6-20-12

I made it to Yokohama!

Sorry for taking so long to post. So for my last post I had just made it to Fukuoka. I’ve done a good amount of stuff since then, but I’ll just go over the highlights.

The first day I was there Eri’s parents took me to Moji Port and North Kyushu while Eri was at work. I saw a lot of nice scenery and we drove through the Kanmon Tunnel, the tunnel which connects Kyushu (the lower island) and Honshu (the main island).

The next few days I traveled around Fukuoka during the day while Eri was at work. Fukuoka is one of the largest cities in Japan (I think the rankings go Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Fukuoka, but don’t quote me on that), so there was a lot to see. 

I also rode the Shinkansen to Kumamoto and back two consecutive days. In Kumamoto I went and saw the castle, some gardens, and got to meet with my Japanese teacher.

Overall, I spent a little over a week at Eri’s apartment. On Friday morning, I left and headed north to Matsue. I decided to go to Matsue because I was planning to meet with my host family Sunday night and stay at their home, and I wanted to do some traveling on my own before I started my classes in Yokohama. Matsue was perfect because it was between Fukuoka and Osaka geographically, and it was in an area I’ve never visited before.

Overall, I had a great time in Matsue. I was able to relax and tried not to worry too much about packing every day with sightseeing trips. I still managed to see a lot and also went for a really nice jog along the lake the second day I was there. 

After my second day in Matsue, I headed to my host family’s house and ended up staying two nights there. I had a ton of fun. It was nice to be able to see everyone again and see how much the kids have grown up in the last two years. It was also nice to be able to stay two nights because I got to sort of “relive” a little bit of my homestay experience.

I got to Yokohama and my apartment/dorm room yesterday. It’s pretty nice. Nothing too fancy, but it definitely works. I have some stuff I need to buy since I was unable to buy it yesterday due to the typhoon. I plan on working on that today.

Alright, this was a really short blog post, but I really need to get looking over my Japanese books before my mini exam tomorrow. Until next time!

6-6-12

Here's a blurb I wrote a few days ago that I haven't gotten the chance to post until now:

My flight to Japan wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane (like always), so I ended up watching 3 or 4 movies. They had an okay movie selection, but I’m not a big movie watcher so there were only a few that seemed interesting. I watched Almost Famous, Enchanted, and Juno, all of which I’ve seen before so I knew they were pretty good. After watching those, my brain was fried but I still couldn’t sleep, so I ended up watching 21 Jump Street. I wouldn’t recommend it. I watched it knowing it was going to be dumb, but it managed to be dumber than I had imagined.

Also, on the long flight I sat next to an elderly Korean lady who was nice but kind of bossy.  She kept randomly telling me things like how to use my pillow (fold it in half so it “gives support”), and she also kept making me stop the flight attendants and give them random pieces of trash (which I know annoys them—especially when they don’t have their carts and they make special trash trips almost hourly anyways). She did give me some of her food from her meals, though, which was a plus because I was oddly hungry during the flight (and I had already eaten all of the food I packed during my first, shorter flight because I was oddly hungry then, too).

Getting through all of the customs stuff was really easy, especially since I have done it before so I’ve had practice. My bag was one of the last bags to come out at luggage claim, which made me nervous because I didn’t want to have to go through the whole ordeal of getting my luggage shipped down to Eri’s apartment. I think our plane might have landed a bit early because it was only 4:30 when I exited out into the main area of the airport. 

 

I stopped at a map quickly to get my bearings, and I am not exaggerating when I say I was looking at the map for at most 5 seconds when an airport worker came over and asked me if they could help direct me somewhere. I told them I knew where I was going, which was true, but my plan was just to go to the information counter and ask for directions anyways. I headed over to the counter and asked (in English, since the person started by asking me “How can I help you?”) where to exchange my train pass and get on the bus to my hotel. I headed down, exchanged my voucher for a real JR Rail Pass, and got to the bus station just in time to catch the 4:50 bus to my hotel.

Checking in to my hotel went smoothly. I once again talked with the worker in English. It feels weird to talk to them in Japanese because 1) my Japanese isn’t that awesome, and 2) they always talk to me in English, so it feels weird to respond in Japanese. They had no single rooms, so they gave me a double at the price I had originally booked my room at (really cheap). So I had a room with two beds. A worthless upgrade, really, but I took it as a sign that I’m going to have good luck this summer.

