I had to write a study report for the people givng me my scholarship. As it basically sums up the year (classes are done. I’m on holiday now), i’ll post it here too for prospective students attending Kyoto next year. Please bear in mind that it will hopefully have changed by the time you get there. If not, god help you.

Obaku

            As a town, Obaku does not have a lot going on for university students, at least not in my experience. There is a Kyoto university campus in Obaku, but it is solely for post-graduate study and therefore irrelevant to me. There are convenience stores between five to ten minutes away by foot, depending which one you go to, a super market about the same distance away, and a large department store a little further on. There are a primary, middle, and high school surrounding the dormitory, so there are a lot of students at the shops or on the train.

            The dormitory itself is quite nice. Each room is en suite, and has a small cooker and sink. The cooker only has on hob though, so making meals that have noodles or rice in them is a pain. Each room comes with air conditioning, but the walls are not insulated so it gets very cold during winter and very hot during summer. Each room has a balcony, though since I was on the ground floor I had a lot of bugs on mine a lot of the time. There is a common room, with chairs, a television, and a ping pong table, but it closes at 10pm, which was annoying since people who did not finish university until 6pm would not be home until about 8pm.

Living in Obaku/Kyoto

            The commute I think was far too great a distance to have a university dormitory. Provided you arrived when a train was arriving, it takes about 40 minutes to get from Obaku station to Demachiyanagi station, the one closest to university, and there is a 10-minute walk to and from both stations. In the same time, I can get to the centre of Osaka, using the same line. The commute was a real bother when trying to arrange outings with friends or having to wake up very early to make it to morning classes. Dormitories for Japanese students are literally across the street from the main campus, though admittedly they are a lot more expensive.

            Kyoto itself is very pretty. I enjoy going to temples and shrines, and the city has a much more relaxed feeling to it than Tokyo does. The food is absolutely fantastic, although the current exchange rate makes it more expensive than Manchester by quite a bit. I love Japan’s open-all-hours restaurants and convenience stores, and am not looking forward to returning to England where shops close at 5pm.

            I understand why, but as a foreigner I am constantly being looked at. With less than 5% of the population being foreigners, it is understandable why the Japanese will stare at foreigners, especially European ones. Surprisingly, older Japanese people seem to have less fear of me than the younger Japanese do, and children do not understand society well enough to know when to stop staring at all. I have become accustomed to it, and frankly if staring at me is all they are going to do, it’s fine when compared to what could happen to me in Manchester, but it is still extremely annoying when people actually move carriages on the train to get away from me, or school students begin talking about me assuming I don’t understand Japanese. But, again, it is understandable, and sometimes older people will start conversations with me which is nice (even if I cannot follow their Kansai accent very well).

Kyoto University and Courses

            Kyoto University is quite pretty, but there always seemed to be some construction going on so I could not get a complete view of the campus. I was enrolled on a course called KUINEP, the Kyoto University International Exchange Programme, and most of my lectures took place in the International Building. The Foreign Student Division (FSD) has, on the whole, been very helpful during my stay here. They helped me with opening a bank account and other things, and were always ready to help.

            Each semester, we had to do a minimum of 6 courses, taught in English through one 1½ hour class each week. On top of that, there was an optional Japanese Language course, itself a further 6 classes a week. Now, I should say first that I understand that KUINEP is set up to cater to as many international students as possible, who are all doing different degrees, and that this is all my personal opinion as a student doing Japanese as a degree, but the way the course is set up was a big problem for me.

            Since my degree is Japanese, I came to Japan to learn Japanese. The information booklets we received from Kyoto university before arrival had suggested that the language classes could be used as part of the minimum requirement for the course (6 classes). However, myself and my classmates found out when we arrived that they were not. This meant that we would have to take 6 classes, in English, before we could think about our own degrees, as Manchester had stated that we had to meet all requirements put forth by Kyoto university as well. We asked if we could focus on language classes and maybe take 2 or 3 KUINEP classes, much like how our degree is set up in Manchester (and in Leeds, a student from there told me). Another student, from Canada and one of the only other students doing a degree in Japanese, was allowed to do what we proposed, but we were rejected. Firmly. At the same time, we were assigned a language class by the FSD, and were not allowed to change it. Unfortunately, the class we had been assigned to covered things we had already learnt, but we could not change language class either. I understand that most international students on the KUINEP course are not language majors, but a little flexibility would not have hurt.

