people say that school is important. but…

hi everyone,
things are going ok, but school started again today, after a month of summer holidays, which was one of the best months of my life EVER. obviously, i'd much rather spend time with my mates then be stuck at school. i just haven't found people at school that i like to be around. so some people say that school is the most important thing about your exchange year abroad, but i disagree. school's most definetly not the most important thing. these are some of the things that are:

• going out with friends to nagoya or gifu,
• taking puricura,
• EATING!,
• karaoke,
• dirty talk with host fathers 20 years your senior,
• EATING!,
• going hiking up a nearby mountain with a guy you met at the gym just because you can
• going to tokyo for a week just because you can,
• having a day trip to osaka because it's close
• going to shikoku to try the best udon in japan because your host family simply wants to show you
• going to an interact 2 day camp, where you're like a celebrity with all the korean teenagers you meet,
• realising your japanese is incredibly informal, ALL the time!
• having old people look at you, with slight offense/surprise that you can speak informal japanese
• staying up until 5am talking entirely in japanese,
• being severely sleep deprived at rotary events
• riding your bike through endless ricefields while listening to music that reminds you of home (in a good way),
• lifting up and jumping around with your 6 year old host brothers,
• playing endless matches of Mario Kart Wii, and beating everyone else,
• complaining with the other exchange students about how strict rotary is,
• going to the gym,
• sleeping on a futon in a tatami room, 
• trying new delicious food after new delicious food,
• being the designated translator for the new exchangies that don't speak any english,
• spending hundreds of dollars and days of your life having the best conversations ever in starbucks,
• making and eating curry udon, and perfecting your recipe (add in two raw eggs to the sauce, just after "plating" to make it much better for you (it's like a tasty protein injection) and more "creamy"
• smelling fresh tatami,
• going skiing through the most incredible powder snow, and not falling over
• learning how to parallel ski from a 70 year old japanese man, who then buys you dinner
• having deep and meaningfuls with friends in onsens, completely naked. :D
• laughing at your japanese friend's crappy english,
• watching japanese tv shows and understanding them
• recognising a large amount of the japanese celebrities on tv,
• singing japanese songs in karaoke and knowing the words!,
• buying clothes you don't need in uniqlo, just because they're cheap and look great
• buying 2nd hand can't-buy-elsewhere clothes on omotosando
• buuing 2nd hand english books for $2.50 at book-off (a large japanese 2nd hand book store chain),
• reading japanese and understanding it,
• renting cds from Geo (a video-ezy/blockbuster on steroids; pronounced Gay-O) and realising that all the music you want is from japanese bands.
• having more ways of paying for things through IC cards (touch your wallet to a reader-style smart cards) than is good for my bank account, which include:
• waon (pronounced wah-on) for mcdonalds, Jusco supermarkets and family mart (the #2 convenience store)
• ponta for lawsons (#4 convenience store) and Geo (see above)
• ToICa (pronounced toy-cah) for jr train trips and vending machines/shops inside JR stations, and Lawsons (again)
• Edy (ee-dee) for other vending machines, Big Echo karaoke, Circle K/Sunkus convenience stores (#3) and other stores
• Ayuca (ah-you-cah) for Gifu Bus 
• nb: i have a love affair with IC cards. there aren't any in my town in australia, so i'm getting my dose of 21st century payment methods in japan instead.
• and making the most incredible friends ever with other rotary exchange 

among other things. :)
so while school might be the lowlight of my year in japan so far, it doesn't mean this year is bad. not at all. this year is great, and that list shows that. school's more like a time to recuperate, so that you've got the sleep in to go all out the next weekend. 
またね！

hi july, this is ben, stop running at me with your friend "second half of the year" please.

hi,
yeah, wow… it's july. as in, the seventh month of the year. i left in the first. that's crazy…
i can't believe how fast this exchange has gone so far. it's "insert superlative word here".
my english is pretty shocking atm. i'm at a point where i notice i'm using the wrong grammar, or the wrong spelling, but only AFTER i've written it. before i left, it was pretty automatic. that's fairly appalling, but my japanese is getting better, so i guess it's alright.

recently, it's gotten really hot. as in, revolting. it gets humid here, and today, it was about 35˚C, with high humidity. it doesn't do the whole "set your clock to the fact that it'll rain everyday at 5:30pm" or anything, but it's still really humid, and somedays, it'll just rain from the moment you get up, to the moment you go to bed. or sometimes, even better, the moment you leave the shopping centre, to the moment you arrive back at home, without wearing rain pants, and having to stuff notebooks down your pants, and wallets and phones into plastic fruit bags from a supermarket, so that they don't get destroyed.

so yeah, i'll just do a list of things i've done recently, and then i'll complain about school. because that's what most exchange students to japan do, right? :D

• during golden week (a long time ago… woops), I went to kanazawa, for 3 hours. we bought fish, and various other veges, and then went home again.

