Sun protection

How popular are suntans in Japan? Well, from what I see they're not at all.
You might see the odd surfer (-girl) on the beach who is deeply tanned and proudly showing it off. Otherwise white skin seems to be the desirable thing here. You see a vast assortment of whitening lotions at drugstores. Malls sell elbow length sunprotection gloves and leg"warmers". And women all either wear a big sunhat or carry an elegant sun umbrella. Malls sell these in all kinds of fabrics, colors, sizes and price ranges. It's much harder to find umbrellas against rain actually.

I decided to go with the trend, although I'm not opposed to having a little tan. As I would inevitably loose the umbrella given the first opportunity and since I consider these a bit ridiculous, I went for the hat. There are tons of beautiful hats on sale. Found mine in a small shop in Daymio quarter and I really think I picked a nice "kawaii" (cute) one. Don't you think so?

Feels like primary school

Can you remember the times when you couldn't read and write? Probably it's hard to imagine not to be able to do so. I'm back to that...

Japanese uses three different types of scripts: Hiragana and Katakana, two syllable scripts and Kanji, the Chinese signs. I have learned Hiragana and Katakana which are a limited number of characters, but it still takes quite some time and effort to get them into your head and become fluent. I have written endless rows of both Hiragana and Katakana. It's an oldfashioned and very boring method, but I don't know anything better. So I guess it's necessary to do it.

Now that I am a proud Hiragana and Katakana "master" (well, I can't do Japanese songs at karaoke yet because it's too fast), I need to start tackling the kanji. These are far more complicated and usually made up of way more strokes. And there are endless numbers of them. You should learn about 1900 to be able to fluently read Japanese. That's an awful lot!

It's really frustrating when you go to bookshops and can't read a thing. The texts are always written in a mix of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. All nouns are usually written in Kanji, except for words with a foreign origin (-> Katakana) and flexions, particles, verb conjugations and alike (-> Hiragana).

The reason why they do not simply use the much easier Hiragana and Katakana only is that the Japanese language has a limited set of sounds at hands only. Many words have various meanings, but are written (in Hiragana) and pronounced the same way. You could sometimes guess from the context which meaning is applicable for a particular case, but it could often be confusing. The kanji have one clear meaning, so it helps clarifying which expression is really meant.

As a courtesy to foreigners (I guess?) there exist certain publications that use only hiragana and katakana, like the "Hirag@ana Times. I bought it to practise a bit and might be able to understand a few things, that would be a cheer up.

My first Yukata

I bought a beautiful yukata (summer kimono) today. On Friday there is a huge party with 1.5 hours of fireworks at Ohori Koen in Fukuoka. So right around the corner from where I live. Plus it's August 1st, so our Swiss national holiday and it's cool to see some fireworks here too. Reduces homesickness (if I had any)...

For this festival you are expected to dress in a traditional Japanese dress. The school has some yukatas they rent out, but I wanted to have my own and a really nice one.

So I went shopping after school. I found a really lovely light blue yukata with flowers on it, a matching obi and geta, the wooden "flipflops and a undergarment. The price included a fitting - or dressing rather. So I will go there on Friday to be dressed up. I'm not sure I'd manage otherwise, especially getting the right knot into the obi would be tricky.

I never thought I had fat feet, but trying on the geta I started thinking I have... They are really really tight and I had to squash in my feet. But I will wear them!

Gaijins on Japanese TV

As announced below, me and a couple of other GenkiJACS students signed up to be on a Japanese cooking show on tv. The idea was to do "cooking olympics" where people from several countries would be competing against each other. Holland, France, the US, Turkey, China, Japan and Switzerland were represented.

The whole thing was filmed in a tiny apartment near the school. It was really small, crammed with stuff (but not chairs...) and very hot. It started off really good, because the fire alarm went off in the building. It was obviously just a test to see that the inhabitants would react the right way. We just went on the terrace and waved down to the guard, which was probably not appreciated.

The guys from tv didn't speak English (of course) and we were glad that Kim-sensei, the culture teacher was there with us. We were expected to first strike a couple of silly "fighting" poses and scream "ganbarimasu" = "I will do my best".

