geisha_feet

Sooooo I completely failed to keep posting here after that last bit. It's October now, and I've already been back at Leeds Uni for a while, but I'm going to post this as a final update for anyone who wanted to know how things went.

I passed Leeds Exam! I got 70% which is an A, sort of, but I only got a Pass overall because my essays weren't good enough :(

I got decent grades in my final exams, mostly As and one C in core Japanese because I got super lazy. My speaking class final was fun, because we had to make a movie, the most interesting bits of which you can find here. I'm the tall blonde who loves herself a bit too much :p There's a bunch of other videos up there that you can watch if you want to see AIU campus, or Internationals behaving like idiots.

The Caution Bears joke is based off a bunch of posters that they put up around the campus, warning us about the bears that they'd spotted around Chuo Park nearby. Except that instead of "Caution! Bears!" they wrote straight "Caution Bears!" which led to all kinds of jokes among fluent English speakers.

Leaving was heart-breaking. I had to get a flight back almost immediately after the term ended, so on the night I was due to get my night bus, we all went out for dinner as a goodbye party. Lots of tears were shed and I don't think I've ever been hugged so much :( I really miss all those guys.

The flight back wasn't too bad. I had to go via Russia, which was an interesting experience, as I ended up going from the Land Of The Super-Polite, to the Land Of Extremely Brusque Russian Ladies. That was probably the biggest culture shock I'd had all year.

It wasn't as weird to be home as I thought it would. I've adjusted pretty quickly, but I've noticed that if I ever bump into Asian people (regardless of whether or not they're actually Asian) just the way they look will trigger Japanese instincts and I have to do my best to squash them flat before I offend somebody :/ It was really weird though, I was walking around in Leeds for job-searching and, somewhere around the University, I suddenly heard Japanese voices right behind me, and it was weird because it occurred to me that it wasn't usual to hear that. I haven't explained it very well, but basically, I heard Japanese and it was weird to think that it was uncommon, y'know?

Other than that, life's been pretty normal. Every now and again, I'll think of things from Japan that I miss. Like sometimes I'll be hungry/thirsty and look for the nearest vending machine, only to realise that there won't be any because this is England and that isn't how we roll. I miss having time though. Leeds is much stricter on its Japanese course, although things have been a bit messy this year it seems. Recently we had a bit of translation homework that nobody knew the exact specifics of. Everyone had different ideas on what we were meant to do. Still, we're learning a lot, and I feel like certain aspects of my Japanese are getting better. Like I'm remembering more Keigo and God knows what a horror that is to learn D: Oh Japan. Only you would make up an entire other vocabulary set just so that you could be more polite.

Anyway, this is my last entry. I hope you've enjoyed reading this, despite it's horribly sporadic nature, and if it's been even a little bit useful I'll be happy.

Thanks for reading!

(O-oh my, is it June already, it is D:)

It's June! And as such the weather has taken a turn for the beautiful and I have lost any and all motivation I may have ever had for work. Learning Japanese? Pff no, I wanna loll about on the grass in the sun. (Although the grass is abnormally prickly so doing so without a towel is inadvisable.)

Of course, the return of summer means the return of giant insects, so I expect to see the killer bees at some point.

(Also, we had a cracking storm last night. The lightning was amazing and there was this one roll of thunder that I think lasted at least a full minute.)

In other news, I am packing up boxes to send stuff home and all my books fit in one with space to spare so I am relieved. I'm also sending some clothes and Christmas presents (I really should have asked for consumables only) and stuff home, but I'm gonna send them by ship so they'll be a) cheap and b) arriving after I get home but probably before I go back to Leeds.

For the most part, I can't believe I only have two months left here. The time has really just flown by and, although I knew, and everyone else and their grandmother knew that this would happen, I'm slightly overwhelmed by how much time I've spent here and how quickly it's already over. For the most part, I don't think I'm going to miss Japan all that much. I certainly won't miss the staring, the assumptions that I'm an idiot, that one creepy stalker guy I met at the train, and definitely not the food. I imagine that Japanese food is usually good, but the cafeteria is determined to make a Y400 meal as unappetising as humanly possible.

What I am going to miss is all the friends I've made here. Although it's nice to know that I have a bunch of sofas in various countries that I can crash on, I'm really going to miss these guys and all our ridiculousness together. I want to kidnap them all back to England with me for my entertainment. It's going to be really odd to think that I can't just nip downstairs to the lobby and just have them be here. I think we're all going to miss each other horribly. Erica won't even let us talk about packing because it makes her too sad.

In the mean time, my English has started to deteriorate (as have my typing skills so if you see any typos, blame it on that) but my Japanese isn't properly fluent yet so now I can't speak any languages! Yay!

I also discovered that my first instinct when I don't know a word in Russian is to replace it with the Japanese. Huzzah >:T

I still don't have my results from Leeds exam yet. They should be coming in sometime this month, and when I get them I am going to tell everyone I know at least three times.

Blimey but I'm looking forward to coming home.

So for those of you who didn't know (and you probably did because I whinged about it all the time) I had my Leeds exam on Friday.

