, but now I need to use the little time I have left to check my Email, I'll get back to you guys soon.
Miss you all, especially you.
I've been in Japan for more than a week, now where do I start? From the beginning I guess.
The flight to Vienna was easy and pain-free, even though the two hours felt like a long time it was nothing compared to th following flight.
We did have some problems getting our tickets in Vienna at first (there was some stuff going on about our luggage) but it all got sortened out eventually.
The flight to Japan was 11 hours long and pretty darn tiring. And I was too tense to concentrate on something for more than twenty minutes (so no movie watching for me).
In what would be the middle of the night in Sweden, but in fact 8 o'clock in the morning in Japan. We landed.
The first obvious difference between Japan and Sweden is the heat. You don't notice it in anime and they don't mention it in books, but Japan is a country in the southern part of Asia.
Which makes it pretty darn hot.
And humid.
Like, really humid.
No, you don't understand, I'm talking big time humid here.
Anyways. We met up with our organisation, we are 20 students in total. 3 Swedes, 2 Norweigans, 1 Dane, 9 Germans, 2 Frenchies and 3 Finlanders. The Japanese lady who greeted us was called Terui-san, she's the one responsible for our group.
We then took a bus from Narita Airport to Tokyo.
I quickly spotted another pequliar thing they don't mention about Japan; there's vegetation everywhere. I guess the humid weather makes Japan the ideal place for plants to grow, and boy do they grow. all over the roads, houses and lakes, there are plants. They grow so easily, I bet you could just leave a spot of dirt open overnight and have your own shrubbery the day after.
Then we got into Tokyo.
They say Tokyo is big.
They lie.
Tokyo is waaaaaay big, too big. I saw it with my two eyes but I could'nt believe it.
It's a town big enough to house the inhabitants of a small country, or like 1.5 times the population of Sweden.
I won't waste my time trying to explain the size of Tokyo, It's simply too big to comprehend.
After about an hour, the bus arrived at the destination.
When we got out of the bus, I noticed yet another pequliar thing about Japan.
The noise.
The freaking cicadas won't shut up. And it's not your average annoying noise, It's a deafening noise made by thousands of bugs making a "Vraa-vraaa-vraaa-vraaaaaaaa" sound. And there is no end to it. (You get kind of used to it after a while, accepting the rythm of the sounds. But then suddenly they do it it wrong, like "Vraaa-vraaa-vraaaa-vraaaa-vraaaa-vraaaaaaa" and it drives you crazy).
I should hurry up, I've only got two hours and I've spent like 20 minutes talking about the environment.
The bus had taken us to a school, where we gathered in a classroom and got to present ourselves in Japanese, I did pretty bad (since I was freaking tired) but managed somehow.
Then we met another of our representatives from the organisation: Yuuki (unfortunately a woman and not Yukiteru, but it's still kinda close). And we got to meet Tom, Mica (Micchan) and Nuri. They're 3 other students who have stayed in Japan since February, they are really good at Japanese. I hope I'll be like that later on.
Fast forwarding, we took a train to Shinjuku (leaving our bags behind) and then the subway to Nakano-Sakaue and got to see the language school we'll be going to for the first 3 weeks.
Then we got back to our luggage and all of the host families were waiting for us.
Except mine.
And the 3 other students I'm sharing it with.
For some reason the family could'nt come and pick us up so we had to send our luggage by mail and then take the train and a car ride. It was actually nothing but at the time I was really tired and felt bad so for me it was a harsh adventure.
We finally arrived at like 7 in the evening, which would be like 11 in the morning in Sweden, damn I was tired.
I was however positively surprised by the host family.
They're rich, They live in a mansion.
I live with a german student in our own house on their lot, the girls live in another house in the same lot.
Both of our houses are big enough to host a family of four. The main house is big enough for 20.
So it's a pretty nice family, just a pair of 61-year-olds who grow their own food in a field and have chickens and stuff in cages.
And they have dogs, five of them. The nicest one is named Kuma, he's big and white and never barks. He's blind though, but he manages somehow.
We only get Japanese food, which is kinda cool. I've tried lots of new stuff and most of it is good, though I'm still not used to eating "real food" for breakfeast.
