Unemployment: The Treaclesphere

Looking for a job feels like moving through treacle. But this is no everyday, run of the mill, up to the knees treacle. Oh no, this is treacle of such volume that you are swimming in the stuff. You are deep under water... under treacle. Whatever. You can't even tell which way is up anymore. You might be swimming further down. 'Oh no' I hear you cry. 'None of the treacle got in my hair did it?' My dear, there is treacle everywhere. Everywhere. So when you do make your way to the surface, a horrific treacle monster, arising for the deep, drawn up by the clarion cry of 'We would like to interview you...' you reach out a treacle covered hand for them to shake, look deep in their eyes and you see their treaclephobia. Their hatred or disregard of the entreacled. You see a thousand echoes of 'Well I was never entreacled. They should have tried harder' and you know they have forgotten. They were once one of the treacle sisterhood. They all were. No matter how hard they try to hide it.

And people throw you ropes. But some of the ropes are also made of treacle and as they melt into the waves you hear them whisper 'unpaid internship' 'do it for the experience' 'maybe if you changed the font on your CV...' The recently escaped from the treacle, and some who still understand are helpful, but they are on tiny islands in the treacle quagmire and have no room for you, they hold you above the surface and let you breath for a bit, but you are terrified of dragging them back in and eventually have to dive back in.

Sometimes you hear people from the distant islands of the safely employed muttering about how much they love treacle and they wish they had more time to indulge and that those still in it are lucky and can do everything they want. But you don't hear it for long, because you are suddenly attacked by the treacle sharks and have to fend them off with treacley hands

And sometimes you meet fellow inmates of the treaclesphere and you hold on to each other and help each other move through the sticky murky gloop but one by one they find their own islands and you are left there, still wondering if there is an island for you in the world, or if treacle is your future and maybe you should just accept that and give up now...

And all you can dream about is getting the most dull, filing, data entry job that will mean showering off the treacle and being free to move again and- OH NO! THE TREACLE SQUID HAS AWOKEN! IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME, SAVE YOURSELVES!

The Overly Long Catch-up Post

Ahah, I shouldn’t make promises to myself about regular updates on this blog… it just makes me feel guilty when I forget to write anything for a while…

So, my last post was waaaaay back in November. Since then, a lot has happened (obviously), including a visit back to England for Christmas. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was trying to write a novel. November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, and it's a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. I actually managed to complete it, for the first time, although the end result was pretty dire. Still, I now know what I want it to be like, and there will no doubt be updates as I try to beat my ideas into some sort of coherent shape.

Anyways, my year in Japan is over, and I am finally back in England (actually, I’ve been back for a month), and I even have a summer job! So, quick recap of the last few months in Japan: I went to language classes, it was dull, especially when the sensei split me and Ohannah up and put us in different sections. This was definitely not inspired in any way by our penchant for sitting next to each other and having entire conversations in my notebook… I had an awesome lecturer for Religion in Japan, who may have been my favourite lecturer of my entire university career, which may have also lead to me figuring out what I want to write my dissertation on!

The Japanese school year begins in April, so in February we said goodbye to the Japanese 4^th years, and then on the 2^nd April we welcomed the new first years. They were all awesome, and got really involved in Global House and I miss them all :(

My birthday in April was a bit of a failday, although my unitmates gave me the cutest cake ever, and I got other tasty foods. Like rainbow pancakes!

Super cute cake, right? One of the nicest tasting ones I've ever eaten too!

In May, I went to Kyoto and Nara with Hannah, which was my parent’s birthday present to me, and I got to play with the wild-but-almost-tame deer. The bruise on my side from where one of them bit me for not feeding it fast enough only lasted a couple of days… we also couch surfed for the second night, which was awesome – the guy who owns the house doesn’t live there, but he lets couch surfers stay there for free for as long as there is space available. There are little thank you messages to him written all over the walls – was really very awesome!

This was my favourite deer. He let me pet him for ages

Couch Surfing - Seriously these were all over all the walls. There were even some on the ceiling when people ran out of room.

Back in Tokyo, I managed to pass Japanese! Though it was a very close thing… strangely enough, the day after my last exam was the first day I felt like I can do this language thing. The last week in Japan, I was chatting with random people in shops etc like I can actually speak Japanese or something! Crazy, I know!

After exams we only had a week before we got kicked out of the dorms and I had to come home, but we definitely made the most of it, doing a lot of the things we had been planning. For example me and Hannah went to Ikebukuro for the day, cosplaying as Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara (an anime set in Ikebukuro). Cosplaying in public is kinda not something people do in Japan, but by this point I didn't really care if I shocked the random Japanese passersby with being unJapanese. Something I learned very early on is that no matter how hard I try, I would never be thought of as anything other than a foreigner and you have a lot more fun if you don't try to pretend to be something you're not. So yeah, cosplaying in public. Was awesome.

