That's the gist of the last two days. On the 29th I had my first Inbound orientation on the hotel. There were three other exchange students; Lindsey and Tiffany from the USA and Emmi from Finland. I was introduced to my Japanese tutor, who I'll be seeing every Saturday from now on in a little restaurant. All four of us also had to do a little introduction speech in Japanese, which wasn't as difficult as it sounds. I took the liberty of going first.
After the orientation came the fun part. The other inbounds as well as the two aussies, Jono and Simon, and Sachiko as well as one of girls' host mother and brother went to do purikura. Purikura is a big thing Japan. Basically, some people go into this photobooth-like thing and take a bunch of pictures, then you choose four you want to keep. After you choose your pictures, you get to draw on them/add animations or characters/ make borders/ or do whatever you want with them, really. After you can send two to your phone (keitei) and the rest are printed out. You stick them to things.
After purikura, we got a bunch of junk food and went to karaoke. (You're not allowed to bring outside food into the karaoke building, but since the food there is heavily overpriced, we do it anyway). It was pretty fun, except I got hit with horrible migraine, and wasn't able to sing. Next karaoke night I'll sing.
Yesterday my host parents took me to see the big baseball game in Sapporo. The Fighters against the Hawks. We cheered for the Fighters, but unfortunately lost 3 to 2. Would have won if the Hawks didn't get two home runs in the top of the eighth inning. It was a good game though. The Japanese are crazy about baseball. The only time the crowd wasn't singing or cheering in unison was in the eighth inning. And no one bashes the other team. There is no booing when the opponent gets a home run. They only cheer on their own team. Which I think is wonderful.
Tomorrow I start school. That should be interesting, since my Japanese is still incredibly limited. We'll see.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Queue Terminator Music
Soo, my birthday was on the 26th. I've been procrastinating with my blog, I admit.
For my birthday the Rotary Club booked a boardroom-type place in a hotel in Sapporo for dinner. Believe it or not, there were 9 courses to this dinner. I'll try and remember each dish, not necessarily in order; Clams on a little salad, some type of sushi with cheese in the middle, sashimi, caramel ice cream, birthday cake (which was amazing, and I swear the icing was actually whipped cream), this egg pudding stuff, fried shrimp and shrimp-roll-thing, noodles and a plate that had assorted things on it like beef, egg and these little weird orange things that I can't accurately describe.
Oh, not to mention the hot and cold tea, coffee, beer and wine. I didn't have any wine, of course. Their legal age here is 20.
And I got a bunch of small presents from some Rotarians. Some things for school, a neat fan, a little box with flowers in it, things like that. Some of the Rotarians even did magic tricks, which was pretty amusing.
After the dinner, we had to wait for Aya because we had driven there in her car. She left to do this teacher training thing. We went to Mister Donuts to wait. It's kind of like a Japanese Tim Hortons, with only coffee and donuts. And you should see the donuts. It looks like something out of every little kid's most colorful fantasy. I'll need to get a picture sometime.
Other than that, not too much has been happening.
Oh, I almost forgot. You might be wondering about the post title. Well, I've just noticed that on Japanese TV they like to put some well-known English music to weird things. Like the Phantom of the Opera music to an Iguana documentary. Or the Terminator theme to a bunch of news anchors posing. Very funny.
For my birthday the Rotary Club booked a boardroom-type place in a hotel in Sapporo for dinner. Believe it or not, there were 9 courses to this dinner. I'll try and remember each dish, not necessarily in order; Clams on a little salad, some type of sushi with cheese in the middle, sashimi, caramel ice cream, birthday cake (which was amazing, and I swear the icing was actually whipped cream), this egg pudding stuff, fried shrimp and shrimp-roll-thing, noodles and a plate that had assorted things on it like beef, egg and these little weird orange things that I can't accurately describe.
Oh, not to mention the hot and cold tea, coffee, beer and wine. I didn't have any wine, of course. Their legal age here is 20.
And I got a bunch of small presents from some Rotarians. Some things for school, a neat fan, a little box with flowers in it, things like that. Some of the Rotarians even did magic tricks, which was pretty amusing.
After the dinner, we had to wait for Aya because we had driven there in her car. She left to do this teacher training thing. We went to Mister Donuts to wait. It's kind of like a Japanese Tim Hortons, with only coffee and donuts. And you should see the donuts. It looks like something out of every little kid's most colorful fantasy. I'll need to get a picture sometime.