Upon exiting the exam I ran off with my arms waving around all over the place screaming "I'M FREE! FINALLY FREE AT LAST!" and laughing maniacally.

For those of you who think this an overreaction, let me tell you how I had to borrow a friend's wrist brace because I studied so much my hand gave out. I probably shouldn't be typing right now because it's still twinging a bit.

Anyway, I think I did all right. At the very least, I am fairly hopeful that I passed. I think this justifies the tub of ice-cream I bought and then ate by myself in one sitting while watching Glee with everyone. It was delicious.

Other than studying I haven't really done an awful lot. I was planning to go to Kakunodate to see the cherry blossoms but that means spending time and money which I don't want to spend.

So yeah. Not an awful lot has really happened, so here's some wacky commentary on Japan.

Things That Japan Is Good At

- Electronics (but everyone knows that).

- Scenery. We're in the rural areas here so this doesn't really apply to the cities but the countryside is beautiful.

- Massive bugs. Have I mentioned the killer bees? Spring is springing, so they're making a comeback.

- Fashion. I have yet to meet a badly dressed Japanese girl. They're just so good at it.

-A runoff from fashion I suppose, but shoes. Japan makes me want to be a shoe person because they're all so pretty. My friend Haruka always has cute heels. ALWAYS. I, unfortunately, will never be able to wear them because my feet are huge and western by comparison. Japanese feet are all tiny and delicate.

- Snacks. Especially here. The cafeteria food is dreadful, and while it may have the necessaries in terms of calories, there are very few occasions where I haven't come away from a meal still hungry. The snacks, however, are beautiful.

- Box cars. Japan has somehow managed to make the tiniest family vehicles ever.

- Pretty people. Some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen, I have seen here. Akita is actually famous for them.

- Public transport. You could set your watch by it. It is always on time, it is always clean and the buses here are especially cheap. The trains are a little more expensive but I can forgive it. I'm just glad I'm not in the big cities so I can avoid suicides getting groped at rush hour. I don't think there even is a rush hour here.

- Festivals. And setting stuff on fire. See my facebook photos for examples.

Things That Japan Is Bad At

- The concept of an ATM. They close here. I've been here for over eight months and this still boggles my mind. The whole point of an ATM is that they are open when the banks are not. They don't need to be closed. The only reasoning I will accept for this being the case is that tiny tiny people are working inside them and have to go home at some point. There's an ATM on campus but it closes at six and on weekends completely. And public holidays. Of which there are a LOT. Golden Week is just a clump of individual national holidays that they decided to just join together for convenience.

- Equal rights. This is kind of a heavy thing but at the moment if you are not full blooded Japanese you have no voting rights. Even if you are otherwise a Japanese citizen and have lived and worked there all your life, you can't vote. The current government is talking about changing it though and also giving voting rights to permanent foreign residents, so I'm a little happier with that.

- Expressing displeasure. I am a foreigner from a place where people are fairly upfront, and I am especially oblivious, so I need people to tell me when I am brassing them off. The Japanese will not do this. I think they'd rather throw themselves in front of some large vehicle rather than tell you that hey your music is kind of loud and I kind of have to study so could you turn it down please? It makes me really nervous to do anything just in case I accidentally annoy someone who won't tell me so.

- Honestly telling foreigners whether or not our Japanese is good or not. It is always good. I said "good morning" to someone once and they were all "OH MY GOD THAT'S AMAZING" so I'm a little sceptical of their opinion.

- Accepting compliments. My aforementioned friend Haruka with the shoes is the most Western Japanese person I have ever met (I don't know how this happened, she has lived in Japan her whole life) and she still does this. Her English is amazing. She showed me her homework and I just went "Uh, what?" She, however, constantly insists that she is stupid and won't believe us when we tell her how astonishingly good her English is. It's better than mine (although mine's been deteriorating, so I'm not a good judge I suppose). I want to kidnap her back to Leeds with me. I think she'd fit right in.

- Leaving work at a reasonable time. Salary men. Nearly all of them do this, getting to work at 7 a.m. and leaving around 10, 11 at night. It's honestly ridiculous.


That's about all I can think of right now. Looking at the list, I'm glad I can think of more things I like about Japan than I dislike. I wouldn't want to live here for the rest of my life I don't think, but I want to do a lot more travelling anyway, so it's not really that much of an issue. I'm pretty confident I'm going to come back at some point in my life. Anyway, go look at my facebook page, it's got pictures and stuff that I FINALLy uploaded.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=728807742&v=photos

Soooooooooo...

It's kind of, um, been a while.

Hisashiburi I guess.

So my last post was in (dear God) early February whereupon I was regaling you all with tales of falling off mountains and suchlike but I never told you about the actual festival which was incredibly cold and incredibly beautiful.

The actual festival involved setting stuff on fire on the mountain and had been made to look like the mascot of Kirin beer (who I believe was sponsoring the event, but I could be wrong) which is a large dragon. It looked pretty cool. I've got pictures but my camera isn't so great at taking photos at night so most of them don't get the light right and those that do are all juddery because I am incapable of holding a camera straight apparently.

