Christmas!

Yay, finally the holidays are here! In fact, I am writing this late on Christmas eve :)


But I'll start a little while back, since (again) it's been ages since I last updated. Believe me when I say that to a large extent it is because nothing really earth-shattering has happened. School has been its normal, busy self, except that there have been some more big tests since last time. At the start of December we had our JLPT's (japanese language proficiency test), and that was quite the experience. It seems what we learn in class, and what is required of us in the JLPT's are not necessarily the same. So some parts were just horrible, with tons of words we didn't know, and couldn't really be expected to know. But other parts were fine, and I was surprised to find that the listening part was the easiest one, although that has been the hardest when we have practiced for it in class. We won't get our results until a while after we're back in Norway, so I've put it out of my mind for now.

Apart from the JLPT's school has been rough, and I'm really tired of trying to keep up with all the tests and homework. We've had some major tests; some of them have gone well, some of them not quite so well :P All in all I'm doing fine, but I'm so happy we have some free time now up until the 8th of January. A class I won't be attending, since Eirik isn't leaving until the 9th ;)

A while ago Joakim and I decided it was time to get the hell out of Togane for a bit, even if it meant just riding our bicycles for 15 minutes. We went to a temple in a town called Naruto. Naruto is a small and tired-looking place, so there wasn't really much to see apart from the temple, but it was a nice excursion, and the temple was really cool. After walking around there and taking pictures we went to have lunch at a small restaurant in Naruto, and for the first time since I came to Japan I had proper sushi :D I've bought it once before, but that was at the supermarket, so it wasn't very fresh. This sushi was really good, and we finished off with eating icecreams that were huuuuuuuge. Though they keep insisting to put cornflakes or crackers in the sundaes here, so half the sundae isn't really sundae at all. But it was still yummy, and we were gasping for air by the end of it. We also stopped by the local geek-shop on the way home, and it was just covered wall to wall, floor to ceiling with plastic figurines from various games and mangas. It was a tantalizing mixture of fun and creepy, since I found figurines from games I've played, but also some dubious looking ones of half (or not half)-naked women with huge eyes and bigger breasts. And no, I didn't buy any :P You can't really see it in this picture, but that's a hairdresser...

Back to school: after we finished our JLPT, Akiko sensei's classes have been turned into projectwork-classes. We teamed up in groups depending on what subject we wanted to work with, and Karianne, Bjørn and me decided on something as patriotic as Norway. So Karianne is writing about the northern part of Norway (where she's from), I'm writing about Molde with surrounding attractions, plus superstition, and Bjørn has perhaps the hardest part, which is presenting information about Norway in general. The hard part not necessarily being acquiring information, but rather limiting it to a format that suits the 3 minutes we have each to do our speech. Because yes, there will be a presentation before our class, the other exchange-students, our conversationpartners and our teachers. So long we're doing very well, though how I'm supposed to memorize two whole pages of text I have no idea. I'll consider it when the holidays are over.

Christmas has been present in Togane (and presumably the rest of Japan) since October, and this manifests itself with an impressive amount of christmasdecorations and lights, santa-hats on every clerk's head, and muzak-versions (heismusikk varianter, for dere nordmenn) of traditional christmassongs. And it's a miracle that I'm still sane, really, since the top played song is "Rudolf the red-nosed raindeer". It's everywhere, all the freaking time, for months now. Lately I started hearing new versions of it as well, the most interesting, perhaps, being the reggeaversion. Seriously, a reggea interpretation of "Rudolf, the red nosed raindeer"? I've also developed a deep and profound respect for the poor sods working at the supermarkets and convenience stores around here, for working in that music all day, and still retaining their sanity.




I haven't really gotten the big christmas-feeling until today, since it's kind of strange that there's no snow, and that in fact it's been warmer here the last two days than it has been for weeks. Also, since we've had school up until today we've been sort of busy, so that might explain things too. But I woke up today, and it felt like Christmas anyway. The whole Kasa Monarie Heart Crew went over to the park for a christmas photo-session, with Yumi being the kind photographer. Of course, merely taking a few pretty pictures of the gang to send to various friends and family, the whole thing degenerated into the usual monkeybusiness we're usually up to. It was great fun xD