            The English-taught KUINEP classes were mostly based around economics or politics. There were a couple of classes about Japanese society and culture, but on the whole they focused on international economics and philosophy. Even classes with ‘Japanese’ in the course title talked solely about international affairs, and when they said ‘international’, they actually almost always meant American. Some of the classes were fun, some were boring. The workload was very high, though. This second semester, I have had to write the equivalent of almost two dissertations of the length I will have to write next year for my final year at Manchester. Even if I had solely taken classes in Manchester that were not language classes, such as Japanese history or culture, the total amount of coursework expected of me for a full year would still be lower than the amount I received each semester in Kyoto. Since I also needed to study Japanese for my degree in Manchester (through self-study), the amount of work I had to do for Kyoto, which had little/no bearing on my degree, was astounding. As a native English speaker, I cannot imagine how much harder it must have been for the other international students whose first language is not English.

            The KUINEP programme is relatively new, maybe 3 years, so I understand that they are still working out the kinks, but it was annoying that I could not focus my efforts on my degree. Again, though, this is merely the opinion of one student on the programme and relates merely to my personal desires and expectations. As an international exchange programme in a non-English speaking country, it may be a good course for students of other degrees, but a little more flexibility could have made my time on the programme a lot easier.

Without A Paddle

So on Wednesday we had Oli’s going away party. There was supposed to be about 15 people coming but a paultry 5 turned up. Undaunted, we went off to get some honest-to-goodness yakiniku tabe-nomi-houdai (all ye can eat ‘n’ drink). Predictably, it was awsome. Then we went to Kamogawa (the river) and got even more pissed there since it was still pretty warm. For some reason we ended up practising karate and tae kwon do at one point, but the best bit was when SPARTAN 372 Jana decided to go for a walk in the river. Obviously, we had to follow.

Since it wasn’t in England, we weren’t worried aboot needles or glass, but the stones were always in annoyingly pointy positions. Small-footed Jana seemed to have no problems, even doing it walking backwards at one point. Show off. There was also bowling, but only 2 games this time ‘cause the girls obviously weren’t as enthusiastic aboot it as we were. Typically, the ‘get a strike this go and it’s free drinks’ special came up on Oli’s turn again. He failed.

Overall, a damn good night. Have fun in Italy you bastard!

Checklist

So yesterday a few of us from Manchester, who’re still in the country and in the greatest, bestest region of Japan; the Kinki region (oh yeah, i’m in the Kinki part of Japan), met up with some of our teachers from back home who were doing the rounds/using our residence abroad as an excuse to go to Japan on the university funds (and why not, really). Attending were Jonathan, Peter, and Richard (Jonathan’s acquaintance and one of Andy’s teachers in Kobe) on the teacher front, with myself, Jana, Andy, Elvyra, Simona, Karren, and Kiko holding up the student side. We went to an izakaya which didn’t show the prices on the menu; a good sign.

Much merriment ensued. We got the bitching about Kyodai out of the way quite fast, and got onto testing all the wierd food on the menu. I expected it to be slightly awkward drinking with my teachers, as you would, but they’re such down-to-earth buggers that the feeling only lasted about half a drink. Kiko proposed her future career as a politician, Richard and Andy argued over being a Red or a Blue fan since they’re both from Manchester, and veryone generally (I think) had fun.

By the way, i’ve now eaten, among other things, the following ‘delicasies’:

Sea urchin (foul),

Horse (s’aight),

Whale (lot of blubber, bit like smoked ham i guess),

and Jellyfish (chewy).

All that’s left now really is turtle soup…

So on Sunday we had to check-out by 10, which meant we (/I) then had to drag our (/my) noticably fuller bags to the station, then to Tokyo station, then through to the other side of the station, and find a coin locker to dump them in. Suitably sweaty by 11am, we grabbed some oyakodon at a Nakau before heading to see the Imperial park.

The park, predictably, was very pretty, even if one section of the wall had fallen down. It was also rediculously sunny and there were bugger all trees for shade, so my arms are now burnt.

From the park we headed to Yasakuni shrine, the shrine for the war-dead, because it was close. There was a market going on full of old stuff from the war, which was pretty interesting.

From there we escaped back to Akiba, where they have buildings aplenty with a/c. We stopped in a bookstore and, because i’d managed to break Oli yesterday, I got to watch in joy as he baught book after book. From there, we toured some of the back streets, which had more stores for me to waste money in. We stopped at a belt-serving sushi bar, stuffed ourselves on raw fish and wasabi, and meandered around Akiba some more before going back to Tokyo station to meet Hippy for tea.