Lucas from Holland was the first to cook his dish. He did a pretty complicated dish with meat and asparagus which looked delicious. Next on were Lucille and Axelle who made a French desert called Clafoutis, a pie with cherries inside. Then Atilla prepared Turkish mezze which looked delicious and watching him you could tell he was used to cooking, looked very professional.

In between the candidates had to answer a couple of question on who you were, how long you stayed in Japan and why, what your favourite dish was and which dish you like least and so on. Luckily Kim-sensei was there to assist... We had prepared some cooking related phrases however to be able to comment a bit. We were not really asked to do that however. Lucille and Lucas were the most advanced students, they are both majoring in Japanese back home. The rest of us was a bit lost.

Then it was Chris' turn. He's a 17-year old American who has never ever cooked before in his life. We all thought it's slightly stupid to get your very first cooking experience on tv, but it's also kind of brave. It turned out to be the most hilarious performance ever... It was sooo obvious that he had no clue what he was doing - and despite the fact that hamburgers are not that hard to prepare. First task was to prepare the meat. We had instructed him to mix it with eggs and enough flour to keep it together (he had no idea what to mix the meat with). He put everything in a bowl and started stiring it with a tiny tea spoon. That looked really ridiculous, even more his scared expression. The two women commenting already started to laugh very hard. We tried to tell him with sign language that he should start using his hands to mix and form the meat. Then he put the meat into the pan and at the same time the buns into the toaster. He supervised the meat closely, but forgot about the buns - which of course resulted in completely burnt buns. This and his shocked expression when he took them out made the tv team crack up completely. More troubles followed - he had taken the cheese out of the fridge too early and it had started to melt in the heat. So he had to scratch it off the plastic with a knife and used a big butcher knife to do it and then paste it onto the meat. Everybody was laughing so hard and the team filmed me and Axelle laughing - they will probably cut that together somehow...

Chris was just THE perfect candidate for the show. We really assumed that they were not only looking for foreign recipes, but more so for gaijin behaving stupidly. And Chris met the brief perfectly and was being so funny. And guess what, today, only one day later they called the school to ask whether Chris wanted to appear on another tv show. He could be really "big in Japan", Japanese tv seems so silly and he would be perfect for a funny show.

I was next and way more boring. I concentrated on the dish "Älplermagrone" (thanks to my sister for the idea and recipe). I think it turned out quite nicely, although the potatoes were cooked a bit too long and therefore crumbling apart. But overall it tasted really good.

Japan and China were last to prepare their dishes. The Japanese dish contained Natto (fermented beans) which most foreigners really hate. It's sticky, smells and tastes rather disgusting and is immensely popular with the Japanese, but probably no one else. The Chinese dish was simple, but looked good. The woman works in a Chinese restaurant after all.

The winners were Holland (1st), Turkey (2nd) and China (3rd). They didn't specify further, so I can still believe I was 4th :-) We then tasted all the dishes and chatted with the tv team as far as our Japanese language skills allowed it. In the end they wanted us to march in again to have a nice beginning sequence.

That was a fun day and really worthwhile doing. Even if we looked stupid no one back home will get to see it anyway...

All the girls love...

Is there a Japanese equivalent of Casanova? We start to think there is and he's working at our school...
I have mentionned before that quite a few of our teachers like to go out with students, get really drunk and reeeally flirty. Some also do it in class. Mention that they like handsome and sexy guys and blinking at students while saying it. Or asking you whether you think they're cute. But nevertheless, most are still sort of discreet.
There is a young male teacher at the school and he really does not hide how much he enjoys his job and its "fringe benefits"... During the three weeks I've been here I've seen him flirt with numerous students and publicly making out with two of them. One of these scenes was also caught on camera - the teacher and X making out at Sam&Dave's. The guy who took the picture suggested to him to print it out and hang it on the school's blackboard. He did get a little nervous then, probably he's not entirely sure that Evan, the school director, would appreciate that sort of student-teacher interaction...

Kurume visit

GenkiJACS received an invitation from the English language department of Kurume University. They were proposing to fetch us at school by bus and showing us around Kurume, a free lunch included. We kind of sensed that the goal was to ship in some foreign attraction and have the English students try out their language schools. But the thing still seemed kind of nice, so about 25 GenkiJACS students ended up signing up for it. We were a few less on Saturday morning at 9.30 which may have been loosely related to a wild night at Sam&Daves...

