Oh, I Suck At Updating XD

Right, it's been far too long so let's take a little trip down memory lane! Let's go all the way back to mid-April actually! Richard came back to Kanazawa with me & we went to Kenroku-en to see the cherryblossom & also to the Higashi-chaya district but we couldn't go to the Ninja temple becaue you had to wait ages for a tour. I also took him to try ramen at Ippudo even though I hate ramen :P But it's ok because I like the little bun things they have there ^_^ Then between him going home & start of May some fairly interesting stuff happened, like going to Torinosuke with Alex's parents, exploring the countryside behind the uni with Mel and also performing taiko at a local festival ^_^ That was pretty fun! There was even a picture of Petteri & I in the local newspaper! We also had some barbecues outside the dorm & down by the river, as the weather was starting to get much nicer & appreciating of cherryblossoms was undertaken :)
But the main thing that happened was I joined a university circle - the Juggling & Magic Circle or "JMC" to precise. In JMC we basically meet up in afternoons & practise together; there are lots of different things to do i.e. juggling various numbers of balls, card tricks, cigar boxes, devil sticks, yo-yo, poi & the one I picked - diabolo! It's really fun to learn new tricks but it's also really fun to spend time with all my circle members (and new friends!), especially because it means practising speaking & listening to Japanese. So I'm really glad I joined because I made a lot of new friends & it means I don't just waste my free time sitting in my room playing games or something XD Near the end of April some people came round to play Wii & watch Appleseed with me & I realised it was actually really nice to have friends outside the dorm too because although I really like everyone I live with it's nice to spend time with different people occasionally so you don't get annoyed with each other!
At the start of May there was a national holiday period in Japan called "Golden Week" though it was actually that you got Monday-Wednesday off so 5 days really, but I guess week sounds better :P Anyway, that was pretty cool too because Dan, Richard & Annika all had friends come to Kanazawa so it was nice to go out & spend time with them too! I also took a trip out on the Sunday to visit Takaoka, which is Toyama, the next prefecture over from Kanazawa. I went to see my friend Keita which was really fun & we went to Zuiryu temple, the old castle park (which had a little zoo) & also saw the Takaoka buddha, which is meant to be one of the 3 big buddhas of Japan, though it's actually really because it has a giant halo which makes it so tall! We also had some giant ice creams & watched some children perform the shishimai (lion dance) at a local festival so it was a really good day!
Other fun things from the start of May include the welcome party for Sakiko (our new residential advisor) which was at GBs cafe & then karaoke so that was fun! Also, Kym & the colour green are particularly memorable... Plus I had some friends come round to eat together so that was really nice! :D Ooh, we had a party with our circle to welcome the new members & so we all went out to eat shabu-shabu & all the new people had to stand up & say where they were from, what they studied & what they were learning in JMC. Then everyone who had the same hometown/major/skill had to drink with them. For me, people who could speak some English joined me for England & of course everyone joined me for Japanese :P It was actually pretty fun even though I didn't eat much & actually it was all free because I am a junior member & the seniors paid for me! Wow! :D I also changed my hair... First I had some braids for a couple weeks, courtesy of Annika, but then I decided on something completely different & got it cut right above my shoulders with a fringe! I really didn't like it at first but actually I think I might keep the fringe for a bit & just grow the rest of the hair a bit longer again... We'll see. Anyway, this is getting a bit long & it's also getting late so I'll wrap this up for now & write some more soon (I hope!)
Thanks for reading, if you want to see some more photos either look on Facebook or send me an e-mail :) Take care! Kou x

Spring Holiday = Travels ^_^

Well, having got back from England there was still a few weeks of Spring holiday to go, so I figured I might as well make use of the free time to see some more of Japan ^_^ First up was a brief trip to Fukui, where I visited Eihei-ji with my tutor. It was very nice but I had the minor problem of complete lack of sleep which meant I couldn't really concentrate on speaking Japanese, couldn't eat & generally felt kinda ill. Couldn't meet Sayuri's family either which I had been looking forward to :( But I guess that's just how things go sometimes! At least I've cured the insomnia now, yay.
Other than that, 2 main trips ^___^ First, Nagoya! Bit of a spur of the moment decision to go see James basically, as well as seeing some more of Japan, so all fun. Nagoya was pretty cool really but not amazing just for tourism stuff I guess. If I hadn't had James & Simon to meet up with I think I'd have got a bit stuck for stuff to do. Nice city in general though, had some fun exploring :) Went to the public aquarium down by the harbour which was cool, despite falling over a bench & hurting my knee right before going in, much to the amusement of small Japanese child XD
Anyway. I also went out for foods with James & his friends, had yakiniku etc, fairly simple Japanese stuff. One restaurant actually had raw whale but I decided not to try it... I'm not really big on seafood anyway, let alone raw stuff. Also took a trip to Nagoya Castle, which wasn't that exciting but the view of the city was pretty cool. Plus the blossoms had just come out so very pretty everywhere, good times :) Wandered into a Noh theatre exhibition, went to an arcade, had curry with Matt & Simon, so lots of stuff to be doing really :)
Final day of the holiday I actually made a day trip to Osaka, which was really good, because I went back to the school I did homestays with whilst at school which was fairly nostalgic, especially walking out of Korien station as though I was going off to lessons. I saw my Japanese teacher from senior school as well as a couple of people I use to go to school with - Phil & Yuki - so that was really good to see them ^_^ The thing was that the school trip I had done previously was happening that week, which is why my teacher was there, so I thought it would be great to go visit then. Pity it was less than a day though, considering I had a nice long bus trip there & back from Nagoya XD