At 5.30 we had a small event over at Karianne's, where we exchanged and opened gifts. It was really nice, and it helped bring more of the christmas spirit. Though we'll have to arrange something for poor Lorenzo, since the gift we'd all chipped in for turned out to be a psp game he already had :(

After the gifts, Joakim and I met up with Marianne, and Keren from Hawaii, and went to eat dinner together. We ended up going to this sweet little Korean restaurant that Marianne knew of, and had bulgogi for dinner. It's been ages since I last had it, and it was gooooood. I think we all ate a bit too much. After we were at least slightly recovered from dinner, we left in search of desert (can you believe that a restaurant doesn't have desert?!), and ended up at a diner where we ended up ordering half the desertmenu, since we couldn't decide what we wanted the most. In true Christmas fashion xD We sat around and chatted for a bit, until we were able to waddle out and ride our bikes home.

Now I've had a talk with both Eirik and his family, and my mother, and it's late at night, so I think I'll say christmas is over for this year. I thought it would be sadder than it was, really. Of course I miss all of you guys at home, but I had such a great time with people today that I didn't have the chance to get too sad about not being with you :)

Also, Eirik, the inlaws, Magnus and Vibeke are coming on Monday! Yaaaaaaaay! To tell the truth, I've been looking forward to that a whole lot more than I've been looking forward to christmas. I'm sure everyone around me is sick to death of hearing about it, but I don't care. They can close their ears and think of puppies or something, because my husbaaaaaaand is coooomiiiing :D

Still alive :)

Sorry it's been so long since my last update, but be assured that's it's not because I've forgotten you, but rather that's the fact that I've been so insanely busy lately that I hardly have time to eat and breathe.

School's killing me lately; we've got so many tests and homework and stuff that I sometimes feel like I don't remember what spare time is, and certainly not sleep. But at least my hard work has paid off; I've been doing really well on the last tests, with one huge exception, which has been noted and firmly dismissed from my mind :P Kanji don't seem to be such a big problem anymore; I guess I've found a way of studying them that works. Same with glossary. Now if I could just manage to have time to study for the other two classes that are not Intermediate Japanese, I'll be solid as a rock. I wonder if they sell extra-hours on Cainz. They probably do ;)

Karianne, Joakim me and Bjørns sister (Bjørn wasn't interested in going shopping, go figgure) went to Chiba last weekend to pick up some snazzy new clothes, and to maybe locate one of the Origins stores that have eluded us so far. We plowed through a mall stuffed to the ceiling with clothes, but it was all brand stuff so it was a bit out of my pricerange. I ended up buying a huge ball that you toss into the bathwater to scent it, but it turned out to be stuffed with seaweed that clogged up my bathtub. It was worth it though; it smelled nice, and I was all silky-smooth :)

This is Joakim and Karianne in front of the huge pink christmastree outside one of the malls. In October.



We also managed to find that Origins store, but when I finally got there I realized I didn't really need anything, since I've gradually replenished my cosmetics-stock while waiting to somewhere that sells Origins. Ironic :P But Karianne bought herself a few things, and now we know where to go when we need something.

Karianne and I also went on a little adventure one day, by going to the hairdresser's. I'd heard about people not being all too happy after getting their hair done here, but we decided to have a go anyway, since we were both seeing all too much of our natural hair color. Oh the horror!

I decided to go for a really dark red, but it turned out a sort of bright red instead, and down by the roots it looked like someone'd bled on me. So I was less than thrilled about the dyejob. I really like the cut though. According to Karianne she now has a halo, since the hair they bleached turned out a lot lighter than the rest. I can't really see it, but then again I'm not really very good at noticing this sort of thing.

Since I wasn't happy with the color from the hairdresser's, I optimistically decided that I could just color it myself. Never mind that I can't read the instructions and that the hairsamples are based on asian black hair. I've done this millions of times, I'm practically an expert!
I picked out a color that was darker than the one I chose at the salon, since that one turned out so much brighter than expected. Except now my hair is more or less black; though I did get the roots to match the rest of my hair. But it'll just have to stay dark for a while, since my hair has probably suffered enough by getting dyed twice in a week.
Speaking of suffering hair, mine is coming off in alarming amounts. It's crazy how much I'm shedding. I'm like a christmastree in the middle on January! And it's not just me; alot of other people in my class are experiencing the same thing, and all of us girls are freaking out about it. I don't want Eirik to meet a balled wife when he comes to see me!

