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 :)

Ceremonies and ditchdiving

Alright, trying to do as I said in the last update and try to post updates more often.

Today we went to school for the opening ceremony, which started at 11. This time I managed to get up in time (yay!) so we had plenty of time. However, when we came to school it turns out there was a lesson that morning prior to the ceremony, which we never knew. There were 3 out of all of us who showed up for that lesson, so at least we weren't the only ones.

Once we got into the auditorium it dawned on us that the Japanese way of coming formally dressed, and our way of coming formally dressed were two very different things. If we gaijins weren't easy to pick out before, we certainly were now, since everyone else were wearing black suits and skirts and we were all wearing relatively colorful clothes today. I guess we can write it off on our gaijin-quota for now, though that list has become remarkably long in just two weeks,.

The ceremony itself...well, I can really say anything about the contents of the speeches (and there sure was plenty of speeching going around) since they were all spoken in Japanese, but the mood itself was rather like going to church. The whole thing was solemn, elevated and ceremonial, and no one knew the lyrics to the songs. It made me wonder how they would react to going to a school ceremony on Blindern, though I'm not sure such a thing even exists. It was amusing to notice that more than one of the people gathered on stage (teachers I would assume, though I could see none of ours there) actually feel asleep during the speeches. However it served the purpose of instilling in us some pride at coming to Josai, and a sense of school spirit, I suppose. And we did get to bow a lot :) I realize as I write this that I make it sound sort of bad, but it really wasn't all that bad. It was interesting to see the ceremony as a cultural event, it's just a shame that I couldn't understand anything that was being said. Also, they gave us sweet rice :)

After lunch we all marched off to Kobayashi's office to get our bikes. It turned out to be a big affair, where we had some sort of lottery to decide who would bikes that would be «Good bikes, or really good bikes», as the man himself put it. I think I ended up getting a good bike :)
However it was then that I realized that, with the exception of my adrenaline-fueled ride yesterday, it's been about 12 years since I last rode a bike. Needless to say I fumbled quite a bit before we all rolled out of school grounds. Ten minutes later I'm hanging head first down a deep ditch on the side of the freeway, thanking the powers that be that I didn't skid another 2 meters into the wooden fence there. After having Karianne help pull me back up, and after having been giggled at by the guys and ogled by the people driving past (did I mention I was wearing a dress? Thank god tights are in fashion!), I gathered up myself, the bike and a severely wounded pride and headed back to the safety of my appartment.
Oh, I did not get hit by a car if that's what you all thought. I managed it all on my own. That is to say, another woman on a bike was coming in the opposite direction, and I swerved to the side to let her pass. However there's a large amount of roadwork being done along this stretch, and though I managed to avoid crashing into the cone on the side of the road, I failed to notice some random piece of wood sticking out of the ground. And off I went! I don't suppose I looked or sounded very elegant during my flight, but Karianne assured me that I had fallen in a very ladylike fashion with my knees together, thus sparing me the experience of mooning Toganes rushour traffic. The whole thing rewarded me with a giant bruise on my inner thigh, and an ancle that for some reason didn't start hurting untilt tonight.

I feel a distinct need to complain about traffic and sidewalks in this town. Because there's a whole lot of the first, and the latter is significantly narrower than the ones back at home. Also, they place the traffic lights on the sidewalk instead of next to it. Add 30 cm of concrete railings and pedestrians and old ladies on bicycles, and the whole thing looks alot like a gauntlet at times. Also, people here drive like madmen, going full throttle seemingly at all times, in particual when coming from small roads leading into the freeway. I swear, between my cycling skills and the condition of the sidewalks I'll be greatly surprised if I manage to complete my jlpt with life and limbs intact. There, rant over.

In other news; I was so thrilled to hear that Molde will be in the cupfinal this year. Gogo MFK! And that the match will be against Ålesund makes it all the better. I'm seriously considering staying up late the night of the match so I can watch it on webtv; I hope tv2 sumo works outside Norway. I hope alot of my friends and relatives will be going to Oslo to see the match live, and that they will cheer the team on for me as well :)

Also tried KFC for the first time today (haven't bothered before, since it's a long walk) and I really enjoyed it, though next time I'll skip the Coke since my food got tossed about so much in the basket on my bike on the way home, that half of it was soggy :S Still good though!