A fancy tourist bus awaited us in front of GenkiJACS and drove us to Kurume in about 30 minutes. We first met the students majoring in English on the Kurume University campus. Kathleen, one of their English profs introduced some language games that should allow the students and us gaijins to get to know each other. We were playing some sort of bingo - there were a set of questions and you had to find a match for each statement. So we walked around asking random stuff like "do you get up before 7 am?" or "are you from Fukuoka prefecture?" or "have you taken the Nishijitetsu train this morning?" and note down their name once you found a match.

After we were sitting down with the students for a Chinese bento lunch and more chatting. The students were certainly more proficient in English than the average Japanese, but their English was a bit limited. We needed to speak quite slowly, using simple language and no colloquial expressions or phrasal verbs. The two girls we were at the table with, Megumi and Akane, told us they were going to an English language school on the Philippines in August. Have never heard that you would go there for a English language stay. It's probably cheap, but is it good too?!

After we were shown around the University campus in the usual burning heat and told a little about the University's history and what subjects you can study there. No clue what you do with a degree in "international culture" for example if you have poor foreign language skills and had little exposure to foreign culture. The campus also sported a students hair salon and the usual omnipresent vending machines for softdrinks.

After we had a small tour of Kurume. We went on top of the nearby mountain and visited a shrine. Before visiting the shrine you had to wash your hands thoroughly. Next to the beautiful temple you could buy little papers with wishes written on them. You randomly draw one and then hang it up. You see these in many places. I didn't pick the best one unfortunately as the guy I was with explained. Some drew their wishes from the children's box, because these were written all in hiragana, which we can easily read. Unfortunately the wishes were stuff like "please make me pass the exam". Well, but we're at school too right now, so can't hurt.

After we went to Narita-san, a temple area with a huge statue of the goddess of mercy. We didn't have much time, but still wanted to climb the statue, hoping for a great view. It turned out to be just a strenous climb in intense heat without the reward of a great view. There were nothing but tiny windows up there - the goddess had no mercy...

Joanna and me wanted to see the small museum after. Keisuke who was with us said we needed to go back or we'd be late. I said "why don't you go back and tell the others the stupid gaijin (foreigners) have gotten lost?" He looked quite shocked and we could guess that that type of sarcasm is not very Japanese. To spare him the embarassement we went back.

After saying goodbye to the students we took the train back to Fukuoka.

URGENT help required - Swiss cooking

In an phase of madness I volunteered to appear in a cooking show on Japanese tv on Monday. Four students from GenkiJACS will cook dishes from their home countries and a jury will decide on the winner then.
So I am looking for simple yet tasty recipes of typical Swiss dishes. The following are not suitable:
- Röschti: Potatoes should be cooked the day before and I don't have the right grater
- Fondue and Raclette: Right cheese not available, neither the equipment
--> I checked in a big warehouse today - most ingredients we would use are available. Milk products are harder to get though, but they have cream and so on in tiny little bottles. Swiss cheese is limited to Emmentaler and Greyerzer.
--> I don't know what cooking equipment will be available - so let's assume NO fancy stuff is there. Recipes should therefore be easy to execute, with little equipment (pan, knife, spoon,...)
Anyone who sends me THE great, simple life-saving recipe will be treated to a nice dinner once I'm back.
Oh my, I am neither a very good cook nor can I speak enough Japanese. This show will be material for laughter allover Japan... Well, we all know that, but it's still funny enough to be on a Japanese tv show. When else would you have the chance to do something like that. Plus nobody back home will be able to watch the show, so even if we embarass ourselves it's only in front of strangers. This is going to be crazy...

Dinner @ Japanese Diner

American style diners are really popular here in Japan. They may feature Japanese dishes or Western fare and are open more or less around the clock.

We had been to Karaoke with some Japanese friends and got hungry after. They suggested to go to one of these diner restaurants "Ringer Hut". The menu consisted of various types of ramen and gyoza and these tasted pretty nice.