This is me and Joakim on the train from Chiba. Joakim's being all scary and gangsta because that's what he does sometimes. I'm being scary and emo because it suits my new haircolor. Please take a good look at it, since it might not be there the next time you see me :P





While I'm sharing my woes and ailments; I went to see the nurse last week, since I'd been getting very dizzy on the weekend, and it was still there when I went to school on monday. It was a bit of a task, since the nurse doesn't speak english, but I managed to get the point across. After which she declares that I need to go to the hospital.
Now of course I freak out, since I hate hospitals, but thankfully Karianne was allowed to leave class to come with me. It turned out the nurse thought I might be diabetic, since there's a lot of it in my family. It also turned out that when she said "hospital", she meant "doctor's office", because that's where she took me. We drove across town, and I was shown into the doctor. Thankfully we had a teacher with us who spoke pretty good english, so she could translate most of the time, though of course she struggled a bit with the medical terms.
The doctor checked my bloodsugar and my bloodpressure, and when both were fine he declared me fine and dandy and sent me on my merry way. I was a bit surprised, to say the least, but they told me if I wanted to check things out further I should go to an eardoctor. Except we had to expect to stand in line for like four hours, since the eardoctor for some reason doesn't make scheduled appointments. By that time both Karianne and I were pretty tired, so we decided to wait and see how things turned out.
I took the next day off school to relax and sleep, in case I was just tired. I also bought a whole lot of vitamins and stuff, in case I was lacking. I got better over the next day or so, though I do still occasionally get little dizzyspells. I suppose it's stress or something, combined with lack of sleep. I'm sure it'll get better now that I'm taking vitamins, and now that I bought a new mattrass for the bed (the one I had was like 5 cm thick) I've been sleeping a lot better at night. It also helps that my grades have gone up, so I won't feel as panicked about that.

Today those of us who volunteered to help with the JIU festival went up to campus at 8.50 to rig up our booth and get our equipment and stuff. We're supposed to sell Norwegian food, so we decided upon waffles! Oh good grief, I'm looking so much forward to eating waffles with brown cheese. Yuuuuuuum!
The festival is going to be really nice, I think. There's going to be a lot of concerts, the school orchestra is going to play, and there'll be tons and tons of booths selling food from various contries, plus the clubs are going to have their own stands. I bet it's gonna get really fun :)
It did end up taking a whole lot longer than expected up there, since we got there at 8.50, and Joakim and got back to our apartments at 5. But I guess that's how it's like with big events like this; stuff takes time. During the (let's be honest) really long periods of playing the waiting-game, we played Uno (blast from the past), sang the birthdaysong to Karianne (yay, happy birthday, wooooh!), and mucked about. Karianne did alot of filming with her fancy new camera today, so I'm sure we'll be on youtube before we know it ;)
We also finally proved once in for all that us Norwegian foreign students are completely insande, since we were fighting, waltzing, giggling, singing, doing the tango, fighting, teasing, fighting, giggling, fighting, fighting ;) But at least we were having tons of fun, unlike some of the other people present, who were just slumped along the walls. We may be silly and childish, but we sure do have a lot of fun together :)
Towards the end of the day we were hanging out with the Japanese students who were so unfortunate as to be delegated to helping at the Norwegian booth (oh, I should say Hawaian, Spanish and Norwegian booth, since we're sharing, which is fine, since their food sounds scrumptous). They're all really nice and fun, though they turned out to be a little to good at Uno. Or maybe I'm just really bad at it :P

Oh, I also got yelled at towards the end of the day. I was having a smoke, when this surprisingly big and scary-looking Japanese man comes over to me, and in a deep strict voice informs me that no, that's not an ashtray, that's a trashcan. I, of course, apologized profusely, but it didn't seem to cheer him up any. At that point I was so tired and sleepy and hungry that I felt close to tears. Here I am, happily complying with the local customs, and all the while I'm smoking over a trashcan. I've been smoking in that same spot since I came here over a month and a half ago. And no one tells me this until now? :( I suppose that means that the huge trashcan-looking things are ashtrays, though it makes no sense to me. I'll just have to go and stalk some Japanese smokers I think, and work out where they hide.

And this is what they'll see when they turn around




Thanks a lot to those of you who's sent me letters and packages and e-mail and stuff, it's awesome to come home from school and find something from home in the letterbox! All pictures and cards gets put on the wall, and it's great to look at them when I feel a bit homesick. Keep it coming!