There is one major drawback living with this family though, it's over 2 hours pendling to school. We need to get up at six every morning, get ready and eat breakfeast and then leave the home before seven, walk for 15 minutes to the station and then take the train one station to Kuki, which takes 10 minutes, then we must hurry to get on the train to Shinjuku, where we have to stand for 55 minutes, then we walk from the station for 5 minutes to the metro, wait 5 minutes for the one to Nakano-Sakaue to arrive and then stand on it for 10 minutes and then walk to the school in 10 minutes. This is if we get there in time, miss no train and nothing is delayed. In that case we might lose 20-30 minutes.
I manage, somehow.
School is ok. On the first day we took a test to see which group we belonged to. Since I had'nt slept at all that night (the jet lag still haunted me), I did terribly and got into the beginner's class. Kind of a letdown after being the top student in my Japanese class in Sweden. But later on I've been asked several times by the teacher if I want to move up since this class is too easy for me, but I want to stay since I like the tempo and have made some good friends there.
Talking about friends, I've become good friends with the students sharing my host family. We usually do something togeather from time to time.
The first time we did something was on wednesday, we went to Shibuya. It was awesome. There were people everywhere and stores and stuff. I could'nt stop thinking about The World Ends With You. After some time wandering about, we went into a store called "Book off", naturally there were not only books but also games and anime.
Despite my better judgement, I could'nt stop myself and bought a game, it was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days. And only for about 3800 yen, which is nothing. I was (and continue to be) so happy.
Oh yeah, I bought my first Shounen Jump before that, I kind of did'nt understand a thing, but I was happy.
On the way home from Shibuya I also Bought Gangan, which is the monthly magazine that publishes Fullmetal Alchemist and Soul eater, awesome. I also got a cool cellphone strap with Edward by buying it. Which was perfect for my new Japanese cellphone. It's way more advanced than my old one, and it is a "basic" model! I might consider starting a diary on it.
I really fell in love with cellphone straps since then and I've got a whole bunch of them now. I feel nerdy (in a good way).
There is a 7-eleven near our host family's house and we went there once. As you know I live quite far away from central Tokyo, so Gaijin are not that usual in those parts. Which explains why during our visit to 7-eleven, we were confronted by three Japanese teenagers.
They had ragged clothes and bleached hair. They made quite some jokes at our expense mostly in Japanese but also in bad English.
They barely knew any English and I think their only knowledge about it comes from movies and posters. So they did things like pointing at my middle area and saying "bigg, bigg" and then laughing like kids.
It was amusing for about 5 seconds.
Talking about other things, the host family showed us the Japanese letters we had written 6 months ago (one of the requirements by the organisation). My Japanese has gotten way better since then and the letter is embarassingly bad. However I was the only one out of the four of us staying there who had'nt been helped by a teacher or a Japanese friend while writing it. So the host family was quite impressed. I'm shining!
We've made two trips with the language school, first we went to the Life security center and got to know what to do in case of a fire/earthquake and evacuation. The place itself was pretty boring but it was fun talking to people and I guess it's good to know what to do.
The other trip was to the Tokyo Edo museum. We got to know about the history of Tokyo which was very interesting. We also bought some weird candy from the gift shop, it was colourful and tasty.
Yesterday I went to Harajuku. There were'nt a lot of interesting people at that particular time but there were some para para dancers and a guy in a pikachu suit. We visited a few stores, including a gothic lolita store ( pretty clothes but now what I'm looking for).
Then we went to a toy store.
I can't remember the name (I think it was something like "Kiddy land" but I'm not sure) but it was like Hamley's, six stories tall and loaded with cool stuff. It was also a 60-year anniversary for Snoopy, so there was and entire floor dedicated to him. I bought a pretty cellphone strap to show my appreciation (Joe Cool hangs around the student union).
Today I was supposed to go to Akihabara, but I think I entered heaven by mistake. There was awsome stuff everywhere, every store was an adventure. I must get back there soon.
Of course, I could'nt help myself and bought a few things. I've got a great excuse for it though.
Since I bought Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Platinum version and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. Oh god yes.
I also happened to stumble over Final Fantasy IV, V and VI in their original forms, cheaply. I'll be rich when I take these home to Sweden.
There is a lot more that has happened, but now I need to use the little time I have left to check my Email, I'll get back to you guys soon.
Miss you all, especially you.
måndag 10 augusti 2009
I'm here, no worries
So yeah, I'm totally in Japan, and I'm currently experiencing some slight problems writing properly. I keep hitting the " write in hiragana" button (it's right where half of the space button should be!)