Trip two. Finally, I went to Tokyo! I hadn't really intended on going to be honest & it's never really interested me in terms of somewhere I would like to visit, but my parents were due to be coming out to visit and of course, Tokyo tends to be the main tourist destination, so I ended up going down too. Unfortunately, my mum's been ill recently and was actually told by doctor's that she wouldn't be able to fly so that really sucked, but my step-dad came out anyway and I met up with him in Tokyo for a few days. I have to say that I wasn't overly excited by much in Tokyo, it's just all too big, too many buildings & way too many people for me, but it was nice to meet up with a few people like Lisa, and was nice to wander round the Imperial Palace gardens, see shrines & particularly visit the Museum for Emerging Science & Technology in Odaiba where I saw Honda's ASIMO robot which was pretty cool! I stayed in Shinjuku but also visited Shibuya, Harajuku, Iidabara, Akihabara etc... I finally met my economics teacher's sons, Duncan & Selwyn which was awesome, having been talking to them via the internet for nearly 4 years as they work in Tokyo. Was nice to chat to them about life in Japan & whatnot, plus we went for a nice work in a park with the blossoms yay :)
So basically, I packed in a lot of sightseeing into the past few weeks which was pretty cool as I won't have too much time now we're back to class! Hope everyone's good, will try & update this more often & closer to the actual events perhaps, but it's nearly up to date now yay! The trees are turning from pink to green, it's still a bit rainy, but overall, should be a good second semester, so here goes... :D Kou x

England!!!

Well, yes, I did give up on staying in Japan for the whole year and made a 2 week trip home which was really awesome, was great to see my friends and family as I'd really missed lots of people! Like Timm :P
Flight back was pretty cool as was all daytime so got some amazing views of Siberia! First few days back I was pretty tired but at that time and in the final weekend too I was able to see some family like my parents, grandparents, aunts, sisters, godparents, cousins and second cousins... So was pretty nice really! And especially nice to be home and to see my mum of course! Only thing weird to start was the food, everything seemed to be incredibly sweet in comparison to Japan XD Ah well... Anyway, after a few days home I went to Sheffield! Yay!
Arrive Sheffield Sunday afternoon. Walk into house, hug Timm, spill his tea over him XD Luckily it wasn't hot... Thus commenced AWESOME week and half of seeing Timm, Elmo, Scott & Tizzy, working TSC and catching up with friends :D:D:D

Overall lots of things were done I guess, such as visiting the museum with Matt, dinner at Wokmania with Dave, 2 trips to Nandos with lots of different friends, trip to the Dev Cat, going to town with Arkady & Wil, seeing Sammo, falling asleep on Elmo, hugging Timm, visiting peoples at NoDDSoc, meeting new housemates, getting my house for next year and also seeing my Japanese teachers! I think I spoke ok but I was still somehow nervous talking to them in comparison to people here. Explaining Ohi pottery was kinda difficult but hey, otherwise I felt I had improved so that was good!
Then there was TSC... Meetings great fun as always, particularly the first week when we were playing with a laptop & projector that had been left to make a PowerPoint and accidentally got logged out leaving a giant screen of "Shut the fuck up Arkady!!!" for the next person to sign in... Which happened to be the University AV people... So we ran out pretty quickly when they came in :P

I ended up doing 4.5 events in total, not so terrible really :P In for Population was fine, I made a new friend by the name of Ed yay! And later on more friends, like Tom for example - yay for nice new juniors! Tuesday both weeks was pretty good, in fact the second week we finished really early so I went home during the event & saw some Cool As Folk at the Fox & Duck where Timm was working and had a nice time talking to Elmo yay! Space was fine as per normal, but I think the best one was the Headphone Disco as the set up was easy & it was hilarious watching people dancing to no music & singing really loudly to themselves! Hehe...
So of course the major highlight was seeing my friends & being with Timm, but there was another thing that was particularly cool... Laser training! After a 2 day course with stuff like health & safety, basic laser info & demonstrations I was able to programme & run my own laser show and I'll be able to do it for events next year so I'm really looking forward to that :D Apparently I need to be quicker with changes but I was told that it was obvious I had experience with lighting as I knew what effects and timings I wanted to use... I didn't bother to say that actually I normally do DJ sound & AV XD

All in all therefore was a great holiday yay! Even the return was not so bad, I actually made a new friend at the airport in fact, as I had to stay there overnight and there was an American guy to talk to who'd missed his flight! Only got to wait until August till I see everyone again now, so not so bad really :P Kou.

