And we're done here folks. With the Japanese Popular Media and Culture exam out of the way (went excellently thank you, forgot who Kenji Nakagawa was (author of Barefoot Gen, an excellent semi-autobiographical manga about surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima which everyone should read) it turns out) but apart from that hoping for a repeat of the mid-terms (96%, heck yeah). 

So. It's over.

That's right, technically that means that my first semester at Kansai is over. (Okay, so I still have to write that essay that was due in *cringe* two weeks ago. But I did get an extension due to the fact that; A. The film I wanted to write about was not actually available until the day before the essay was due in, and B. My stupid video player refused to play it when I tried to watch it. So there is that. But still, it is awful of me to let it get so late.)

It's very odd. I have been here for nearly four months now (that's a third of a year!) but it seems like it has been no time at all. Yet on the other side of that feeling is looking back on events that have happened here and thinking, "Whoa, that was so long ago!" But it has been fun, I just wish I had gotten around to buying a replacement camera. Oh well.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Broken Social Scene - Fucked Up Kids

Just had my Reading Test. Went much better than the speaking test because Yuki sensei is awesome and genki. For those interested, this is what I had to read:

カナダ人の留学生です。日本の大学で勉強しています。私の悩みは日本語です。今、日本人のホストファミリーとうんでいます。家族は親切ですが、みん名は私と英語を話したがっています。だから、私は「英語を話さなくちゃ」と思って、英語を話します。学校に日本人の友達がたくさんいますが、みんなの英語は私の日本語より上手です。だから、たいてい英語を使います。

Translation:

"I am a Canadian foreign student. I am studying at a Japanese university.My worry is Japanese. Currently, I am living with a Japanese host family. The family is kind, but everybody wants to talk to me in Japanese. So I think "I must talk English" and talk in English. At school I have many Japanese friends but their English is better than my Japanese so we usually speak in English."

Or near enough that.

Easy! Thankfully.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Music: Eddie Izzard - Jesus and Man

So, I just had my oral final. It could, quite honestly, have gone better than it did. Which is not to say that it went horribly, but it could have been better. In my defense Kawano sensei is absolutely terrifying and makes it hard to remember what you were going to say.

Current Music: Animal Collective - Loch Raven

Seeing as it has been upwards, just about, of a week since we trotted off to Tokyo, I thought it was about time that one posted about it. Photo-mo-graphs will have to wait until I have sifted through the numerous pictures taken by other people for the best ones, since I have none myself due to my lack of working camera.

Onwards!

THURSDAY

Thursday we were not actually in Tokyo. We left Makino for Kyoto (from where we would go to Tokyo) at about 7:45 and got the express trains to Kyoto station... meaning we got there at about half past eight. Seeing as our bus left at 10, we had plenty of time to kill and went and got noodly stuff at a nearby noodly shop. (Note: Noodly needs to be in the dictionary now if it is not already.)


Eventually the bus came! Joy and excitement filled our bodies. Oh what foolish people we were. So very foolish. The night bus, as we would soon find out, is an instrument of discomfort and torture. But we shall not dwell on that unpleasant aspect of the trip, we shall just say that next time we go to Tokyo we are not taking the night bus.

FRIDAY

We arrived in Tokyo at six in the morning. Six in the morning. I was not aware that there was a six am in the civilized world any more. We dashed into a nearby 7/11 to hijack their bathroom to clean teeth and generally stop ourselves feeling very icky indeed. And to buy hot chocolate. Mmm.

We then wandered around for  a while and finally took refuge in an underground station and ate donuts provided by Kim's host mother (whom is most awesome) to restore ourselves. Once properly fortified we set off to seek out our hostel.

I shall now take this chance to tell you that the Japanese street address system makes no darn sense at all. As a result it took us a fair while to find the place. But find it we did! We were not actually allowed to check in until 3pm. It was, at this time, about 10am. Oh joys. So we wandered off and found a delightful little bakery where we purchased breakfast in the form of tasty pastry (sorry, the rhyme was too delicious to resist, much like the pastry) and what can only be described as 'fake banana milk' (imagine those soft banana shaped and flavoured sweets you get at the cinema in liquid form).