We ate in a Thai place in the station, which did a pretty mean (if small) green curry, and then went to a cafe to lounge aboot before our bus. The place closed before then, so we said goodbye to Hippy and went to a bar by the bus pick-up point, which had a tv showing a J-drama.

Then came the night bus. It was as cramped as the first one, only this time I got the aisle seat at leats. The bugger stopped every two hours again, and coupled with all the sweat we’d accumulated during the day, it was a somewhat unpleasant ride. Honestly, just fork out the cash for a shinkansen if given the choice; it may cost twice as much, but it wont fuck up your body clock and is comfier. I’d rather spend 9 hours on the local train during the day than ride another night bus.

We arrived back in Kyoto around 6:30. I made it back to Oubaku, somehow, slept ‘til 5pm, then spent all night writing a 5 page report on philosophy. Unfortunately, since it’s Kyodai, that class was all about American philosphy, which is boring as buggery to me and reeks of propaganda.

Honestly, we’ve learnt more about America this year than we have Japan, since all the ‘international’ studies inevitably just talk about America here.

But anyway, Tokyo was ace, though not for my wallet, and night busses SUCK ASS. ijou.

H’okay, now that i’m recovered from the nightbus and next-morning report deadline, time to crack on.

Tokyo Day 2 (Saturday)

For some reason, we didn’t go to bed until midnight, but I still got a good night’s sleep before Oli had to get up for a date with some chick he knew. I dozed for a bit before getting up and hopping on a train to Akihabara (Akiba for short)to kil time before he was finished. We met up at Ginza station at midday, and went to the German beer hall-stle place I went to with Stef & his parents all them years ago for some lunch. For some reason they’d closed off one of the main roads and set up chairs & table in the middle of the road, so it was nice and quite outside, even if it was rediculously hot. We stopped by Toy Park, before heading to the Sony building.

Basically, it was 4-5 floors of ‘look how awsome 3D is!’ crap, even though everybody is already fed up with 3D. The camera section was cool ‘cause they let use test out the new models. They can automatically filter out all but one colour now, like red, which I thought was epic. The mp3 players were interesting primarily because my zen is starting to die so i’m keeping my eyes open, and the Vaio laptops looked cool. There are even models with a numlock keypad built in!

Then we moved on to Harajuku, strolled down the street, walked to Condomania, and decided to walk back to Shibuya. Along the way Oli stopped in a shoe shop ‘cause he’d been saying he needed some new shoes, and spent half an hour agonising over different batman and superman shoes before I finally broke him and he bought some. Yeah, I broke his will, finally.

After that we nipped back to Asakusa for a shower ebfore heading back to Shibuya to meet some classmates and friends; Alex, Zuza, Carys, Rosa, Kenji & Hippy. We went to an Izakaya with a touchscreen menu (which apparently they do have in Kyoto but it was my first time seeing one and I felt like a hick) and half-Kyoto-price alcohol. For the 8 of us it came to aboot 13,000Y for 2 hours, which we can manage with half the people in half the time in Kyoto.

We reminisced, we bitched, we theorised, we laughed, we sighed. It was great. Hadn’t seen most of them in over a year, but it didn’t feel like it.

After that we headed back to l’hostel to prepare for our last day and the dreaded night bus.

So today Oli & I arrived in Tokyo.

At 7am.

Night busses suck. For some reason likely to remain eternally unbeknownst to me, I thought I could sleep on the bus, despite a proved track record of being unable to manage more than half an hour in a chair-shaped seat. We left, get this, a whopping TEN MINUTES LATE (!!!!) from Kyoto station at 23:50. We had booked the seat-type one level up from basic, as it was still fairly cheap and we’re both quite tall, but it was still cramped.

Being the last in the queue, a few seconds after we got on the bus and noticing the curtains were already drawn, they drew some curtains at the front of the bus, sectioning us all off. I’ll be honest, a small part of me wondered/hoped we had just entered battle royale. But alas, no such fun. The bus stopped every 2 hours for toilet breaks, and when it did so it turned all the lights on suddenly like it was casting flare or something, meaning even if I had managed to get to sleep, it wouldn’t have been for very long anyway.