Once I had settled into my room, connected to the internet and sent messages to my parents and Eri telling them I was alive, drank some warm tea, and taken a shower, I went down to the lobby and bought dinner from a convenience store. I decided to treat myself and bought one of my favorite Japanese snacks (karintou), too. They had a couple restaurants that looked like they had good (and not too expensive) food, but I decided that it would be awkward to sit and eat on my own.

I ate dinner and watched tv in my room for a while. I was super tired but I wanted to stay up until a normal time before going to bed. I watched the news and understood about half of it, which I thought was a pretty big accomplishment compared to how I started at the beginning of my last visit when I couldn’t really understand anything on tv. I also watched a show about oddly shaped houses, which I found extremely interesting for no good reason. 

Around that time my phone rang. I picked it up and out of habit said “hello.” “You have phone call,” one of the front desk workers told me.  The guy was probably nervous to be talking in English, but honestly it sounded like he was really angry about me having a phone call. A little bit taken aback by the guy’s tone and completely confused as to who would be calling me, I just said “Ummm…. Okay.” And then sat there. And there was no response. So I decided to test out my Japanese and said hello in Japanese. And Eri answered, so that was good.

I talked to her for a bit and we planned out where/when to meet up, etc. She also convinced me that if I was tired I should probably just sleep. So I took her advice and fell asleep immediately after I talked to her.

I had a dream that my parents were sharing my hotel room with me and we didn’t have enough beds for the three of us, so I got a futon and slept on top of some wooden cabinets that looked like ones from one of the oddly-shaped houses I saw on tv. It was a really weird dream. I woke up at 6:30ish to an earthquake, which was cool/slightly scary. It feels like you’re in a vibrating bed or something. It was one of those really small earthquakes where I’m sure I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I wasn’t lying down in bed.

I got up and around slowly, taking my time to get ready since I knew I was in no big hurry to leave. I planned to meet Eri in Fukuoka at 6PM, meaning I technically didn’t really have to leave my hotel until about 10:30. Somehow, I still ended up being ready super early and making it on the 8AM airport shuttle bus. 

I walked around the airport for a while looking for a bookstore. When I finally found the bookstore, it ended up not even having what I wanted. (I was looking for sightseeing guides for either Kyushu or Yokohama, but they didn’t have any guides for areas in Japan—only for foreign countries. I guess that makes sense since the bookstore was in the departures area of the airport.)  

 

I headed down to the train area and got a ticket to Tokyo station. This time I spoke in Japanese, which was nice. I watched the people selling the tickets talk to people before me and noticed they tended to say “Next person please” in Japanese and then follow it by asking “How can I help you?” in English once the people got up to the counter. So I beat them to it and told them “Good morning” in Japanese as I was approaching the counter. I was rewarded by being spoken to completely in Japanese, and I’m pretty sure I came off as at least slightly coherent because the person didn’t seem worried or feel the need to re-explain everything in English after giving me my ticket. 

 

I rode the (really really nice) express train to Tokyo station and got my Shinkansen ticket to Hakata. Since I was running so far ahead of schedule, I had to specifically request a later ticket. I spent my extra time walking around the station looking for a bookstore again. I found one and was able to purchase a book about food and sightseeing in Yokohama. I looked through that as I waited for my train. From what I’ve read so far, it looks like there could be some fun stuff for me to do without having to venture too far from my apartment. That should make for some nice trips I can do even on days that I have classes.

Right now I’m riding on the train on my way to Osaka. I’ll switch to a different train in Osaka, then continue on to Hakata. I’ll meet up with Eri there, and then we’re going out to have curry for dinner. I will be glad to be able to get rid of my luggage because it’s really big and annoying. I probably could have brought a smaller bag because it’s really not full, which actually makes it more awkward because everything shifts around inside of it, making it hard to maneuver. 

 

On a random note, I’ve been using my phone to make a list of vocab words. I’ve decided that each time I look a word up, I’ll add it to a “daily list.” If I review these daily lists every night before I go to bed, I should be able to learn a good amount of words. I’m surprised I didn’t think of doing this last time I was here. I hope it proves to be a successful practice!

