Trip to Asia Pacific University on Kyushu Island

What an amazing trip! From Friday afternoon until Monday I spoke Japanese almost all of the time, hung out with Koreans (who speak Japanese fluently) and Japanese and other exchange students and talked about how to make universities more exchange student friendly. All the discussions were in Japanese too, so I did my best to get my thoughts across. Because so much happened during this trip I think it'll be better if I list the best parts of it.

1. 12 hour overnight boat trip to get there that included lots of noise and alcohol being consumed in our sleeping quarters
2. slept in the same room as 50 other people (all from Ritsumeikan) on futons (mattresses) on the floor. There were no windows, AC and the lights got turned off at 11.
   It was compared to being either
   a) an animal transport to the butchers
   b) the way smugglers pack their boat with illegal immigrants
   
3. slept 2 hours in a full body massage chair because the room was too hot
4. arrived at Beppu city at 7am, followed by a 30 min bus ride to APU
5. talked about being a foreigner in a homogeneous society like Japan, in Japanese
6. learnt the rules to a Korean card game by just watching, this was followed by me taking part and eventually winning my money back. We played for 10 yen each time so overall I only won about 60 yen
7. slept in bunk beds with 7 other Koreans in my room
8. held a presentation in front of 80 people in Japanese about what students should do to break cultural boundaries
9. went to an onsen (hot spring bathing house) with the Koreans.
10. had a naked onsen, was walked in on by the female owner who "needed to dry the floors", got stared at by the Japanese men, had a guy do yoga (NAKED) about 1 m in front of my face
11. had my head bitten by a Japanese spirit (god) to remove my wrong doings
12. was filmed again by Japanese TV. this is the 3rd or 4th time now
    
13. ate the most amazing ramen
14. got back on the ferry to party more
15. searched for JJ for over 1 hour since she got drunk and disappeared. Luckily she was found in the bathroom on a different floor
16. slept 3 hours in the 50 person room
17. arrived at Kyoto and Ritsumeikan in time for my 10am class; which I attended

The sleeping arrangements on board the boat

Aibek and I on the ferry going under Osaka bridge

Joss and JJ after getting off the ferry at Kyushu

The view from APU

My Korean mates - sleeping in the guest dorms at APU

The god that bit my head - Their followers worship the healing properties of the onsen that I was at

Outside the Onsen with group (Koreans and Japanese)
-I was the token white guy- hahaha

The old and famous Onsen in Beppu, Kyushu that we visited

Not for the kids, or those without a sense of humour!

Got this video from a mate of mine. Its definitely worth a watch

Watch to the end ^_~ haha

Yakisoba and Okonomiyaki

Since I've been stuffing my face with Japanese Curry and Rice, tonkatsu (breaded pork) and every other sort of katsu available I finally got to try something different! The restaurant is called Janba and its a small local restaurant that only does this sort of food. Since it very small and it is very famous we had to stand in line outside for 45 minutes before we could even order! But it was worth the wait :)

Yakisoba is basically fried noodles and okonomiyaki is an omelet type dish with meat or seafood in it. Duncan in his infinite wisdom and use of his amazing Japanese skillz managed to order squid omelet *puke* but after giving it ago it was OK. I DID promise myself to try new things while I'm here so at least I'm keeping that promise.

Another thing that is great is that the food is cooked by the chefs right at your table. And all in all, it was about 500 yen (40 SEK) per person.

All the ingredients raw

The Main Chef dude does his thing!
Lets EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to borrow a quote from my Big Bad Buddy Ben (Munday) and say that I still have a major lack in confidence of the Japanese language. Even when "not sober" =P it's difficult to string sentences together and make sure that the particles are all in the correct place of the sentence, doing what they are supposed to.

However, one positive thing is that I keep getting praised for my pronunciation. The Japanese people that I'm speaking to are surprised to hear that I've only studied Japanese for 2 years. When I'm talking about things that I've talked about many times before they think that I'm really good and respond with the most complicated sentences. Then they realise that I'm a complete moron and don't understand a word of what they just said so they have to simplify it. But hey, my 発音 (hatsu on, pronunciation) kicks ass :) Maybe it's time to study the chapter on how to humbly accept praise from others from the chapter in the Shinnihongo book hahaha

Breakfast of Champions

Pfft, off to Uni early and no food at home. Had to boil an egg and put it on the 1 inch thick bread!!! Why is bread so thick here? And when you buy a loaf it only has 6 slices of bread. I just don't get it?! Can some one please explain it to me?

A lesson learnt

I have now learnt a valuable lesson in communication. If you start a talking to someone in good sounding, grammatically correct Japanese they will automatically assume that you can speak fluent Japanese and will start talking back at insane speeds and complicated grammar.

I went into AU to get some information on prepaid and contract phones. I started off by stating that I'm a foreigner living here in japan for a year and that I am an exchange student at Ritsumeikan university and I am interested in buying a phone and that I had some simple questions about contracts and a specific phone. Furthermore I wanted some information written in English if they had any.

All i got from the guy was a long speech about how living in japan for 1 year was not a good option for a contract phone since it would be cheaper with a 2 year contract and then I lost track of what the salesman was saying. He carried on talking about the phones specific technology (I could pick that word out of the bombardment of Japanese thrown at me) but didn't understand anything else. I was then given information written in Japanese and he said thank you and goodbye. I still don't know if he was expecting a response from me but all i could say was that unfortunately I'm not here for 2 years so i have to think about it.

So unless you want to become like this guy on the left and go insane due to the frustration of not understanding people's explanations the lesson is this:

If you are on an intermediate level of Japanese and when speaking Japanese to a Japanese person ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS start off by saying "my Japanese is not good and please speak slowly to me and use easy words that I might understand". That, or ask 英語が話せますか。 Do you speak English?

Good luck everyone!

My good friend John has also learned a lesson this week, but it relates to kanji. Check it out here.

First post

So I'm finally in Kyoto, Japan where I will be living for the next 10-11 months. It will be exciting, interesting and difficult and I'm hoping that after this time I'll be much better at speaking Japanese. I will be commenting on daily life here for all my overseas friends and family, make comments on things that happen to me, that I have witnessed or heard from others.

This blog make get a new URL if I can think of anything else. Suggestions are welcomed, so please do leave a comment regarding that if that is the case.

The blog will be personalised as soon as I get the hang of this webpage formating and I'll include pictures where possible.

Also, I've made a promise to myself: to stop being so picky about what I eat. So yes, I'll be blogging about food that I have found tasty and different and also on restaurant experiences in Kyoto. Eventually I'll have a small list of restaurants that I'll recommend with a 5 * rating system. Being an average student with NO money, price may be a factor that can increase or decrease the rating the restaurant gets.