• i see a brand of tissues/paper towels called scottie everywhere, and it makes me laugh

I went on my school trip to Hokkaido. it was pretty good, but i felt quite alone, in that not many people in school will talk to me. but, i got to sleep on the bus, go rafting (no pictures, unfortunately), see sapporo, enjoy non-humid weather, eat lamb for the first time in 4 months, have a crash course experience in traditional ainu culture, go to a great zoo, and to an onsen, which was great fun.

enjoy some badly formatted photos, courtesy of blogspot.

 a view of sapporo

another view of sapporo

the sapporo clock tower, which is famous for a reason i don't know of.

  

first lamb in four months, on a bed of cabbage and onions, cooked on a hot plate. i didn't care how it was cooked, i just wanted to eat lamb, which i did. happy!! :)

me and mari-mokkori, a character that, for japanese people, means "hokkaido"

me wearing dear antlers, of course

the obligatory japanese deer photo

a polar bear at the asahi-yamada zoo

some japanese monkeys. apparently, japanese monkeys are the most northernmost native monkeys in the world.

some people of ainu descent. they're the original people that lived in japan; the majority of the current "japanese" didn't actually come from japan, but from mainland asia.

my host parents and I went cherry picking in a nearby prefecture about a month ago. i ate probably over a kilo of white cherries, fresh off the tree. i then got to go to a winery and cheese factory, which reminded me of adelaide/south australia quite a bit. the wine was quite different in taste though, very tailored towards the japanese palate, compared to australian/nz/european wines.

my host parents and a cherry/cherry tree.

we had the school sports festival, which involved me playing badminton fairly badly for 6 hours. these are some first years (year 10s), that, at the stage of this photo, hadn't gotten over the fact that i looked different to other people. oh the joys of a monoracial society… :/

I, and a friend went on a walk to the top of a nearby hill, where we put a new japan flag on the flag pole. this photo above was taken during the walk down again. really pretty!!

said japanese flag. the clouds behind the flag were just about to start BUCKETING down an hour after the photo was taken. it rains so much/hard here!!

i went hiking with some teachers from various schools near where i live. we went up a mountain, and i took heaps of photos. it was a great day!

this is my ALT (assistant language teacher), who teaches english at my school twice a week. he may be 40, but he'd easily be my best friend at school.

this photo is showing it's age; i'm wearing a jumper, which just hasn't happened anytime recently.

me and my aussie hat/japanese mountains. this was still taken during the hiking

there was a festival in my city, with a huge fireworks celebration. unfortunately, my iPod and great headphones got stolen from my bike that day, not cool. :/

my host nephews, and their friends, at the festival.

If you're a japanese teenager, you don't go to house parties. you don't go to pubs, or bars. school forbids them, and people just don't have enough space in their house to allow for 50 people to come, so instead, teenagers go to karaoke, and to shopping centres. we, as exchange students, are teenagers living in japan, so we too do the same things now. so here's a slightly inappropriate montage of puricura photos.

for those that don't know: puricura （プリクラ）is a japanese version of a photobooth. imagine a photobooth, and then give it an overdose of LSD, and you're getting close to what puricura is like. you take 6 photos, standing in front of a greenscreen. through a touchscreen, you select the backgrounds, and how much you want the computer algorithms to make your faces free of all blemishes and eyes larger. i've had puricura, where you couldn't see that i had a 4 day beard, and my eyes were about 1.5x the size of a 50c piece. it's incredible. this is because it's aimed entirely at japanese teenage girls, and so it sometimes has trouble with western faces, especially guys, when some puricura booths automatically add on makeup to your face (ie. rouge, eyelashes, mascara, foundation etc)

after you take the photos, you head into another booth on the side of the box. in this booth, there's another touchscreen, with two pens connected to it. here, you have about 5 minutes to annotate the photos you've taken, such as adding in comments, placing on "stickers" and the like onto your photos, while chemically sweet j-pop plays in the background. after the timer counts down, you're forced to stop "editing your photos, and you head to the front of the booth. here, while you wait for your photos to be printed out, you get to choose a variety of different ways to get your photos digitally.