Well, that’s all I have for now. You can probably tell that I’m bored because I wrote a lot of stuff about nothing in particular. Sorry if it’s a boring read, but writing it has kept me entertained for the last 2 hours. I can only do Sudoku/Kenken puzzles for so long without becoming bored. If I think of anything else to write during the next four hours I might add tack it on to the end after this.

Summer in Japan 2012

I've decided to start writing in this blog again for my trip this summer. I'm not sure how much I will be able to write (because I plan on keeping myself as busy as possible), but I'll write little blurbs when I have time. My posts may not be as well organized or written with as much attention to detail as they were on my last trip, so I apologize in advance to anyone who actually reads them.

I will be spending my summer in Yokohama studying Japanese through a language program. I hope to improve to a point where I may be able to think about a career that involves Japanese. We'll see how that goes. Before the program starts, I will be travelling around Japan for a while doing some sightseeing and meeting with friends.

Because everyone needs a hag.

Phew. I've had a lot of adventures since my last post. This is probably going to be a monster post!

Recap:
Winter Semester came and went
Did a lot of stuff within that span of time
Went to Tokyo
Went to Fukuoku
Went to Awajisihma

I'll start by just saying that winter semester was so-so. The classes went really fast and I'm not sure how much I actually learned and how much was review/wasted time. On the other hand, it was nice to have classes and feel like I'm actually progressing. We used some textbooks that I'm going to try to finish before the next semester starts again, so that is a nice benefit, too.

Alright, I have a bunch of pictures from my phone, so I'm going to post them here and talk a little about each one.

So we're going in reverse order, but here's a picture from the amusement park we went to on Awajishima (shima=island). Jion decided that he wanted to play one of the shooting games, so I snapped a picture of him. An innocent small child holding a gun. Cute, right?

The joy of guns in arcades :) But anyways, I just got back last night from Awajishima last night. My host family and my host-dad's parents had originally planned to go to Okinawa, but the flights were all full, so we ended up going to Awajishima. My friend that I went with to Fukuoka laughed when I told her this and said that the only thing the same about Awajishima and Okinawa is that they both are islands. It would have been nice to go to Okinawa (shucks!) but I'm not complaining about Awajishima :)

We stayed at another Westin hotel, which my host parents keep assuring me is a US hotel and ask me if I know of it. I don't. But the hotel was extremely fancy. We got there on Saturday, spent the night, and left for home around 3 on Sunday. On Saturday we spent our time in a giant park and at the pool. I wish I could have taken a picture of Aoi and Jion at the pool because they were so cute :) For being so small, Jion was surprisingly at home in the water and kept getting angry that I was following him around. Aoi was also a pretty good swimmer. I guess I should have expected that, as both of them have swimming lessons twice a week.

I already told my mom, but when we were in the park I saw a dog competition for frisbee-catching. That was pretty cool. From what I saw, though, Ellie could definitely take on those Border Collies. Maybe I'll have to start getting her to practice seriously and then we'll have her compete. Haha.

On Sunday we went to the amusement park. It was definitely aimed at small children, but I still had a good time following the kids and the family around. There was an interesting area where they had small models of a bunch of the world's most famous sightseeing spots (Niagra Falls, the pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum, etc.) and it was interesting to hear how many of the places that my host parents have already visited. I also realized how many places that my stinking sister has been to (Hawaii, Italy, Latvia) and am a little jealous of that >:(

On the way home the traffic was heavy so we ended up stopping at my host grandparents' house to have dinner. I've been to their house a couple times before, but it was the first time I took a bath there and I'm completely jealous -- they have a giant hot tub and a TV that faces the tub in their bathroom. Crazy awesome. I felt like a celeb while I was taking my bath. Actually, that's kind of been my theme for the last two weeks -- feeling like a celeb. Our hotel was so nice in Awajishima, we had expensive sushi on Sunday and super expensive Chinese food on Saturday (at a restaurant that proudly displayed that David Beckham ate there once). Celeb treatment, right? I'll talk about that more when I talk about Fukuoka, too! ... which is now!