What you can't see is the friends of that Japanese school girl  who were staring at us and proclaiming how 'kakkoi' (cool) we were :P

Anyways, the being able to speak Japanese thing was quite helpful when it came to getting to the airport. Some people reading this who were around on Facebook at that time might remember the panic I managed to work myself into. I meant to put up the whole saga earlier, but I was so relieved to actually be home that I forgot. Sooo, I will try to keep it brief!

My flight was going to be at 9.45 am from Narita airport. This meant I would have to get there by 8.45 at the very latest. It takes two hours to travel from the university I was in to the airport. However, the first part of the journey had to be done by bus, bike or walking. Needless to say, with the amount of stuff I was bringing home, bus was the only option. Problem number 1 – the first bus was going to be far too late – 7.30 or 8am or something. There was no way I would be able to take it and still get there in time. Problem number 2 – I did not have the money to get a hotel room for the night or something in a place that would be closer to the airport.

With my typical genius, I therefore decided to go to Narita airport the night before and stay overnight in the building. I checked the website (albeit briefly), and couldn’t find anything about the time they opened/closed, so I assumed that they would be open all night, like Stanstead in London and, I presume, London Heathrow.

My friend Hannah had very kindly offered to help me get all my stuff onto the train that would take me direct to Narita, so off we set. Problem number 3 – we were leaving at the same time as one of the last parties in Tsuru – the social room of the dorm, and so of course, everyone wanted to say goodbye, hug me and all that – what can I say, I’m awesome and everyone loves me! This wasn’t technically a problem, except that it made me a bit later than I had planned and caused more problems later.

So! We got to the bus stop, having missed the bus I wanted to get, but with another one only 15 minutes wait away. It was at this point that my archery bag decided that it hated me and that the zip was going to break. I fixed it up with pin badges and started sewing it shut when the bus arrived. We got on the bus with minimal difficulties, and then soon we were at Musashi-sakai station, the closest one to our university. Hannah had agreed to help me to Nippori station, where I would change on to my final train of the journey. I used the hour long train ride to Nippori to finish sewing my archery bag back together. We arrived at Nippori, and I realised that I hadn’t remembered to check the route to the airport before I had left. Nevermind! I had done this journey before, and there were easy to follow signs all around! So, we went to the platform that said it would take me to Narita, and Hannah helped me onto the train. Right, the time at this point was about 11.30pm, so I was aware this was probably the last train, and that it might not actually go all the way to Narita. It didn’t, but there was another one that did, and I managed to do that change surprisingly easily with all my stuff. I arrived at Narita station at about 1am. Problem number 4 – Narita station and Narita Airport are NOT THE SAME PLACE. If I had arrived an hour earlier, I would have been able to get a train from there to the airport, but having been delayed, the next train was going to be at 6am.

No worries! I thought, I’ll sit outside the station and wait until then. I am a strong independent female who can cope even when I make stupid mistakes! Needless to say, I had been sat on my suitcase for less than a minute when I started to cry. What can I say? It was late, I was tired, I wanted to get home, and I was annoyed at myself. Plus, my arms hurt from lugging heavy bags around.

Thinking back, the expressions on the faces of the Japanese people hurrying by were priceless. They clearly had no idea what to make of this strange foreign girl crying her eyes out at about 1.30am by a station, surrounded by suitcases.

It actually wasn’t long before this random old guy came up and asked me what was wrong. Bearing in mind all the conversations I had that night were in Japanese, I feel quite proud of myself. I managed to explain the mistake I had made that that I just wanted to get to the airport, but the trains wouldn’t start until 6am. Bless him, he tried really hard to calm me down and stop me from crying, and then offered to pay for me to have a taxi ride to the airport. He said he wouldn’t be able to give me more than 3000yen – about £25, because he needed the rest of the cash he had on him to get home. The taxi driver we spoke to said that the taxi would be 4000yen, but I did at least have 1000, although I think only just, so I would be able to do it.

Off we set, with me having thanked the old guy profusely. While in the taxi, me and the driver chatted about why I had been in Japan and how I had got myself into this stupid mess. Part way there, he said something like ‘you do know that the airport is closed at night, yes?’ Behold! Problem number 5 raised its head. A bit panicked I asked if there was a McDonalds or similar fast food place nearby that I could wait in. He said there was a gyudon (beef ricebowl) place. He took me there, with a brief detour to a hotel to show me where I could get a free shuttlebus to the airport at about 5.30am. It was about a 5 minute walk up the road from the gyudon place, which he took me back to. In the end, he only charged 3000 for the ride, and then gave me 1000yen, telling me to get myself something to eat and take care.

So yeah. I got to the airport, via the shuttlebus the next morning (I was able to access the hotel wifi from the pavement outside it, and so freaked out on FB until people helped calm me down)

The rest of the story is fairly dull, interspersed with me being VERY ANGRY AT LUFTHANSA, and a really nice lady giving me a lift in a motor trolley thing across Frankfurt airport.