in "normal" photobooths, the ones used for passport photos, you only get a physical copy. but here, it's different. japanese girls LOVE their mobile phones so much, they use them more than almost anything else in their lives. so the puricura booths have got a multitude of ways to transfer your photos to ur phone. with the photos, you can email them, transfer them through the infrared port on your phone, or use a touch panel on newer phones and booths. sometimes you'll have to compete in minigames on the touchscreen to see how many times you can receive the photos. after about 3 minutes, the photos have been printed, and are given to you on a small sheet of sticky-backed paper.

then, you go over to the cutting station, where you cut them into half, or thirds, or sevenths, or whatever, depending on how many people you've done it with. (i've done it with seven before!) then, most girls (and me) stick them onto the backs of their phones. i currently have 8 puricura photos, each the size of a postage stamp, affixed to various places on my phone, and another as the background picture on my screen.

so yeah, that's what most japanese teenagers will do if they go socialising. it's like a day isn't complete, unless you've taken puricura, as a way to seal the occasion. this weekend, i took two of them, with two different people, and it's so much fun. and all this, cost just ¥400, or A$5.40.

and that's just 5 of 6, that i took with another exchange student (not girlfriend) yesterday. so much fun!!

so yeah, that's a quick description of things i've been doing recently.

i can't really be btohered talking too much more about school; it's just not very interesting, is very strict, and i don't seem to be able to make many friends. bit of a shame it's the main thing i'm here for, but the weekends make up for it; i'm literally going out and doing something every weekend, once, if not twice.

hope everyone that's reading this isn't too pissed that i'm not doing many updates, i just can't find the energy to sit down for an hour to upload photos and think of things to write about,  a lot of the time.

cheers

ben

my everyday day at school.

hey.
i thought, instead of doing a "my life is so good right now, i did …, and … and even …!!" style post, which is a bit interesting for a couple of people, but can be a bit dragging, i thought i'd do some informational posts on a variety of topics to do with my day to day life here in Japan, especially in comparison to australia.

here's my standard day at school, in a schedule form:

• usually, i'll get up out of bed before 7:40am, and, depending on how late i am, i'll either get dressed straight away and be out the door about 5 minutes later, or have breakfast. this is pretty different to australia, where i missed breakfast all of 1 time in all of my school life (13 years!!!).
• my town has lots of public announcement style speakers, where, occasionally, they'll announce something to the whole town. i think they might also be used in the chaos that would follow a natural disaster (read: the overdue tokai-earthquake, which will probably hit pretty close to where i am), but for the most part, they're just used to play super corny (like almost everything in this country!!) music at 8am, 12pm and 6pm daily. at first, i got freaked out by this, but now it's pretty useful!! :P ) so i need to be out of the house before, during, or just slightly after the 8am music plays. that's because:
• it takes me half an hour on my bike to get to school every day. that's more than 6km, slightly uphill, twice a day, almost everyday!! so i'm a genius at multitasking on my bike now. the other day, i got my drink bottle (with screw cap lid) out of my bag, opened it, had a drink and put it back into my bag, all while riding and being careful around traffic. i seriously couldn't do that 3 months ago!!
• if i'm late to school, i'll get into some serious trouble with my host family. the japanese just have this psychological need to arrive to all things on time. so whenever i'm even a single minute late for school, my host mother gets notified (and i'll get castrated), and then i have to get about 6 teachers to stamp a sheet of paper for three consecutive days. school starts at 8:35.
• i have 6 lessons a day, punctuated by short home room before the first lesson until 8:45, and lunch at 12:30 or so. there's no recess, but all the classes have a 10 minute break in between. i still get pretty hungry in the last lesson before lunch though!!