Oh, and here's a tip, before I head off to bed. Jelly Coffee. It's hilarious the first two sips, but after that it's just funky-flavored jelly. And jelly's not supposed to come in cans.

I'll post more info soon with pictures and info about the festival. Stay tuned!

Tests, festivals and awesome husbands.

Sorry I've been a bit slow to update this time; I've been really busy lately with school.

Last weekend we stumbled across a festival. It seems it was something like a japanese version of halloween; a day of the dead sort of thing. Or so we think. We were out riding our bikes when we stumbled across this huge parade, with people dressed in oldfashioned traditional outfits and priests and huge floats and everything. It was really fun to see, and the floats were very beautiful. A shame I left my phone at home, or I'd have taken some pictures of it for you guys.

That evening there were celebrations all over town, and we found this party close right next to the dorm of some of the other students. They were selling all kinds of yummy food, plus cotton candy and chocolatedipped bananas which tasted awesome :) There was also a huge stage there, where every old lady in the neighbourhood (or so it seemed) would get up on stage in kimono and make-up and sing old folksongs. It was kind of nice but still kind of creepy :S



And then a whole troupe showed up, and played the samisen.



Everyone there were really friendly with us, and we felt very welcome there, even though I think we kind of crashed a local party. But everyone were smiling and waving at us and giving us drinks and stuff. I left pretty early, but I've heard from some of the others that people were generous with the drinks, and some of them generous with their hands :P

Tuesday we had this huge test for the chapters we've been through so far. I thought I'd studied enough but man, that test was a killer. I did my best, but though I haven't gotten the results yet, I know I did very poorly. I got really depressed afterwards, and started thinking that maybe I just wasn't meant to study japanese at all, but I managed to pull myself together, and instead channel it to study harder instead. So the rest of the week I've been studying like a madman, and the latest tests and homeworks I've done have gotten very good results. I will keep working hard this weekend, since I'm hoping to get a head start on the next chapter, so I won't get so overwhelmed in the future. Fingers crossed that I can keep it up :)

Last saturday we had a huge ceremony at school to welcome us foreign students to Josai. We started in the cafeteria, where they'd decked out a ton of delicious-looking food (which I never got to sample because the chinese students managed to wolf it down before the rest of us could get a shot at it :P), and we listened to several long speeches we understood nothing of. Afterwards there were pictures taken. Me and some other girls were hijacked over to the table of the honorary members of the school faculty, and some other bigshots to get photographed. After that Karianne was introduced to two girls who were supposed to be her mentors (mentors and conversationpartners are not the same thing, though the line seems blurry), and we ended up spending most of the day together with them. They're really cute and really nice, so I hope we'll get to spend more time with them :)

After this we were sent to a big hall, where we were introduced to several of the clubs; by which I mean martial arts clubs, who tried to lure us in by showing their skill at hurting eachother. I've considered joining, but ended up deciding that I was too much of a coward, and that I probably wouldn't have time anyway. There was also a huge concertband that played a few tunes, including the Josai schoolsong. There were also two guys who played the guitar and sang, and they had more than one foreign girl wanting their autograph later. Though I can't really see why, they weren't very good looking, and though they were fairly good I don't think it was anything to go nuts about :S but then I'm just an old auntie who has no idea what the kids like these days ;)

We went to dinner after the show, together with the two japanese girls we met earlier, Mina and Hari. They took us to try okonomiyaki for the first time, and I'm really not sure what I think. We were given this bowl of various vegetables, meats, eggs and some other stuff, and we were supposed to make a sort of omelet thingy on the fryingplate embedded in the table. It tasted ok, but the fun part was that I was talked into trying to put thin slices of dried fish on it, and it tasted it really great together. The chopped-up, dried seaweed was not as good though :S But we had a great time :)

Wednesday was a really long day. Apart from having three lessons with the obligatory tests, we were also suddenly having a meeting for those who were helping with the JIU festival (which I signed up to do), and we were also getting our conversationpartners! Josai just likes to spring things on us at the last minute :P

I was very nerveous about meeting my conversationpartner, but she turned out to be a really sweet and friendly girl called Aiko, and though we didn't have much time to get to know eachother since it was lunchtime, we ended up talking a great deal together. Turns out she's just started studying english, so hopefully we can help eachother out a bit. Guess it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, and it wasn't awkward at all. Though I might have been lucky with mine, I don't know :)