Karianne and Bjørn and I spent a few hours at the local arcade today, where I very determinedly set about getting a teddybear to replace my husband. I suspect the whole thing is rigged though, since it was damn near impossible to even move anything. I did have a lot of fun trying one of the games, though I have no idea what I'd be able to win. If anything. I started to try and describe to you guys what the game is about, but it sounded like nonsense even to me, so I'll skip it :)

I was thinking about going to Tokyo Gameshow this weekend, but I decided against it since the trip is relatively long and costly, plus I'd definately be wanting to buy something. So you FFXI guys are just gonna have to pay attention on various websites; you won't be getting any first-hand news from me :(

I'll finish today's post by stating that it's still sunny here, and I bet it averages over 25 degrees celcius. I've even gotten a tan! Well, it only looks like a tan when you compare it to the places on me that hasn't been exposed to the sun, but still, tan, yay! I bet it's cold and wet in Norway now, so sucks to be you! :D

From the land of the dead

By which I'm referring to my appartment. My terrace to be more precise. When I arrived in my appartment I was surprised to find my terrace (in all its 1,5x0,5 glory) being squatted by a rather large and definately dead beetle. At first I thought it was a cockroach, but to keep my piece of mind I firmly decided it be a beetle from then on. Well, one day I was hoovering (it's only been that one time, really), and I diligently removed the squatter from my property. However, the next day I awoke to find a dead cricket there instead. I didn't think much of it until I brought my brand new rubber ducky into the house. It'll only float belly up :( In a week or so I'll probably have darkhaired japanese ladies crawling out of the tv and hiding in the cupboard. Too many japanese horror movies? Me? No way!

Imminent doom aside; on Monday we (the MaiDreams-crew as we now call ourselves) went back to Tokyo in hopes of finding the Imperial East Gardens open this time around. Which we did. It was a nice day for a walk in the park, sunny, but not too hot. The Gardens are as beautiful now as they were when Eirik and I went there 4 years ago. Nothing had changed at all, it was as if (pardon the clichè) time had stopped. As we went into the corner of the gardens with the small streams and the koi fish I got a huge lump in my throat, because I could so vividly remember the times when Eirik and I walked there. We were being so silly and romantic in that garden, so when I now stopped at the waterfall where we got our picture taken last time, I had to stop myself from crying outright. God, I miss that man so much sometimes. But maybe we'll have time to return there when he comes in January to watch it in winter. If it's open that is.

After walking down memory lane we decided to go to a whole other side of Tokyo, both literally and geographically; Harajuku. The district was bursting at the seams with people from the moment we went off the metro; it's kind of crazy looking at such an amoun of people in the same place, when you come from a small town like Molde. Molde's population could probably fit in there ten times over. We didn't do much there except looking at the japanese street fashion, but that was an experience in itself. Karianne and I briefly (we had two guys with us) snuck into a few stores, but we couldn't really find anything we wanted, which is kind of amazing taking into consideration that this is a shopping district. In our defence, a lot of the stores are big brand stuff like Gucci and Tiffany's and that kind of stuff. I was afraid they'd charge us for breathing their air if we went in there, if the appearances of the shops where anything to go by.
We crossed trough Harajuku into Shinjuku, but by the time we got out from the arcade we wandered into it was about time to head back to Togane. We stopped by a small bookshop at the station to buy some manga before we left, and I bought the first volume of Vagabond. I've read it before in English, but in a fit of wild confidence in my abilities I decided I was ready to read it in Japanese. After looking at it when I got home it was appearant that I'd need a new kanji dictionary, plus a heavy dose of patience.
So the day after I went to Wonder-Goo (electronic's shop, and yes, it's the real name) to buy a Nintendo DS. Why you say? Because appearantly a DS is cheaper than buying the electronic dictionaries they want as to get, and the program you buy for it lets you look up words and kanji just as well. Plus I found a used Super Mario game for 1300 yen, you can calculate into your preferred currency yourself, I'm too lazy to get up at the moment.
I did not, however, find the program I needed for the DS dictionary that was the whole reason I bought the thing, and after checking the electronic's store close to school it seems I need to go way across town to check the store down there, and if they don't have it there, head in to Tokyo. I hear we'll be going there at some point for a school trip though, so hopefully I won't have to go to Tokyo just to get that one thing.