If anyone needed proof that human beings can be amazing, kind and just generally awesome, I think I found it in spades over that 36 hour travelling period.

AND I’M DONE! Further blog updates may include, but not be limited to: The trials and tribulations of searching for and then acquiring a summer job, the joys of LARP and the amazing people I’ve met there, my attempts to continue my novel/clothes designing/nyan cat plushie making.

Peace out :P

Finals and Part-time Jobs

It feels like nothing particularly interesting has actually happened for me over the last week. This would appear to be because I'm getting used to the slightly weird life I am living (which seems to include bumping into Visual Kei bands in the middle of Harajuku...), rather than because nothing interesting has actually happened.

Firstly, finals week. I think I mentioned this at the end of my last post, so I'm sure you are desperate to hear what happened. Well, there were exams. And I went to them. That's about all, really...

Okay, not quite all. So, I don't think I've talked about the way exams work in Japan yet. Actually, I'm not sure if this is how all exams are. My Japanese language exams are the same as they were in England, and only one of my other modules had an exam. However, my International Relations exams seem to me to be the way exams work here. Basically, the exam consisted of somewhere between 25 and 50 multiple choice questions, and then a 1-2 page essay. For this, I had about two hours. Needless to say, I was out of the room in under half an hour. I am much more used to having two hours to write two or three essays, of three or four pages each. However, most of the people taking the course are Japanese students, so I guess it's difficult enough for them to understand the questions let alone answer them - I had trouble understanding the weird wording of some of the multiple choice questions after all.

What am I complaining about then, with such easy exams? To begin with, I don't actually recall complaining so far in this post... But any ways, the thing is that the pass mark here is a LOT higher than in England. So, English universities have 40% as the lowest passmark. 70% is the lowest mark you need to get the highest grade possible. Not so in this university! Here you need to get 70% to just get a C grade. This strikes me as terribly confusing and unfair... Anyways, now that I have actually complained about that, I will move on.

Now, with the end of term exams over, it is currently holiday - November break. Term will start again at the beginning of December, just in time to break up again for two weeks for Christmas... I seriously have no idea who came up with this 'logic'. Anyways, with the holiday approaching, I thought it might be nice to go someplace. Unfortunately, travel in Japan is a bit more pricey than in England, and I spent a considerable amount on bills at the start of the month. So in hope of earning enough to go visit friends in other parts of Japan, I did something I had never wanted to do. I have started tutoring English. Now, I like teaching some things. Archery, for example. However, I have very little patience to be a really effective teacher. But, there was no other option. There are websites which facilitate meetings between students and teachers, so I signed up to one of them. It appears having an English accent is quite a lure to some people, so I have had a bit of interest, and have had a couple of lessons. This seems to involve meeting some random Japanese person, usually a businessman, in some random coffee shop, and having awkward conversation for an hour, then being given however much money I decided in advance I would charge and trying not to grin too happily at the money... Then ending up spending most of it on groceries...

Needless to say, I have not saved up enough to go someplace. I haven't even really even earned enough to go someplace, even if I had saved all of it. However, the money I got made some things nicer, like the fact I was able to go to an all you can eat pizza place with my friends who had been begging me to go with them for weeks. I was a little unnerved to see that some of the pizza was topped in chocolate sauce and bananas, or in apple and cinnamon, but it was actually quite tasty. As was the unlimited tiramisu which was included in the whole thing. I did feel quite ill on leaving the restaurant though. And one of my friends seemed to have some strange problem of hearing jazz music in the restaurant, even though none was playing...

So, to continue in the, frankly disgustingly capitalist tone of this post, I would like to talk about money. Specifically money in Japan. See, I am always surprised, and a little irritated, by how much of a 'cash culture' Japan has. Now, I don't mean to say they don't use credit and debit cards. Lots of shops accept them, but I have rarely seen anyone actually use them, except for really big purchases. Japan is, as a lot of people are aware, one of the safest countries from petty crime, but still...

I will give you an example – bills. I have had to pay a depressingly large number of these since arriving. The fees for the dorm I'm living in, my mobile phone bill, my health insurance bill... The thing about all of these is that you pay them in cash. You can pay most of them at any convenience store, or post office, and conveniently, we have a post office right in the middle of our campus. Some people tried to pay by card, especially for the dorm fee, which was almost £2000 at the time due to horrible exchange rates but were told they had to pay in cash. No one wants to carry around that much money. Most banks wont even let you withdraw that much at one time. Still, cash it had to be.

In England, if you work in a shop and someone tries to pay for something with a £50 note, often what you are meant to do is call your manager, who will assess whether the note is real, or tell the customer that they don't accept £50s. That's because a £50 is much more likely to be fake. The only people who use £50s are tourists, and I really pity them for the trouble they will find trying to use one.