Then we headed off to Ginza.

Ginza is, for lack of a better simile, the Oxford Street of Tokyo. The kind of place where Prada can apparently get away with charging roughly £200 for a tie. Oh what laffs.We mooched about various shops (including the Sony shop, which had numerous fancy gadgets on display) and then got lunch at some small restaurant (fun fact: It is nearly impossible to find somewhere to eat in Ginza at the height of the day).

By now it was check-in time. So we trotted back to the hostel, checked in and went comatose in bed for a good four or so hours. Upon awakening we mooched around Akihabara for a while. Sadly most of the shops were closed by now, so I could not find a cheap digital camera. But we had a poke around an arcade and a, well, a sex shop. There's no polite way of putting that, so there it is. We saw... things. Things that need not be mentioned in polite company. Needless to say, I learnt a few things in there. I might not have wanted to. But I did. Then dinner again. Not in the sex shop, clearly. That would have been weird. Oh! And Jeff got a balloon figure Mario.

SATURDAY

Saturday started with a small lie in (no matter how hard Kim grumbles about it) and then we had breakfast from the bakery again and decided to go to Ueno Park.

There were quite a few people in  Ueno Park, to put it mildly. We went to the National Museum of Western Art. It was very interesting. Quite a bit of Rodin in there. They had a Munch exhibition going on, but we didn't  go to that. After the Museum we... uh... what did we do? I think we saw the balloon man then. Who made several amusing balloon figures. We then wandered around for a bit, ended up in some random university art exhibition full of a bunch of pretentious student art rubbish and a few interesting pieces. Oh, and the shop there felt fit to charge roughly £200 for a candlestick that looks lile even I could have made it in DT at school. Most ridiculous.

We did not get to go to the National Museum because there was only 40 odd minutes left and it would have been pointless to pay to go in for that little amount of time. We did, however, get ice cream. Aum nom nom.

After the park we went to Roppongi. Roppongi has a lot of pretty lights  and Tokyo Tower. We did not go up Tokyo Tower because the queues were unbelievable. But we did gawp and ooh at it. Then we tried to go to a fetish bar (Kim's idea!) but it was closed. What a shame. I believe we also wandered around a bit and saw some fancy Christmas-ish lights and snazz. Oh, and I also fell off / through a hole.

SUNDAY

Sunday started, for the last time, at the bakery I believe, with more tasty goodness.

And, uh, then we... hmm. Oh! We went to Shibuya! And wandered around and then headed to Harajuku, home of the cosplay weirdos. Cosplay, for those unfamiliar with the term, is where people go out, in public, dressed up as characters from anime, manga, films or videogames etc. They are a bizarre bunch.

Harajuku was interesting. There were many interesting people out and about. Sadly Jeff was having no part in my suggestion that he buy and wear a Takarazuka outfit. Can't think why. One irritating thing that happened was that we got kicked out o- sorry, "asked to leave", a cafe because, despite the fact that three of us were ordering stuff, one of us was not. So, rather than serve three out of four paying customers they simply kicke- asked us to leave. Which is fantastic business sense of course.

While in Harajuku we met up with my friend Moeko, who I met when I was in Japan for the international summer camp two years ago. And boy, can people change in two years! Just as well that, as a floofy still-kinda-red-haired gaijin, I was easy to recognise, because I'd never have recognised her!  So we looked in a bunch of snazzy shops and laughed at the people in dress-up.

We then headed back to Shibuya to look for a cheapish digital camera for me to purchase. No such luck. Tokyo is, of course, very expensive, so I admitted defeat and left camera-less. We then went to have dinner. We wanted to go to what sounded suspiciously like a police themed maid cafe (again, Kim) but, alas, it was closed so we went somewhere else.