We had a fun evening. We asked our friends a couple of less polite Japanese expressions like "piss off" and alike. Not sure whether they were happy to teach us. One of the guys, Yasushi, was really into Katherin and asked his friend to take pictures of her. A new gaijin-Japanese love story at its beginning? Let's see :-) (Hm, I find him a bit too Japanese "salaryman" looking as opposed to the many cooler guys).

Recipe for a Japanese-style pizza

You want to make a pizza the Japanese way? Well, here's the original recipe:

Ingredients:

• puff pastry
• tuna from the tin
• ketchup
• green salad
• salad dressing
• mayonnaise
• tomato

Put the puff pastry on a round baking tray. Mix the tinned tuna with mayonnaise, form little balls and put them on the pastry. Cut the tomato and distribute the pieces across the pizza. Mix the salad with the dressing and put a generous amount on the pizza's center. Complete your pizza by putting luscious amounts of ketchup and additional salad dressing on top of it.

The above recipe may sound like a joke, but I think it's the exact recipe for the pizza that I had in a place called "Italian basil". The place looked really quite Italian, so I was confident to get a pizza that would resemble the original. But boy - none of these guys have ever been even close to Italy... I really had to make an effort not to laugh. First the waiter served me the Coke as if it was expensive wine, slow and classy (but spilled half on it on the table). And then he served me that strange tuna pie that made me crack up completely. They had asked me if I wanted a pizza and salad combination, but I had not been able to imagine that they would put the salad on top of the pizza. See picture for evidence...

Preventing disasters

Japan is country that's at great risk of all kinds of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, etc. Therefore the population is asked to do trainings regularly in order to learn how to react correctly when natural disasters occur. So every city has training facilities.

We really wanted to get a first hand experience of the training - and who knows, we might also need it. Fukuoka has a "disaster prevention center" near the Momochi beach area. So we went there after school.

We were four foreigners and the center deemed to be enough to do a training in English. First stop was the earthquake simulator. The simulator was a mochup kitchen and we had to sit down at the kitchen table and sip from our "Hello Kitty" cups. They simulated a grade 5 and a grade 7 earthquake and we had to hide under the table as soon as it started. The grade 7 "earthquake" was really rather scary - not to speak of a real earthquake of that strenght. My wooden bracelet broke, otherwise we managed to escape in pretty reasonable condition... Next we entered a typhoon simultator. Since the school had told us that there might be one on Saturday, this seemed to be the most urgent training need. We were a bit disappointed though, the whole thing was rather lame ass. Ok, we were wearing special glasses which we normally wouldn't, but still.
Finally we had to go into a dark, smoke filled room and escape the "fire". There were a series of small smoke-filled rooms that you had to cross crouching. The smoke was smelling pretty nasty, but we made it back. The fire extinguisher training was closed that day unfortunately, so we didn't get the full fire training.
The training was concluded by a movie on Japan's natural disasters of the past, underlined with dramatic music that enhanced the scary impression that the pictures gave. We also tried to do the Q&A, but most of the questions we didn't understand, neither the answers. The helicopter was a great opportunity to behave like kiddies in the end :-)

Afterschool drinks...

Exhausted GenkiJACS students enjoying some well-deserved drinks on a rooftop...

We discovered this British pub that offers a superb deal for Happy Hour drinks. Each drink costs around 300 Yen (~3 CHF) only. So we suggest to go there right after school and buy some stock, so happy hour won'r be over before you have satisfied your thirst. Choose some light topics such as the next karaoke visit, your fellow students anime characters imitations, Alex topless pix or Chihomis boy toys and you will easily realax from a hard day's studies.

Cheers, Johanna, Jon and Alex!