So we arrived at Tokyo station at 7am, me at this point gone 22 hours without sleep (okay, 20 minutes of half-sleep on the bus), and head over to Asakusa, where our hostel, Asakusa Smile, was allegedly located. We arrived a little after 8, but the reception wasn’t opening ‘til 9, so we went for breakfast and then to wait at McDonalds. Oli got his coffee, and I had a coke since they don’t do ice cream on the breakfast menu…I got 10 mins sleep.

We drop our stuff off at 9, unloading our clothes and laptops, and are told, predictably, to come back at 3 to check in. We meandre over to Asakusa market (the international building on the corner is gone, Stef), where we got accosted by a monk handing out golden tokens. After taking one, he asks if you can write your name in his book, only it’s a trap! Bastard thought that since we accepted the ‘good luck’ charm, we were entitled to donate to his temple. Sneaky bastards were only targeting foreigners as well.

But anyway, then we went to Akihabara because, well, it’s (more than) half the reason we came. We actually missed the stop initially ‘cause we both fell asleep just before it, but we got off one stop later. The first place we stopped at was a gaming nerd’s mecca/graveyard, full of second hand games and consoles from as far back as you can imagine. He never admitted it, but Oli probably popped wood in there. He spent ages agonising over whether to buy a gamecube or a DS, bless his little nerdy soul (to be fair, the gamecube was 500Y [c. £4]).

From then on it was mostly my time as we encroached upon all the anime/manga stores. What was funny was Oli’s reacton to the cute girls handing out fliers for the maid cafes they worked at while in uniform. He honestly reverted to a little boy; all meek and quite, taking the flier but unable to even nod his head in thanks he was too shy. He got some ridicule for that, since it happened every time we passed on of them. The best was when one invited us to her cafe in English, and I swear he flinched a little…

Anyhail, my feet hurt like a motherfucker. Tomorrow is lots of sightseeing and then over to Shibuya to see some Manchester classmates for a drink, which will be fun!

Oh, If given the chance again, i’d proabbly pick the shinkansen to travel by. The extra cost almost outweighs the lack of comfort and messed up body clock the night bus brings. I would even rather take the local trains (9 hours with 4 transfers, or something).

Also, it’s not 18:45, which puts me at about 34 hours since I last properly slept. Get in.

Oh, yes, the JLPT was on Sunday. I had absolutely no chance of passing it since i’ve had to put my degree on hold for the last 2 months to do all the bullcrap assignments for kyoto uni, but since i’d paid, and I really didn’t want to do the absolute skull-fuck waste of time that was the Japanese economy & business report (will give an honest, no BS assessment of the kyodai courses probably sometime next week [probable offensive language warning]), I went along anyway because hey, might as well test the noose before the test in September, right?

Oh, JLPT means Japanese Language Proficieny Test. It’s not part of either the kyodai or manchester programme, it’s a seperate, government thing (like the english proficiency test for foreigners we have back home). Only we need to pass it while we’re here or take an exam of ‘equal difficulty’ when we get back to manchester. Level 1 is highest, 5 is lowest, we have to pass level 2.

It consisted of two papers; second was a listening paper, the first was basically a mix of everything else bar speaking (vocab, kanji, grammar, reading, etc.). The first, which i’m simply calling the reading paper for ease, was a fair bastard. Kanji are my weak point, so that section sucked, but it also made the questions harder to even under-goddamn-stand. Since the paper is multiple choice, much guesswork ensued.

The second half of the reading paper was all reading. Except there were only 2, maybe 3 questions associated with each article, meaning there were aboot 10 different articles we had to read, and the entire exam was only 1hr 45min. I don’t think I actually even made an educated guess for any of the reading questions; I just picked the answers with the most kanji, assuming the closer it was to Chinese the more likely it was to relate to the damn articles (which probably could have passed for a news article in China themselves). And that’s not even an exaggeration; I genuinly stopped reading the articles after the second one because there wasn’t enough time.

After that hollocaust of the soul was over, we had short break, where we could all go outside and curse the gods, before the listening paper began.

