Darlo's Year Long Adventure in Japan

[darlo]

Well guys it's been a while since I posted here last, I look over at the top right corner of the screen and it says that my last log in was 09-08-08. Now I'm not sure if that's August (as I'm from the UK) or September (as is the way a lot of other countries write their months at the start), but either way it's been a while.

So where have I been?

Since September I've actually been in a little place just west of the International Date Line that one or two members here may have heard of, a little known country called Japan.

(yes that was just a little bit of sarcasm )

As some of you know I study Japanese in the UK and passed (barely) my first year. This means that the second year of my degree takes place entirely at a University in Japan. I'm studying at Konan Daigaku (Kobe) and living in Kamishinjyou (Osaka), but will be moving to a different area of Osaka next week, nearer Umeda.

I have been keeping a blog on my own website and have also made it available to a couple other forums (UK based) with an interest in Japan, but decided I really should share it with you guys also. So this thread is going to contain updates of things I get up to and experience in Japan. Since this is my first time here, most things I try will be for the first time, including appearing on a TV show called Hajimete Nippon (First Time Japan).

I won't put the entire back history here, just from the latest entry. But if you want to read about things like trips to religious mountains, taking a 7 hour walk from one prefecture to the next for no reason whatsoever, and eating Curry Rice at Higurashi (man that was awesome), then have a look at the main site (remember the Japan section starts in September).

In the meantime, here's the latest entry from the blog.
Enjoy!

Blog: http://www.darlosworld.co.uk
Pictures: http://darlosworld.blogspot.com

Sat 22nd November 23:08pm (Japan time)

Ok, you caught me.

Through a rough combination of fatigue, procrastination and a general desire of not wanting to doing much I have put off writing up the blog. This could well be my subconcious way of trying to deal with the fact that since the change over to a new system of textbook I've not been retaining the information we've learned. But being honest this is something I cannot blame the book for, godawful as it is. I've realised that I'm having the same problem as I did with Minna No Nihongo; it's new information.

For years I've had a problem with my memory and trying to recall things. So first time around studying Japanese I struggled to learn various things. When I started classes here at Konan because we were actually going over stuff that we'd already studied in Leeds I was able to remember it this time around ... well, some of it anyway. But now that we're onto new information I'm having that trouble once again. Despite the fact that I can try to put into context what we're covering (for a couple of hours until I go home), it's not sticking. So what does this mean? It's going to take me twice as long to do my degree because I need twice as long to retain any bloody thing? God I hope not.

Ok, so here's what happened since the "I don't want to pay through the arse for a fish" section of the last entry, up until ... well, as far as I get before I fall asleep (hence it'll be a very brief version of events).

So one of the American guys and I headed off in search of the parks which were a short walk away (roughly Hadley Centre to Wellington Town Hall for those North Telford readers). When we reached the park we had a good look around to find it's entrance. You see we arrived at the castle side, and of course castles come with high exterior walls, meaning we had a nice little extra walk around the perimeter. Once we'd arrived at (one of) the main entrance(s) to the park we were confronted with a sign telling us that the gates were closed for the evening (and that we'd have to pay to get in anyway ¬_¬).

Yeah in retrospect we should have had a closer look at the information we were given which did clearly say the parks opening times ... oh well, diddums.

We decided to head back to town a different way as we hadn't seen any cheap places to eat. Heading into town we passed a wedding (to contrast the funeral I'd seen earlier in the day) and also a group of very excited young girls cheering and dancing as they came out of a theatre. Maybe they finally cracked how to do some complex manoeuvre or something.

We found a nice restaurant in town that was reasonally priced and the food was good. As I chomped down my cheeseburger and McPork, I happily thought about how much money I was saving. Yeah, not the most adventurous meal ever but food is food after all. I wanted to buy some souvenirs the following day, so making a cut back was a reasonable way of doing so.

After dinner we went past an arcade, well, not quite an arcade as we'd think of it back home as this one is nothing but UFO catchers (or drop arm games, crane games, grabbers or what ever you call em). Anywho as we wandered around the arcade I explained to my colleague how these type of machines are, well, I won't say rigged, but they're designed to only allow a certain number of winners per players. Here's how to be in with a better chance of winning on these.