There was a foreigner I didn't know! This never happens, there are like twenty foreign people in Akita prefecture during the winter. There was free food, and that was very delicious although while I was trying to enjoy my Frankfurter some slightly drunk guy tried to hit on me. He seemed like an otherwise okay guy so I actually participated in the conversation but I ended up making some feeble excuse like "I have to go over here now" and went to stand by the bonfire where most of me was warm, but my feet were cold :/

Between the festival and other things I don't think I had an awful lot to do other than study for finals and get roped into going to schools and such by Okano-sensei. He is an expert at this.

Okano-sensei: Milena-san! Are you free on this day at this time?
Me: Well, yes, but-
Sensei: Excellent! Do you want to go to a school?
Me: I don't not want to go to a school, but I-
Sensei: Great! I'll sign you up since you're free and you just love this school stuff don't you?
Me: I-
Sensei: DON'T YOU.
Me: Yes sensei D:

This is followed by much weeping at the theft of all my free time.

(I kid, he's much more amiable about it than this.)

I ended up going to Daisen city at one point and dressing up in Ghanaian clothes. There was an international fashion show at the local Aeon mall and I got to meet pretty much every JET member in Akita. I think I can now fairly confidently say that I have met every foreigner in Akita.

Then there were exams!

They were pretty easy but I notice that AIU is so much easier to get through than Leeds is that it's not even funny. I'm going to go back to Leeds and burst into tears at the sudden upwards motion of the difficulty level and workload. I got an A- in Japanese and I passed my calligraphy course (it was just pass/fail so it wasn't especially challenging) although the final calligraphy on my wall-scroll (which took donkeys by the way) is so awful that I want to cry just looking at it. I'd done much better things previously, I'd rather have used those.

So that happened, and then it was the holidays!

Katy and Fran came up to see us for a few days as well. It was wonderful. And we got to sign our housing contracts and those are going to be sent off soon, so we'll have somewhere to live by the time September comes around.

Andrew flew over to see me, which was lovely and we down to Osaka and stayed in this really nice place called the Hotel Chuo Oasis. We didn't see much in Osaka although the place we were staying in (Shin-Imamiya) had Universal Studios Japan in it and I wish I'd known beforehand because I really wanted to go. It looked really cool.

We went to Kyoto, and that was beautiful. We went up Kyoto tower where you can basically see the whole city and got blatantly stared at by teenage boys before heading to a temple down the road. It was really odd, because on the temple wall, in English, in said "NOW LIFE IS LIVING YOU" and I thought that this was just crazy Engrish, until I read the sign in Japanese, and it really did say that.

Figures.

We met up with Peter (yaaaaaaaaaaay Peter!) which was fabulous and he showed us around a bunch of places that we wouldn't have seen otherwise and that was cool. We went to the the Yasaka shrine and giggled at the drawings on the plaques. Peter and I had a bit of a pray, because that's what you do at shrines and I hadn't done it yet since coming here. Andrew wouldn't do it, because he fails.

After that, we went to the arcaaaaaaaade!

We took purikura, which are little sticker pictures that you take in silly poses with a green screen for funny background purposes and then you draw on them. Fortunately, you can pick and choose your photos so that you can ignore the ones where it took you by surprise or where Andrew ruined everything.

Can you do an accusing glare? Janet can.

It was here that we were told of the wonders of ELEVATOR ACTION DEATH PARADE.

It's a shooter game.

You play it in an elevator.

Sort of.

We found it later in a different arcade in Tokyo and it was awesome fun. Andrew holds guns with two hands so I had elevator button duty which is fine, because my accuracy with a gun is nil.

The day after we went to Nara and got attacked by deer which was all kinds of fun. And got slightly lost. But then we found ourselves again so it was okay. And we got carted around by a short but exceedingly physical fit gentleman by the name of Satoshi, who gave us a short tour of Nara city and I translated (badly) for Andrew. He was very nice and complimented me on my Japanese, but that seems to be standard practice. I once just said 'hello' and was complimented for it so you can see that the standard isn't particularly high.

Tokyo was pretty cool. We stayed in Ikebukuro and Ikebukuro is one of my favourite places, so I was pretty made up. We managed to get to the Ghibli Museum, which was pretty fab. There was this one room with lots of films and stop motion animation and this music that made me feel surprisingly touched. They had one of the robots from Laputa: Castle in the Sky up on the roof so, naturally, there are pictures. They will eventually find their way onto facebook.

THERE WAS A CATBUS.

But only elementary school age kids are allowed on it, so I was BURNING WITH JEALOUSY. Andrew was amused. And then he got me a sootball. It's adorable. I'll take a picture so you can see. He sits on my desk, but is, as yet, nameless.

We also went to Tokyo Disney Sea. In Japan there's Tokyo Disneyland as well, but Disney Sea is, you guessed it, ocean themed. Andrew forgot his camera, so we bought a disposable one for relatively cheap. Jack Sparrow was there so we got a picture. I think it must have been really tiring for him because he was constantly chattering away in English to people who didn't speak it.
We wanted to get on the ride for Journey to the Centre of the Earth but the queue was three hours long so we avoided that boredom fiesta. A whole bunch of the Japanese were playing videogames in the lines while they were waiting.