In Japan, the highest note I have seen is the 10,000 yen note, which right now is about £70. These are accepted everywhere. Even in a hundred yen shop, where you are only buying one thing, and want all that change back. Personally, I think they prefer that to when I go in and buy one thing with one hundred and five one yen coins (100 yen shops are actually 105 yen shops, after tax).

One yen coins are possibly the most useless thing ever. They are worth less than a penny and are made of recycled drinks cans. They are also the bane of everyone's wallet and the reason why cash based societies are always stressed. Although, there are special boxes you can buy to keep your 1 yen coins in. You can fit fifty in a box, and I've already filled one and am on my way through a second. Because you can't actually use these stupid pieces of fake metal anywhere, except the occasional shop where someone feels like being nice to you and pretending for a moment that they are anything other than a waste of everyone's space, time and drinks cans.

Anyways, I'll end here. Sorry for the lack of photos. I kinda forgot to take any over the last week, so busy with doing the incredible amount of revision I did. I really, really hope I'll end up doing something of interest over the next week, but probably all I'll do is sew plushies and try desperately to finish my 50,000 word novel by the end of November...

Finally here, after a arduous three week delay

Hello! So, you may have noticed that I haven't really posted anything for... a while. I think it's about three weeks.  While I'd like to blame this solely on being incredibly busy, sadly that just isn't the case. Not to say I haven't been very busy, but there have been evenings with me sat in my room when I totally could have written this, and just...didn't. Partly because I have a very short attention span, so concentrating for the hour or so necessary to write, edit and add photos to one of these can be a little taxing to my dominant childish side.

Also, every time I thought 'Hmm, I should probably write that blog entry now' I would remember something I had taken photos of recently, and that I had not yet uploaded said photos to my computer. I was therefore faced with the choice of leaving out the event, and having to explain why in a future blog, going through the arduous task of retrieving the cable to transfer photos from camera to computer from its usual hiding place (in plain sight, right next to my computer) and then wasting maybe even five of my oh so precious minutes transferring the photos... or putting off writing all together until I'd gotten round to sorting out photos at some mystical future point in time. I really do like making life difficult for my future self, whilst grumbling that past-me clearly had no consideration for others, or foresight.

So yes, lots to catch up on, because I know you have all missed my wonderfully dry witty comments on society, and my delightful Tokyo antics.

To begin with, I know I left some of you hanging with my last comment from the previous post - a tantalising glimpse at a weekend that I was very excited about. I know there are some who have been dying to know what happened, and what had made me so excited - it's alright, you don't need to hide your anticipation, you're with friends now. So, the weekend started off with the Canada House Ball on the Friday. This was a party held by Canada House, which is one of the all-male dorms on campus. They had dressed the place up to look like a club, and there was an outside area as well, where the performances happened. Now, I was running a little low on money at this point, and so had resigned myself to not buying any drinks whilst there. But then a pre-party party happened in one of the units in Global House... Anyway, when the Global House group arrived, I'm fairly sure we made the whole party about ten times livelier. From what I could see, people were talking when we arrived, but no one was dancing, except us. Now, there are about sixty people in Global House, and whilst not all of them went to the Ball, enough did to make it a very successful dorm invasion.

The Ball was awesome, and the performance by Smooth Steppers (the ICU dance club who are all made of pure, solidified awesome) was incredible, but I get tired of dancing quickly, and after bothering as many of my friends who I could find, I decided to call it a night.

Saturday was basically just filled with me lazing the day away in my room. Nothing particularly awesome happened that day.

Sunday, however, was one of the best days, possibly of my whole life. Now, I really like a certain type of Japanese music called 'Visual Kei'. It's very unique to Japan. Basically the idea is, that the bands don't just provide music to please your ears, but a complete aesthetic experience. Basically, this means they dress up in awesome costumes and act very over-dramatically on stage which, as those of you who know me well will understand, is something I fully support, on stage and off stage.

On that Sunday, there was a music festival, called the V-Rock Festival. It was a little way out of Tokyo, so meant an early start. I went with two of my friends, who also like V-Kei. This was the first and only music festival I have been to, and was AWESOME! All my favourite bands were there. In fact, most of the really famous ones were there. Name dropping time for anyone who knows Japanese bands, or wants to look some up: The artist GACKT, the bands Versailles Philharmonic Quintet, Golden Bomber, Ali Project, Girugamesh (which should have been Gilgamesh, but turns out they didn't do enough research into the proper spelling of characters in Mesopotamian mythology. Honestly, some people...), Mucc, SuG, Matenrou Opera... I'll stop there, because there were almost thirty acts. It was impossible to see all of them, but luckily none of my favourites clashed with each other - my favourites being GACKT, Versailles and Golden Bomber.

Wooo, look, a sign!