First of all, make sure you have plenty of time. When you find the machine from which you want to win a prize, just wait there until someone else comes and wins. If you had to wait a while for that then you're going to love this part. Keep waiting, but count how many goes people have until the next winner. Finally, continue to wait until roughly that same number of people have tried and lost. This gives you a greater chance of the claw actually grabbing the prize. Do be careful though, there's still some element of skill to it and someone could still win whilst you're waiting around. On that note some arcade places don't like people lingering in there not spending money; fair enough right?

Then there's the other method, the one that we used to win a pretty big Stitch (Lilo & Stitch) doll. Look around the machines for one where the prizes have been stacked quite high. You might be able to use the arm to push the prize down into the hole rather than actually grabbing it. There was a slight problem for us though. Stitch's head was too damn big to fit through the hole. We called for assistance, expecting the staff member to explain to us that it didn't count unless it came out the hole, but no, he opened the machine and handed over our new cuddly friend.

And then there were three of us.

[Game8910]

tl;dr but wow a year in japan? thats frigging awesome and ur a donor from nov 07, I welcome you back to BW with open arms

[darlo]

tl;dr but wow a year in japan? thats frigging awesome and ur a donor from nov 07, I welcome you back to BW with open arms

Thanks for the welcome back ... um ... not wanting to sound like I've missed too much since I've been gone, but ... what does tl;dr mean?

[Game8910]

too long, didnt read XD

[darlo]

ah ... gotcha

[darlo]

Blog: http://www.darlosworld.co.uk
Pictures: http://darlosworld.blogspot.com

Sunday 23rd November 5:31pm

It's interesting. I have a link tracker on here which tells me some of the ways that people arrive onto this website. It's no big secret actually, it's part of one my advertising boxes from Project Wonderful. Anyway, if you've arrived here looking for 'adult materials in a town in County Durham' I'll tell you know you've come to the wrong place.

So continuing our adventures from Kanazawa, we were walking along the town passing numerous restaurants, shops, bars and cafes (yes, they included Maid cafes before you ask), when we decided it was probably time to head back. Heading in the direction of the train station, an easy landmark to return to the hotel from, we had the pleasure of seeing a group of drunken men run into the middle of a crossroads whenever the lights were red to throw one of their mates up into the air. This itself was such a sight that many of the hundreds of people (it was a busy Saturday night after all) we were walking through didn't notice the two out of place foreigners carrying an 18 inch tall Disney toy, well some did obviously.

After a while of wandering around with no eki (station) in sight, we had a look at our map. We located several buildings that were right near the eki and after hitting a river we eventually came to the conclusion that the trainstation must have been underground and we'd simply missed it when we were walking wildly (5w's ^_^) in search of it. After another looong period of circling the area we eventually asked for help.

According to a karaoke room staff member, standing outside to try and draw in customers, the station was 30 minutes away and he offered to call us a taxi. Not quite believing it'd take us half an hour (5 mins tops) we asked him to point us in the general direction of it. After leaving him we came to the conclusion that he had a link to a taxi company and would probably have earned a commission from us tourists.

After another long duration of walking, my friend considered another possibilty. Looking at the map, we noticed that infact all the places we'd been seeing were there by the eki ... but they were also there ... on the other side of the town! Some how we'd got our bearings mixed up coming out of the park and instead of being in the town near the hotel, we were in fact in a different area of the town altogether.

Karaoke man was right!

After a vigorous walk back to the hotel, following the map from the correct point this time and stopping at a convenience store for some food incase we were hungry upon arrival (I bought some insta-noodles, a can of beer, and a jam-jar with clear alcoholic liquid called Fukucup ... no idea what it is), we went to our rooms and relaxed. What we expected to be no more than a few hours out turned into us arriving back at about 11.30 at night. I'd been joking during the day about having a 'walk' about but really didn't expect it to turn out this way.