Here's me and my friend from Fukuoka eating sushi at one of Fukuoka's most popular sushi restaurants. The sushi there was really good, but I don't think I can eat sushi for a while now.

About a week before I went to Awajishima with my host family, I went with my friend down to Fukuoka for 5 days. Actually, the we left for Awajishima the day after I came back from Fukuoka. Fukuoka is on the island of Kyushu, the southern-most of the four main Japanese islands. My friend had a job-searching meeting down there, so she took me along and showed me life in Fukuoka.

We stayed at her family's apartment (no hotel fee!) right in the center of Fukuoka. Her parents spend most of their time in Korea -- they both are presidents of companies that deal with iron production and trade in Japan and Korea, but they have an apartment in Fukuoka for when they come back to Japan. Right now my friend's cousin is living in the apartment. Her cousin's current job is simply watching the apartment and taking care of chores and duties that my friend's parents can't do because they're in Korea. Talk about an awesome job. So the three of us did a good amount of sightseeing and eating while I was in Fukuoka.

I'm just going to list what I did.

First, I forgot my contacts so I went to a Japanese eye doctor and got free samples to help me make it through the 5 days. It was my first time actually having an eye exam and meeting a doctor in a medical setting in Japan, so it was interesting.

We ate at a really fancy buffet in a hotel one day, a nabe (remember this?) restaurant, a famous sushi restaurant, a really good French restaurant, and a ramen shop that is pretty popular in Fukuoka. Fukuoka is famous for its good food, so we spent most of our time eating.

We went to Kita-Kyushu to renew my friend's passport. She grew up in that area, so it was fun having her guide me around. The buildings in the area are pretty big, and while it definitely looks very urban, compared to Fukuoka, it is pretty much the country.

I met with two of my friend's friends, who were both really cool. One of them was actually a pharmacy major, so I got to ask her a few questions and see what Japanese pharmacy school is like.

I got my haircut! Here's a picture:


And in the process, I gave my hair stylist an English lesson! Haha. She said she wants to go to the US someday, but can't speak any English, so we had a short English lesson while she was cutting my hair.

There's probably more, but that's all that really sticks out in my head right now... We did a lot of fun things, though, and it was so relaxed and the food was so good that I really felt like I was on vacation. It was also nice to have a small break away from the craziness of my host family.

Alright, that pretty much sums up my trip stories. I still have Tokyo to write about, and I'll do that if I get time. Since I don't write my blogs very often they're starting to become too broad and I don't have a lot of time to go into the interesting details. I'll try to write some random thoughts/funny stories right now. I hope they're interesting.

Well first we'll start with an update on the kids. Aoi is lively as ever. She still thinks we're getting married, though she's started to realize that it's not going to be any time soon. And she's still pretty ill-tempered. Actually, she's the scariest small child I've ever met. I think I could make a horror movie using real-life clips of her screaming and hitting people. It would probably be entertaining.

At the amusement park the other day she decided to stamp a red stamp on her face. When I asked her what it was, she told me it was an illness. I laughed quite a bit, and I think that may have been the first time I actually laughed at something she said instead of being scared and or confused.

Now I'm going to cross over to Jion. Last night when we were driving home Jion started talking in his sleep. First he yelled at Aoi for breaking his brand new toy, then he told her to stop bullying him. Poor child. Can't even escape her when he's asleep. He's doing pretty well otherwise, though. He still has no sense of time (A couple days ago he asked me if I was going to eat breakfast when it was dinner time), but other than that he's good. One of his favorite things to do when I'm around is to have "battles" with me in which he gets a really big running start and punches my butt. It doesn't really hurt, so I'm okay with it, but sometimes it scares the crap out of me when I'm not paying attention. I'm still convinced that he is the cutest 4 year old Japanese child in Japan, though.

Yuta is doing pretty good. His classes finish up next week, he has a two-week break, and then he'll officially be a fifth-grader. He still complains about his homework a lot, and he got really sick for a couple weeks during my winter semester, but he's pretty healthy now, so that's good. For some reason, he absolutely despises going to school, which probably isn't good. Oh well. Hopefully he'll get over it eventually.

