11.25.06
Posted in Japan at 1:03 pm by Daniel
Another week goes by and I’m settling in quite well with my new host family. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but even though I live at a temple and my host father is a priest the they’re as normal as any of the other families I’ve stayed with. It’s quite a relaxing lifestyle here, which will be a nice ending to my stay in Japan. But anyway, on with last week’s events…
Last weekend wasn’t really very eventful, I spent all of Saturday just sitting at home messing around on my laptop. On Sunday afternoon I went into Osaka and met up with Kaori who was one of my Japanese teachers at Narrabundah. She’s been helping me go through some of the stuff I’ve been studying for the Japanese Proficiency Test. I tried to use my new school train ticket to get me all the way to Osaka, since that would make it cheaper as I’ve already paid for half the trip. Now normally that wouldn’t be a problem, this time however was different. Upon arriving in Osaka I put my ticket in the Fare Adjustment machine like normal expecting it to spit out a new ticket and ask me to pay another 100 yen or so. I don’t know what went wrong but the stupid thing beeped and charged me 1100 yen (about $13). Now this being a very busy Sunday afternoon in Osaka and me being just on time (verging on being late) I couldn’t be bothered to wait and ask someone at the station what was wrong so I paid up and went on. So I met up with Kaori and we spent a couple of hours drinking coffee and chatting while she laughed at all my mistakes on the practice tests. Before I’d left home I wasn’t sure how long I’d be and had told my host mum I’d send her a mail when I was coming home. Well that was good in theory, but my host sister had given me the wrong address for the mum by accident so I my mails just got returned. I wasn’t overly late, so it wasn’t a big problem, I was running right on time to get home by 6:30pm or so. But I guess Sunday just wasn’t meant to be my day with trains. I had caught a Special Express from Osaka to speed things up. Only by the time I got to Kobe I didn’t realize that the next stop was about 5 stations further down the line than I needed. So I wasted about 35 to 40 minutes coming back to the correct station. By the time I was 10 minutes from home my host mum had finally sent me a message asking me where I was. Somehow I’d managed to get screwed over by Japan Rail twice in one day. My host family thought it was rather amusing though hehe.
Monday brought me back to school again and back into regular classes for another week. Tim and I did yet more practice stuff for the big test but that’s pretty much normal now.
On Tuesday Tim and I did the listening section of the 2004 JLPT. I made a few stupid mistakes (falling asleep in the middle of the question) and only got 88%. But that’s still a damn sight better than what I get on the other sections. In the afternoon we also had our two hours of table tennis which is usually fun. This time we played doubles. We all drew out numbers from an envelope the teacher had and everyone in the bottom half of the class got paired with someone from the top half of the class (skill-wise). So that worked out quite well for me. Most of the games are pretty much decided by how bad the low level person is compared to the high level person and whether they can compensate enough; Or as I like to put it, whose retard is more retarded. Anyway, by the end of the lesson my partner somehow managed to come out as the number 2 team in the class. The only team that beat us had the school champion in it. He never seems to get bored of smashing the ball in weird ways to thwart lower level players. But that’s fine, number 2 is still better than I usually get.
Wednesday was fun… if you liked mountain climbing that is. Every year the school does a regular hike up the mountain behind the school. It’s the kind of activity that almost no school in Australia would ever do without making you sign all kinds of disclaimers and insurance forms first. The first leg of the hike was not what I would normally do if I had a choice. It was quite literally single file climbing over huge rocks up a steep mountainside. I spent the majority of the time looking at my feet to make sure I was standing on something solid and wouldn’t fall down and break my neck. The rest of the hike wasn’t so bad, just a lot of steps which was kind of tiring by the end. We went in groups of about 5 or 6 people and had to get our names signed off at a bunch of checkpoints along the way. But even so there were plenty of places where a kid could have fallen off the path and no-one would have known the difference. After about 4 hours or so we finally reached the top of the mountain, almost 1000m tall. Though we’d probably hiked over 10km by then I’d say. From there it was pretty much all downhill to the end, Arima Onsen. It’s apparently a pretty famous hot-springs area. I didn’t realize it was so close to Kobe, it only took us nearly 5 hours to walk there. From there we were allowed to go home. So I spent about an hour on a train getting home. Overall it was a pretty fun experience, though I reckon Ive walked enough to last me until the end of the year.