We did, however, go on the Indiana Jones ride which was awesome. It's based on the fourth movie (y'know, the one that doesn't exist) and there were giant snakes and fireballs and large rolling boulders and a good time was generally had by all. And we ate chocolate popcorn and tacos (not together) and they were beautiful.

Unfortunately, Andrew eventually had to leave, and I had a bit of a cry and then I went and mooched around with Fran and Katy and Katy's friend Tat and that cheered me up considerably because all of those people are wonderful awesomesauce. Beautiful fruit tarts were eaten and later we went to karaoke and sang incredibly nerdy songs because we are just that cool. And then I got on my night bus and that went considerably more smoothly than the last time I got the bus from Tokyo to Akita although there was the worry that I wouldn't be able to find the locker I left my duffel bag in, but that turned out to not be a problem.

So right now, I'm killing my brain with kanji. I retook the placement test so instead of moving from 303 to 304 I'm going straight to 401. This is very good. Also I think the endless kanji may have helped a bit so I'm relieved to know that at least some of it is sticking. It's quite entertaining actually, because rather than studying by myself in my room (which is depressing as all get out), I've set myself up in the lobby and this crowd of people ends up forming around the table to socialise. It makes me feel better to be around people when I'm studying that horror of a textbook.

The new students for this year just arrived too (Japan's academic year begins in April) so now I have a new roommate! Her name is Yukari and she's from Kyoto. She's lovely. I've been really fortunate with my roommates, both of them have been really nice. Also, I've managed to get into the habit of only speaking Japanese with her so that's good. I signed up for the peer-support thing so I was handing out keys and giving campus tours, and now people think I know my stuff. The internationals keep coming to me to ask me about stuff and it's kind of flattering but most of my advice tends to be "ask Mike".

Mike was our guy in student services. He's just moved departments, so now he's in PR which is the only department that doesn't have much to do with the students. This is a shame because Mike is amazingly good at his job and really sticks his neck out for us. His replacement, Brian, has mile-long shoes to fill. Brian seems pretty nice, but every time he speaks with his American accent I get thrown off because I can't stop thinking about how much he looks like Bill Bailey so I kind of expect him to sound like him too. I am completely aware that this is totally ridiculous.

That's pretty much everything so far. I registered for classes, so now I'm smacking myself in the face with language, because it's all Japanese and Russian. Classes start tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it :D

I'll try to update a little more regularly in the future, but I make no promises.

Alternative title: "The Day That Milena Couldn't Stop Falling In Snow Drifts"

So the Shiraiwa Castle Light Festival is in a week. It's been a while since I vaguely mentioned it in passing, but the preparation for it was today, which involved climbing up a mountain.

Fortunately, they lent us snow boots.

Unfortunately, mine were huge on my feet and I will maintain until the day I die that they were the reason for my atrocious balance today.

I fell no fewer than three times into the snow. It was hilarious. I even got stuck at one point and had to be pulled out. By the time we got down, Satoru-san, who was walking in front of me, had developed ninja Milena Is Falling Right The Hell Now SensesTM and whipped round at one point to catch me when I slipped a little bit. He wasn't even looking, it was amazing. Like a ninja.

We also helped to make mochi a bit. The part of mochi making that we were involved in basically surmounted to hammering it to a pulp. Literally, with big hammers. And the men sang some kind of work song, which was really beautiful.

(Mochi are rice cakes, you can get them in the UK I think. I don't like them over much, the texture is kind of a cross between marshmallows and mushrooms. Fortunately, we had it in some kind of soup thing, so I could ignore that. And then we had it for dessert too! Economy in food!)

But yeah, the actual festival involves a lot of setting things on fire. We were putting up the candle holder type things up on the paths on the mountainside (except they won't hold candles, they'll hold bottles of oil). When they're all lit up, we'll be able to see it from the village. It looks like it's going to be really beautiful.

I am so looking forward to this.

So it's been warming up a little bit lately. Last friday we had sun oh my God, and it was the first time I'd ever been to Oosumi elementary and it hadn't been nearly blizzarding. It was quite nice.

I think it's a sign that I'm still perfectly English when I open a blog entry with a comment on the weather.

Right now, my life is being taken over by kanji, because if it isn't taken over by kanji then I am going to suffer. Prostitution, electron, direct current and static shock are but some of the kanji on my To Learn list. If I ever come into a situation whereupon I need to know the word for prostitution in Japanese, I will know that my life has taken a very strange turn downhill. Seriously.

A Fun Thing I Learned Today:

The Japanese word for seahorse is 'tatsu no otoshigo', which literally means 'dragon's dropped child'. The general idea is the seahorse was originally a baby dragon, but it was so small that it's mother couldn't keep her grip on it as they were flying and she accidentally dropped him into the sea.

It sounded a lot more adorable in class.

Lately, I've been reading Gaijin Smash, which is a blog written by a guy who was an ALT in Osaka and his crazy but true adventures. It's kind of making want to apply for the JET program despite my long professed hatred of children.

