Wow, hisashiburi!

Hello everyone! Yes, yes I know..its been a long time. Nearly 2 months in fact! That is pretty appalling of me, but nevermind. Water under the bridge?

My word, its been a complete rollercoaster this last month and a half, what with having a somewhat tedious relationship with a japanese dentist (I should add, it is purely professional. He does have an unhealthy obsession with root canal treatment though); suffering from serious “This language is so hard” blues; but enjoying such wonders as being able to speak in front of about 300 people and Princess Takamado on behalf of Britain, and doing a gig! It’s been go, go, go here…although in truth, for a month and a half, not that much has happened.

Right, so let’s crack on. I have started classes! They are going okay, but I do sometimes wonder why I study this language when it gets ridiculously difficult. They’re conducted purely in japanese, which from one angle is great practice, however, having new japanese grammar explained to you in very fast japanese seems a slightly wonky deal. We, being everybody who is in the class, often end up leaving the class filled with self-loathing and the need to jump from a very high balcony. Our confidence is somewhat obliterated by having teachers whittle away at us via means of incessant incomprehensible language “explanations” for an hour and half.
I am possibly being slightly harsh – I did imagine I would have to self-study, but I did not imagine I would have to teach myself everything again that we are meant to be learning in class.

Anyway, about the dentist.

Haruda-sensei, a very nice man, who delights in telling me about British vegetables, and drilling in to my head through my teeth. One night, I went out for a meal in Shinjuku, with all the Leeds lot as well as my wonderful friend Satomi-chan. I took one bite of my food, and it felt as if my face had exploded on one side. The pain was excruciating, I was left a quivering wreck, and while everyone enjoyed their meal, I watched. Hungry, but unable to eat. I realised that I would have to visit a Japanese dentist, or it’d be death by face explosion. However, visiting a Japanese dentist was pretty much the main criterion when it came to “What to avoid when in Japan”.
My tutor, Murakami-san, a god amongst men, got me an appointment as soon as he could. Still in awful pain three days later, I finally got to go to the dentist. Haruda-sensei whisked me away to have an x-ray, at least I guessed it was an x-ray, he made me put my head in a weird machine. He explained to me what was happening in Japanese, but my head was throbbing from the pain and I wasn’t listening.
After about 5 minutes he came back and said “Abscess desune” at which point my heart sank. I had an abscess. GREAT. He waffled on for about 5-10 minutes in technical japanese I didn’t understand. The only word I kept hearing, mangled by the japanese accent, was “Root Canal Treatment”. So….I was having to have root canal treatment, by a dentist who couldn’t tell me what was happening, in a crazy country. Not how I expected to be spending my November.

Things got worse. The pain didn’t go away, despite the dentist poking and drilling and doing all sorts. So I had the interesting experience of buying Japanese painkillers. If you only take one piece of advice from me, never buy painkillers in Japan. It’ll make you want to weep. Firstly, they are so weak. The packet recommends taking one tablet, which did nothing, because they have just over half the amount of paracetamol in them than that of just one british tablet. And obviously in Britain you would usually take 2, so it doesn’t surprise me now that taking only one did nothing. So I took at least three each time. Secondly, they are SO expensive. For about 20 tablets, that lasted me one day, £7!  Never take 25p packets of paracetamol for granted, people!

After another day of horrendous pain, I was becoming suicidal. And then my face swelled up. I had an infection which had spread to my jawbone! Which I had to try and explain on multiple occasions in Japanese. I went back to the dentist who put me on industrial, heavy duty antibiotics, and he slit my gum to relieve the infection. Now, this would be an awful thing to go through if I was at home. Or even in Leeds. But in Japan? It was horrific. I just wanted a never-ending cuddle. Things are on the mend now! Woopie!! I may not be able to tell you about what my best friend’s hobby is in Japanese, but I can sure as hell tell you about the symptoms and subsequent treatment of an infection!

I digress. ON TO NICER, LESS GROSS THINGS.