Luckily for me, Thursday was a National Holiday which meant I could sleep in and not have to worry about doing anything all day. Which is precisely what I did, nothing.
Which beings me to where I am now, Friday. Yet another day of regular classes at Konan. We started a new chapter in the English textbook, YAY! Oh wait, I’ve already read that section at least a few times already and twice more today. We also had economics, watching the teacher trying to explain stagflation. Trust me, that word should not be translated into Japanese, they should all be forced to learn the English pronunciation. I guess it wasn’t much better last week though, gogo Gross National Products. But it is funny watching the kids make fun of the teacher when he says something silly, which happens more often than he’d probably like. So yeah, that’s was all pretty normal.
Although I’m writing this on Friday night, I’m too lazy to plug in my laptop to the net so I wont be posting it until Saturday sometime. Oh and I’ve started my countdown. 1 week to go until Wii! I’m so stoked. Though I still haven’t decided where exactly I’m going to line up for it. All indications are for it to be very cold next Friday night. So we’ll see if I cant freeze my butt to the pavement outside some shop overnight. Then after trying to freeze myself and deprive myself of sleep I then intend to take the JLPT on the 3rd of December too. So next week should be an interesting blog entry…
But until then, Catch yas later 
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11.17.06
Posted in Japan at 5:07 pm by Daniel
or Yum Food Good if you like to spell things correctly. So yeah Im now officially living at a temple. But its kinda strange, the building is half temple and half house. Anyway my new family is all really nice. I had no idea who they were but apparently the AJS here found them for me. I found out later on that their youngest daughter is a member of the AJS and spent a year living in Ballarat. I had met her before a few times at the AJS meetings here but couldnt put a name to a face until now.
My last host mum was kinda crazy. She didnt think that all my bags would fit into their car. Im positive that they would have, but she wouldnt listen. She didnt want me to put anything on the leather seats (yet the kids bounce all over them anyway, what difference does a small bag make?) but even without that I reckon they would have fitted. So in the end she decided that it would be better to get my bags couriered over to my new house. Which meant that they had to be sent the day before I moved in order to get there the next day. I was able to get out of half a day of school on Wednesday so that I could move. My last host mum picked me up from school at about 1pm and drove me over to my new house. When we got there we all sat down and ‘chatted’ for a while. It was really kinda akward, my old host mum was trying to be polite but didnt have a clue what to say so there ended up being long silences where we all just sort of stared at each other. Eventually my old host mum decided that she would take me to update my Alien Registration Card at the local office. My new host mum told her directions to get there. She didnt listen. We drove a short way down the street, stopped the car and she looked it up in her GPS navigation thingo. Then we drove, and drove, and drove. Blindly following the stupid map. Eventually she decided that the map must be wrong so she stopped and tryed to search for where we were going again. She realized that she had input the wrong place the first time and that we’d been going completely the wrong direction. So after getting that set right we eventually managed to find the place. It would have been faster for me to just walk there in the end. So she took me back to my new place and we said goodbye. By that time my luggage had arrived so I was able to unpack my things. I was then able to spend a nice evening with my new host family watching TV and eating really good traditional style Japanese food. They told me that since its a temple and such they dont really eat much western style food, but that suits me fine.
On Thursday morning I only had to get up by 7am which was good considering how far away from school I now live. By 7:30 I was out the door and my new host father was walking me to the local station. When Id looked at the map I assumed that I would be going to a slightly further away station, but it turned out to ba different one thats a bit closer. Which is very good, the ticket is actually about 100yen cheaper from the closer station. School on Thursday was pretty much normal, nothing really interesting happened. But I did get a bento for lunch which was a first for quite a while. When school finished I walked down to the station. Before going home I had to pay my phone bill and get my address changed so the next bill is actually sent to me. Im not sure but it really seems like the people working in shops here are more helpful than those in Australia. For example when I was changing the address for my phone bill the guy in the shop almost seemed happy to fill out the form for me since I cant write the kanji for my new address. After that was done I went and bought a 1 month train ticket, cost me about $65. Its one of those magic cards too, so I only need to wave it over the sensor at the station gate and it goes beep and lets me through. Plus I can get on and off at any station between my house and school, so when I want to go shopping I dont need to buy a separate ticket, I just use my school one.