The JET program is basically where you apply to go and be foreign in front of Japanese students. Specifically the English-speaking kind of foreign. You just need a Bachelor's degree and fluent English and a beating heart and you're eligible. They actually prefer that you don't know Japanese, the reasoning being that you're less likely to speak English in front of the students. This is rubbish, I love speaking English to Japanese kids, they think it's amazing. Speaking to them in Japanese is also amazing because they're all "Oh my GOD, you speak Japanese MY MIND IS BLOWN". Apparently speaking any language at all will amaze them. It'll amaze the teachers too. It's really difficult to get Japanese people to believe that you speak Japanese. It can be really frustrating, especially when they have something to tell you and then they waste ten minutes trying to find someone to translate "come with me" for them.

I'm a little short on time today, I'll tell you more stuff later.

(You can find Gaijin Smash here by the way. It's pretty entertaining, though not really work safe.)

So I've been really lazy about updating this blog and I'm sorry for people who actually wanted to know what's going on.

ANYWAY.

I went to Tokyo and that was awesome. It was a little bit warmer, which was nice and Katy let me crash on her floor. Although getting to Katy's was a bit of an adventure. I got into Tokyo on the night bus, which meant it was like 6:00 in the morning and I had to call Katy to wake her up and find out where to go next. The place Katy lives in called Musashi Koganei, but I don't know the kanji for that word so she told me to get on the train to Tachikawa. I did. Of course, I stupidly forgot that she actually lived in Musashi and was merrily headed to Tachikawa before I realised. It was no major disaster and all I had to do was switch lines, which didn't cost me anything, but I felt a bit of an idiot.

Once I actually got there, there was epic fun to be had and I saw Fran and Miles (who I didn't really know at Leeds but he's pretty awesome too) and I was given a grand tour of Tokyo's major stations.

Except Harajuku, I didn't get to go to Harajuku.

So we went to Shinjuku which was kinda nice. It's a big shopping area basically, so in terms of tourism, if shopping isn't your thing, there isn't much to do. We did go to the cinema though and watched the Professor Layton film, which was basically and hour and a half of Professor Layton being badass. And fencing with a steel pipe, because you can do that nowadays.

I say nowadays, because even though it seems like it's set some time in the past, technology is apparently advanced enough to create super-realistic robots that look, talk and act like humans and to transfer one person's memories into another person's body. Nobody knows when these games are set.

As you do.

So the film was pretty great, and we understood pretty much all of it until it got to the end because that was the point where it more-or-less went completely insane. There were mechas. No logic was involved.

We also went to Akihabara which is nerd central. This would be wonderful except for the fact that it is male nerd central, and male nerds and female nerds are vastly different in Japan. For one, there seems to be more of them. For another, they're far more openly perverted about it. We didn't stay there for very long, although we did accept a bunch of pamphlets from the maid girls that littered the streets because they seemed so happy when we did. I was relieved to see that they were allowed to wear coats over their uniforms, because even though it's warmer in Tokyo than it is in Akita, it was still the back end of December. It was cold, you guys.

One girl in particular ran after us because she'd noticed that Katy's shoelace was untied. How lovely is that? She did her best to say it in English as well, which would have annoyed me at the university but I don't mind people in Tokyo assuming that I can't speak Japanese. It is tourist central after all.

Speaking of which, I had to stop myself from grabbing Katy and going "Look! Foreigners!"

Let me explain. Akita is pretty small and doesn't get many foreigners. If I'm in Akita city and I see someone who is foreign, they probably come from the university and I recognise their faces. In Tokyo, however, I'm seeing foreigners I don't know at all.

This was a surreal experience for me.

Back on to the topic of nerds, we also went to Ikebukuro, which is home to Otome Road, which is female nerd central and contains no maids at all. It is almost impossible to find. It also has a large doujinshi shop which I was excited about, because I've never really found a decent amount of doujin anywhere.

[Note: Doujinshi is self-published manga. It is often a fan-work of previously published manga or anime and is extremely cheap because it's usually quite short.]

A lot of doujinshi tends to be boys-love, but if you look closely you can find friendship based stuff. It doesn't often have much of a plot, given that the length limits the amount of story you can actually have. The art tends to be nice though and it's pretty cute and fluffy stuff generally. You have to keep an eye out for the mature rated stuff though, because the Japanese are into some weird things, and they aren't nearly so reserved about it as you'd think. You have to be careful if you don't want to end up with brain-scarring.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, Otome Road is much smaller than Akiba. The guys get most of a district, the girls get half a road. It kind of sucks, but maybe it'll expand over time.

Maybe.

Ikebukuro is pretty nice though. It's pretty busy, though not nearly on the scale of Shibuya, which I'll tell you about in a minute, but there's things to do and see, so it's good for an explore. I'm going back to Tokyo with Andrew in March and the hostel we're staying at is in Ikebukuro. Peter recommended it, it looks nice, and the internet is free.

So at some point, we went to Shibuya. You kind of have to go to Shibuya in the evening, that's when it's all lit up and beautiful. I stepped out of the station and my jaw literally dropped. "Oh my God" may have been uttered at some point. We didn't stay for very long, because other than being impressed at things, there didn't seem to be an awful lot to do. We took a picture with Hachiko and went up the 109 building, which is shops, shops and more shops.