Nihon-go wa muzukashii desu

(The Japanese language is difficult)
I haven't given up the Japanese classes yet, despite the fact that it's a humbling experience. But I do actually start to understand stuff and do not feel so inferior to my classmates anymore. Since Alex has been promoted, the average level in the class is not so much higher than mine anymore I guess (no offense, dear classmates!). I do not seem to give significantly more stupid answers than the rest.
Well, most teachers we had so far were really nice and also seemed to possess some humour. There was one exception last Friday. "Miss Nasty" really made us feel that we're a bunch of retards, she'd constantly make remarks that we were not good enough. The two lessons got pretty messy because everybody was rather fighting against her instead of learning from her. She told Jon that he should have studied Hiragana at home and he was like "yeah, I can study everything at home, so why do I come here?" and Robert looked up the Japanese word for nasty and kept repeating it more or less aloud (which she ignored). That really wasn't a productive class at all.
Otherwise our lessons are really fun and we are all participating. We do a lot of small group work and communication thingies which is the most useful for us. The Japanese sentences have quite a different structure and contain all these strange particles which makes it a bit tricky. I guess you get a feeling for it over time and forming the sentence will become more natural.
I made a funny mistake today. I was supposed to say: "I don't know how to say this in Japanese, may I say this in English". Instead I said: "I don't know...., may I go to England?". Hm, my vocab is not superb yet...
Camille usually says a lot of fun stuff too. She replies in a way that indicates that she has no clue what the task is. Like you should translate questions to Japanese such as "Can I make a phone call?" and she replies with "no, it's too expensive". But she is also occupied with drawing manga during lessons, so at least doing cultural studies.

We also tend to abuse new grammar that we've learned. We have studied the polite "-te" form for the past few days. So now when somebody wants to say "I'm going to kill you", we would say the more polite "shinde, kudasai" = "please die"... You see, we are learning some Japanese manners :-)

So, I need to do some homework now and we'll have a vocab test as well tomorrow.

Cute and cuddly

The Japanese very obviously go for the cute and cuddly. Accordingly, one of the most heard Japanese words is "kawaii" (=cute). Even garages and other "serious" places have cute animals as in their company logo.

Parts of the city seem quite Disneyland-ish with game halls, photobooths where you can take silly pictures, stuffed animals, teenagers in all sorts of costumes. The pinker, the flashier, the cuddlier - the better it seems. When you walk the streets at night you see lots of people sitting in Pachinko halls and "relaxing" by inserting money into a machine and waiting for the little metal ball to make its way down. It's not like you actively have to do something, just insert money. Besides it's annoyingly loud in these halls and it's hard to see why you would consider that a cool way to spend your evening.

Johanna and me took a couple of silly pictures called "purikura". There are photobooths to take them everywhere. You can choose from various backgrounds and manually add all kinds of comic style items on after you've taken the pics. Some places also provide costumes and wigs so you can dress up before taking the picture.

Nagasaki

I went on a trip to Nagasaki with a few people from school today. The city has obviously an unfortunate kind of fame for being the second city where an atomic bomb was dropped. Nowadays it's a bustling port town and said to be one of the most beautiful cities in Southern Japan.

We had to get up pretty early (for a Sunday morning at least) and take the direct bus to Nagasaki. Took us about 2 hours to get there. We were all being inappropriate by chatting loudly in the bus, which is obviously a "no-go" in Japan. But keeping your trap shut for 2 hours gets kinda boring, doesn't it?

Martin, the old American guy had gotten our tickets from Evan to take care of. Obviously Evan thought an elderly male would be the more responsible than any of the chicks on the trip. Weeeell, Martin got off at a totally wrong stop and we then had to go and look for him with the guide that we met at the next stop. We were immediately asking for our tickets, our trust in him had somehow been shattered...

Our guide first led us to the Nagasaki peace statue (through the usual striking heat). There was a nice park with a pretty ugly, unhumanly muscled statue. But it's probably the though that counts. There were small shrines with origami cranes next to it. There is a story about a girl who got sick after the Nagasaki bombing and her mother promised that she'd get better if she would make 1000 paper cranes, one each day. The paper crane has since been a symbol for good luck. There were a few smaller statues donated by various countries. There were quite a lot from socialist countries and I assume that the statues were not just intended to be a symbol of peace, but also a demonstration of the "American devil's vice".

Our guide showed us Nagasaki's large catholic church that had originally been built by the Dutch and was reconstructed after 1945 (Pope's visit followed later on). There had been a lot of Dutch merchants in the area in the 18th century and they brought the Christian faith to the region.

The atomic bomb museum was simple in style, but very memorable for its content. The atmosphere is made to really recall visitors the horrors of the 1945 bombing. One of the most striking exhibits was a clock that had stoped at 11.03 am when the bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. I spent quite some time watching interviews with survivors. They were really, really touching. Some had lost all family members, a teacher his students, others had been seriously handicapped and confined to bed for years. This was really heavy to see. I really liked the museum overall. But I have to say that it didn't quite acurately depict Japan's role in the 2nd WW.