So yeah, thats about it for now. Im enjoying my new place a lot so far, especially the regular meals hehe. The only thing which is a bit annoying is internet access. They have one computer that is connected to the internet and theyve said that I can use it. But there isnt a way that I can connect my laptop to the net as far as Ive seen just yet. So that means that I wont be on MSN or Skype or any of that. I also cant respond to emails very fast unless theyre sent to my phone. But yeah, we’ll just have to see how that goes, hell I’ll probably be better off for having less internet access, who knows…
I havent taken any photos of my new place just yet but Ill be sure to post them when I do.
See yas later
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11.13.06
Posted in Japan at 2:36 pm by Daniel
Well somehow I managed to waste my last weekend pretty well. Tim had organized that we’d go hang out with some of his other friends, but they never returned his email so that fell through. I ended up spending a good portion of Saturday packing my bags in preparation for moving to a new family on Sunday. Somehow I was able to cram everything into my bags, though I did wind up with a big bag full of rubbish as well. Apparently my current host mum was supposed to call my new family to arrange how the move would happen. Well somehow even though she was supposed to call them on Friday she didnt end up doing it until Sunday morning. By which time it was too late to organize the move for that day (yesterday). As a result, my move has now been put off until Wednesday this week but I’m still not exactly sure how I’m getting to my new place. So Sunday ended up being completely wasted, I sat around at home all day which was pretty boring. Especially since I’d spent all of the day before packing all my things away. So everything except for my laptop was packed away and I really couldnt be bothered to unpack it since I’ll only have to put it away again before wednesday.
I also learnt a little bit more about my new place. Being bored on Sunday I plugged my next address into Google Maps, I found roughly the right area, but I was sure that the address was slightly wrong (probably an error on my part) because the map came up centered on a temple. So I figured they probably live accross the street or near by. Either way I knew the general area and it wasnt too far from the station or the beach. I didnt think any more of it until I came into school this morning and my advisor Sawabu-sensei asks me if I know that my next family are Monks. It took a few seconds for it to sink in what she was saying. They’re Buddhist. But not just your average run of the mill religious family. The address I’ve been given is actually that of a Buddhist Temple. So I’m not sure exactly how thats going to pan out… I was expecting to go live in just another house somewhere. But if it really is at a Temple then it could be interesting. I really will be able to claim that I’ve lived in just about all the different types of Japanese home. It doesnt really bother me if it does turn out to be a temple. I just hope its a technologically advanced temple with an internet connection :-p
So I guess my next update wont be until after I move, presuming I have easy access to internet. But I guess I’ll just have to wait and see…
Catch yas later
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11.10.06
Posted in Japan at 11:20 pm by Daniel
Just a note, I screwed up when posting this and it was meant to be posted last friday…
I’ve had a rather eventful few weeks, not all of which I’m going to write about. I’m going to be lazy and skip the part where I try to remember every last thing Ive done and then write it all here. I’m just going to do a brief bit about whats going on over in my little world at the moment.
First of all, the big news. Apparently I annoyed my host mum enough that she wants me to move. This Sunday in fact. So I’m going to probably spend a good portion of tomorrow cleaning and packing up my room. Somehow I doubt its all going to fit into my bags, but we shall have to see. The whole new host family thing is kinda old by now though. It just sucks because I have no idea what the people I’m moving in with are like or what kind of house it is, if it even is a house and the list of unanswered questions is almost endless. At least with my current place I got to meet everyone a few weeks before I moved in. The only two things I do know about my new place is their name, Yamada (great, how many Yamadas are there in Japan? too many) and their address. The address tells me that I’ll now be spending about an hour to get to school, as well as about $6 a day in train fares unless I get a school ticket. My moving house is also the reason for me writing this post, I have no idea if I’ll even be able to access the internet at my next place… But I guess all these things will be answered in time, rather sooner than I would have liked, but whatever…
In other news, Tim had a birthday. They tell me he turned 18. We had a big party and people tell me there was cake and we all had a good time. My memory is pretty fuzzy though… so yeah… It was good
I also went bowling with the AJS a few weeks ago. That was pretty good, I got what was probably a personal best with 135 points. Except there are always people out to ruin the fun, one team had 2 people get over 200 points and the other two with around 120. So yeah, my team came second, which wasnt too bad I guess, at least we had fun. I also met a guy called David who comes from Brisbane at the meeting. When we finished bowling I went with david and a few of his other friends into Namba, Osaka. Now this was on Halloween night, so there were lots of people in crazy costumes. We spent a few hours waiting for Jesus to arrive (one of davids friends). Then when he finally got there he said Hi and went into a club that we couldnt get into (no ID). So yeah, that was a rather long night, but once again rather fun.