• all the lessons go for about 45 minutes. currently, my lessons include a variety of first, second and third year english lessons (as the english that is being taught is fairly simple, so is the resultant japanese. therefore, it's probably the best class for me to learn something in all day.), calligraphy, physics (i've done the curriculum before, and my teacher knows some english, so ironically enough, i'm usually one of the best in the class!! haha) and PE. i've also got free lessons, where i'll study kanji, or new sentence structures.
• at lunch, i'll have my bento (a variety of cold japanese foods served with rice in a plastic box -- see pictures) with a couple of guys from my class. in it, i'll always have: half a thing of rice, along with some japanese style omelette (they usually have soy sauce and sugar added to them), a pickled dish, sometimes some fresh veges, and a major protein source. in the two photos to the right, up the top, in no particular order, there's: rice, brocolli, omlettes, some cooked ham, and a カレークロッケト, which is a deep fried pocket of mashed potato, with a small amount of curry in the centre. the rice might look a bit bland by itself, but i really love it. i think, almost EVERY day, since i've arrived here more than three months ago, i've had some rice. it's considered sacrilegious to add soy-sauce to the rice; it's like mooning the pope. and you don't leave any rice behind; i've read that while you might not be looked down upon for wasting money, you will be for wasting rice. it's really quite dense, so while it might not be that high in protein, the sheer bulk of it means that it takes up a large space in your stomach, keeping you full for quite a while.

After school lessons finish, i have another short home room, where notices and the like are read to us, and then we have souji. as you've most likely read, if you have any interest in japanese schools at all, instead of hiring of cleaners/janitors to clean the school after hours, the japanese just get all the students and teachers to put in 10 minutes a day into their predetermined job. it means the school stays pretty clean, and they save quite a bit of money too, i'm guessing! :) i have to clean the above ground corridor that connects the two major school buildings. but, as it's covered 24/7, and there are 4 of us sweeping everyday, it stays almost too clean, and we have nothing to sweep up, on most occasions!!

after souji, club starts for about 80% or so of the students who have decided to attend a club. they range from the "an hour and a half of mucking around, twice a week" (read: ESS; ie English Speaking Society), to the draconian, military inspired full-time bootcamp that is baseball. the baseball kids would seriously spend almost all their time playing baseball!! for example, it's currently golden week, the major week of holidays for the entire country. but, the baseball kids have practice from 8am to about 6pm, EVERY DAY!!!!! i'm not sure how they don't go on a baseball induced rampage, killing everything in sight… but, they seem to love it, so it can't be too bad; but it's not for me! :P

my club is judo, a kind of semi-traditional japanese wrestling. some things about it are pretty good, like newaza, which is a kind of glorified version of sibling scuffling/wrestling, but elbow submissions and strangle holds are good!! today, we had judo again, even though it's golden week, as well as having it yesterday too. yesterday, it went from 8:30am until midday, and today went from 9:00am till 12:30pm, but it was at another highschool.

the rundown of yesterday's (fairly normal) practice went as follows:

• warm up, mainly taiso: a type of calisthenics done at the start of every working day for most companies and the start of every physical activity for schoolkids.
• perhaps some ground technique learning, which would go for about a half hour or more
• a rotational system is used to allow everyone in the group to practice against each other, using the moves that they just learnt/relearnt/perfected in a "match" style situation.
• more techniques are practiced, followed by another match kind of thing.
• at the end of the practice, there'll sometimes be a true match, where the timer and scoring system is used, as well as the entire playing space; rather than a small fraction of it.
• then, as a cooldown, the taiso is repeated, and various bows are done to:
• the guy who created judo,
• the teacher,
• and to the other people in your class
• then, you go home!!

i'll usually be home by 6:45, where i'll have dinner and talk to my host family for a bit, have a bath and relax, ready to do it all again the next day.

so yeah, that's my standard day!! :)

my past month or so

here's a bit about my last month. note that it was originally written to some rotarians back in australia, but i thought it would be fairly interesting for everyone!

I've been on holidays for about 2/3 of march. it's spring holidays here at the moment, so everything's getting a bit warmer, and the cherry blossoms are really hitting their strides. Most days, i'll have judo club for about 3 hours in the morning, and i might do some stuff with other exchange students in one of the bigger cities near us once every two weeks or so. at other times, i might just be at home, watching tv, or relaxing.