Hachiko, by the way, is a famous Akita dog that was so faithful to its master that long after he died, Hachiko continued to wait for him at the door of his house. When he was given away to someone else, he kept escaping to go and wait. When the dog finally realised that he wasn't coming back to the house, he went to Shibuya station to wait for him there. When Hachiko finally died, he was found on a street in Shibuya.

Hachiko's a big story for the Japanese. He's got a statue in a bunch of places and he's used as a kind of moral compass for school kids. If you don't know the story of Hachiko and you live in Japan, then you probably live under a rock. With ear-plugs.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that there's a similar story in the West but I can't remember the name of the dog. He sat at his master's grave until he died or something like that, I can't remember the whole thing.)

Moving on, eventually I had to leave and I didn't really want to but the next day was Christmas and I wanted to talk to my mum via Skype while present opening. I managed to get myself home without any problems although I was very tickled by the fact that I was sitting on the very back row in the corner. It was kind of "hide the foreign girl, she'll scare the other passengers".

I'm aware that this is likely to not be the case but the thought amused me.

SO THEN IT WAS CHRISTMAS.

Christmas was quite nice, although quite dull once I stopped being on Skype to family members. There was large amounts of chocolate and a Mr Potato Head from Phil, because I'd been complaining about the lack of potatoes in Japan. Rice is their staple food and it makes me want to jump off a cliff. I am so sick of rice, although I can tolerate it if it's onigiri, which is rice balls with stuff in it. Tuna is my favourite.

Boxing Day I went to work. I signed up for that thing with the Satellite Centre where I go and talk to people in English for three hours. It is tiring. I've done it twice so far and I'm always checking my watch after the first hour. It's fun, but there desperately needs to be a break in there somewhere. Just like five minutes to split up the time.

Classes started a couple of weeks back. I have a lot of free time and very little homework. Japanese class is more or less the same as it used to be, we're just moving ahead in the text book. I'm the calligraphy class, which is fun, but right now we're doing this thing called Tensho style which is really odd and drives me insane. You'd think calligraphy would be relaxing right? Wrong, it's about as relaxing as the zombie apocalypse. No matter what you do, how you try to draw that one stroke, it will refuse to look how you want. Always.

Anyway, I've been going to schools a lot lately to eat up some of this free time I have and practice my Japanese. I keep signing up to go to Oosumi Elementary School, which is where I went yesterday. Some of the kids recognised me from my previous visits, it was really nice. One kid asked if I remembered him, so I did what any responsible adult and lied my face off. You? Of course I remember you! How could I forget?

Oosumi's a nice school. There was this one little girl with her hair in pigtails who obviously really liked English and knew most of the answers. There were some bonkers kids, but it's a school, there are going to be bonkers kids. Not to mention exciting foreigners were around so oh my God! So exciting.

I now know the word for 'zebra' in Japanese. I will never forget it. EVER.

(It's shimauma if you're curious. Literally means "striped horse".)

Ayatori has also kept me busy. Aside from the learning the dance, we've visited three villages. I have to tell you, I'm really glad that we get refunded our travel expenses because getting there is expensive.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Masaka village, the preparation for which prompted this conversation:

Shimoken: "Okay, this weekend, we are going to Masaka village."
Mami: "Massacre?"

There was laughter. Funnily enough, Mami is Japanese. Her English is amazing though.

So we were driven to Masaka. Once we got there, there was a whole lot of talking. These guys speak Akita dialect and they're older so they automatically speak differently so I ended up not really listening. Fortunately I'm not the only foreigner, so they explained things to me and Katka later. We'll be going back at a later date to help them with farming. Hopefully in Spring because I'm getting really sick of my feet being so cold all the time when I'm outside. The performance went okay, but it was the new people's first one so we kept dropping things. It could have gone much better. They also fed us, which was nice, though I'm ashamed to say that I avoided the tofu and the sushi. One is raw fish and the texture of the other makes me want to throw up, I'm sorry.

Afterwards, we headed to the train station and just missed the train home, so we had to wait an hour or so, which was great, but I was freezing and the day before I'd been to a festival which was held outside in what was virtually a blizzard. We'd had to trek across a field to get there. I'm fairly certain it was the widest field in the world. This cold malarky was starting to get really old. While we were waiting, we headed to the nearest supermarket to get ingredients for a nabe party that we had that evening and stopped by a small shop where they sold Obanyaki, which is delicious. It's a sweet cake type thing, with a filling (I had cream) which is reminiscent of Yorkshire pudding, only more squishy on the inside. Apparently you can get frozen ones, so I'm gonna get some at some point and just eat them all. I was considerably happier after eating it.

The nabe party was fun too. Nabe is basically where you take a pot of stuff, throw everything in it and hope for the best. It was delicious, and one of the Japanese students contributed his flat. He had a kotatsu. Kotatsu are wonderful things. You attach it to a table and then you all sit under it in warm bliss. There's a blankety bit. When I have my own place, I am going to buy one. Even if I have to ship it over from Japan. I want one.