Today started out as one of the worst days here yet. I was woken up by the doorbell at 8.30 by the rest of the crew, who were all ready to go to school. I was certainly not. After a whole lot of swearing I spent the next ten minutes washing, drying and straightening my hair, while getting my clothes on, putting makeup on and packing my pack simultaneously. Fast forward another 20 minutes, and I start wondering whether I unplugged my straightening iron before I left the house. I decided I did (I always have, though I always think I've forgotten), and we went off to school. The first period the teacher decides to give us a pop quiz. On the first day! Now, I had studied for this lesson; studied the kanji and read the dialogues and written notes in my textbook. I did not memorize all the vocabulary for that dialogue, which was exactly what the test was for. Good grief.
By the next lesson I am seriously worried about my straightening iron, and the whole lesson through I picture dark smoke on the horizon and the smell of burning houses. My anxiety aside, it was a great class. Our teacher turned out to be Akiko, who was our assistant teacher last year. She's such a sweet person, and I'm glad to have her preparing us for the JLPT's.
After this lesson I borrowed Yumi's bike, and zoomed back to my place to check on my straightening iron, all the while imagening a Togane in flames on the news accompanied by violins and the sound of crying children. The iron was of course turned off, so I swapped into pants (after showing my thighs off to the locals when biking home) and zoomed back to school.
I arrived for our last lesson of the day red-faced, sweating like a pig and with legs as mushy as the noodles I chowed down at home. From there on, however, the day turned itself around, much to the honor of which goes to our new teacher, whose name I have written down on a piece of paper that has mysteriously vanished at the moment. All in all a great guy; cheerful and with a good dose of humor and self-irony (if that's even a word in english). He had us all introduce ourselves and state our hobbies etc, and when he found out I played Dungeons & Dragons he called me hardcore :D
He must be a real smart guy too, because from what I could make out (he spoke only in Japanese, and very fast), he's studied at pretty much every big university in the US, including Princeton. Intelligent and made of awesome. I already I know I'll love this class :)

The latest news is that we'll get our bikes tomorrow after the opening ceremony, which may not sound like a big deal, but it really is considering the distances in this town. So yay for that! Now I'll just have to try and survive the next few months, since appearantly people get run over all the time here (when they're not jumping off bridges, we've been warned of traindelays).
Also, Kobayashi (our student councellor) says we'll get internet in the first week of october, and since october starts next thursday, I think I can manage. Though keep in mind that the time Josai runs on is usually slower than the one the rest of us follow. But for now, I'm thrilled at getting a bike, and now that I have a date to look forward to for the internet it'll be much easier to cope :)

Note to self: update more often to avoid wall-of-text's. Obasan out!

While the noodles are cooking

Alright, I said I'd post from now on in english so my friends who don't speak norwegian can feel included :)

Starting with a follow up to my last post. Somehow I've managed to end up in the A class, which means me and 9 others will follow a schedule that will be slightly more difficult than the rest of the guys. I'm not sure I can manage to keep up, but I'll certainly do my best. The 4 other guys who live in the same dorm as me have also ended up in the same class, so I'm sure we will study together regularly.
The teachers seem nice, but we've only had one introductory class so I don't know yet how difficult the classes will be. Bit I've browsed through the books we will be using and I noticed that the first chapter at least will be partly repetition of stuff we learned last year.