The JIU festival meeting thing was part embarrassement and part stress. We had to turn in a stool sample to be able to serve food, and let me tell you: carrying your stuff around in your bag the whole day is just too weird. Plus that the word stool sample in itself seems to effectively stop any and all bowel movement. It's amazing the nurse got anything from any of us :S

After seeing the nurse (very briefly, accompanied by red faces and high-pitched nerveous laughter), we went to the meeting room, where we were informed that we had like 10 minutes to think up a menu, decide on price and find out what cutlery and stuff we'd need. After some frantic discussing we ended up relatively unanimously voting for waffles. I was put in charge of decorating our booth, so send me all the norwegian flags and trolls and mooses you have please ;)

Today I was woken by the doorbell, to find a japanese guy waiting outside with a packagedelivery for me. When I opened it, I found this:



Do I have the best husband in the world or what? He knew I was a little down after the test on tuesday, so he decided to order me flowers to cheer me up. Of course I cried the second I saw them. And then I ran over to show them to Karianne, and then I cried some more. And then I came home and looked at them again and cried. And I've been getting choked up every time I look at them. I miss that man so much it's not even funny.

The day got even better when I went to Cainz and managed to get a toastiron (thanks Kjersti!), and a small stove (thanks mom and dad!), plus a vase for the flowers. And a chocolate cake from kasumi that looks scrumptous. So now I've cleaned the appartment, cooked some toast and I'm looking forward to having dinner with the rest of the gang tonight. Tomorrow I'm gonna mess about with the new stove; yay for food that's not noodles!

Mi casa

Finally got around to taking and uploding some pictures of my appartment, plus some other stuff. I found it was really hard to take pictures of the place, since most of the rooms are very cramped, so you'd have to be pretty much standing right in the middle of it to see the whole thing. But these will suffice to give you an idea :)

Hallway from door:


Bathroom:



Toilet: (sadly not the kind with tons of buttons, but it DOES have grape-scented toiletpaper)



Kitchencounter:


Livingroom seen from hallway:


Livingroom seen from window:


My ittybitty terrace. I couldn't even find a way to take a shot of the whole thing since I'd be occupying half of it, and the airconditioning the other :S



Sorry the pictures are of poor quality, but I forgot the USB cable for my camera at home, so these were taken with the iphone camera, which sucks.

Karianne sent me this great picture she took of me and Bjørn riding the train to Tokyo, I think it sums up pretty well how we look most of the time down here:


I'll add some more picture of the MaiDreams crew and the rest of Togane and Japan later, so you'll have a reason to keep checking my blog ;)

In other news, I was home sick today. I woke up during the night, sick as hell, and I spent a great deal of the remainder of the night huddled over the toilet. I guess I must have reacted to something I ate, because I was sick as a dog the rest of the night, and most of today. Though now I can keep food down atleast.
I'll have to work out how to get a note from the nurse that I was sick, but it's kind of tricky since I couldn't very well ride a bike for 20 minutes to school while puking my guts out. I don't even know where she is. But there's this party for us exchangestudents tomorrow at school, so I'll look into it then. Hopefully this is just a reaction to something I ate, and not a virus of some kind.
It really sucked to just sit at home and be sick while the rest of the gang were at school, and then going out to get their green card. Hopefully I'm back to normal tomorrow.

That's it for now, I'll post again soon :)

Typhooooon!

It hit japan last night, and we were all glued to our respective tv's, and facebook was being spammed by classmates hoping it would hit Togane (though not too hard) so we'd get to experience, and so that school would be closed on Thursday :P And certainly the weather turned bad on Wednesday. Strong winds and heavy rain, it was really fun looking through the window, since we're not used to weather of this magnitude in Norway. At about 1.30 am I decided achool was almost certainly going to get closed, so I went to bed listening to the rain hitting the window, feeling both excited and just a little bit nerveous.