The next day we went to Noshiro, which is considerably bigger than Masaka. Unfortunately, we were lacking some people because we'd had the party the night before and some of them had stayed up until stupid o' clock telling ghost stories. The original plan had been to get the bus from AIU but instead we had to take Shimoken's car straight to Akita station and pay for large amounts of parking. Japanese cars aren't very big, and we had to cram six people in there. Basically, we had three people stuffed in the back, myself included, and Yuri had to lie across all our laps on the drive there. I'm pretty sure it wasn't safe but we couldn't be late. In Noshiro, we had to dance Ayatori four times, once every half hour. The audience wasn't huge and after our first two performances, there wasn't really anyone new to watch us. We did get interviewed though, and Aki was nice enough to translate for me when I could quite understand the questions and when I couldn't express myself properly in Japanese. It was warmer than the previous day, so I was happier with life.

The third village we visited was just last weekend, when we went to Kosaka village. We had to get a train to Odate (which is the furthest away we've been so far) and then we were picked up. They fed us, which was lovely, and then we had to travel even further to get to where we were going.

Fun facts about Kosaka!

They used to have a collection of about two hundred drums that have gradually been lost over the years to time, which they're trying to recover. They want us to help when it comes to the drum festival (I won't be able to participate in this, I'll have already gone home) in Summer, but not with playing the drums, just holding them. These are some massive drums, so I think there are more people needed to hold drums than actually play them.

They make wine. I don't know if it's good wine, and I don't know if they're famous for it, but they want us to help them harvest it.

The performance went okay, but I mucked up at one point so it all went downhill from there. Afterwards, we had to leave separately, because most of the team was participating in this overnight research thing that the new people weren't involved in. Shimoken originally wanted us all to stick around but that would have been ridiculous because we would have had to occupy ourselves for several hours, with no guarantee of a warm place to do it in. Fortunately, it turned out to be impossible anyway, so we got to go home.

Our latest performance was actually at the university. We were dancing for some Taiwanese high school students who were visiting and it turned out that a bunch of people I actually knew were going to be there and good Lord, if that didn't make me nervous. Fortunately, I didn't drop anything. And we got free food, so that was cool.

I'm sure I had something else to talk about, but damned if I can remember it.

So I finished all my exams and essays and they weren't particularly difficult which is AWESOME so I feel pretty good about life and the universe in general. I now have lots of free time in which to revise kanji. Fabulous.

There's still snow, so I think I can officially say goodbye to the ground here until March. The construction on the car park and the road in front of the university that started in like October has finished and apparently the bus stop (which had moved) is moving back to its former position on Boxing Day. Huzzah!

I am setting off for Tokyo this evening, and I AM SO EXCITED because I will get to see Katy and Fran (but unfortunately not Peter) and I have missed them like burning. I'll be back on Christmas morning so I can open presents with Mum and Andrew over Skype.

In the meantime, loads of people are leaving D: I totally failed to get up in time to see Sarah off this morning and I feel kind of bad about it, but I may see her in Tokyo anyway because she'll be there for about a week or so.

It doesn't really feel like Christmas yet (despite the presence of Christmas trees and songs and the whole shebang) so I'm hoping that time spent in Tokyo will be a nice build up to that.

The IAC had the year book stomp the other evening. Not that many people showed up but there was dancing and sugary things and I think everyone had a pretty good time. There was musical chairs, and Twister (with a board made by yours truly, so obviously it was amazing) and fun was generally had. It was also a goodbye of sorts for our chairmen, one of whom was going back to New Mexico and Takuma had to step down for some reason that, now that I think about it, I'm not too sure what it is :/

In other news, I'm definitely getting the subsidy! Yaaaaaaaaay money! That I can now avoid spending, unless it's on travelling, which I will be doing a lot of in March when Andrew comes to visit.

Also, Friday was tons of fun. I went to an elementary school and sat in three different classes of third graders teaching them greetings and body parts and where the UK was on a map. The first class I walked into was hilarious because they all went "Oooooooooooooh" the minute they saw me xD I was only there for a couple of hours but everyone was really nice and they provided transport and tea and 9000 yen's worth of book vouchers for my trouble which is, um, actually quite a lot and I don't think I really did enough work to warrant it, but I'm still really grateful.

I've also signed up for a bunch of other things while I'm at it. I've volunteered for the Supporting Villages Project which is trying to liven up Akita's smaller villages (specifically a village called Masaka for us) because they have a pretty serious lack of young people. Also, Kenji, who's running it, has suggested that we learn a dance called Tenjin Ayatori which is really cool and I really want to do it but apparently, even though it's a traditional Akita dance, barely anyone knows what it is so Kenji wants to start an Ayatori club at one of the high schools so that more young people will learn it.

What else, oh! I signed up for the Shiraiwa Castle Light Festival which is also an attempt at revitalising various communities (you can tell that this is kind of an issue) by SETTING THINGS ON FIRE.

This can only end well.

So yeah, it'll take place next February on two weekends and ten AIU students are going to go and help prepare things and there'll be a homestay as well. It sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys and THINGS WILL BE ON FIRE, so it'll look seriously cool.