After finishing off my beer, I went to another friends room, who was having a Matrix showing on their laptop. Following this I went back and thought I'd indulge myself in some television, after all I hadn't really watched much TV since I'd arrived in Kamishinjyou. Flicking through the channels there was a nice range of shows in different genres and languages, many of which you could adjust the language to English. I stopped flicking through though when I hit one channel of a man being walked on by a woman in high-heels. This wasn't a Japanese show though, it was an Italian one. "No more TV" I thought, and went to sleep.

After breakfast the next morning we checked out of our rooms and headed down to the lobby. Due to the fact that we'd only been there one night you'd have thought everyone would have been on time, not needing to repack everything and an elephant ... right? Alas no, some daft bints still ended up being 15 minutes late for no general reason. I'm normally a believer of 'the pointlessly late get left behind' and this day was no exception! GARGH!

The group split into two from here. Half of the group went to the Kaga Yuzen Center to participate in a Kimono dyeing class whilst the rest of us went to the Higashi Chaya district. Higashi Chaya is a popular tourist area as it is famous for its Geishas. Unfortunately for us we got there relatively early on a Sunday morning, and because of the slight drizzle, none were out and about. Oh well, a European student and myself still went off for a nose around the area and took some really awesome photographs (which will be uploaded to Blogspot eventually) of various shrines, temples and areas that were generally nice to look at.

Getting back on the coach we took a short (so short it would probably have been faster to walk) to the park area we'd gone the night before. Even though during the day it was much nicer to look at, unfortunately the heavens had opened up and we were with rain once again. Thankfully I'd brought my trusty brolly along for the ride, but holding a brolly while taking pictures and trying to keep the camera dry was a bit of a challenge. The gardens themselves were very relaxing on the eye, and even though I didn't understand a word our guide was saying (she was speaking in keigo - very polite Japanese), I did soak in the atmosphere ... or maybe that was rain water.

After being challenged to and losing a game of Poohsticks by one of my fellow countrymen, we accidently split from the main group; them going right and we went left trying to catch up. FAIL. Thankfully someone from the main group came back for us, though after a while we were still slightly lost, only one person more. I forgot to mention that the park had a significant lack of sticks, so we had to play Poohsticks with leaves instead, but its fundamentals were still the same. If you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, buy yourself a book by AA Milne.

We eventually met up with the group once more and were told where and when to meet up as it was now a bit of free time. I went straight to a couple of stores I eyed up on the way to get a couple of omiyage (souvenirs). I'd bought myself a paper umberella (and struggled trying to to get it wet ... ironic really), and I bought Momma Darlo a Geisha doll. Let it be known I really didn't want to buy this doll, especially after my trip to the Iki Ningyou No Ma (Room of Living Dolls) with TV show Bebop High Heel, but it was a bargain and knew it was something that she wanted.

After this I went for a walk to try and find something to eat. I headed back in the direction that I came from the night before, back to wards the hotel.

Something was wrong.

I knew this place, I recognised it clearly. This was NOT where we came through last night to get to the garden ... but rather it was that mysterious town that we ended up in last night! How the fudge had I ended up here ... again? Suddenly I found myself face-to-face with the McDonalds we went into, right accross from the arcade where we got the Stitch doll, and down the road slightly from the maid cafe.

Could this be the true power of Kanazawa?

I decided not to think about it too much, worried that I might anger some spirits that had lured me back here, and ordered my usual food from the 100 yen menu.

Meeting up with everyone at the appointed time and place (outside the Ishikawa Modern Literature Museum in Central Park), I spoke to my friend about our trip the night before. He was also in a state of bewilderment about the situation. I guess Kanazawa was indeed a more mysterious place than we first thought. Getting on the coach I thought to myself about coming back one day, and who knows, maybe I will.

On the coach trip back nothing too exciting happened really. We watched a couple of films (and horrendous and one at par-level), played a little Mario Kart and passed a few tall buildings I knew in Osaka, wishing that we could simply jump off the coach here. Diddums.

Home ... bed.