I've moved host family too. my first host family seemed to be the typical rotarian family; they were in their 60s, had children not living at home, and were still working. for the two months i was living with them, i had a great time, but it was occasionally a little difficult, because there was never anybody close to my age that i could talk to.

but now, i'm on to my second host family. they're a bit younger, and they've still got two of their four kids living at home, in their twenties. I get along with my host brother really well. we have some similar interests, and he doesn't seem to mind including me in things that he's doing. it's amazing how easy it is to bond over some multiplayer Mario Kart!! :)

School drags at times, especially because I can't understand any of it, and all i am able to do is study some not-so-riveting japanese grammar text books. but Judo, which i have about 6 times a week, for three hours, is probably the highlight of my day. i've made some good friends with people from there, and I always look forward to it. I'm quite a bit stronger than most of the guys there, but my technique isn't good yet, so on occasions, i can be quite easily beaten by a 45kg girl 15cm shorter than me! :D

I go to Rotary meetings every week. they seem to be much more formal than the marion rotary club's meetings, and there is only one female member, who seems to be little more than a "rotary-wife" to the rest of the men there. it would be quite unheard of for the next president of the club to be a woman, as is happening in Marion soon! there isn't anything similar to inner-wheel. I think the wives quite enjoy having the night free! :) the food is a different meal each week, but the serving sizes are actually microscopic. as i am often coming straight from judo and a whole day of school without afternoon tea in between, I'll usually eat two to three of these small entree-sized plates. :D it's almost become a running joke with me and the rotarians, that i'll eat about 3x as much as everyone else! that's the standard rotary dinner to the right.

i haven't been getting home sick at all, which is good.  in fact, that's not quite true. i do miss some things. mainly woolworths extra-soft hot cross buns, bakers delight italian style white bread loaves, olives, lamb, pasta and a the large range of cereals that you australians enjoy. here, in comparison, the choice of cereals here is about the same as the choice of tofu at the average australian supermarket. so not much! :)

i'm not really missing my family; i went over with the mind-set that: i will be away, but the year will go so quickly, so i shouldn't spend several months pining over how much i miss my family. once i get back, i'll have far too much time to talk to them then! I talk to them about once a week, often more so, and emails and facebook are a great way to keep in contact, without really having to keep in contact! also, i actually even forgot it was easter, until i received an email from my sister!

I went to tokyo all of last week, where I went shopping and bought some great clothes, two days in disneyland, some great time with my uncle and aunty and their kids, and did some things in tokyo that i'd been wanting to do for a long time, such as having a coffee over the shibuya crossing (left)

this past weekend, i also got to go to my host brother's wedding, which was a great experience. it's not every day you get to see about 25 women dressed meticulously in traditional kimonos scrabbling to be the ones to catch the bouquet of flowers thrown by the bride!! :) also of note is that in most japanese weddings, the actual wedding ceremony is quite christian orientated, even though almost no-one here is actually christian! also, in japan, most brides will change several times over the day. the bride started out in a long, elaborate white western style dress, then into a slightly more simple pink western style dress for half of the reception, and then a different more trendy outfit for the evening! this is of course in conjunction with the 3 different dresses, (two traditional japanese, one western) that she wore in the photo session 2 weeks before hand! she would have spent so much time getting changed that day! thankfully, the groom doesn't usually change. the wedding ceremony itself was fairly simple, as was most of the wedding reception, which was completely devoid of dancing, but did include some karaoke!

i'm a bad exchange student.

what to say of exchange atm?
words can't really describe it. sometimes, it's quite uneventful, especially now that the "novelty" of being in japan has worn off. it's not that it's boring here a lot of the time, but i just sometimes don't really have much to do.

recently, school's sort of finished for the school year, so now, i'm on spring holiday (i think! :D). i've been doing quite a bit with the two other exchange students from australia, which are living quite close to me, so that's been awesome. we've been going into Gifu and Nagoya, and going shopping, and just generally having a great time. but buses are expenisve here. it costs me about ¥2 200 to get to Nagoya and back, and about ¥1500 to get to gifu and back, so it's not exactly cheap to go anywhere… :/

for the last two days, and tomorrow, i've got work experience. yes, that's right; the guy who can barely communicate in japanese is working. i'm going to the town hall (like the local government equivalent), where i'm working for the public relations section. i've been doing some stuff in english, like writing emails supplying information to tourists interested in coming to visit Seki, among other things, so it's been really quite interesting. I wish i got paid though! :)