I'm also signed up for being an English conversation partner at the Satellite Centre in Akita city over the winter, and I'll get paid for that so that'll be nice.

So, yeah. I think that's everything. I am going to be a busy bee, though I'll need it to stop me from killing myself with boredom over the winter.

SNOW!!!

SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW

SNOW

Snow.

So hey, it snowed today and will probably snow for the rest of the week I AM SO EXCITED I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS SINCE NOVEMBER /flail

We're gonna make a fort.

I'll take pictures.

So I might be getting a housing subsidy (pleasepleasepleaseGodI'llbereallygood) which will be awesome and all I have to do is go and play Simon Says with some elementary school kids. On Friday. It'll be fun. And I'll get paid because I totally got myself a work permit finally.

I consider this to be a pretty sweet deal.

Anyway, I had my kanji final today and it was gloriously easy SO YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS. And Toma-sensei gave us biscuits. What a dude.

I have a cold! Only a little one though but I woke up this morning with my eyelids stuck together so I appear to be allergic to something in the room. I have no idea what it is but it's making me sneeze all over the place.

I can't wait for this last week to finish.

/glee

...

I, uh, I'm not dead yet!

SO, things have been happening.

I am now the proud owner of both a phone and an electronic dictionary. Both are very useful :3

SINCE I LAST POSTED we have had a trip to Kanmanji and Mount Chokai to see the shrine and the autumn leaves. The view from the mountain was gorgeous and all the leaves were this glorious reddish-orange colour and I bought myself a little good-luck charm which is a gold owl-shaped bell. It's adorable and now attached to my phone. I jingle when I walk :D

I went to a medical school! The trainee nurses we went to speak to were very lovely. We had two groups, one older one younger, and the younger group apparently came to like us so much that they came to wave us goodbye when we left. Pictures were taken and I'm sure that they'll end up on facebook at some point. I suppose.

I was trying to do Nanowrimo for a bit, but I have writer's block and too much work to be doing to actually finish it. OH WELL, there's always next year. I still don't understand how it is that everything I write ends up with demons in it :T Sneaky beggars.

Finally, I got round to sorting myself out with a conversation partner. It turned out that we vaguely knew each other already, which surprised me a bit. Her name is Miki and she is lovely and speaks slow enough that I can understand. Huzzah! I'm also meeting up with my email friend Mai in the near future. The email project that we were doing is finished but that's a rubbish reason to stop talking to someone.

OH AND I HAD AN EXPERIENCE. It kind of freaked me out. While in Akita city with some friends, we decided to be really rubbish and go and get burgers. We couldn't sit in the non-smoking section unfortunately, so we were sat right next to the glass partition that separated smoking and non-smoking. So I've just finished my burger, and the others are still eating when Shane grabs my attention and points to my right, telling me to look. I ended up regretting this slightly when all I see is this pair of EYES staring at me. This girl just had her nose pressed right up against the glass and she just would not look away. In my experience of being stared at, people who get caught staring tend to look away with the whole "Who? Me? Staring? No way!" but she just kept staring. And she wasn't that young either, like late teens or something. The five year-olds who point were less obvious. It was amusing, because she was staring at me and her friend was staring at her like "what are you doing?" She looked really surprised when Karl tapped on the glass though and did a funny sort of jump in her seat. The whole situation was very... strange. She had really massive eyes and it got me thinking about The Grudge (not the Japanese one, the iffy American one with Sarah Michelle Gellar).

I keep having dreams about going home. I don't feel homesick, but apparently my subconscious does because I keep dreaming about visiting home (and it's always visiting, I'm never back to stay) and then I suddenly realise that Oh No! I don't have a re-entry permit to get back to Japan, and then I wonder how to break it to Mum, because she'll obviously be angry with me for being an idiot. The last time I had that dream I forced myself awake to check that it wasn't the case xD It's never the same dream though. I've had three completely different dreams about being back in England (once with my family, once in Leeds and once with one of mum's old colleagues for some completely unexplainable reason) and one about Andrew coming to visit me. That one was kind of weird, because for some reason he could speak basic Japanese and I got all irritated because obviously he should let me do all the talking xD And then he had to leave after about a day, which was kind of dream-rubbish.

I've been looking through the winter semester course options and I am frustratingly limited. I wanted to try and do another language at a basic level (like Russian) only to discover that the only language course available in the winter other than Japanese is Mongolian. I am le disappoint although I may end up taking Mongolian anyway in a desperate attempt to get the right number of credits :/

Japanese is about to get really fun. In grammar we just did a frustrating section with a bunch of conjunctions that all mean slightly different things but not different enough to be able to remember them without constant assistance >:[ And we're about to do keigo, which is ultra polite Japanese that I'm quite looking forward to doing. I know about two words in keigo. It's completely different vocabulary for the same meaning. The exact same meaning. Also, I can't wait for this one guy in the university to get to keigo because apparently he is doing horribly wrong but insists on using it everywhere :/

Yay, Japanese!

Umm I've probably forgotten things but that's all from me for now.