However, I woke up a little past 7 am (who knows why, since I wasn't supposed to get up for another 30 minutes), opened the shutterthingy in front of the window....and got hit by blinding sunlight and nice summer temperature. I was so shocked and disappointed I felt like crying xD I was hoping to be able to sleep in, and found out that Togane was all Disney outside. When I got out of the shower, however, the weather had changed. The winds were picking up, and I looked at he news and saw that though the center of the storm was going to miss Togane, it really hadn't arrived in these parts yet. Another 30 minutes later and it started raining heavily, and the wind was blowing very strong. I was still not sure if school would be cancelled, so I went over to Karianne and together with the boys we stood staring up at the sky, testing how bad it was. And 10 minutes later the others were called up by teachers saying school would be closed :D I was so happy! I ran back inside to watch the news, but soon I was curled up nice and warm in my bed again.

When I woke up I turned on the computer, planning to happily catch up on e-mails and blog, and maybe find some pictures to post. However, the second I tried to click anything after it booted, the laptop froze up, and I couldn't get it working again. I was so frustrated, since I managed to get my internet like 2 days ago, and now I was getting worried I'd have to scrape up money for a new laptop (or spend the rest of my time here at Joy Club). But the MaiDream team pulled together, and now my computer works again! Turns out it had so many running processes the CPU was 2 seconds away from hanging itself from the ceiling. Yes, I'm looking at you Erik :P It also turned out to have several keyloggers and spyware and a trojan, so a big part of the day went into locating and removing all the little anomalies. But it should be fine now, and the laptop should now be a technological equivalent of Alcatraz.

At 7 am Joakim and Lorenzo and I went out to eat dinner somewhere, sick of spending the day inside. We happened upon this little place that looked sort of run down, but man, the meat they served there is just delicious. More than delicious even; all three of us went into a shared moment of culinary bliss. We even ordered seconds, just because the food was so good. I don't know how they get their meat this good, but I'm contemplating bringing a cow with me whe I go back home to Norway.

Now I just came back from Karianne's, where she and Bjørn and I had a glass of wine and took turns messing about with Karianne's hoolahoop. The damn thing is huuuuuge! It reaches me almost to the shoulders! And it weighs a ton, so I'll probably be back and blue all around the waist tomorrow.

At school tomorrow we'll get to have two tests, since school was closed today, but I feel like I've studied enough. We'll see once the tests start though, since alot has a tendency to go out the window when I need it the most :P Anyway, just one more day, and then weekend!

Now I'm off to bed :) Oyasumi!

The good and the bad

Time for another update from Japan!

I'm kinda bleh with school these last few days. There's always so much to do; we have tests and homework every day; plus we have like a gazillion kanji and vocabulary to memorize to prepare for tests the next day. I'm getting really sick of it sometimes, since I feel like there's not much time to go out and see Japan, and in the weekends I still have homework and preparations to do, or just go over what we've had already. And try to sneak in some time for fun and relaxation somewhere in there. I'm sort of tired of feeling like a moron most of the time as well. It's frustrating to know what you want to say; but not have the vocabulary to say it. And school is moving so quickly it feels like I'm barely keeping up sometimes. Sometimes the teachers speak so quickly I don't even know what they're saying half the time. Guess I'll write it up as a lesson in humility.

I'm also really nerveous about the kaiwa-partner thing (conversation partner); we're having this big meeting on thursday (dunno what happened to it being scheduled for wednesday) at lunch, to meet our partners and get to know eachother. It's basically a positive thing, but I'm dreading it anyway; I hope it won't be as uncomfortable as last week. And I hope someone picked me. Or maybe I don't :S scares me to bits in any case.

Speaking of Thursday; there's a typhoon on the way to Japan, and it's supposed to arrive on Thursday. It's sort of fun, and sort of terrifying at the same time; I feel anxious because of the recent typhoon in the Filipines, and I sort of look forward to it too, since we rarely see weather of this magnitude in Norway. And it's probably not going to be as bad a the one on the Filipines, and anyway I don't think there's a safer spot to experience something like this than here in Japan. It's also landing at the very south of Japan, so it probably won't hit as severely up here, if it even gets that far. Though I'm sure we're in for some rough weather. One of our teachers said that we shouldn't be riding bikes on Thursday if there's a storm, and that school will be cancelled if it's too bad. Here's to hoping! That would mean we'd get to postpone the conversationpartner thing ;)

Speaking of which; Karianne and Lotte and me met with a girl Karianne has got to know here today at lunch. She's originally Korean, but she speaks Japanese fluently (perapera!) as far as I can tell. She's such a nice and sweet girl; and she promised she'd cook dinner on Karianne's birthday this month. The four of us actually managed to keep a relatively nice conversation going, though there were more than a bit of "uhm"'s and "err"'s sometimes ;)

To keep the whining going; I miss Eirik and you guys at home so much it hurts sometimes, and talking to the whole gang on skype on dad's birthday was so much fun and so awesome, though the tears came bubbling up afterwards. And I never got to hear Sanna on the phone. She must be getting so big now.