Other than that, not too much has been happening.
Oh, I almost forgot. You might be wondering about the post title. Well, I've just noticed that on Japanese TV they like to put some well-known English music to weird things. Like the Phantom of the Opera music to an Iguana documentary. Or the Terminator theme to a bunch of news anchors posing. Very funny.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Yes We Can
The Internet was hooked up yesterday afternoon, but I haven't had to time to blog until now.
So, the journey was long. Very long. Like, more than 13 or 14 hours long. Three planes in one day, and I've discovered that, when landing, the pressure in my ears is agonizing. The worst was landing in Sapporo. I could hardly hear anything for an hour after landing. A lot of smiling and nodding to people trying to talk to me. The welcome party was pretty unexpected. And very nice. There were maybe ten to fifteen people there, and I was given a flower bouquet. Another girl from America arrived shortly after I did.
Wow. The toilets here are crazy technical. There's all these buttons everywhere. All I want to do is flush! It took a little while for my host mother to explain to me how to work everything. Potty training here must be like rocket science.
And everything is backwards. Even the littlest things. Steering wheel is on the right side, people drive on the left side of the road, toilet handle is pulled up to flush instead of pushed down, tap is pushed down to open, books are read from back to front and writing is vertical. Even the sentence structure is backwards. Subject object verb. I like it.
And the food is excellent. Last night we had sashimi, which is basically raw slices of fish and soy sauce to dip, beef slices, pasta salad and kiwi. This morning we had some sausage, fish, yogurt, boiled egg and this pumpkin...mush...stuff. Think of potato salad, only with pumpkin instead of potato, and pieces of meat in it. It looks very weird. And most people probably wouldn't risk trying it. But it's actually pretty good. Very similar to potato salad. Oh, and they loove sweet stuff. Like pocky, which is like a thin bread stick coated in chocolate. You can get different flavours. And these chip things, that look and taste like mini pringles. Lots of chocolate stuff. And lots of ice cream. The only thing that I couldn't bare was the cold green tea. Veery bitter.
Yesterday I went around Sapporo with Shuji Chida to get fitted for my school uniform and gym strip. Sapporo is so nice. Very green. Trees and grass everywhere, little gardens and flowers and such. And goats. There were goats, just chillin in this little grassy field. No fences holding them in. The cars are all, in general, smaller than the ones in Canada. The people here are big into the hybrids. And there is a surprising amount of English in scattered random places. For no particular reason. Oh, and they have alcohol sitting out in the open in the supermarket.
And there are elections going on right now. They do their campaigns so differently. The candidates actually walk around the city with big megaphones, personally advertising their campaigns and meeting people, talking to people and the like. Or they drive around in these vans with megaphones on the roof, advertising themselves. And they all look so happy and nice. It's weird.
A little bit about my host family: The family name is Kawamura, and it means 'river bridge'. Sachiko, my host mom, is a nurse. Her name means 'happy child'. She cooks all the meals and does dishes. I've tried to help, but she just smiles and tells me to sit down. Kazunori is my host father, and he is a highschool teacher, but not at the school I will be going to (SIT). His name means 'peace constitution'. I know. He helps me with my hiragana/katakana and basic Japanese. My host sister is Aya. She looks like she could be 18, but is actually 26. Very shocked when I found this out. I can't remember what her name means. But she teaches disabled people. I might go to her school one of these days and meet them.
Oh, and they have kindergarten buses that are designed to look like cartoon characters or animals. I saw one that was Thomas the Train. Shuji said that there are dragon buses and cat buses, too. Makes me wish I was in kindergarten so I could ride on one of them.
I think that's it for now. Remember, you can leave comments if you like, without having to sign up to blogspot ^^.
So, the journey was long. Very long. Like, more than 13 or 14 hours long. Three planes in one day, and I've discovered that, when landing, the pressure in my ears is agonizing. The worst was landing in Sapporo. I could hardly hear anything for an hour after landing. A lot of smiling and nodding to people trying to talk to me. The welcome party was pretty unexpected. And very nice. There were maybe ten to fifteen people there, and I was given a flower bouquet. Another girl from America arrived shortly after I did.
Wow. The toilets here are crazy technical. There's all these buttons everywhere. All I want to do is flush! It took a little while for my host mother to explain to me how to work everything. Potty training here must be like rocket science.