I honestly thought they had mixed the tapes when the first question came up. Surely it couldn’t be this easy?! I had to hold myself back from laughing aloud for most of the exam, especially when the recorded said “lets take a short break” and started playing music. The disparity between the difficulty of the two exams was rediculous, but highlights a very important fact about the Japanese language;

NOBODY uses the grammar you learn after about half way through second year in spoken, everyday Japanese. All you’re learning after that (though, obviously, there are rare exceptions since there isn’t a single curriculum that teaches you in an organised fashion) are the obscure, only-ever-used-in-writing grammar points that, if you say to a Japanese person, will just get you corrected (after a strange look) by them with the grammar you learnt in first year.  Triple negative sentence-endings? Never hear ‘em. The worst it really gets on that subject is nakerebanaranai, which we learnt in first year, and you just learn to translate as ‘must’ if you ever hear a double negative. I have learnt more useful Japanese this year studying a Kansai-dialect book than I have from the JLPT books.

Anyway, the listening was piss, but failing any of the sections results in a fail overall, so oh well. Gonna be a fun summer…

The weekend before last I was invited by Mayuko to see animal cruelty under the guise of religion. I have no idea what it was for or celebrated (probably a good fishing harvest or something), but basically it involved tying some black birds that apparently are related to penguins, and having them hunt for fish at night in the river.

The catch, wonderfully, is that when they do catch something, the maiden holding their rope hauls them onto the boat, grabs the base of its neck, shouts “Okay, it’s going to throw up!”, and wrings her hand up his throat, forcing the fish inside back up and out. The bird is then thrown back into the river where its brethrin are.

The best part was that it was done at night, so there was a massive log fire lanterd hanging over the edge of the boat, right above the birds. I’m assuming it was to attract fish, but the thing got so close to the birds at one point that the maiden actually shouted “They’re going to burn! They’re going to burn!”

This continued for about an hour.

Pictures are on facebook. There are videos, but i’m too lazy to upload them since they’re like 4 minutes each, facebook gets pissy about file size, and it also re-sizes the videos smaller, which doesn’t help when it’s already mostly just black with an orange fireball in the middle.

Anyway, off to Tokyo until Monday, and since i’ll have a report due in the next day (aka. needs starting after I get back) at 10am, expect more uploads and, possibly, even another blog.

oooooooh.

It’s been just over 3 years since I switched my degree over to Japanese, and apart from the East Asian department, Manchester seems to think i’m still in ChemEng.

To whit; thank you so much Manchester for the email congratulating me on finishing my final exams and graduating, I can’t wait to take advantage of being an alumni and getting reduced prices at Manchester uni restaurants. The fact that I haven’t taken any of the exams for ChemEng since semester 1 of first year didn’t tick you off that I maight not actually be attending? let alone that I might pass?

Now I have to go and email Manchester to check if i’m still on Japanese again, and honestly i’m half expecting a diploma to arrive in the post or something…

So yeah, apparently i’ve graduated! w00t! no more essays for m- wait…

I can’t believe I forgot to post about this. About….two weeks ago, Oli and I/ I and Oli went to eat lunch by the river. Now, before you assault me for it, yes, we went to McDonnalds, and no, I don’t care. First time bitches, first time (excluding their 100Y MrWhippeys, which are just good economical sense, really)! We were doing a comparative study of the locales around uni for price-to-content-to-quality purposes, and it was the big M’s turn, alright?!

Anyhoo, we sat down. I pull out my double big mac (the burgers here are wafer thin, cut a guy some slack!), and Oli whips out his teriyaki chicken. I start to bend down, when all of a sudden i feel something soft brush my face and the world goes black as automated processes shut the world out of vision. All i can hear is the whoosh whoosh of wings.

Wait, wings?! The world returns, and my peripherals espy something happening to my left, where our Oli was sat. I turned and lo, I did see bird. Big bird. and more than one of the buggers. It seems to wriggle around in mid-air for a second, practically in Oli’s face, before flying off again, trailed by its bretherin. I watch them a while then shift my sight back to our Oli, to see him stock-still, mouth agape, staring and the wreckage his lunch has become.

I laughed for about 10 minutes. The falcon had completely ignored my beef mountain and tried to have a go at half-inching Oli’s chicken delight, succeeding only in sending half of it to the floor, where, as we were out it nature, no something-second rule could be applied.

Apparently, he still flinches when he sees their shadows on the ground, circling him.

I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s taken me 7 months to go to a yakiniku-tabehoudai (tabehoudai being all you can eat, and yakiniku being, literaly, grilled/bbq meat). The place was also all you can drink, which just made it better.

Now it’s probably a good idea to tell you that in Japan, the portions are small (and not just by my standards). Also, the Japanese tend not to be able to hold their drink and so need very little to get wasted. As such, waiters have a habit of only visiting you once every 15 or so minutes. Myself, Oli & Arne thought ‘well fuck that’ and probably pissed the place off no end by constantly ordering.