Japanese? it's going ok. i know i'm spending far too much time reading, listening, talking and watching things in English though. it just gets a bit difficult, when you're just like "I need to be able to understand things!!", so you retreat into a language you can understand, and hence, your japanese doesn't improve. once school starts back up again, though, i think it will start improving again. well, that's not quite true. it's always improving, my vocab's getting better, i'm slowly learning how to use a few new sentence structures, and my understanding is going up trhough the roof, but i don't think my outgoing communication skills overall have gotten a HUGE amount better. with time, they'll improve even more. hopefully… :D


also, if you're going to japan, or really, anywhere, on exchange in the next 100 years, read this.


get ready for packing 101.
i just wrote this for a girl leaving for japan next week, and i thought it might help some other people out too. here's the original blog post that this post is related to: http://jennyinjapan49.blogspot.com/2010/03/lists-are-your-friends.html . it would probably make more sense to read that post first, but my take on it is still really useful, i feel.

call the airline that you're flying with, and ask them to give you extra baggage allowance, after mentioning the fact that you are an exchange student. you'll often be given a couple of extra kilos free baggage allowance. you'll thank yourself in the long run!!

DON'T BUY CLOTHES before you leave. you'll hate yourself. seriously; don't. buy them here instead. there are way more interesting clothes here than anything you can find back at home, they'll be souvenirs you'll actually use, and it gives you something to do!! and yes, unless you're 7 feet tall and 200kg, the clothes will fit you. i'm a 75kg 6ft guy, and a large percentage (~40%) of guys around my age are the same height or taller than me.

same for shoes. just bring one pair of trainers (invaluable for days of walking), a pair of more fashionable shoes that you are still able to walk in, and a pair of very formal shoes that you can wear in formal situations. i'm not sure what the prices are for shoes where you are, but they're cheap here, compared to australia. also, unless your feet are like 30cm long (1' long), you should be able to find shoes here. if your feet are a  similar size to your friends of asian heritage, you should be fine!! and then, buy more shoes when you arrive!! they're a pain to pack, they take up lots of room, and it's EASY to find awesome shoes here that i would buy in a moment!!

depending on how good your japanese is, maybe don't bring many learning materials, except for kanji cards with english translations. everything else is easy to find here.

don't go over the top with formal clothes. i brought 4 polos and 4 button shirts; i've worn them all of no times so far, and i've been here for 2 months already. bring lots of t-shirts, because that's what you'll actually be wearing, and also a good water-proof raincoat. currently, it's really quite rainy and windy; it's often freezing and inconvenient on your bike, i can assure you!! also bring some gloves that you can wear while on your bike/walking. it might be starting to warm up a little now, but it's still way too cold to ride without gloves, i feel.

make sure you have a VERY simple way to access money from canada or where-ever you are. every 7-11 here has an international ATM, so you can get money from most cards; but there are usually fees attached, if you're not careful. so talk to your bank, and see what can be done. i didn't bring ANY travelers cheques with me, i just get money from my account out of an ATM at the 7-11 near me, and it works perfectly.

bring the crappy kitchy canadian/american/australian stuff that you wouldn't think that your host family would like. they'll bloody lap it up!! like, my host family is still using fridge magnets from exchange students that came more than 10 years ago. olympic themed things would probably go down well too. but make sure it's presented nicely. the presentation almost matters more than the gift itself!!

buy some skype credit before you leave, and set up a skype address with phone numbers of loved ones already put in, (physical home numbers etc) so that you contact people easily once you arrive, for cheap. I had a half hour phone convo from skype to a landline in australia for half an hour, and it cost less than a dollar. bargain.

let me know if you need more info via a comment.

cheers,
have an awesome time in japan everyone!!


btw, some one asked about how i'm going in school. i can't understand almost anything any teacher says the class. so, most of the time, i goof off a little, stare aimlessly around the classroom/out the window, read harry potter (in english! :D), or study grammar. it's riveting stuff… :) school itself is probably the most boring part of my week (especially during english grammar lessons, japanese lessons, and maths), but club, where i've joined judo is awesome. i love just being able to beat the majority of the people at something, and i've made some friends, which is great. boring school lessons might be the lowlight of my day, but judo for 2.5 hours afterwards is probably the highlight! :) it doesn't hurt that it helps burn ridiculous amounts of energy; there's barely a practice that goes by without me being SERIOUSLY exhausted from a exercise.