And everything is backwards. Even the littlest things. Steering wheel is on the right side, people drive on the left side of the road, toilet handle is pulled up to flush instead of pushed down, tap is pushed down to open, books are read from back to front and writing is vertical. Even the sentence structure is backwards. Subject object verb. I like it.
And the food is excellent. Last night we had sashimi, which is basically raw slices of fish and soy sauce to dip, beef slices, pasta salad and kiwi. This morning we had some sausage, fish, yogurt, boiled egg and this pumpkin...mush...stuff. Think of potato salad, only with pumpkin instead of potato, and pieces of meat in it. It looks very weird. And most people probably wouldn't risk trying it. But it's actually pretty good. Very similar to potato salad. Oh, and they loove sweet stuff. Like pocky, which is like a thin bread stick coated in chocolate. You can get different flavours. And these chip things, that look and taste like mini pringles. Lots of chocolate stuff. And lots of ice cream. The only thing that I couldn't bare was the cold green tea. Veery bitter.
Yesterday I went around Sapporo with Shuji Chida to get fitted for my school uniform and gym strip. Sapporo is so nice. Very green. Trees and grass everywhere, little gardens and flowers and such. And goats. There were goats, just chillin in this little grassy field. No fences holding them in. The cars are all, in general, smaller than the ones in Canada. The people here are big into the hybrids. And there is a surprising amount of English in scattered random places. For no particular reason. Oh, and they have alcohol sitting out in the open in the supermarket.
And there are elections going on right now. They do their campaigns so differently. The candidates actually walk around the city with big megaphones, personally advertising their campaigns and meeting people, talking to people and the like. Or they drive around in these vans with megaphones on the roof, advertising themselves. And they all look so happy and nice. It's weird.
A little bit about my host family: The family name is Kawamura, and it means 'river bridge'. Sachiko, my host mom, is a nurse. Her name means 'happy child'. She cooks all the meals and does dishes. I've tried to help, but she just smiles and tells me to sit down. Kazunori is my host father, and he is a highschool teacher, but not at the school I will be going to (SIT). His name means 'peace constitution'. I know. He helps me with my hiragana/katakana and basic Japanese. My host sister is Aya. She looks like she could be 18, but is actually 26. Very shocked when I found this out. I can't remember what her name means. But she teaches disabled people. I might go to her school one of these days and meet them.
Oh, and they have kindergarten buses that are designed to look like cartoon characters or animals. I saw one that was Thomas the Train. Shuji said that there are dragon buses and cat buses, too. Makes me wish I was in kindergarten so I could ride on one of them.
I think that's it for now. Remember, you can leave comments if you like, without having to sign up to blogspot ^^.
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Final Countdown
It is officially 3 days, 22 hours and 45 minutes until my plane leaves for Vancouver. And from there, to Tokyo, Japan and eventually to Sapporo. Almost two years in the making, and it still doesn't seem real. I don't suspect it will until the plane takes off. Or until I step into the main terminal of Tokyo International. Or maybe, probably, until I go to sleep that night in my new home for eleven months. It's hard to beleive that only five days from now my life as I know it will be over, and a whole new universe will begin. It's refreshing, actually. I'm all for change and clean slates. Places where no one knows me. I think this is as fresh as it gets.
I just picked out my suitcases. I didn't buy new ones, not enough money for that. Instead I'm borrowing a set. That's fine with me. They're big enough. I won't be bringing much, anyways. Almost all my weight will be from the gifts I'm bringing over. A lot of stuff, but I'm still not sure if it's enough. I think I'll go out tomorrow and get some more. Tim Horton's coffee and some Red Rose tea. Pure Canadianism. The real task will be deciding what clothes to bring. I'm only taking enough for about a week, maybe less. Planning on buying more when I get there. Then I have to make a list. So much to do. I wish I had more motivational drive. Maybe then I could get off the computer and do it.
I just picked out my suitcases. I didn't buy new ones, not enough money for that. Instead I'm borrowing a set. That's fine with me. They're big enough. I won't be bringing much, anyways. Almost all my weight will be from the gifts I'm bringing over. A lot of stuff, but I'm still not sure if it's enough. I think I'll go out tomorrow and get some more. Tim Horton's coffee and some Red Rose tea. Pure Canadianism. The real task will be deciding what clothes to bring. I'm only taking enough for about a week, maybe less. Planning on buying more when I get there. Then I have to make a list. So much to do. I wish I had more motivational drive. Maybe then I could get off the computer and do it.
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