By the way, I'm writing this on a computer at the japanese language school (East West language institute) where I'll be studying for the following three weeks. Since I have a limited time to write this, I'll be brief. Even if there are so many things I would like to say.
First things first, I'm alive and OK (except for some horrifying amounts of jet lag), My host family is really nice and even though they don't speak English I kind of get by with my minor Japanese skills.
The Japanese food is weird (as expected) but manageable, Quite a lot of vegetables though.
There was an earthquake yesterday (oh noes!) but it was really small and actually kind of funny, the coming-and-going rainfalls are not as funny, but I'll survive.
This is all I can come up with on such a short notice, I'll make a proper update by saturday (I think) until then, Sayonara, I miss you all.
By the way, I'm writing this on a computer at the japanese language school (East West language institute) where I'll be studying for the following three weeks. Since I have a limited time to write this, I'll be brief. Even if there are so many things I would like to say.
First things first, I'm alive and OK (except for some horrifying amounts of jet lag), My host family is really nice and even though they don't speak English I kind of get by with my minor Japanese skills.
The Japanese food is weird (as expected) but manageable, Quite a lot of vegetables though.
There was an earthquake yesterday (oh noes!) but it was really small and actually kind of funny, the coming-and-going rainfalls are not as funny, but I'll survive.
This is all I can come up with on such a short notice, I'll make a proper update by saturday (I think) until then, Sayonara, I miss you all.
fredag 7 augusti 2009
And It turned Into A Ballroom Blitz
Mitt sista inlägg, i Sverige, på svenska (då jag inte kommer palla skriva nån sorts svenska utan de användbara vokalerna Å, Ä och Ö).
Det är mitt i natten, tekniskt sett samma dag som jag ska åka, men det är ingen som räknar. Eller okej, jag räknar.
Jag har flera personer på msn som jag chattar med, alla konversationer handlar indirekt om samma ämne. "Idag" sticker jag. Mina känslor är blandade, det är härligt, tungt, kul, ledsamt och väldigt kliché.
Jag kommer nog inte kunna sova inatt, alls.
Vi hörs i Japan.
Det är mitt i natten, tekniskt sett samma dag som jag ska åka, men det är ingen som räknar. Eller okej, jag räknar.
Jag har flera personer på msn som jag chattar med, alla konversationer handlar indirekt om samma ämne. "Idag" sticker jag. Mina känslor är blandade, det är härligt, tungt, kul, ledsamt och väldigt kliché.
Jag kommer nog inte kunna sova inatt, alls.
Vi hörs i Japan.
tisdag 14 juli 2009
Our Lord Has Sent You A Message
Det här blir ett av mina kortaste blogginlägg och det smärtar mig att jag inte har något att skriva om, men jag måste berätta något som är ganska viktigt och som mer eller mindre berör mina läsare.
Min resa till Japan har flyttats fram (eller är det flyttats bakåt? Jag har ingen koll) till den 7:e augusti.
Det betyder väldigt många saker, först och främst så får jag mer tid att spendera med nära & kära (speciellt kära). Det betyder också att jag kan gå på Närcon (om än ingen sovplats), sist och egentligen minst betyder det att jag kan köpa ett spel som skulle ha släppts precis när jag åkt.
Allt som allt är jag nöjd med fördröjningen, det gör mitt sommarlov längre (och har jag nämnt att det är mitt bästa sommarlov någonsin?).
Oh right, och idag kommer Yoshia till Stockholm! Gauisus dominatus omnis (Happines Rules All).
Min resa till Japan har flyttats fram (eller är det flyttats bakåt? Jag har ingen koll) till den 7:e augusti.
Det betyder väldigt många saker, först och främst så får jag mer tid att spendera med nära & kära (speciellt kära). Det betyder också att jag kan gå på Närcon (om än ingen sovplats), sist och egentligen minst betyder det att jag kan köpa ett spel som skulle ha släppts precis när jag åkt.
Allt som allt är jag nöjd med fördröjningen, det gör mitt sommarlov längre (och har jag nämnt att det är mitt bästa sommarlov någonsin?).
Oh right, och idag kommer Yoshia till Stockholm! Gauisus dominatus omnis (Happines Rules All).
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