I had my first gig performing solely my own songs! It was an amazing experience. A couple of the guys from Leeds and I went to a gig in Shibuya, for singer-songwriters, which was good, full of westerners, but good none-the-less. I got chatting to a musician from Oxford named Joe, who introduced me to his manager after I told him I have once or twice dipped my toes in the singer-songwriter pool. He was great, and we chatted for a while, and he said “So, are you looking to gig?” and I replied “I would love to! I just need to find some places…” to which he said “Oh, well, you can go on next, if you like?”. I was shocked and excited and nauseous all at the same time. “I don’t have a guitar…” and Joe darted in with “I do! Use mine!” so I did. It was….amazing! I don’t know what everyone thought of my songs, but it just felt so good to be up there and playing them in front of people! I would very much like to do it again. A few of the people who watched me gave me their cards, and offered me a few more gigs, so watch this space, Tokyo!

And so…apart from obvious illness, and hard work, everything is going well! I miss Britain terribly…the cheese, the curry, the muffins, the crumpets, the tea…and many more things. However despite all this, and Japan’s frustratingly challenging nature, I love it here still.

I promise I’ll update sooner next time! Speak to you all soon!

2 comments November 27, 2009

Falling behind!

My gosh, I’ve not updated for so long, I have about a weeks worth of stuff to talk about! One would think that’s a lot, but in fact, I’ve been pretty dull and not done much. However, I did have my placement test. Which went pretty well, I got placed in to the intermediate group, which is level 4 of 8, and I’m with people who have been studying between a year, like myself, and 5 years. And to be honest, I am the most rubbish person in the class, and I’m also the youngest. However, this doesn’t bother me too much, as I hope to just get to their level quickly through working hard….I say this now, but talk to me in a month or so and see how far along I’ve come with that. Anyway, everyone seems very nice, very proficient. So I must reach that raised bar, so to speak.

Anywhooooo, what else have I done? I went out to Karaoke and for a meal with the lovely guys from ICU (That’s the International Christian University in Tokyo, where Miles, Katy and Rob are all studying on their year abroad) which was SO fun. Especially after the day Hattie and I had had. We managed to spend the equivalent of £50 on a pillow, a pillow case and a sheet. YES I KNOW, it’s ridiculous. You don’t need to tell me. Japan is HARD. Then we went to a restaurant and accidentally ordered twice as much food as we had wanted, but ate it anyway, out of politeness and sheer hunger. So that cost us more money. I’m struggling with money as it is. However, this did make us wary of hitting the Kichijoji night life due to financial reasons, but in the end we submitted to peer pressure and tagged along. Hattie and I were both so grumpy about the loss of money on stupid things (although we did acquire a pretty damn good pillow) and didn’t feel too up for going. However, it turned out to be such a good night! We all went to an izakaya (a japanese pub), where we had to sit on the floor and I was wearing quite a short dress, so I had to sit on my knees until my legs went numb. Here we are enjoying our yakitori, or not, as the case was, because it was fried cartilage on a stick. I had fried spring onion on a stick. Sustenance galore. But a good time was had by all.

You can see by this photo that there isn’t a smoking ban in public places in Japan yet, so the air was sooo smokey.  Here’s one of Katy, Fran and myself, I heard someone shout Charlie’s Angels and so I thought everyone else was posing. Evidently, it was just me.

And OH MY GOD I tried Sake, and Plum wine, both of which are delicious. The sake was warm and scrummy, and the plum wine was so sweet, and sooo alcoholic. It was possibly the nicest alcohol I’ve ever had. And that is saying something. Going to be doing that again, definitely. Here you are, here’s me with plum wine:

And anyway, on we went from the izakaya, and to Karaoke we headed. It was AMAZING we had so many free drinks and so many songs were sung. My favourite was definitely Baby Got Back, performed by Miles. It was amazing. Here we are all enjoying a good old sing song:

Hattie’s really in to it. Haha.

Anyway…I fell asleep on the train home. It was fun.

On Friday…or Saturday…I don’t know, we had a welcome party in our halls of residence, which was fun. I met loads of people in the end, speaking mainly a mixture between drunken english and broken japanese. It was grrrreat.