I've gone into tokyo twice with the 4 others living at my dorm (Bjørn, Joachim, Karianne and Lorenzo). The first time was to go into Akihabara (electric town) to look for a mac for Karianne, and cool gadgets for the rest of us :) It was a fun trip, though the highlight of the day was when we decided to go to a cafe for a cold drink.
We'd been handed out a flyer earlier, for something called MaiDreams, which boasted pictures of pretty girls in maid outfits on it. The guys being in the majority, we ended up going there; needless to say I was more than slightly sceptical of the whole idea.
We took an elevator up to the fourth floor, and as the doors opened with a cheerful ding we walked into what can only be described as a mix of barbie's playhouse and every boys upost fantasy. The room was all plastic, and everything was white and pink. The second the door opened we were assaulted by a loud "IRRASHAIMASEEEEE" from three girls in maidoutfits, screeching their welcome at the top of their lungs in a pitch high enough for bats to pick up.
We were guided to our table by a young maid whose shoes seemed three numbers too large, in a dress three numbers too small, and wearing more plastic accessories than the whole of the 80's combined couldn't compete with.
We ordered some drinks only, as all the food had cute little faces painted on them and we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat them. As the maid returned with our drinks, she also brought a plastic sheet, from which she read loudly in a heavy-accented voice. Turns out there was a special ceremony that came with buying drinks in this place, and I'm still suriprised we did it, though we've had some good laugh of it since. The ritual went as follows; we made a heart shape with our hands, and while moving it around we sang "One, two three: MAKE FOOD DELICIOUS!", immediately followed by a substantial amount of cheering and clapping. Sadly we missed the two middleaged men in suits on the next table performing the same song.
After we had finished our drinks (we opted not to buy pictures of the maids), we somewhat sheepishly made our escape, with the sound of "Sayonara, master!" guiding us out.

Our next trip to Tokyo was yesterday, when we decided to go see the Imperial East Gardens, an open part of the park surrounding the Imperial estate. However, it turned out that the park was closed on sundays (whut?), and so were the ones in the viscinity. So instead we decided to go to Shinjuku to watch the kids prance around in the latest fashion, and to maybe do some shopping ourselves. In unbridled optimism, and perhaps in a slightly skewed perception of our physical condition we decided to walk. Turns out it wasn't as short a walk as it seemed on the map, and the blazing sun didn't help. It was a nice walk though, surprisingly considering how close we were to a freeway. We followed a rive for a large part of the walk, and most of the time there were plenty of trees and greenery along the path.
After arriving in Shinjuku we spent some time just walking around and enjoying the sight of the crowds and the architecture. We also spent some time in various arcades, in one of which I was beaten the crap out of in Tekken 6 by some Japanese guy, who had probably lived in that arcade for most of his life. No, I'm not a sore looser :P
Twelve hours after we left home, we returned to our appartments, tired and slightly sunburned, but on the whole pleased with our excursion :)

In other news; we still have no internet, so I'm leeching off the wireless network of one of the neighbours. The signal is poor to say the least, so I leave it alone apart from writing the odd mail and sometimes talking to des on skype. Writing this post I have to constantly save my work, in case I get disconnected, which happens depressingly often. I also look forward to being able to getting up to speed on tv-shows that are not all in Japanese (though I do watch japanese tv alot).
We also don't have bikes yet, which sucks considering the distance in Togane. Add humidity and heat, and shopping for grocieries can sometimes be a bit of a chore.
We tried karaoke on Friday, which was so much fun! I sang to my heart's content, and hardly had a voice left on Saturday. It's kind of dangerous to go there though, as for the price of the room you get free drinks for as long as you stay (and they're open to like 5 or 6 in the morning), and their oh so tasty mango drinks pack a serious punch :S


All in all I am happy here, though I do get the occasional pang of homesickness. The worst thing is being seperated from my husband; I'm still not used to having to be without him, and I miss him terribly. However it has gotten alot better during the last few days, as I have become more at home here. And I'm sure it'll help once I have a stable internet connection, so that I can talk to him more.
Everyone around here is very nice, and though they speak very little english, and we speak too little Japanese, the residents in Togane are very friendly and eager to help.