The meat, at least, was constant, and by george it was fucking delicious. The drinks, not so quick. We had to order 2-3 times each round before we finally got anything. Bastards.

But oh well, it was damned good and I got to spend the night with Alex 0.5. That means I met a slightly taller, more broad-shouldered, half-canadian version of our Alex Newall, which is to say he had short-ish hair, a leather jacket, strutted like he owned not only the place but everyone in it, but also went american-outraged at the slightest thing.

The best bit came when we were stood outside the place after paying, and Alex 0.5 was asking people, in Japanese, for a lighter. Eventually he stopped a family with kids, and the dad offered his up. His children, bless their xenophobic hearts, started crying at the sight of us 6ft+ barbarians, and the dad let Alex 0.5 keep the lighter.

It was hilarious.

Then we went to the river and chatted with people I didn’t know, before trying to get into a club but failing because Oli left his ID at home, so us 2, Midori & Chikaku went to karaoke. God bless more nomi-houdai & badly synched music.

Then we went for a ramen at a little place we know that currently holds the title for best ramen at affordable prices (2nd in total including the expensive places), AND gives more than 1 piece of pork.

manzoku ya.

I’ll probably get scolded by Niki again for this, but i’m currently uploading a sh- lot of pictures of sakura, cherry blossoms. I only actually managed to see Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion Temple) and the Philosoper’s Path next to it (some guys went for a 2km walk and became ‘enlightened’ etc. etc.. What that means is there’s a 2km stretch of riverbed lined with sakura), as the weather was conspiring against us and being ‘clougy with showers’ on the days when we weren’t in uni, and now they’re dying.

Oh well.

In other news, apparently we had radioactive rain last night (and probably the stuff that fell today was too). Suck on that, acid rain. Maybe i’ll try and collect some to save on electricity at night…

And finally, they’ve gotten rid of the 500ml coke cans at uni. This may only really appeal to one person’s sense of horror, but basically my vision’s a little lightish red atm. Bastards.

Peace and Love.

Which means, rather more politely, ‘Honey i’m hoooome!’

So yes, i’m back in Japan. Oubaku Dorm is a ghost town, now, as pretty much only myself, Jana and Sam the American are left. Most Europeans were ordered home by their governments, but England merely said ‘you might wanna avoid Tokyo’ and apparently only evacuated its nationals as far as Hong Kong, which is rather hilarious.

While I was back, I didn’t really do much. Alex, being the only one around, kept me company a lot, which involved a LOT of nerding, and Matt came from Leeds for a Sunday to see me and celebrate our Alex’s birthday. I saw Emma for lunch before she ran off to start her dissertation due in next week, and the next weekend I ventured South to see our Stef, or more accurately Stef’s 360, and played Reach for 2 days, re-buying Live and now thoroughly regretting playing the game as i’m going to miss it for the next half a year. Sophie decided she wanted to interrupt my special time with Stef’s 360, and so I did manage to see the inside of a TGI Fridays. I was then cockblocked by my baby sister and best friend, as apparently i’m not allowed to sleep with the waitress who was obviously interested, for the simple reason that she was ‘happy and smiling’. Typical.

The Family, that being my parents, other sister, and the dogs, were all bored of my return within minutes, as is usual, and there was barely any tailwagging at all. We ate heartily, as dad is now getting paid again, and I got to pick most of the meals, which meant spaghetti, steak, pizza, and a good old fashioned turkey sandwich. Oh, and a chippy, obviously.

I enjoyed being back home, of course, but there’s something…convenient about Japan that had me missing it the whole time. Everywhere being open at reasonable hours like 2am, for one. Thick meat and English bread were a bonus, but there’s something to be said for a good gyuudon. Needless to say, it’s good to be back (and honestly i’m a little suprised there wasn’t any fuss about it from the parents, though if they can say okay to sending one daughter to Uganda during a civil war, and another to Vietnam with all the unexploded mines, a little radiation’s not all that much to worry about, really).

The flight was less arduous than on the way back to England, which was 13 hours to France and sucked ass. This one was only 10.5 hours from Amsterdam, and far more interesting. When we landed in Amsterdam, the baby behind me and left an isle just CHUNDERED EVERYWHERE. Less than an hour out of Amsterdam, an old lady collapsed at the back of the plane and i thought we’d get redirected.