Well I can't think of much more to write, so I'll call it quits for today. Here's a couple more random pictures to finish up this post :)


My birthday cake! This was quite a while ago, but I thought I'd put it up anyways. It says Happy Birthday Eric on it. They were going to have it written in English, but they couldn't remember if my name had a 'c' or a 'k', so they ended up having it written in Japanese. And they were worried that my friends and I wouldn't be able to read it if it was written in kanji so they had it all written in hiragana.

Here's a picture from another one of my birthday parties. We were in a booth that makes your eyes bigger in the pictures, so my eyes take up pretty much half of my head. Haha.


Because everyone needs a hag. I saw this and laughed a ton. There's a lot of strange English in Japan (commonly called 'Engrish', making fun of the fact that Japanese people have a hard time telling between 'l' and 'r' sounds) but this one made me laugh a lot for some reason. I might just go back there and buy this and use it as my pencil bag next semester.

Here's a picture of nabe, one of the best Japanese foods :) The food's cooking in the pot, and there's more stuff to add when everything in the pot is gone!

That's it for now!

~ Chapter 5: Over Halfway Done ~

It's been a long time since I changed the header of the section for my blog, so I figured now would be a good time to do that.

I'm a couple weeks over halfway done with my study abroad! It's sad, but it's nice to be able to look back and see what's changed. I'll take a slightly more reflective view on my blog posts from now on out.

I'm going to start working on a new post right now, so it'll be up soon!

Winter Semester Tomorrow (!)

Hey, it's me. The person that writes this blog. Long time no see. My bad.


Just thought I'd throw a post together because I start my winter semester tomorrow (!) and I don't think I'll have much time to do much writing after that starts. The winter semester is supposed to be pretty crazy -- they cram just as much Japanese as you learn in the fall semester into one month and call it the "Intensive Winter Program." Pair that with the fact that I am taking "Intensive Japanese" classes and it means that this month is going to be double intense. Bring it.

Well, I haven't really been doing too much during my break. I've spent a lot of time meeting with one of my Japanese friends who is supposed to be "job searching," which all third year college students pretty much have to do, but she doesn't really want to. So instead we hang out. And not really hang out as much as study together at random cafes and restaurants. It's good for both of us because it gets me out of the house, which is important since no one is home all day (it's kind of lonely), and it forces her to do some studying and work on her job searching.

Other than that, I've gone to various onsens with my host family and done a little bit of studying. I didn't really study as much as I wanted to, but I did make it all of the way through one of my grammar books, which is huge. Go me.

Right now my big project is that I am planning a short trip to Tokyo in the beginning of March. The association that gave me a $4000 scholarship to study in Japan is hosting a special "job fair" for scholarship recipients only, so I really want to go there and see if I can make any good connections. There's also another guy at Kangaku that got the same scholarship, and we're pretty good friends, so we're going to go together. I told him I'd take responsibility of setting it all up, though. It's actually a lot more fun than I thought. When I went to Hakone, I let my friend do all of the planning and just kind of did what I was told. It's cool to be the one in charge this time.

I'm trying to use my connections for this trip, too. My host mom's parents are special members to a certain chain of hotels, so I'm trying to see if we can get a room at one of those hotels when we stay in Tokyo. That way it would be like $30 a night to stay at a really nice hotel, instead of staying at a creepy hostel or something. And I've already checked all of the subway maps and seen how to get to-and-from different places. It helps that I've also been to Tokyo once already so I know a little about the subways :)

Hmm what else??? I had a birthday at my house, and it was fun. Not too many people were able to come, but those who did said they enjoyed it. I think my host kids also had a lot of fun. I was actually surprised that the party consisted of 3 exchange students (including me) and 4 Japanese students.

And the other day I went to a nearby onsen with some of my Japanese friends, which was really nice. It made me realize how many interesting places I still have to visit that are close to where I live. I'll have to start exploring more!

Finally, my biggest accomplishment is that I have completely taken up reading Japanese manga. My Japanese friend that I study with a lot is a complete manga buff, so she started recommending me series that she thought I should read. Right now I'm reading one about basketball, and it's really interesting. It's a great way for me to entertain myself and increase my reading comprehension and conversation comprehension all at the same time. And I figure that once I feel like I have the hang of simple manga series, I can move onto more complicated ones, then maybe eventually get to the point where I can read novels (which is my goal). Right now the simple, focused manga series I'm reading is nice, though, because it gives me a chance to read what I learn somewhere other than in a textbook. Yay.