Golden Bomber is a recent interest for me - I only found out about them about two weeks before the festival. They are unique amongst V-Kei bands in that they don't even pretend that they play their music live. In fact, although it is written by them, they openly admit it was recorded by professional musicians, although I believe the singer sometimes sings live. They are the first, and only, 'air' V-Kei band. I think they are satirising bands who mime on stage rather than playing live, but they also seem to just be messing about. The live show I saw included someone doing a 'guitar solo' - which for them equated to speed eating corn on the cob, and someone having a shower on stage, because he felt the venue was a bit too warm. I almost hurt myself laughing, and was very surprised by the amount of the Japanese I could understand.

So, moving on from pretty Japanese rock stars, to the following weekend. Now, in most high school anime, and in Japanese TV dramas set in high schools, at some point there is a 'cultural festival', where each class and each club has a cafe, or food stall, or performance to attract attention to them, or raise money. Turns out universities have them too, and that was what the last weekend in October consisted of. It was absolutely awesome, and there were far more types of tasty food on offer than I could afford or manage to eat, but I tried a few. I was also helping out with a cosplay cafe, the costume for which arrived the day before the festival, thanks to my awesome parents.

Wandering around in cosplay in Japan is very different to in England. It's less intimidating here, although that might just have been because there were other people in weirder outfits running around. I would probably feel pretty out of place wandering into a supermarket on a normal day dressed like that. I had a couple of people ask if I was dressed as Alice in Wonderland, for an early Halloween celebration, which I actually hadn't thought of using the costume for, so that was fun.

Personification of Belarus, or Alice in Wonderland?
Who knows, but I certainly didn't see any rabbits that day...

And on to last weekend - I'm almost there! Thanks for staying with me on this! In Tokyo, there is a place called Ikebukuro, in Ikebukuro there is a shopping centre thing called Sunshine City, and in Sunshine City is a place called Namja Town (I suddenly feel like I'm writing a children's book...). I'm still not sure what to define Namja Town as, even though I have been there. It is a bit like a theme park, without any rides, but with lots of food. This is a theme I seem to have noticed in Japan - the cultural festival was all about the food booths, with maybe one game booth, and one garage sale type booth, unlike in England where those would be the norm.

We had barely left the station, when we had to make an emergency stop off at a Japanese bank. The reason for this was that I was very low on cash, but luckily had some English money. The on-campus post office had refused to change it, as the £20 note I had wasn't in their book of 'recognised English currency'. The picture of a £20 that they had is in fact one that is now out of circulation, and although I tried to explain this to them, there was no way they would believe me, so I had to brave the bank. Situations like this are what restore my faith in being able to cope in this country. I may get bored in Japanese class, and struggle to remember the vocab, but I can walk into a Japanese bank and, with no help from anyone else, understand what I am being told, and walk out with my purpose accomplished, having changed my money, and therefore being able to afford a train ticket back home.

Back to Namja town. You pay 300 yen to get in - which is about £2.50 at the moment. Inside it is pretty much a maze. The official guide book admits such and warns parents to keep their children near them. Currently, possibly due to Halloween, there is a ghost hunting theme, with games you can play involving searching for ghosts with sensor things (the 'ghosts' are in fact carefully 'hidden' electric devices that probably do something like bounce the signal back at you). The walls are full of posters that look like they could have come from America or England during one of the World Wars.

Whatever the Namderbirds are, they are apparently here to protect us. Yay?

Whilst there are food places scattered liberally around, the main ones are concentrated into 'savoury' and 'sweet'. My idea of going straight to Ice-cream City was vetoed by the people I was with, so instead we went to Gyoza Town. Gyoza are very tasty dumplings, which weren't nearly as expensive as I expected. There was also a rogue sweet shop that I expect was only let in because it fitted with the traditional theme of that specific area, but it had very cheap, very tasty sweets, so I will forgive them for trespassing into the domain of the savoury.

Then to Icecream City, where I actually didn't have any ice-cream, although I definitely plan to next time I go. I did, however, take pictures of some of the odder flavours they were selling, including garlic flavour, cheese flavour, sunflower flavour, eel flavour and, my personal favourite, mysterious fruit and chocolate flavour (no really, that was its official name...)

Apparently Dracula endorses the Garlic ice-cream.
Also, wasabi ice-cream (the green label)? Really? Isn't there enough despair in the world already?

Right next to the land of ice-creamy wonderment was a large arcade, which contained the real reason for us going there. One of my friends is fairly obsessed with a game series called 'Persona'. The fourth game is currently being made into an anime, which she had got me watching. In this arcade was a Persona 4 themed purikura (sticker pictures) booth. It was a touch more expensive than normal purikura, and you didn't get to decorate your pictures afterwards, but we all agreed it was worth it. I then beat one of my friends at air hockey.

The only other thing of interest that has happened is not Japan related at all. November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, where people worldwide are challenged to write 50,000 words of the novel they have bubbling away in the back of their head. I have been trying to complete this for three years - with a new story idea each time, and although I have fallen a bit behind, I really want to finish it this year. Finals are next week though, so things may get a little stressful over here in Camp Hazel, and due to that and my recent track record, don't expect regular updates of this blog. But there again, you never know. I do delight in being unpredictable after all...