btw, don't plan to be homesick. you're just setting yourself up for failure. you're only going on exchange like this once; you can't get this time back again. if you spend it whining and pining, trying to stay in contact with the people you actively decided to leave for a year, then why did you go on exchange? you'll see them way too soon again anyway. just enjoy the experience while you're here, because before you know it, you WILL be home again, and wishing you had spent more time actually doing things.

that's my take on it. :)

i might not be homesick, but i do definitely miss my caity… :)
cheers
xx

school and not

the last few weeks have been really good. school's been a definite change though. previously, before coming to japan, i thought i had a pretty good idea of how japanese school worked. i was wrong. yet, at the same time, i was pretty much on the ball in regards to some things. some things though are really strange. for example, in japan, they don't have recess. they only have 10 minutes between lessons, and a 40 minute lunch. so by the end of the third lesson, you're both starving and drained, because you haven't had an opportunity to relax for long enough. i definitely prefer the australian method atm, but it is nice to not have to go from one class STRAIGHT to the next, and to instead have a bit of a break.

at school, i was a bit of a super star, but now it's starting to wear off, which is nice. for a week, i was riding some serious novelty factor, but now, as i become more of an everyday thing, it's not so prevalent, which is nice. but the japanese teenager doesn't seem to gawk or react to a novelty person in the same way that an australian would. i think australians in general would at least attempt to talk/communicate with them, and maybe mention to their friends as an aside a difference between them and the novelty person. here, though, it's more like: 1) a japanese girl sees me. 2) she quickly mentions to her friends that i'm there, and they start screaming/giggling. 3) they wave/laugh towards me, if they're brave enough. 4) i wave back, sending them into more hysterics. on occasion, they'll actually approach me, and attempt to say "herro! my name is *insert VERY forgettable name here*" (btw, japanese names are SO hard to remember! i can remember all of about 4 people's names in the whole school atm, because they all sound so similar. many girl's names end in "ko" and are 6 letters long, as are many of the boy's names, minus the "ko".) it's pretty funny watching the girl's reactions, but sometimes, it get's a little repetitive, but still fun. the boys often want to shake my hand, and will usually go "OOHH! BAEN!!" no body's able to pronounce my name here… it's kind of funny, especially as it's not like it's very difficult for them, not something like liam or laela etc…

because the year 12s had exams this week, i had three days off from tuesday till thursday, which was great. on tuesday, i went on a very scenic route to Mago, the main/only shopping mall in Seki, on my mama chari. i also went to the only gym in my city with my host brother. it's strange; in adelaide, there are heaps of gyms, all of which you must pay for. but here, there's only ONE gym in the whole of the city (yes, i know i'm in a much smaller city here; but there's more then 11 gyms in Adelaide!!) and it's free. as in, if you're a citizen of the city, you can go to this gym as often as you'd like, for nothing, ever. all you must do first is go to a safety demonstration where they show you how to use the equipment properly. so, that's what i went to on tuesday evening.

on wednesday, it was my birthday, so i relaxed for most of the morning, had some nice lunch (i think it was a japanese version of chinese fried rice, some miso soup and salad). then, i went to the gym, and when i came home again later, i relaxed, and then called my australian counsellor, my grandparents and my own parents, before having dinner.

omg it was so good!! there was sashimi (tuna and squid sashimi is like heaven from the sea!!!), purple-y rice with soy beans, a cooked vegetable dish with sauce, ebi-furai (literally: prawn fry, or deep fried battered prawns, which are so good!!) and ham-furai (fried centimetre thick pieces of ham battered and fried, delicious!!). there was also salad, which, like everything else made by my host-mother, was delicious!!! :D

i was given a REALLY nice wallet by my host parents, which was ridiculously unnecessary, and a nice beanie from my host brother, which i plan to use next month when i go skiing again!! :D

btw, i went skiing on sunday by myself. i got up at sparrow (like 5:15am) and caught a bus from seki to hirugano and was skiing by 9:00! :D the actual ski resort was fairly small, (ie two 1km long lifts equivalent) but the weather was INCREDIBLE, and the powder snow was to die for. i even made myself a powder snow angel! haha it definitely beat 35˚C in Adelaide!