On to more postive things: Interneeeeeeet! It finally arrived! Man, I was walking on clouds! Finally being able to go to itunes, write blog and e-mail for easily, read newspapers and follow forums and chatting to people on msn; it's so great, and it really helps when I feel alone. And I'm already up to date on my favorite shows :D

I also really like my classmates. I think we're a nice group, and it's alot of fun hanging out with you guys. Karianne and I spend alot of time together, in particular, and I really enjoy that. Very convenient that she lives around the corner. And today she finally got her own hairspray, so she won't be leeching off mine anymore. Sneaky little thief!

I'm also starting to cook my own food a little bit more, so I'm getting some meat and vegetables now; not just noodles. I'm so sick of noodles you have no idea. And it's just October! I was jumping with joy when I found strawberry jam to put on my bread (or the endearing mix of sugar, air and preservatives they call bread here). I also experimented with making pancakes, though since I was using a very small bowl, and I was using a fork to mix it, I ended up making a huge mess. I soaked the pancakes in sauce, so they tasted pretty good :)

Off to bed now, Oyasumi everyone :)

Introductions, quizzes and other horrors

So much for planning to update more often :P However, rumor has it that we're getting our internet tomorrow (Saturday), so fingers crossed!

Last weekend was spent quietly, and most of the week has been a constant fight aainst the clock, trying to keep up with homework, tests and studying. Now that we've had or first real week of school here, it's pretty clear they're not pulling their punches. We have tests pretty much every day, either in kanji or vocabulary, and so far I've not been doing very well. Granted, the first one we didn't even know we were getting, and that was pretty much on the first day of school. I think I did pretty well on the kanji quiz we had yesterday, but I think I did badly on the one today, so who knows. Hopefully I'll settle into a rythm of some kind, and find a method that works for me. Because man, there's plenty vocabulary and kanji to go around.

Wednesday....Man, what a day. First off we had three classes, which may not sound too bad, but each class is 90 minutes, so it adds up. After our classes we were supposed to go to this meeting, where we were to introduce ourselves to some Japanese people, and maybe find a study partner. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

However, we were informed that it was the Japanese who would choose who they wanted as their studypartner, based on their impression of us on stage. And they didn't have to introduce themselves. They just got to sit there and watch. So we'd have like 20 seconds on stage, where we would try to represent ourselves and our interests in the best way, to maybe attract conversationpartners with similar interests.

We show up, and there's this big room with tons and tons of people, most of them Japanese. Who sit there, watching us, considering us :S We are then paraded on stage, and I think everyone were just as panicstricken as me. I had a whole little speech planned, stating my name, where I come from, what my hobbies are etc, and hopefully seem like a nice and interesting person.

I think if anyone got the impression that I was anything but a stuttering idiot tumbled out of the norwegian highlands, it's a fullblown miracle. I stood there like a goldfish, opening and closing my mouth, before stuttering out my name and then (remembering I wanted to state my hobbies) muttered something about computergames and books. All I've ever learned about grammar and vocabulary went straight out the window. This might just have been one of the most awkward and embarrassing moments of my life. Though I suppose I can take a measure of confidence from the fact that most of us hated it as much as me, and that everyone felt as puny as I did.

Also, I hope the gaggle of girls in the back choke on their extensions, because laughing at us is just not a nice thing to do >.< You try being paraded about like a cow on market day.

After our round of introductions, there was a bunch of speeches of sorts, from people who I suppose were administrators of some sort. They all spoke Japanese, and too quickly for me to catch much of it. Also, my brain had turned into strawberryjam at that point, so I doubt even Norwegian would have made much sense.
We were then seperated into smaller groups, consisting of a mix of foreign students and Japanese students. Then some guy talked a lot again (I think he's supposed to be an advisor to us or something), and we had 5 minutes where we were kind of supposed to mingle, I guess, but everyone ended up just sitting there feeling embarrassed.