Alright. I think that's all I'm going to write for right now. I'll try to post during my winter semester, so keep an eye out for that! Bye!

Hakone and Bath-Time Fun

Hey. I'm back. Two days later than I promised, but whatever. No complaining on your part.

So let's see. I already talked a little with my parents and sister about my trip to Hakone, and I'm sorry to say that I don't really feel like writing a ton about it right now. I will post a couple pictures, though, and say a few things about it, so you should feel lucky (whoever you are).



Alright. First off, here's the sign at the station. The station was pretty cool because it was extremely country. Actually, on the second day of the trip I went to a station that was so country that they didn't even have an electronic ticket-taking machine. Instead you just handed the ticket to a guy standing there. That was cool. But since it was so far in the countryside, the stations didn't have heated waiting rooms and the trains didn't come very often, so we spent sufficient time freezing our butts off while waiting for the trains.



One of the train trips was to get us to an outlet mall where we got this view of Mt. Fuji. Cool, right? Speaking of the outlet mall, that was the classiest outlet mall I have ever been to in my life. I mean, at one point I saw Banana Republic and thought it was out of place because the rest of the stores were just that ridiculously expensive. Now that I think about it, I'm going pretty much in order because that was day one. Night one was at a simple Japanese-style hotel, which was pretty cool. Sorry I don't have a picture. Use your imagination or something. Alright, on to day 2.


Yep. We rode a ship that was designed to look like a pirate ship. It was pretty fun, and much nicer than riding the bus, on which I got extremely carsick. Driving along tiny, winding mountain roads on a bus is not fun. But riding on a pirate ship is fun :) After the pirate ship took us on a tour of the lake, we got on a rope way? Is that what you call it in English? Because that's what you call it in Japanese, using English words, so I feel like that's what it should be called in English. But yeah, from the ski-lift type "rope way" as I'm going to stubbornly call it, we had an awesome view of Mt. Fuji again, which was nice.

The second night was a completely pimped-out Japanese and Western hybrid hotel room which completely rocked. I wish I could have stayed there forever. It had two giant HD televisions, its own Japanese-style bath, a giant, classy bathroom, a Japanese-style sitting room... pretty much anything you can think of. Completely awesome. Then the next day we left and came home. All in all a good trip, and a great way to relax after the end of the semester craziness.


There's me not wanting to go home. Haha. But of course, I'm doing pretty well with my host family right now, too! The other day I got to read two of the books that I bought my host kids to them before bed. (On a side note, I remembered how awesome Dr. Seuss is. I mean, I think I enjoyed the books more than the little kids did.) After I finished reading the English books to Jion and Aoi, they took me down to the family bedroom (lol) and picked out a couple Japanese books and read them to me. It was really cute. Jion also told me that I had to stay with their family forever, so I lied and told him okay. He probably doesn't understand how long forever is anyways, and 5 months is pretty much forever anyways, right?

Alright, now for my funny story of the day. I saved it for last to keep you reading. First, background info: there are a bunch of toys in buckets around the bath because the kids like to play with the toys in the bath. They are squirt-guns, ships, etc. Because of this, it takes a lot of convincing to get the children out of the tub... but that doesn't have anything to do with this story. Sorry.

Okay, so yesterday I had just gotten out of the tub and put on my pajamas when Jion came in the bathroom to get his toothbrush. He walked over to the tub area, looked in, then turned and looked at me with a suspicious look in his eyes. I had no idea what he was doing until I noticed that the toys were still all over the bath area. Normally when I take a bath, if there are any toys out I pick them up for the little kids. Because I didn't pick them up this time, he accused me of playing with the toys in the tub. Unsure of how to deny it properly, I decided to play along and asked him how he knew. He told me he noticed that I had moved some of the toys, which I didn't, but I agreed. He seemed pleased to know that I also liked playing with the toys in the tub. He then told me it was okay for me to use them, so that's a plus.

And again today after I took me a bath he told me he knew that I played with the toys, and I told him to keep it a secret. I've honestly never giggled to myself so much in my life.

Well, that's all for tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Probably not. But soon!