To be honest with the exception of the usual commute-study-commute-sleep routine, nothing really happened until Thursday this week, which is where I'll pick up from. Oh wait ... on Tuesday we had a linguistics exam in which I did awfully, my only consolation knowing that had I taken it in Leeds I'd have passed it by the skin of my teeth.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Thursday marked the start of the Universitys school fayre, and is running up until tomorrow. It's a method for various clubs and circles to gain exposure, and a little income, by selling a range of foods to anyone willing to buy it. Unfortunately I've found that a lot of their selling approaches are what I'd consider to be aggressively direct. It's ok to go around with signs advertising your fare, but it doesn't really come accross as polite when they're shoved in yourface and you're quickly surrounded by people calling out at you. But to be fair, as I've said time and time again, "not my country, not my rules", so this is something I'll have to get used to.

For those of you who like spotting this sort of thing, notice that I used 'fayre, fare, and fair' all in the same paragraph ^_^.

There's also a stage area with a live band that's been performing a nice range of music, and apparently everything changes everyday.

Friday marked the start of a four-day weekend. OH YEAH BABY! How have I spent it?

^_~

Relaxing!!!

On Friday I met up with a couple of Japanese friends and we enjoyed an hour at karaoke. It was a relief to see that I wasn't the only one who did anime theme tunes, though I also threw in some English pieces also. Following our departure, they had to head to Uni for something ... I can't remember what though, me and some friends decided to go back to the Iki Ningyou no Ma. Well, for me it was going back, for them it was the first time.

Now in order to get the best experience from the room, you really need to understand Japanese, at least to a basic level. This point was really driven home to us by the staff members, each of whom asked us in great detail if we could understand Japanese. After eventually convincing them that we'd be ok (not too much of a challenge for the one actual Japanese person with us), we watched the starter video. It was here I realised that it was slightly different from when we filmed. We then proceded into the room, and it was much darker. I'd been told that because of the cameras they needed to leave on some of the lights, but DAMN! It was dark.

I'm not going to explain what happened, like before, but I'll put it to you that it was much scarier for me this time around. After asking the others who came along, it was a frightening experience but was still a lot of fun, and definately worth the 600 yen entrance fee.

From here we went onto a Yodobashi Camera, that huge department store I'd previously mentioned. We had a good look around most of the place before calling it a day and heading home. But that was not before visiting the coin-capsule section and picking myself up a Komori Kiri (a hikikomori) keychain from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (Goodbye Mr Despair).

Yesterday I admit I spent faffing about playing Gyakuten Saiban 3 (Phoenix Wright 3) and working on a newer easier to manage version of Shrotaku, and that brings me up to today.

After waking up nice and late with no alarms going off and no food waiting for me, I started writing up this blog. With distractions such as eating cereal and taking a shower, and doing a little bit of cleaning in the room, I have officially caught up. That being said, there's stuff I've probably forgot to include ... oh well.

This time next week I'll be in a new home closer to Umeda, Osaka. Still a dorm, but much closer to what I'd consider to be a fun area. I'm hoping this will help me to get some communication practice at weekends (for the record today I've only said one word; konnichiwa), as well as give me better access to travel links; it's a 15 minute walk from Umeda Eki.

And so, now that I'm all caught up, I'm going to head off and cook some food. By cook, I of course mean boil some water and stick it in a plastic tub filled with noodles.

Byee!

[darlo]

Blog: http://www.darlosworld.co.uk
Photos: http://darlosworld.blogspot.com

Tuesday 25th November 21:21 (Japanese Time)

I've got to make this a short blog tonight as I've got a fair bit of stuff to do; revise for a kanji quiz, homework, shower and of course start packing. Officially I move on Saturday, but my new room in Kita-Umeda has become ready so I can at least start shifting stuff.

So yesterday was pretty cool. After a nice lie-in I met up with a couple of friends at Uni and proceded to tackle the last day of the school fayre. As usual we dove head on into the aggressive sellers, only this time we were accompanied by our old English friend ... rain. Not only was this the day that I'd left my brolly at home, but it was also the day that I'd decided not to bring in my washing that was hanging out.

Balls.

Growing weary of the fayre, and full of random food (including a fried potato coated in some kind of sauce (name forgotton >_<) and yakitori (skewered chicken)) we decided to head to karaoke for a couple of hours, and then afterwards head to Sushiro, a sushi restaurant where food is on conveyor belts.