We then went to China town and had lunch and visited the former Dutch merchants quarter Dejima. The Dutch had been confined to a small island which they couldn't leave. Only their Japanese courtesans were allowed to enter the island. This was done to eliminate foreign influence on the local culture as much as possible.

Nagasaki is a city built on several hills, so we climed one (well, by elevator to be honest) to enjoy the view over the port. Mitsubishi is still the largest employer in the city and is located next to the port. The Misubishi production sites had actually been a major reason for the bombing (allthough Nagasaki was not the originally sought out target). The residential area on the hills offers great views, but is obviously not so popular with residents because of the inconvenience in transport (no streets up there).

The confucian temple we wanted to visit finally was already closed. So we went to the shopping mall for some ice cream and then hopped on the bus back to Fukuoka. This time we were being a bit more quiet and less annoying to fellow Japanese travellers...

Karaoke rocks!

The school had advertised a karaoke night for Friday night- something I always secretly wanted to do. For 1800 Yen we would get 2.5 hours of dancing and endless flows of beer. So didn't sound too bad and a whole bunch of students and teachers ended up going there.

They had a super thick catalog with songs to choose from, both English and Japanese. Most needed a few beer before daring to go on stage. Some singers were actually pretty awesome, others rather the funny kinda genre... The most daring would choose Japanese songs and practise their hiragana/katakana reading skills. Well, for anyone from MY class this would probably have been a foolish project as opposed to just daring...
The teachers were really active with singing as well. Chihomi deserved special mention, her performance of ABBA's dancing queen will be dearly remembered :-)

I was sitting with Alex, Jon and Johanna and we were more involved in emptying the beer glasses than in singing. Too shy to go on stage obviously and also slightly too stupid (or drunk?) to properly sign up for a song. We got to sing at the very end. I happened to be outside for most of the song though because I had understood that there's be a 10 minutes break (NO- it really wasn't my intention to skip). Joining for the final tunes only was not that satisfactory. Jon closed the show with a pretty good performance, Alex failed to sing alltogether. Well, maybe next time we'll have a more impressive appearance on stage...

After karaoke we felt pretty "joyful" already and were looking to get some more entertainment. We went to a club named "The darkroom". No, it's not what you might think. Neither is another club that's named The happy cock" - the Japanese just seem to like allusive names... The club offered a "drink as much as you want" option for women, for only 1000 Yen (10 CHF). We didn't realize that this came with a twist. You were required to stay till 2.30 and also you could not go to the rooftop (we finally sneaked out though).

We had a couple of drinks and danced a bit. Our teachers were still with us and of them got pretty much down and dirty with a students half her age or so. Dirty dancing contest?!. So I saw my observations from a previous post confirmed - teachers are not shy to get involved with students beyond lessons:-)

I played some table soccer with 3 Japanese. It was hilarious, I usually really, really suck at table soccer and would always loose. In Japan you can really shine with these lousy kinda skills, because they suck at it much worse. I'm gonna play again...

I took a taxi home. Didn't really know what my address is, so I mumbled something about "Ohori koen shitekatsu" - Ohori park subway. I was pretty confident that I'd find my way home from there.

How much is a melon worth?

I had read in my guidebook that expensive fruit is a popular hostess gift here in Japan. I went to a supermarket this week and learned what expensive means.

There was a regular fruit section with prices comparable to ours. And there was the gift section with the nicest looking fruit ever. All fruit was really polished and came in a perfect shape as well. Huge peaches, perfectly round melons, polished cherries. All wrapped in nice paper or in little gift boxes. The price? Well, a single melon could cost up to 12'000 Yen (105 CHF). The gift set composed of a melon and a small box of cherries costs 10'500 Yen. And how much would you be willing to pay for this?...

Pictures

I haven't posted any pix so far. That's due to the fact that I left the cable to transfer to pix at home (idiot!). But it should be possible to buy one here, after all Sony is a Japanese brand:-). So I'm soon gonna be back with illustrated posts...