the weather here atm is really cold. i literally breathe out steam in my room in the mornings and evenings, it's so cold, mainly because no-body in all of japan has ever heard of central heating. instead, they all use these piss-weak gas space heaters, and so everyone's freezing, all the time, unless they're next to the "stove" (as they call them, except that japanese people can't pronounce "v" sounds, so it comes out "stobe"! haha), when they're too hot. i think i'm getting used to it, and it was snowing for a couple of days last week, which was awesome, and most definietly made up for it! if you're my friend on facebook, check out my photos, i believe they're worth your time! :D

anyway… i think i'll go to bed now. the olympic ceremony is from 11am japan time, so i'm getting up for that. can't wait!!
let me know what you want to hear more of, and i might put it in next time, if i can be bothered.

btw, to leave you with a smile: i was in a drug store the other day looking for gum, but i had some real trouble choosing which type i should get. i mean, do i go for "Black and Black"? or maybe "SPASH"?? or how about "XYLISH"??? some of the names of products, t-shirts and shops here are absolutely ridiculous, including a shop called "crack step" and a tshirt that simply said: "parent's are sure hard to raise". ok then… :D

the long fabled "hello from japan!!" post

yes, it's that time of my life, where I'm able to write the previously mentioned, very important, "HELLO FROM JAPAN!!" post, so here goes.

in a couple of words: I'm having an awesome time.

my host family is really kind and down to earth. i had read some things about japanese families in general about rules that every single person seems to follow, but they seem to be a bit lenient, which is great. i'm talking about japanese specific bathing rules etc, not major "oh, you can break every rotary D if you want…" hehehe

my host mother and father are in their early 60s, and my host father is still working. We live in Seki, a small city of around 100 000 people, and it's a nice town, but SUPER cold. like, as in, it has never been; and never will be this cold in Adelaide ever. in my family, when it's cold in the morning, you breathe out mist, it's called "dragon breath". well, i have that in my room!! there's a heater, but i don't want to be using heaps of energy, wracking up their energy bill this early.

japanese language wise, i'm improving. currently, i feel as though i'm only getting better at the things i already know; ie i'm SO much better at plain form, after speaking almost entirely in plain form for the last few days. but i'm not actually currently learning any new sentence structures or the like. but soon, i hope that will change. to give you an example of how my japanese is currently, when i watch ANY kind of tv, be it those strange panel shows that you never see anywhere else but japan, or a drama, or the news (which is the hardest) i might understand the occasional word, but nowhere NEAR the level i need to be to understand it. i can have broken conversations with my host mother quite easily, but they're almost constantly punctuated with *new word i don't know* はどういみですか？ (what is the meaning of *new word i don't know*)

i'm currently sitting next to my host nephew, who's 9 years old, and he's SOO good at reading. the book he might take an hour to read; i still might not be able to read at the end of the year!!

i've done some stuff already with my host family. with my host mum, i went to uniqlo, where i bought a super nice polar fleece hoodie for only ¥980, which is about AUD$12, so an absolute bargain. just before, i went to a paper museum, where i got to make some traditional japanese style paper using traditional techniques, and to the library, where i borrowed some super basic picture books, and some bilingual manga. doraemon ftw! :D

the food is awesome!! a note to the potential future exchange student heading to japan. your host family WILL be worried that you won't eat japanese food, and THEY WILL feel frustration towards you if you don't like the majority of the food they eat. and yes, they WILL tell their friends and other exchange students once you have left about how you didn't like the majority of their food. so maybe, if you despise fish, tofu and rice, you should maybe choose somewhere else to go. but if you like japanese food, welcome to heaven. it's incredible. the stuff my hostmum can pull together in a couple of minutes is better than almost every japanese food you can buy anywhere in australia. but toast? the japanese have never, and will never do bread properly. their toast is strangely fat/tall, super white and soft, and has way too much sugar. so, i'm not sure what american bread is like, but for an australian who's used to good quality italian infused bakery bread, it doesn't compare.

i'm about to go do some kanji practice with my 7 year old host nephew, so i'll post more tomorrow, or in the next few days. but i don't start school until monday, so don't hold out for that just yet!
cheers