Karaoke was great fun, as is the norm. We booked two hours, and since there were only three of us, we tried a lot of songs that we'd never done before. For example I took a shot at Nantoka Nare and Hito Toshite Jiku ga Bureteiru amongst others.

Needing to kill some time before heading to the restaurant, we took a trip to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi. Not really much happened here, as I said we were mainly killing time. So forgive me while we skip on ahead.

One thing I will draw back to is my introduction to an anime series that's ... odd. Oruchuban Ebichu was introduced to me by one of my fellow foreigners and despite it's general crude, animal abusing, blood-dripping, sex filled content, I found it to be quite funny. Possibly because of the fact that it's cute appearance is a tremendous contrast to what is actually happening.

I'm not going to ruin it by telling you what goes on (I have a feeling your curiosity will have got the better of you by now anyway), but I will explain that there is a long running joke throughout the series where a certain word is used. I'm not going to say what the word is nor will I write down it's English quivalent, so I'll use an English word it is similar to ... Mango.

The reason I explain this will come to light shortly.

The restaurant was really nice, and a very relaxing place. On our arrival it was almost empty, giving us a good 4 seater area (one seat had all our stuff). There are two methods of getting food at Sushiro, both very easy. The first method is to sit there and watch all the different foods go by on the conveyor belt next to your table, then grab whatever you want. Alternatively you can press the call button on the table and order something. This itself comes on the conveyor belt on a marked dish so that no one can grab your goodies before it gets to you. If you order it you do need to be able to do it in Japanese; I know I said both methods were easy, but I think that pushing a button does indeed fall into that easy category.

As most of the plates were 105 yen each (and by that I mean I hardly saw any that were any more than that ... maybe one or two), not only was it an inexpensive way to try lots of different styles of food you'd not normally get to try, it was also very easy to keep track of your spending. After chowing down on a plate's food you stack it at the end of the table. If you're with a group and want to pay seperately, you just have to stack your plates individually. Feeling full at 7 plates I called it a day. Don't get me wrong, the plates are not massive, like our dinner plates back home, but 7 plates more than qualified as a good meal.

But why bring up Mango? Well, when the food comes down on the conveyor belt there is (normally) a sign in front of it saying what it is. At numerous times throughout the night a mango pudding came around (an ACTUAL mango pudding). Seeing the sign for this had us in stitches, and many bad jokes about mangoes were told, including how we'd always munch on a mango during the summer!

Last night whilst on the internet I noticed something. Staring at an empty beer can I took a piece of crappy plastic and starting hitting the two together. Unsurprisingly it made a noise. I then took the plastic, put it between my fingers and started swirling it like a mini electric-fan. The beer can was then introduced to this whirlingness and a continuous clacking sound came about. Yeah, once again no big surprise. However, then cogs in my head started whirring, and I started to remember being young, making similar annoyingly noisy things.

From when I was a kid I'd remember annoying the hell out of people by constantly doing things that I'd just learned, practicing it and getting it down to a tea ... before getting told off for being an irritating buggar. Anyway, it came to me that i could perhaps use this inspiration in learning my grammar and use whatever grammar point learned as much as I possibly could.

That's what I did today.

Yes, I was annoying, yes I wasn't making much sense to the context of conversations, and yes I did confuse many Japanese people (and some of the upper-group exhange students). However, yes I was remembering the grammar, yes I learned how to use it better from friends correcting me, and yes it was funny for all of us.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I was doing:

Person A: "I went shopping at the weekend and it was fun."
Darlo: "So in other words, you mean to say that apples are delicious."
Person A: "Um ... well, we did buy apples yes. And after that we went to the cinema."
Darlo: "So in other words, you mean to say that Person B has become better at playing tennis."
Person A: " ...... "

[reminiscene]

o.O...wow.i too would love to spent a year in japan.xD

[darlo]

o.O...wow.i too would love to spent a year in japan.xD

You can dude ... you just have to believe ... BELIEVE!!!

(and fill in a ton of arduous paperwork)

[TheDefend]

alrite... so this is basically a sumarry of your life in japan. i just skimming through it... not read the whole thing cuz that's a massive amout of text