Next Wednesday we are all supposed to gather in the cafeteria again, to find our conversationpartners. So I guess it's fingers crossed that someone liked me :S

Oh, and today we had our first traffic accident; one of the exchange students from the Filipines got hit by a car while riding her bike on the way to school. Thankfully she's ok, no major injuries. However it did give us another warning at how dangerous it is to be moving around here. One of our teachers talked to us about it for a long time, and he said it was actually becoming a problem here that the cars were going too fast, and that the drivers didn't pay enough attention to their surroundings. He said that he knew of at least three accidents last year, whereas one was very serious and where the girl had to go back home. I think there's been more though, beceause our administrator talked a lot about it earlier too, and by him I got the impressions that it happens pretty regularly.
I'm not surprised though, because we've all already had instances where cars have come speeding out of the sidestreets to the main road without stopping or even slowing down much. Don't worry though, I'm always careful an checking for cars when I cross the road. Still, it's unnerving to hear it from the teachers, and to see it already (we were biking past a couple of minutes after the accidents). As if riding a bike here isn't hazardous enough, the drivers seen to want to us all dead :S

On a happier note; Karianne and Bjørn and I went into Tokyo again today, to look for the program for the DS that lets us look up kanji (and we sure need it!) and words, since it appearantly is out of stock on all the stores here. Strange thing, that :P

We started off in Akihabara, since electric town seemed like the best place to go look for this sort of thing. We found the program in the second store we entered! So Bjørn got to buy his DS, and Karianne and I got our programs. There were a ton of other games there for DS too, including a lot of final fantasy, plus alot of other interesting games. I managed to stick to just buying the kanji program though :)

After that we moved on to Ikebukuro, the part of town where Eirik and I went last year. And I am proud to say that I managed to guide us around pretty damn well; I could remember the way from the station to the Sunshine City (the mall close to our old hotel), and I also remembered where most of stuff was. I'm very glad we went there, because it reminded me of the time I spent last summer, and it really is a nice part of town. We went there mainly because Karianne had found out that Origins had a store there (it's a cosmetics brand), and because I've been talking nonstop about the pizzaplace there, that serves the best damn pizza I've ever had. Sadly, the pizza shop was closed for renevations or something, so that was a big letdown. We didn't find the Origins store either, though we found out from talking to people that we were close. We want to go back there sometime though, since Sunshine City has a lift that goes all the way to the 60th floor, where there's a panorama view of all of Tokyo on all sides. We tried to go there today, but sadly it closed half an hour before we got there. There's also a ton of great stores there, including a Gap, so it' worth going back to when we want to do some shopping.

We returned home very easily today, since we had some very nice people come up and offer us help moving around. One of them even rode the train with us, and we talked to her quite a bit. Turns out she had spent some years studying in New York, so she spoke very good english, and she'd taken pity on us after remembering her first days in the Big Apple.

I should never have said that the weather here was all nice and sunny and summery, since this week the rainy season began. It's still pretty hot (it's midnight now and I'm sitting outside in a singlet), but with the added rain it's humid as hell. I suppose I'll have to hang my clothes to dry inside my room now :S
We've been posed with a bit of a dilemma in regards to what to wear when we go to school, since it's too hot to wear coats, too humid to wear raincoats, and too wet to just go in a shirt. The locals seems to have mastered the techniqe of riding bicycles while holding umbrellas, but cycling is dangerous enough for me without adding more challenges. I don't know yet what I'll do to stay dry, but for now I've invested in a hooded sweater that atleast keeps my head and upper body relatively dry.

I'm gonna stop writing now, cause I really just want to take a bath (I have a bathtub!) and go to bed and sleep for a week. Tomorrow there's a field excursion where we get shown around some temples and stuff, but it lasts from 9 to 5, and I really want to get some sleep, do some laundry (two clean panties left! D:) and start memorizing the kanji and vocabulary for next week. So I think I'll pass, since it's not mandatory. Maybe I'll go there some other time.

Also, send more mails and letters please! I've gotten ONE e-mail this week, plus a few messages on facebook, and not a single letter! Come on guys, I really want to hear from you! You have no idea how it brightens my day when I get news from you guys, even if it's just a post on the blog.

And with that slightly manic outburst, I'll finish for now. Hopefully I'll have my own internet tomorrow, which mean I will be a lot more active online :)