Something I have noticed about Japan is that the skies here are incredible! They turn such wonderful colours at sunset, it was purple the other night, and I can see mount Fuji from my balcony! I shall attach a photo, hang on…

This is Matt’s photo which I stole, because I’m a crap photographer and Fuji looked like a breast in my photos. But there he is, in all his wonderous awesomeness. It’s a fantastic sight.

Anyway, I have got more things to write, but too much to get on with for the moment, so until next time….sayonara

1 comment October 13, 2009

Righty…so much has been happening in the last 4 or 5 days, it’s unreal! I’m not entirely sure where to start, I guess from where I left off would be the best plan. Most of it has been academic, such as just about surviving a placement test, opening a japanese bank account, lectures (PURELY IN JAPANESE COMPUTER JARGON might I add!), various meetings, and orientations etc. Also, Karaoke. To be honest, the last few days have had their ups and their downs. One of the major ups being that I finally bought a guitar, and one of the major downs being that now I have virtually no money to live on. Japan is TOUGH.

Monday! Right, I got up so early, about 7am, to get myself ready to meet with Matt and his lovely tutor Akie-san, in order to go and open a bank account. I was kind of dreading that, as my tutor Murakami-san was unavailable to help me open the account, and Akie-san was going to be helping Matt, soooo I was possibly going to have to open it myself. Alone. In Japanese. With the Japanese bankers speaking in ridiculously polite ‘keigo’ Japanese (which to those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a form of the language which shop assistants, bankers and hotel workers use to speak to customers, and if you understand regular japanese, there is a very high chance you won’t be able to understand keigo.). So BASICALLY, I was pretty screwed. But it turned out in the end, that we couldn’t open a bank account that day anyway, for a reason I never learnt. However, we did spend nearly an hour, standing around in a circle looking expectantly at one another, saying “So…what now?”. At which point I went back to my room, to despair for a while at the lack of organisation around this place.
When my despair had finally tapered off, I decided to head in to Kichijo-ji, a town about 4 stops away on the train. I had one thing on my mind – GUITAR. There’s nothing quite like a good old razz on a guitar to cheer you up. So, I headed off with Matt and Fran, to this lovely town. We have to change once on the train, at a place called Musashi-sakai, and I ended up getting lost in the train station. For a good 10 minutes if not longer. Matt and Fran have both got a special card that just lets them straight through the barrier, and I got left behind. I then managed to get through another barrier, but it turned out I’d gone through the wrong one, and the machine had eaten my ticket. Flustered and alone, I ended up having to go to the information desk and ask in very broken japanese “I NEED TO GET TO KICHIJOJI, HOW?! Please….” haha. The man was so kind, he gave me the money to get the train.

Anyway, we finally managed to get to Kichijoji, and…it was pretty much just like anywhere else. Pretty, and lovely! Lots of neon signs, but beautiful. Just like the rest of Tokyo really. After much wandering around and getting lost, we decided to ask someone where the guitar shop was, and there was a very sweet girl who lead us all to the guitar shop, and asked me really sweetly “Gitaa ga suki?” which means “You like guitars?” she was too cute. Anyway. This was where love blossomed for me. I couldn’t quite prepare myself for the intense happiness I felt as soon as I walked in the shop. Guitars everywhere! Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase, I fell in love with a cheap and cheerful red acoustic, who I have now named “Ichigo” which is japanese for Strawberry 🙂 and she set me back 12,000 yen. Which is about £80, but I did get a case, a tuner, a capo, a DVD on how to play guitar (haha), a new set of strings and other things, all included! It was great. I love her. Not as much as I love my guitar Rupert though, who is waiting for me in Britain. Here she is!

Right, I shall write more when I’m not in a state of serious food deprivation.