Pandas, Dorm Festival and Part-time job woes

So this blog is a 'little' later than I intended it to be. There would have been an update last weekend, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading 'Waaaah, I feel ill. Waaaaah' which was pretty much all that the post would have contained. So I decided to wait a week, get better, and hopefully do interesting things.

So the first thing of interest would be my visit to Ueno zoo. Technically that wasn't the point of the daytrip to Ueno. The zoo was actually where a group of us went after the official tour/field trip for the Ramune to Anime class. Basically, we have lectures about the history of a specific bit of Tokyo, then go to see what's left of the history and so on. While this can be quite interesting, what really convinced most of us to go on this particular trip was the pandas. Ueno park is actually huge. There's a lake in it, with swan boats, but we didn't go on them (no crazy pirate shenanigans for me. Besides, I left my pirate hat at home.) The park used to be the site of a huge Buddhist temple complex, but time, and a handy civil war (known in common parlance as the Meiji Restoration) cleared the way for the pandas.

Apparently, after the Meiji Restoration ended in 1868, there was talk of turning the area into a medical school attached to Tokyo University. However, the Westerner they consulted about this was like "No! We can build a medical school next to Tokyo University itself. You know what this area would be perfect for? Pandas!"

Okay, maybe he just said that Tokyo needed a proper, official park, but I'm sure he would have been even more adamant if he'd known Ueno park would become home to Ueno Zoo, which would become home to Ling Ling from 1992-2008, then Li Li and Shin Shin from February of this year. Yup, Giant Pandas apparently are too awesome to have just one name, they need two. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of creativity in the Grand Bureau of International Panda Naming, as they just get their name repeated twice. Still, it sounds very cute.

Sad Panda? Or do they just always look sad?

Now, sadly I have to move on from talking about pandas, as I have typed and looked at the word so much, it no longer looks like an actual word. Last week was the week of Dorm Festival and Midterm Exams. Not the best piece of scheduling right there... So Dorm Festival first as it was the most fun of the two. It basically seemed to be a chance for all the dorm students to get together, play games, hang out and meet each other.

Monday kicked of with the 'Engeikai' performances. Basically, each dorm performed a really funny skit in Japanese. Was really awesome, and I was amazed how much even the people who know very little Japanese could understand. I didn't take part, which meant I got to watch all of them, instead of having to rush off and get ready. I was really impressed with how good each one was - there wasn't one which wasn't hilarious. The outrageous costumes and terribly overdramatic acting really helped!

Other events included playing rock, paper, scissors for icecream. Thanks in part to my extensive studies of this game and also to the fact that it was actually really easy to win (what can I say, I have a natural talent!) I was one of the many people who won (also known as all bar one person. Shhh, I totally have skills.)

There was also a scavenger hunt, which very few international students turned up for, so I had a chance to practise my Japanese, trying to understand instructions and play charades etc. Also, it would appear that I am terrible at group skipping rope challenges.

Finally, there was a dinner with free food, and announcements of Engeikai results, although most of the announcements were in Japanese, so I'm still not sure who won what, except that our main actor won 'best actor' or something, which is pretty cool.

Then, after a little bit of getting ready, went out for a friend's birthday party. There is this wonderful thing in Japan called 'nomihoudai'. It means 'all you can drink'. Sometimes there is a time limit, for this place there was not. Soft drinks are often included too, so non drinkers can still join in. There are also places which offer 'tabehoudai' - all you can eat. For a country where food is so expensive, this is an amazing thing.

I actually hadn't realised how expensive food would be here. I think the problem is, if I could cook, especially Japanese foods, it would be a lot cheaper, but I am fairly restricted in my skills, so end up having to buy slightly pricier food. I am therefore currently looking around for some kind of part time job. If I get anything, it will probably be tutoring someone in English. I did see an advert for a part time worker in a shop I truly adore in Harajuku, but upon inquiring, I was told I couldn't apply. This made me sad. I am contemplating whether or not going there every weekend and asking again will make them change their mind. I mean, the sign was still there two weeks after I first asked...

Are these replicas or the actual costumes Visual Kei bands wore on stage? Judging by the prices, I'd say they are originals. All I know is that I really want to work in a place that has things like this on display constantly.

I also got to go to Shinjuku, but didn't get to do as much random wandering as I had wanted to do, as there were very specific place we wanted to go to. Also, we were supposed to wander around Shinjuku as an independent field trip, so I expect I will go back soonish and take pictures of more than just the awesome Hello Kitty bus.

Is it a tour bus? What is its purpose? We may never know...

I imagine next weekends post will be fairly epic, as I am super excited for this coming weekend. It probably won't be up until Monday though, as I will be out all day on Sunday.