But i’m back, and it WAS sunny until Friday. On Friday, it rained all day, ruining my plans to go see some temples and such while the Sakura are blooming, which I almost missed. Fortunately Oli, in typical girlfriend fashion, took me to the theatre instead. We got to see Miyako, or what would more easily be labelled as Geisha for the purposes of explaining to everyone who doesn’t do Japanese, and spend an hour with a dead arse, but it was free. How exactly Oli managed to get the tickets from his Granny neighbour i’m unaware of, and quite happy to remain so.

University lectures started on Friday, but the ones i’m planning on attending start on Monday. If i’m lucky, I could get Thursday and Friday off, but we’ll see how interesting they are next week. For now, i’m going to sit in bed with my cold, drinking tea and praising my sister for reminding me that I could bring some Tetleys back with me before I left.

Good girl.

The Up: I have my results for the first semester. With a low of 79 and a high of 91, 85.8% (technically 85 and 1/12, which is 0.8 and a third. I rounded) overall, which is yay.

The Down: It doesn’t count for my degree at all. All I needed to do was pass (60%). I mean, yeah, I didn’t exactly put much effort in, and it was all a mahusive waste of time, but still…

Oh, and i’m coming home for a bit. It feels a bit like i’m running away, but there’s only so many times a parent can skype ‘nevertheless’, ‘just in case’ or ‘we’d feel better if’, no matter how subtly or with silence, at you before anyone would feel like a dick for not being scared of something that won’t happen and cave into their unspoken demand that you return to their side. Eventually ‘meh’ just won’t cut it as an arguement anymore and, honestly, I miss my dogs.

Unfortunately, I have no real arguement besides the fact that the nuke reactor problem ISN’T A GODDAMN PROBLEM THE RADIATION WON’T EVEN GET TO TOKYO, and that flights are an effort, so home I go.

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=566406782

For the few of you who still read these; i) commendable, 2) i’ll be home from the 23rd to the 5th, bitches.

God I hurt.

So yesterday was the rearranged Karaoke from the other day. typically, it was a massive pain in the ass to organise students into arriving somewhere at the same time. The group eventually ended up as me, Oli, Oli’s housemate ‘Hippy’, Cecile, and her boyfriend Justin. Somewhat refreshingly, people arrived within 15 minutes of the appointed time, which is a somewhat novel experience for me.

Anyway, we went. Being my first karaoke experience, I wasn’t entirely sure what music would be available that I could actually sing (we are in Japan, after all), but the selection wasn’t too bad. Thankfully Justin likes similar music to me and Oli, so Linkin Park, Nickelback, Evanescence, and even Disturbed made an appearance. Naturally, Oli & I did Bohemian Rhapsody and many other ‘British’ songs popped up.

It was a lot of fun, but i’m not entirely sure how I felt about the whole thing, for one single reason: none of the English songs were the originals. I’m assuming copyright was involved, but some Japanese person(s) sang the songs instead, and even some of the tunes were altered to become, as Oli put it, ‘Karaoke-ised’. This played hell with a lot of the timings, and the on screen prompt being too quick certainly didn’t help matters.

But, as I said, it was a blast. It was nomihoudai too, which was epic. For some reason, Cecile paid for the whole thing despite our protests, so it turned out rather cheap in the end (though we’ll pay her back eventually).

Then Cecile and Justin left, as they had to leave the hotel the next morning. Since I had missed the last train, and I don’t sleep well when intoxicated anyway, Oli & Hippy agreed to stay out with me until the trains started again (which I thought was around 7:30am. It had just gone midnight). We went for some food, and then decided to go bowling. Why? Because we could.

Let me just say now, 6 games of bowling is damn painful. It lasted about three and a half hours, with Oli and myself both winning one each, and drawing two with each other. Hippy had two wins, and since he had the highest overall score, we decided he won.

Periodically, I think about every hour and a half, there’s a chance to win a round of drinks or something if your next bowl is a strike. Somehow, both occasions we went through were on Oli’s turn, and we both feel that we were lucky he didn’t get a gutter-ball at the time, what with everybody paying attention and us being the only gaijins there.

Also, fuck the pin on the far right. I got so many 9’s it’s unreal, and nearly every time it was that fucker that was left. I had a stint of five 9’s in a row (and not like getting 5 and then 4, i’m talking getting 9 on the first bowl, and zero on the second because the ball is designed to curve left naturally, which makes hitting that pin a bitch), four of which were that goddamn pin, and the other one was the pin on the far left instead, which pissed me off even more.