And then we went to find our bus stop, even though the bus wasn't due for another four / five hours odd. Good thing we did, because it was insanely poorly explained, and the only way we got through it was by ambushing a fellow gaijin who happened to be in the post office at the same time as us and begging him to help us. Luckily he'd been living in Japan for twenty years and managed to help us. Thank you, random gaijin! Then we sat in a coffee shop for two hours before it closed, then moved on to McDonalds (no, we did not eat) until it was time to get on the bus. Yet another uncomfortable six hours passed on the bus (personal space  dammit! Don't care how cold you are!) before we stumbled, half-dead with exhaustion, into Kyoto then back to Makino.

FIN

And that was our Tokyo escapade. Pictures will follow once I have finished picking through the 600 million pictures the other took.

Current Music: Fesit - One Evening

I have, after a mere two months, set up what is apparently called a 'blog' for my time in Japan. I shall hold off posting anything interesting in it until I get back from Tokyo on Monday. Hopefully I will have purchased a digital camera whilst there and will have photomographs to display too. If not, I shall just steal some from Amanda and Jeff.

A note on the journal name: It continues my fine tradition of fashioning names from bands. This time mashing together the bands Esiotrot and Cinderpop into the name above.

I shall finish off this entry by posting the email I wrote to all you English folks in case anyone ginds their way here who did not recieve it.

--------------------------------------------------


First things first: Apologies for failing spectacularly at keeping in contact with people. I still have several letters that I wrote over two months ago now but never posted because the idea of going to the post office and negotiating the air mail procedures in Japanese terrifies me. So, again, sorry.
 
Now, on to the actual reportage of events and life in Japan! Or rather, to begin with, the journey over here. The flight from Heathrow to Bangkok was, to be honest, unpleasant as we had the misfortune to be sat next to an aggressive drunk. Joy of joys. But after he drank himself to sleep, it was okay. We stopped over in Bangkok for eight hours and so decided to go out and see a little bit of the city. Three hours later, after eventually finding the ridiculously well hidden Baggage Lockers (down the hall, first on the right, just past the final resting place of the Holy Grail), we ventured out into Bangkok by night. 
 
Which was very hot indeed. We wandered about through the seething crowds underneath a canopy of neon signs as numerous vendors tried to hawk their wares at us, and mobile noodle vendors forced their way past people in an eggy, noodly haze. Sadly, a sudden and spectacular rainstorm cut our touristy gawking short and we had to huddle in a nearby bar (only because the bus stop was outside it, I swear!) and wait, watching the lightning turn the sky a delicate lilac colour.

The flight from Bangkok to Osaka was, thankfully, much more relaxed and enjoyable. It was spent mostly asleep.
 
The first week of living in Osaka was spent enrolling in the various things I had to enroll in, going on tours, sleeping off jet-lag (although that wasn't so bad really) and going out for meals and drinking.
 
Classes are going fine. Japanese classes occur every day for speaking, and three out of five for reading & writing. Homework every day is a bit of a drag, but it's not too onerous. Although we have small vocabulary quizzes twice a week and a kanji quiz each week. Which is less than joyous, but I cannot deny that it is making me work (and learn) more than I did at Brookes. Acamdemic classes are also interesting. I am takign Japanese Popular Media & Culture, and New Japanese Cinema 1995 - 2005. They are both very interesting courses indeed. Although, one must admit, pretty darn easy. But that's okay! Helps keep that Grade Point Average up where it needs to be. Classes also introduced me a new educational concept: the midterm. I have decided that it is evil and must be done away with as soon as possible. Quickly follwoed by the 'skit', one of which I must do next week. Such fun it shall be, I think not.
 
Now that the boring school stuff is out of the way; on to the exciting stuff!
 
While I hesitate to say this, as I fear it will ruin the sweet little chiorboy image some of you may have, there has been a fair amount of drinking going on. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. In the course of this we have found several fun little bars. One the owner of which displayed and demonstrated for us his collection of bizarre foreign instruments (from a dide- dig- them Australian blowy-tube things to a Hungarian mouth organ) and gave us free sweets. Needless to say we went back there. Also, the bar where the owner came and sat with us, giving us free ske and drinking with us, teaching us coin tricks. All very cool.
 