New Year, Fun Times?

Well, the new year started pretty well I guess with a trip to some local Kanazawa shrines courtesy of our friend Ishikawa-san who does karate :) It snowed most of the day but was pretty nice wandering around Kenroku-en & taking part in what's considered to be something traditional to do at New Year's in Japan. We went to 3 shinres in total, but I can't exactly remember the names off the top of my head :P
Dan's mum also visited around that time so she came with us which was nice, and a few days later we all went out for curry as a goodbye dinner.
Speaking of goodbyes, something sad did happen a little bit later which was the return of my friend Yoonjin to Korea, as she'd finished her year abroad. But lots of us went out for tasty "American-style" food which was effectively American, but in Japanese form. It was kinda weird to be completely honest. But anyway, Yoonjin left a little while later which was sad :( Though she did leave lots of Korean sweets, noodles & seaweed for people which was nice of her! I haven't actually written to her yet but I intend to soon cos I do want to try & keep in contact with people I meet out here.
On a more positive note we spent some time over January & February going on trips for our final Japanese cultural experience, in other words, the making of Ohi pottery. We were all able to make 4 pieces, 2 of which had to be tea bowls. I ended up making an extra little bowl & a pig for my optionals, not entirely sure why to be honest XD The fun thing about doing the pottery Ohi-style was that everything was done by hand, unlike normal pottery where they use one of those wheels. We shaped the clay and moulded it with our fingers which made each piece very personal, though the following week we did carve it better with a little tool thing, so they didn't exactly have finger marks on them or anything... In the end all my pieces turned out ok, not exactly amazing but hey art is not my forté... My pig looked pretty cool though with its greenish-silvery colouring, and one of my teabowls had a nice red effect in the centre :) Apparently getting red colour is lucky, good times.
Other than that, the snow fell, exams were taken & essays were written, which took up a lot of the start of February. Exams weren't too bad I guess, though I did find the reading class one quite hard. Essays were ok in general, just time-consuming! However I did have fun writing my Japanese Ways of Thinking essay in which I basically started my research on looking at hentai portrayals in manga, which was really helpful as I needed that for my Sheffield project proposal! Anthropology wasn't as great but at least we got a little extension for going to a symposium our teacher was speaking at, which was actually pretty cool as there were 2 really good taiko performances going on too :) Even the jodo exam went pretty well which was good, guess all the practice hitting Wolfgang paid off :P

Holidays began, karaoke was once again visited, we had a nice dinner out for karate & in general it was nice to relax for a bit! Then about a week after term ended I headed off on my trip home! Will write about that next post I guess, gonna head off & make some dinner for now. It's got warmer recently & I need to drink & eat more I think as I felt really faint earlier today XD At least the sleep pattern's improving a little. Peace & love etc ;) Kou x

November/December Catch Up Time!

Well, it turns out I am useless at keeping blogs. But currently I can't sleep so I will attempt to fill in the past few months, starting with... Winter!
I guess it's easiest just to list some fun things to start with.

Snow! There was a lot of snow. It came halfway up my boots & the first day I went out in it I fell over about 10m outside our dorm. Nice ;) Made getting to lessons take a bit longer as going up the steps became a bit of a health hazard. Also, as per normal, karaoke was visited, taiko was played & yakiniku was eaten. Sometimes even scary Finnish sweets (aka salmiakki) were consumed.

On the subject of taiko, I had my first taiko concerts! One was at a primary school which was nice & non-scary at least and I did mess up once but hey! The next one though was at a special exchange students' party with even the president of Kanazawa University attending, but to be fair once I was up on the stage it was more fun than scary. We only performed one song as it's all we knew properly at the time, but it was still nice to have the experience! In other news, Ryan & Alex put up a little Christmas tree in the common room & things felt kinda seasonal though not quite like home.