Anyway, that took us to 4:30, so we went to the station to see how long I had left, and found out the trains start again at 5, so Oli & Hippy went home while I went for some supper to kill half an hour.

…that fucking pin…

Not that any of you have been paying attention, but it’s been 2 months since I last posted, so I figured I should get to it before I gets even longer and I have to try and remember even further than yesterday than I do now.

Akemashite omedetou

Means ‘Happy New Year’. I had a lot of people asking if i’d found a party or club to go to for new years, and I got tired of expaining it, but that aint how it works here. New years in Japan is religious, and not like religious like Christmas, I mean religious. Just before the year ends, Buddhist temples ring their bells 108 times, one for each of the mortal ‘sins’, to cleanse us for the coming year. On new years day, people do hatsumoude, which is the first shrine visit of the year, to pray to the Shinto kami for good luck in the coming year. They do other stuff, like eat certain foods and listen to Ludwig’s 9th, but those are the main two. The famous shrines see millions of people in the first few days of the new years.

For some reason, it never occured to me that I could go and watch the bells being rung, so I waited at home for them to begin. Unfortunately, I was counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums when midnight rolled round and didn’t hear them. w00t.

I did my shrine visit on the 2nd, at the Heian shrine in Kyoto. Our Alex and our Kenji were in town (Kenji’s family lives in the Kansai prefecture) so me and Jana went with them, which was cool. It was still quite crowded, but the food stalls were damn fine, if expensive as highway buggery.

The Grid

The next big thing I can be bothered remembering was going to see Tron with Oli and Cecile. Odly enough, the 3D-ness didn’t give me a headache this time. must be the decent-quality glasses.

As Tron, it’s shit.

As a soundtrack, it’s epic.

Currahee

Then not a lot happened for a while, until Mayuko invited Jana and I to a sake brewery in chuushojima (where I change trains to get to uni/Kyoto). It was cool, with a free can of sake, and some nice tasters. We also found a kappa museum, which was interesting.

Then we went to Fushimi-Inari-taisha.

Working backwards, which is usually a good tactic for translating Japanese, that’s the main shrine dedicated to Inari located in Fushimi. Inari is the fox kami of, originally, rice and harvest, but now also commerce (money). As such, there are tens of thousands of shrines dedicated to him, especially in the business areas. It’s famous for it 10,000+ torii, those red ‘gates’, that line the 4km path up a mountain. If you look at my fb photos, there should be about 100 pictures of those damn things.

Needless to say, I regretted wearing jeans that day.

…..pub?

Then on Saturday we went to the Pig again. Cecile’s boyfriend is in town so she wanted to take him for the ‘British experience’. Oli and I wanted fish & chips.

We were going to go to karaoke, ritual social suicide in England but a favoured pastime here in Japan, afterwards, but Patrick wanted to go home and cook schnitzel, and Cecile came ill from all the smoke (still legal here) and we postponed it until a later date.

yeeeessss, but

Finally we come to today. Oli decided the morning could be used for something other than sleeping, so had me in Sukiya at 11. He showed up at 11-mother-fucking-30. It was also sunny today, but in my semi-comatose state I had double layered under my coat, so it was hot as well.

After some Odin-blessed gyuudon, we headed to Sanjo with the intent of studying some Japanese at the International Centre where we teach on Wednesdays. We got there, and it was closed.

We ended up in a cafe, him with a coffee, me with a Mr. Whippy (wh00p), and got to it. Ater going over a bit of grammar, Oli-boy nipped downstairs to steal a newspaper from a bin, came back up, and suggested we try and translate a bit of it.

What followed was an hour and a half reenactment of Mondays after lunch from last year, and quite frankly taxed parts of my brain usually granted rest during holiday periods so hard they’re demanding a pay rise and cake.

After that, we meandered through Sanjo for a bit before Oli caved and said it was food time. We went to an all you can eat pizza place we had heard aboot.

It was epic.

A curiously definitive 893Y gets you all you can eat pizza, spaghetti, pasta, spice potato chip things, curry and salad. I also got a coke the size of an L-cup at the cinema. Oli decided he was up for punishment, and ate a piece of squid pizza, which was inked black. Apparently, not that good.

And, since it’s Japan/ not England, there was always a pizza on each section of the table.