Apart from rampant alcoholism, several trips have been made to assorted places. Mostly wandering around Osaka and Kyoto (which is stupidly beautiful). I was also, last weekend, taken hiking. I will give you all a minute to stop laughing at the thought.
 
...
 
Done? Good. Yes, it is true. I went hiking. And it was all very enjoyable. Even if I do still find the idea of clambering over rocks when there is a perfectly good footpath in the vicinity perverse. ALso, clambering over mossy rocks, down a steep hill, in the semi-dark, is never a good idea. But we survived. And then, after returning home to shower, we went to karaoke.
 
Yes, karaoke. For the third time. That's right; I have willingly put myself in a situation where I have to sing in public three times. I'm sure you are all baffled and/or horrified at the thought. In my defence, it is actually very fun and also ll you can drink for 10 pounds. I am not ruling out the possibility that those two facts are in some way related. Possibly.
 
I suppose it's also worth mentioning, maybe, perhaps, that I moved out of dorms about a month ago and am now living in an independently rented apartment with a friend from Oxford Brookes. While dorms were not bad, and my room mate luckily very nice, the rules they insisted on still grated too much after the complete freedom of living in my own hous last year at Brookes. Stuff like friends having to leave by 10pm if they did not live in dorms, and no parties. Or alcohol. So yes, we moved out and are renting a tiny, and I mean tiny, little apartment about 5 minutes bike ride away from campus. Apart from a small cockroach problem (ew) it is very nice and fantastically cheap in comparison to dorms. We also have fairy lights in the kitchen, which is always nice.
 
Oh! And if you thought karaoke was bad enough, I joined a music circle. Now, that in and of itself is not a bad thing, but I also played live with them in the International Festival. We played Franz Ferdinand. It was great fun, even though I messed up a bit, and now we're practicing to play the Arctic Monkeys in the winter festival. They wanted me to sing at first, but I convinced them this was a Bad Idea and am now just playing bass. They also said we (me and my friend Sarah) should play The Kinks at the graduation festival (this is your fault, Dad, as I was playing that Ray Davies CD at the time). It's all good fun basically.
 
Ah, one last thing, in relation to the music circle: The Japanese drunk. The Japanese drunk is a stealthy beast. You can turn away from your Japanese friend for a split second and turn back to discover the Japanese Drunk has taken him over. One glass of beer is enough to send these guys off into beer lanket world. Which is great, because it always means I am the most sober person in the room. Always. No matter how much I may have had to drink myself. The Japanese Drunk is also far more open and amsuing than his normal counterpart. After the festival we went to a nomikai (all you can drink, and gfood, for a set price) and they were all roaringly drunk. Which meant that one guy I'd never sopken to before felt the need to inform me that he does want to talk to me, but he's too shy. When I informed him that I, too, was shy. He happily threw his arm around me and proclaimed we were Shy Boys together. Also, my friend Tomoya informing me that he loved me because we both love music, England and Japanese, before trynig to sleep on the pavement. Like I said, amusing people.
 
And I feel that that is all I have to say really. If there is anything you want to know about that I forgot to cover, let me know! All that remains to be said is goodbye for now, and I shall, hopefully, see you all at Christmas, as I am returning for the festivities! Thought you'd got rid of me hadn't you? No such luck!
 
From,
 
Matthew
 
P.S. Augh! Remembered something! I am also volunteering at a local elementary school to teach the 7/8-year-olds English. I think I was an instant hit. If the tidal wave of Japanese ankle-biters that swarm over me every time I go is anything to go by. The hair, which has not been cut in about three months now, is always of great fascination. With much unwanted patting going on. Also, the socks. For those of you not in the know, any time I wear matching socks is considered a miracle, and since we teach without shoes on, my oddness is displayed for all to see.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: The Snake The Cross The Crown - The Great American Smokeout