As for school, well there was test week, and a few more classes, and other random boring school stuff. We also had our school’s ‘Culture Festival’ which basically means all the clubs get together and make stalls selling food and all the classes will do random bits of entertainment and put up exhibitions in their classrooms. Being an exchange student I somehow managed to miss out on being directly involved in any of that. But that was OK since I got to wander around all day with my camera taking random photos. I got a great video of my current host brother getting a plate full of whipped cream in the face. YouTube Link
I think thats about it for the moment, stay tuned to see how my next move goes…
See yas later
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10.19.06
Posted in Japan at 10:54 pm by Daniel
Apparently its already been a week since I last wrote anything here. So I guess that means that its once again time for me to actually write some more… Maybe this time I’ll be able to cut it down to a decent length.
Friday last week wasnt too bad in the grand scheme of things. My classes were all the usual except that I was able to go home at the start of lunch, around 12:20. The rest of my class has some test or practice test or something. I didnt really pay much attention to anything other than the fact I could leave early. So Friday afternoon was spent at home, sitting at my computer. I was even able to chat with my parents for a couple of hours on Skype.
I have also designated Saturdays as my ‘Do Nothing Day’. Since for the past few weeks I have done just that, nothing. Well unless you count sitting around at home at my laptop and just generally doing nothing much. Last Saturday continued the trend and more than likely next Saturday will also.
Sunday was ever so slightly more eventful than Saturday, at least I got out of the house, twice even. So I managed to avoid getting out of bed until around midday which was a very good start to the day. Then around 1pm I went with my host mum and Ryoken and we met up with the other brother and sister and ate lunch at some restaurant. I think it was meant to be Italian judging by all the pasta on the menu. Anyway I really didnt know what I wanted and so my host mum just chose something for me. Which suited me fine, except that I had no idea what I was getting. After a while a waitress came over to our table and asked my host mum (in Japanese) if she should explain the menu to me in english. To which my host mum told her that it was ok and we would be fine. My host mum then proceeded to try to explain what we had ordered. It went something like this: “Its this stuff with this thing on top and you have to eat it like this (makes wierd hand gestures)”. I think I would have preferred the other explanation but anyway… The meal did end up being quite good and was basically just different pastas with different sauces. After lunch I went home and bummed around for about 4 hours or so before going out again. Apparently there was some festival like thing happening in Ashiya near where I am. So we all jumped in the car and went to meet up with my younger host brother who was already there with his friends. When we met up with them they all piled into the car. We now had 7 people in a car meant for 5. Good thing 3 of them were only small We then drove around for a while looking for the festival, not very successfully. Eventually we settled for just going and eating dinner at a restaurant. All in all a rather uneventful weekend.
As for the rest of this week, well its really been rather uneventful too. I dont really have all that much to write about. We were given our schedules for next week when the rest of the school has tests. Which basically means that this Friday I finish at 12:20 again. Then next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I only have Japanese lessons until 11:20. I also get next thursday off which is nice. As for what I’ll do with all that spare time, I’m not exactly sure yet.
Today was another normal day. Though for some reason I’m not as tired as usual, maybe thats because I went to bed at midnight last night instead of the usual 1:30 to 2am. Today also saw Harvey on a plane heading back home to England for surgery on his knee. So we’re back down to only three exchange students at Konan.
Yeah… thats about it… A very uneventful week…
Oh and I’ll be returning to Australia on the 17th of January. I have my flights all booked and I’m looking forward to coming home and hitting the big reset button on Japan.
Also, a short phrase that appeared in one of our practice tests that I found rather amusing: 甘い言葉ばかり並べる人には注意した方がいい
Which in English basically translates to: Beware of those who only line up sweet words.
And now Ive run out of stuff to write… So until next time,
See yas later
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