One thing that did occur around that time was our third experiences in culture trip, on which we ventured to a gold leaf museum type place, where we used gold & silver leaf to make our own design on an item of our choosing, in my case a little black box. I guess it could be a jewellery box but you could put whatever you felt like in it really. It could even contain a dragon to be fair, given the whole separate dimensional existence that Terry Pratchett claims them to inhabit... Or whatever it is. Anyway that was pretty cool though as per normal my efforts weren't really as pretty as most people's XD
Christmas was pretty good. We had a party on Christmas Eve then on Christmas Day I helped Ryan make Chistmas lunch for which we had chicken, potatoes & vegetables. We even had gravy courtesy of Richard :)

Then on Boxing Day I left on a trip to Kyoto with Petteri! I was really excited about visiting Kyoto, especially as it was the only city I really knew before this year, maybe asides from Osaka. The trip was in general really fun though a little short but we managed to cram a lot in. For example, we visited Kiyomizu-dera, the imperial palace gardens, Maruyama park, Kinkaku-ji and Kitano Tenman-gu as well as a day trip to Nara & Uji, where we visited Todai-ji, where the Daibutsuen (giant buddha) is, and the Byodoin (Phoenix Temple), respectively. It was especially nice as I got to meet up with my friend James from Sheffield Uni & also saw Ben albeit briefly :) So all in all was really fun & just to say also that Petteri was an awesome travel companion so that made it extra good ^_^

Then of course it was back to Kanazawa and time for the New Year! We had another party in the common room & sang Auld Lang Syne & watched the countdown on the Japanese TV so all in all was pretty fun I guess. Mel wore a cosplay outfit & I wore my yukata out in the snow :D So despite having had exams at the start of December I guess those 2 months were pretty good overall! At least they were only mid-terms anyway :) Will continue shortly... Oh, just one more thing. Something particularly funny that happened was once again Petteri was wearing his headphones & singing to himself whilst cleaning & in the end quite a large group of people had formed outside his door to listen to him :P He got a nice round of applause at the end of "Different World" by Iron Maiden & came out of his room all embarrassed hehe. Fun times :)

Karaoke, ikebana & yukitsuri

Well, I suppose 3 main things to really sum up the past couple of weeks! Firstly, on Hallowe'en we went to karaoke! It was my friend Nae's birthday & loads of people went so it was really fun ^_^ We even managed to sing Through The Fire & The Flames this time round!
Since then, I've mostly just been doing the same thing i.e. Japanese classes, karate, jodo, taiko so not so bad really! Also, our university had a festival recently & they had some really awesome taiko performances which was cool :) I also got some random gashapon (coin-operated toy vending machines) stuff & I won an Elmo stuffed toy on a UFO catcher hehe.
Last Tuesday in our cultural experiences classes we did ikebana (flower arranging) which was actually quite good as we got to go into the woods & collect all our own stuff & then arranged it "free style" :) You can see mine here though some of the other creations were much cooler but hey...
Hmm, other than that, last Saturday evening I went to Kenrokuen again, but this time with my friends Kym & Petteri & Kym's host mother. It was open especially at night so it was really pretty & there was also an ocarina concert. Plus recently there was something set up called yukitsuri, which is basically where the trees are supported by bamboo poles to help when there's lots of snow which happens a lot in Kanazawa it seems.
Anyway, I'm gonna head off now but will hopefully have something new & exciting to write about soon :P Ooh, just incidentally, it started snowing yesterday though so far it's mostly just been hailing or slushy. Might improve soon, you never know. Bye for now! Charlotte ^_^

Almost A Month In Japan!

Sorry I haven't updated this in ages, have been pretty busy! Ah well. Still haven't found too much Japanese food to eat other than yakiniku but hey it's not so bad to eat Western food some of the time! At any rate, I've discovered at least that I really don't like gyoza, nikuman or sanma & I'm going with the basis of "at least I tried it" for now :P

Food aside, it's quite interesting being here, classes are quite good & my kanji is improving which is great! I've also had a few lessons of karate & jodo now which is great, already getting more flexible! Haven't exactly done regular exercise for the past couple of years other than walking everywhere in Sheffield & whatnot so it's all good!
Have also been out a couple of times at the weekend which has been fun. A couple of weeks ago I went to the beach with some friends. It was quite far away so we had to get a bus to the station & then a train from there! But it was a nice day out & sunny which was great! Then the weekend just gone there was a bus trip to Kamikouchi which is a mountainous highland in Nagano prefecture, and we walked round there for a few hours. It was really pretty but very cold! We also stopped off in Takayama in Gifu prefecture for some dinner though my friends went to a soba restaurant so I didn't really eat much!

So yeah, all's still good though of course I miss talking to people & the time difference makes it pretty difficult! But I have lots of studying to keep me occupied, for example about 10 sides of kanji homework to hand in by Friday! Though Friday evening should be fun as I think we're going to taiko then after that to karaoke for Hallowe'en :)
Hope everyone's ok & hopefully hear from you soon! Charlotte x~x