School life

I am back to school life, started it two days ago. The school is called "Genki Japanese and Culture School" or "GenkiJACS". It's located in central Fukuoka, with tons of shops and places to eat nearby, so a great place for students.
On the first day we had a placement test. I didn't understand much of what was being said on the tape and accordingly couldn't reply to much in the test. Since I couldn't do that, I at least "translated" the questions into Hiragana and Katakana (the Japanese syllable scripts) to demonstrate that I master these. I got sent to a beginner class, but one that was already somewhat further in the book. Maybe that decision was wrong, I am really struggling to understand what is being said in class to be honest. I am writing out words from my dictionary like crazy and try to pick up as much as possible. I'll try it till the end of this week and if I get the impression that it's not possible to catch up I will go to a slightly lower level class. I am not used to suck so much at a language... I now spend my mornings at Starbucks studying for classes in the afternoon. But as I said, I do not just have to do the class homework, but also catch up with the previous stuff, that is 120 pages in the textbook. I am ambitious, but it might be too tough. So it's really not going to be a beach holiday or anything like that :-). Let's see...
The students come from a whole lot of different countries: US, Finland, France, Sweden, Korea, Australia, etc. Lots of them are in college, so people who really have time to spend a couple of weeks in a language school. The average age is probably early twenties, but there are older people as well, up to mid 50's. Quite a few students desire to learn Japanese seem to have been inspired by J-Pop, the Harajuku youth and Manga. The school also offers special courses that teach Japanese through pop culture (more for advanced students though). Especially the Finnish students are dressed up like Anime characters, similarly to Japanese teens who play dress-up in Harajuku and other places.
We're 7 in my class: Camille, a slightly lost 16-year old from France who stuffs sushi into her mouth during classes. Johanna, a cool 30-year old Swedish drama teacher. Robert, a McDo and KFC addict from DC. Alex, a pretty self-absorbed ("too sexy for my shirt") farmer boy from Indiana. Jon, a cute film student from NY. And Tamu, a giggly Finnish art teacher. It's fun to be with them, we have a good time in class and went for drinks after. Language level wise, Tamu and me would probably belong to a lower level class rather and Alex is too advanced. So we're probably going to be in different classes soon.
The teachers are really cool and fun. I especially like Takako, one of the grammar teachers. She laughs about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g and it makes here face look incredibly funny. You just have to laugh with her. What's funny also is that teachers are not shy to hit on students (which would be a reason to be fired in our world). Alex is definitely the goal for that in our class. We haven't had any male teachers yet, but I heard that one of them was recently making out with a student at a Karaoke bar. So pretty wild bunch our teachers :-)
Ok, let me get back to study a little...

Directions

This morning I had to apply my first culture lesson that I've learned from the "Culture Shock" book that I purchased some weeks ago. "How to ask for directions"...
The book says you should not approach people and ask them, because most would be afraid of having to speak English and would just run away. Instead you should open a map and helplessly look around and wait for someone to approach you.
Great tip...This morning I sort of couldn't remember the school location and since I could not read the street signs and so on it was hard to guess where I was even with a map. So I was standing next to the subway station and acting like a confused idiot. The issue was just that nobody approached me in 10 minutes and I started getting late (which is a cardinal sin here). So I decided to still ask someone. BUT as the book predicted she just walked by and acted as if she had not heard me (I had even addressed her in Japanese). I was desperate and went down to the sub again. On the stairs I saw a woman smiling at me and took this as a sign that she wouldn't be afraid to talk to me. AND I was right, she even spoke German (had spent 3 years in Konstanz) and was happy to show me the way.
Ufff, I arrived just on time...