Akihabara and other misadventures

A bit later than I planned to post this, but then this weekend was quite busy. Well, I say busy...

Firstly, there was the terribleness that was Friday. Now, originally I though Friday was going to be in the 'Best. Day. Ever' folder of my life. Okay, maybe that's exaggerating. But at least in the 'Pretty awesome day' folder. Turns out I kind of fail at planning things. So in Japan at the moment, there's a whole load of stuff encouraging us to reduce electricity usage (or maybe its not all across Japan and is just in my uni, I'm not sure yet) I think it's to do with the fact that there are less power stations in Japan now, so power from elsewhere is being rerouted to the Tohoku area.

So, in aid of this 'reducing electricity usage' thing, ICU decided to have last Friday as a 'no power' day. From 8am to 5pm they turned off all electricity on campus, so no lights, no cooking, and no hot water. Now, all this was fine. They had warned us in advance, and a lot of people were planning to go sightseeing for the day, because they had also cancelled classes. I decided to sleep in for a bit, then use the battery power of my netbook for a few hours of chilled internet time. Turns out no power means no internet. Don't know quite how I hadn't figured that out early enough. But by the time I had, everyone else had gone to fun and exciting places and my very last minute plans fell very, very flat. Still, I had the chance to study for hours more than I thought I would! Then I got bored and went to a nearby bookshop and bought a book to try and read. Turned out that felt a lot like studying too, as I had to have my electronic dictionary next to me the whole time and look up almost every other word.

Saturday was a lot better though, as I finally managed to get to Akihabara. For those who don't know Tokyo, Akihabara is also referred to as 'Electric Town'. It is full of shops selling electrical goods and gadgets, and is an awesome place to find a good deal, if you know anything about that kind of thing, which I really don't. However, as Akihabara is a haven for the geeks of Japan, it doesn't just have electric things. It also has many, many shops filled with wonderful anime merchandise. And arcades, which will eat your money up faster than a trophy wife (I assume. I have never actually experienced that, but I have read about it in Regency era novels...)

However, arcades are also the home to the wonder that is Purikura. Also known as sticker pictures, these things are amazing, and we should totally have more of them in England. You take pictures with your friends, then decorate them. They are designed for girls who often want to look more American, so there are options that make your eyes look bigger, and your skin look paler. For the sake of irony, I usually go for the biggest and most dramatic eyes and the palest skin tone. I went with Alyssa, who is pretty cool, even if she doesn't live in the best dorm on campus (unlike me). Sadly, I didn't get to go and look for shady alleyways, because Alyssa was afraid that at that time of night, in Akihabara, I might actually find some. Apparently explaining that  it would be alright, because I know aikido/self defence was not comforting, especially when I explained the first thing I had been told to do if I got in a fight - try to run away. Turns out she doesn't know aikido/self defence and I didn't have the time to teach her the finer points of the great and noble art of running really fast from danger, so we came home.

Also, the sign in the picture on the right below this paragraph entertained me so very much. It's basically saying that this is a 'women only' zone. There were other signs which I think were saying that guys were not even allowed downstairs to this whole area without a woman. The pink rectangles are the Purikura booths that guys are completely forbidden from entering, whereas they are allowed in the blue ones, but I think they're still mean to have a girl with them. Not that many groups of guys would want to do Purikura, it just entertained me that they made it into a rule.

An example of Purikura, me and Alyssa

Just out of the shot is a little additional sign,
saying 'no cameras'. Oops?

So with all that over and done, and me back safely, even though I had left my bike unlocked for hours, with the key still in the lock, and no one had taken it (I love Japan) Sunday came next, when I finally managed to get along to church. Which was cool because I got to meet up with a friend I haven't seen for almost three years. It was a little bit weird being so far from home, yet still in church. It was nice though, made me feel like I'm finally settling in or something. It was quite a journey to get there, especially as I missed the stop on the bus, and had to go round the loop circuit, which luckily only takes about 30 minutes, with the bus driver staring at me like I was crazy... But yeah, I managed two solo journeys this weekend, without getting too lost, and managing to make it to everything on time. I'm totally not counting the bit of the return journey on Sunday, when I got on the wrong train and went two stops in the wrong direction before I even realised.

Backtracking a bit now, because I covered the weekend which, to be fair is when most of the actually interesting stuff happened, but there was some interesting stuff in the week. So I mentioned how I feel like I'm finally settling in. Well, I think the two main things that are bringing it home to me that I'm living here, and not on holiday, are my bike and my phone. Those are not things that a vacationer buys! Or if they are, then they must be some kind of really rich vacationer, who really likes bikes, and doesn't want to hire one... Anyways! Yes, I got a Japanese phone last Tuesday. My flatmate Yukari took me to the phone shop and dealt with all the confusing translation stuff, and I walked out with a phone. It was a bit of a weird process, as I didn't pay a penny, and now have unlimited emails - Japanese phones email without having to be officially connected to the internet. It's basically like texts, except I can send them to normal email accounts as well. I have never in my life had a contract phone before, and I keep being slightly weirded out by having one, but it's amazingly useful for finding out what's going on and everything.