2 comments October 9, 2009

Settling down and settling in

Well, the past few days have been somewhat hectic. I have  been having to sort all the bureaucracy of living in Japan, which has been quite ghoulish, and it’s not even finished yet. I have yet to open a bank account, or obtain a mobile phone, which is SO IRRITATING. Also, my monetary situation isn’t looking too pleasant at the moment either, until the Jasso scholarship gets it’s act together. If it ever does. It’s all up in the air due to change of Diet (Japanese Government) which sucks. But…I can live on £400 for 3 months…can’t I? 😛 hehe. It’ll all sort itself out, I hope!
But on to happy things, like my bike! Aozora-chan, or “The Destroyer” to you. She and I have had some good times. Hattie, Myself, Aozora, and Deirdre (Hattie’s bike/partner in crime) went on an excursion to the Japanese supermarket. In which we found many wonders, such as: British tea, with the milk already put in, cold, in a 2litre plastic bottle. Mmmmm. And more incredible vegetables than you could ever imagine. Also, the music they play is fantastic! Haha, it’s like the japanese version of musak, or lift music. Appalling, but funny 😛 Oooh, the things that one could buy in that shop…all the opportunities, the possibilities! However, Hattie and I did not account for the typhoon which swept us up in its arms as we rode to, and from the supermarket. We got so drenched! The Japanese ride their bikes with umbrellas…they have it so right. It didn’t help that having anything of any weight in Aozora’s basket makes her drunken and seriously wobbly. But maaan, it was fun.
Later on, I went with the guys, and Kazuki-san, a very lovely guy who is Dan’s tutor, to Lingua House, the language learning school, where Mochizuki-sensei met us. We went for lunch which consisted of beautiful looking sushi…of which I had one bit, which was delicious – it had shrimp, avocado and some sort of mayonnaise type thing, and then one with salmon on top, which was gross. In my opinion. I hate sushi hehe.
Here is a picture for you 🙂
But then we had some Gyouza, which is a sort of dumpling. THEY were scrummy. We drank Jasmine tea too, which was soo nice and refreshing. We spoke mainly in english…which sucks. I really want to speak some more japanese soon. Satomi-chan has added me on skype, so hopefully I will have the courage to speak to her soon! BUT anyway, we ended up staying for 5 hours, and then had our photos taken with Mochizuki-sensei, and I got to hold her puppy, who was soooo CRAZY, and fluffy. His name was Pudding! hehe. He kept trying to french kiss me as the photos were taken haha. I haven’t got a copy of a photo of that sadly, but here is us after din dins:
Then I got attacked by Mosquitoes. BLURRRGHHH they’re mean here, my bites felt like golf balls.
Last night, I made my own dinner. I made Yakisoba, which to those who aren’t in the know, is kind of like a stir fry, with various bits and bobs, stirred in with fried noodles, and a nice soy sauce 🙂 Twas yummy!! 😀

Todaaay I went to Fuchu with Hattie and Dan, we went to the “Hyaku En Shopu” Or in english 100Yen shop! 😀 I bought so much crap haha. But I have pretty much kitted out my room 🙂 Well, that’s a lie, there’s still so much more I need to get. We also went for lunch at a place where, to get the attention of the waiter, you had to press a button and it made the loudest “COO COO” sound haha. I had Ramen, which is a sort of noodle soup with bits and bobs put in. However, the soupy bit tasted so fishy, I didn’t like it much. This is causing me problems haha. ALSO, it’s so weird, they give you an egg, still in its shell, which has only been boiled so that the very outside is white, and the rest is almost still raw. It’s gross hehehe.

I got stared at by children on the bus for a long time today. It was odd.
Oh, and I saw a very, very ugly car.

1 comment October 4, 2009

Wow..Japan is…Wow.

Hello everyone! So…this is my blog. Exciting, ne? No, I didn’t think so either. I’ll make the writing a different colour…There. Far more riveting. I guess this’ll be the place you guys can all catch up on what I’m doing in Japan, or at least, what I am *trying* to do in Japan. I just hope that it won’t be too hideously boring.
So, let’s crack on shall we?

The first few days. Well, packing was a bit nightmarish, trying to work out what to take for a year’s trip to a country I’d never been to before was hard, and I ultimately ended up forgetting things – namely British to Japanese socket adaptors, handy little buggers of which I have one. And about a million appliances to use. Great one, El. But once that was done, I had the horrible task of saying goodbye to the family and friends. This involved getting hyper on a tasty meal prepared by my dear Mummy, then sticking chocolate matchmakers in our mouths to become walruses…like so.