Terrorists and drugs

Ok, the post is kinda late, but I still want to dedicate a post to the Japanese immigration procedure...
Arriving at Osaka Kansai airport I had to go through customs. There were about 8 counters for Japanese and only two for foreigners. With planes arriving from Dubai, Seoul and Singapore at that time there were obviously a lot of these and the queues in front of the counters got longer and longer. Well, that gave me time to study the impressively big yellow anti-terror posters that announced a "very thorough immigration check" including fingerprints and a photo (no, you won't receive a copy). I have to give the Japanese credit, they questionned the Koreans in the queue as thoroughly as the full bearded Emiratis - an equality that I didn't see at Boston Logan airport...
After long waiting and getting anxious that I'd miss my connecting flight, it was my turn. Ok - fingers on the tab and "cheeeese" for the camera. That was the easy part. The guy questionned me about my stay in Japan - why I didn't have a return ticket from Japan, if I wanted to stay in Fukuoka the whole time, blablabla... He saw that my return flight from Sydney would be in December only, so he started doubting that I'd stay in Japan for less than 3 months (well, actually I won't). I had the bright idea to show him my 3-month Australia visa then and that made it credible that I'd leave Japan in September. (Applying for a 6-month visa right away is a hassle. It's easier to extend the 3-month visa, that's why I didn't declare the full lenght of my stay).
Then I had to go through customs with my luggage. They had dogs around, opened my luggage and fumbled through my stuff. And then the guy asked whether I had any drugs with me. I said "no" and he then said "not even marihuana". After I denied that too, he asked me another 3 (fucking) times. What the heck did they have the dogs there for?!
Well, Japan obviously thoroughly sorts out terrorists and drug dealers...

Konban wa Japan

I've arrived and I'm dog-tired now. Luckily I was picked up by a rep from the school and brought to the house where I lodge. Conversation is really difficult, their English is minimal. But that means I have an incentive to learn Japanese as fast as possible.
I just noticed that I have the wrong plug adaptor and I need to find another one here. My laptop is almost down, so I will be online again when I got the new adaptor. Hope that's not too tricky a task...

Free bus rides and insistent women

The adventure has begun... I landed in Dubai yesterday and greeted by the most incredible heat. I was told though, that this is not yet the hottest time of the year (gosh!).
Dubai is this crazy place with construction going on e-v-e-r-y-where. It's not really what I would personally call a lovely surrounding, but that was my assuption already. It is really really hot and the air is so full of sand that you can't see very far. I had great difficulties with my contacts (should probably not wear them) and breathing. You basically keep on looking for places with aircon all the time. Even a short walk of about 500 meters seems long here.
I took a public bus to go to the youth hostel. Cheap but also more cumbersome, but I like local transport much better than taxis. You're so off daily life if you take them. The busses have separated seating for men and women. Women have the front rows reserved. But since not too many women are out in the city, the rows also fill up with men - just never next to a woman. It really seems that public transport is not used by Emirati or expat women much. You see philippinas, indians plus a few other asian and african women only. The busses are cheap, but it takes unnecessarily long to get anywhere. And busdrivers are pretty grumpy and deny men to enter the bus (whereas women are always taken in first).
Well, yesterday I missed the stop at the youth hostel when I came back from Jumeira - actually the driver was just skipping the stop. I decided to just keep on sitting in the bus and make the whole turn and get out when we would drive past that stop again. Only the bus driver noticed that I was sitting in there for a pretty long time and asked whether I had any clue where I was going. I told him about my plan and he said I'd have to buy another ticket actually, but he'd give me one for free and I'd just have to give it back when I'd get out. He also got us some Pepsi at the final stop and we chatted about life in Dubai (he's philippino).
I also walked around in the city a bit yesterday and it seems to be ok to do that on your own. You get looks and stuff, but nothing too annoying. Local women dress from modest to fully covered (eyes only not covered). I wear long wide trousers and a long sleeved shirt. That seems ok and compared to many foreign women (western and asian) I'm conforming more to local standards.
In the youth hostel I met a British woman, Jackie, who tries to find work here. She had worked in Kuwait before, been to Iraq and Saudi Arabia and done all kinds of crazy stuff. It's funny how you always (and almost only) meet these kind of really independent, original people when travelling. She's now looking for a job here and having 4-6 interviews every day. It's obviously not that easy - most of the jobs she applies for are considered for men only and also the competition from cheaper Indian workers is strong. But this woman is really remarkable, she left Britain when she was 17 and has since worked in numerous countries. Not the usual "wanna build a house, plant a tree, have a kid" sort of life.
We shared the room with Waafah from Sudan. She's the third wife of someone (...) and just travelled to China to buy stuff to sell in Sudan. I asked a few questions about the situation in Sudan and she seemed a bit too laid back about it. She mentionned that Khartoum, where she lives, has been attacked recently, but the governmental troups had managed to chase them out. So another interesting person to talk to in the room.