New phone!

Behold, my beautiful Tavros. Yes, I named my bike
Because it is an awesome bike and deserves an awesome
name.

If I remember rightly, I have already ranted about 'yay I have a bike, yay' in a previous post, but seriously, it's like every time I ride it, I'm reminded that I live here now. That this isn't like before, that I'm here for ten months. While that sometimes seems scary, I'm loving being in ICU. This place is like everything I always dreamed a university would be like. Sure, its a bit disorganised at times, and I wish the Japanese Language Program had made the workbooks to have ALL the chapters we're going to be studying in the order we'll be studying them in, so they don't keep having to give us more paper, which I inevitably lose, but I really love it here. I'm enjoying studying Japanese again. I'm enjoying all my lectures. The campus is beautiful and there are tennis courts, and a gym (which you can use for free) and a swimming pool (which has a small fee for each use). The people are all really kind and friendly, and my dorm is just awesome.

So even though days like last Friday are kind of annoying, I am really looking forwards to these next nine months (and can't believe that I've already been here for almost a month!)

Two weeks in

Vaguely trying to keep to an update per weekend schedule. Here we go!

I have now been in Japan for a bit over two weeks, although it seriously feels like far longer than that. Maybe because I'm used to not really doing much with my time, and these first two weeks have had what feels like a mandatory, or strongly recommended event every single day. It's been fun, if a little tiring and has made me feel like I've lived four weeks here instead of two.

Of course, my classes have started too, but my usual tactic of 'go to classes, then go back to my room, study and lurk on the internet or watch random things' has been disrupted by the nightly parties/meetings/things that have been going on. We had dorm tsukimi about six nights in a row. Tsukimi was a word I had actually never heard of before coming to Japan. It translates literally as 'Moon Watching' and is the term that is used all the time at ICU for the 'welcome new students' parties that go on in the evenings. The ones I went to were held in my dorm, and students from one of the other dorms would come over and we would all introduce ourselves, then play some random 'getting to know you' game (I know, I know, it's a WILD live I lead!) It was actually really fun, if slightly exhausting to have to many social events. I also discovered a new favourite game – Uragiri (Traitor) Basket, a much more entertaining version of the Fruits Basket game. 

Still, despite my busy social schedule, I have managed to explore a bit. My getting lost in Japan count so far is only at two for this trip sadly, but I'm sure that will increase as time goes on. Especially as one of my lecturers recommended that we all went out and tried to get lost because that's when you find the interesting places. I'm still not convinced that wasn't his way of trying to cover up for getting everyone lost on the first field trip they took the class on... Still, it is advice that I intend to follow diligently.

The big news since my last post has to be, of course, that I have found vaguely affordable cheese. Heh, just kidding, no the big news is that I have had a full week of classes, including switching one of my classes for a more interesting one. A lot of the week was spent wearing a really-not-me outfit for initiation, which is now, thankfully, over. The fake nails actually didn't last past a day. They were just far too irritating to put up with. Which was sad, because they were kinda cool, just too long.

It's so...girly :(

So I know very few people will be interested in my classes, so I'll just say a bit about each.

Japanese: it is really disorientating to have Japanese taught at a level I can understand it at, keep up with, and actually learn something through. I like it.

Introduction to International Relations: Really awesome and interesting class, but the timetable means I have no time for lunch.

Contemporary Japan: Ramune to Anime: Make this class an hour shorter, and it would be the nicest class conceivable.

Right, now onto other, less tedious academic things. Grocery shopping in Japan is very interesting, especially for someone like me, whose main method of cooking is heating stuff in a microwave, or cooking things from frozen. That is definitely the most expensive way to eat here, and so I am having to, after many years of resisting, figure out how to cook real meals. Pasta, noodles and pasta sauce are figuring a lot, as I try to figure out what foods contain protein that I can afford and cook (bearing in mind that I really, really dislike cooking raw chicken). Also, I need more ways to cook eggs than scrambling them. Nice as it may taste, I need variety.

Another thing I have learned is that apparently I look half-Japanese. When three people on separate occasions make comments about it, or ask me if I am, I started asking why. Apparently it's the hair. Naturally straight hair is apparently not a western thing. The fact that it is currently black might help, but I haven't made a secret of the fact that it's dyed. Now, I'm not saying its a bad thing that people wonder if I'm half Japanese, it's just odd. Also, if people who know me think that, maybe the random strangers on streets think that too, which might affect my ability to play the 'oblivious foreigner' card. These are the important things in my life to think about.

Speaking of cards, I am now officially an alien! I have an alien registration card to prove it and everything! Ok, granted that was just a bad translation of 'foreigner', but it is the official translation, which is what counts, I feel.