It was fun. The trip to Heathrow was quite subdued as everyone was aware of my imminent departure. But when we arrived, it just seemed right. As though it was time for me to go. I was met by Fran, then Matt arrived, followed by Dan, and lastly by Hattie and her parents. Who so very kindly bought us all lunch! They were very kind!
The flight was….gruelling. Going over night seemed such a good idea, but in fact I was restless, and everyone else was either asleep or watching their little tellies. I couldn’t sleep for a while, I was too excited, and the telly was giving me a headache. So I was bored. Very bored. And 12 hours of boredom sucks. HOWEVER, on the plus side, we had so much legroom on the plane, it was unfathomable.

Anyway, the hours passed, and the closer to the land of the rising sun we became. We finally arrived at the local time of 11.56am, 30th September. We were very, very, jetlagged. Everyone was walking so fast, so Dan and I were skulking our way towards customs almost out of sight of the others. Customs was a breeze, had a retina scan, and had my fingerprints taken. And was checked for swine flu, not very thoroughly, thank god! When I emerged from the immigration area in Narita Airport, Satomi-chan and a gaggle of people all greeted us with screaming and cuddles, it was fantastic! The tutors are all so nice, and friendly. Also, very understanding of our tiredness, and lack of Japanese efficiency. Well, I’ll speak for myself there, MY lack of Japanese knowledge. I did try and speak Japanese though, it was very broken and slow, but they got the gist. Satomi-chan brought me such a cute present too, a little japanese phone charm, a little japanese lady bookmark and pencils 🙂 So lovely!
Riding the trains was so fun too, it took about 2 hours to get to TUFS from Narita airport, and we were all knackered, but the views were stunning, and I was surrounded by lovely people, so it was fine. I did lose my blue hat along the way though, which made me so sad. So, so, sad. But n’rmind, eh? Worse things happen at sea. I bet they lose their hats all the time.
I fell asleep at about 9pm, and woke up at 7.30, which is not bad at all considering jet lag. Most people wake up at dawn. We were straight away out the door, we went in to Fuchu-shi, the local area of Tokyo that we live in, and sorted out our Alien Registration cards, or “Gaijin card” as Fred has informed me of local venacular. This was a tough feat, considering tiredness and japanese speaking being poor. It was all done in Japanese. We went afterward to sort out our Japanese health insurance. Again, all in Japanese. My poor brain. We then visited the local shrine, which was so beautiful. I prayed, and it felt so serene. The whole area just had a serenity about it, it’s hard to imagine. It made me feel a little giddy. Then the Leedszos, Kazuki-san (one of the tutors) and I went to grab a bite to eat at a lovely restaurant. I had such a tasty meal, it was chargrilled mackerel , with sticky rice, miso soup and all things yummy!!
Then later on, we went to Shinjuku, which was just TOTALLY awesome! Shinjuku is just like the photos of Tokyo you see with the neon lights, huge zebra crossings and millions of Japanese business men. Also, that’s something I’ve noticed, Japanese people dress so perfectly! They alway look pristine. Unlike a certain Ella I know. Haha.

Today, I woke up at 11.30am! It was soooo nice! And I scavenged some stuff from downstairs, which people from last year left, like a fan – which is necessary because the humidity is deadly here. A kettle for afternoon tea and instant noodles 😀 And bowls and knives etc 😀 Sooo good. ALSO, I rented a bike today, which those who know me will realise this is a huge feat, as I’m sooo bad at cycling. But it will be so fun, she’s beautiful, blue and has a basket on the front. GORGEOUS. She is called Aozora “The Destroyer” Kotsuki, the Japanese means “Little moon of the blue sky” 🙂 . She’s my baby. Anyway, on that note, I’m going to head off in to the wilds of Fuchu for washing-up liquid shopping. 🙂 Jyaa Mata ne!

6 comments October 2, 2009