That's it for now, I'll post again later!

Kjapp oppdatering :)

Hei!

Endelig funnet meg en internettkafe, siden vi ikke faar internett paa hybelen paa en stund enda. Kan jo surfe med mobilen naa og da, men det koster jo masse penger. Gah, helt haaploest og skrive paa japansk tastatur!

De siste dagene har naturligvis vaert utrolig hektiske :) Da vi kom av flyet bar det rettavgaarde til universitetet, hvor vi skulle faa omvisning og info og alt mulig. Ingen av oss hadde jo hverken sovet eller spist siden frokosten saa alle var helt herpa. Landa halv aatte og vi var ikke paa plass paa hyblene foer rundt 5-6, og selv da var det bare dusj og saa ut og finne mat. Var litt troett naar jeg kom hjem den kvelden ja x,x

Hybelen er ganske flott. Bade er lite i ordets rette forstand, men det er badekar der, saa jeg bader jo hver kveld foer leggetid :) Doen er for seg selv, og naa har jeg kjoept meg dopapir som er blaatt og lukter litt drue eller noe, saa naa foeler jeg at jeg virkelig er i Japan ;) Stua er i grei stoerrelse, med stort skap. Desverre er skrivebordet vaart lite, og stolen ikke mer enn en liten krakk, saa jeg sitter for det meste i senga (som er helt grei). I tillegg har vi en bitteliten veranda hvor jeg kan gjoere min lungebeskadigelse samtidig som jeg blir holdt selskap av den digre airconditioningmaskina. Jeg har ogsaa en bitteliten tv, som jeg bruker overraskende mye, til tross for at jeg ikke skjoenner noe saerlig av det som sies. Pretty moving coloooors :P

Nabolaget er stille og fredelig, og jeg har havnet sammen med fine og rolige folk fra klassen. Skjoent, det er ikke altfor mange studenter som er kommet enda, kanskje alle braakeboettene kommer senere :P Det er ikke veldig lytt mellom veggene heldigvis, saa jeg hoerer ikke noe til naboene.

aa handle mat er kanskje det aller mest spennende jeg har gjort saa langt, siden jeg ikke vet hva mesterparten er. Stort sett velger jeg utifra bildet paa pakken, og hvis jeg foeler meg eventyrlysten plukker jeg bare opp noe tilfeldig fra frysedisken. Jeg og naboen er noedt til aa dele vaar *ene* stekepanne og kasserolle, saa jeg tror ikke det blir rom for de altfor store kulinariske eventyrene. Men igaar kjopte jeg meg ijhvertfall en vannkoker, saa igaar kjopte jeg meg ijhvertfall en vannkoker, saa jeg har ihvertfall mulighet til aa spise nudler. Tenker kanskje jeg skal se om jeg finner en billig riskoker, saa jeg ihvertfall kan steke noe kjoett med ris.

Sann paa det personlige plan saa varierer det veldig. Igaar morgen grein og grein jeg fordi jeg savna Eirik saa mye, mens resten av dagen og paa kvelden gikk det fint. Det kommer og gaar, men jeg merker at jeg ikke kan stoppe og tenke paa dere der hjemme, for da kommer taarene. Men saa lenge jeg har noe aa fokusere paa saa gaar det greit, og jeg regner med at det blir bedre etterhvert, og ihvertfall naar jeg faar eget nett.

Spraaklig saa forstaar jeg overraskende mye av det som blir sagt, ihvertfall meningen om ikke alle ordene. Apropos det saa hadde vi placement test idag. Den er det meningen skal finne ut hvor mye japansk vi kan, slik at de kan plassere oss i klasser som passer til vaart nivaa. Jeg er spent paa resultatene, for som alle andre i klassen min kunne jeg svare paa kanskje ti av de aatti spoersmaalene. Men de som var der fra andreaaret saa like forpinte ut som resten av oss, saa det er nok ikke det at vi er spesielt kunnskapsloese :P Skolen er forresten diger og veldig fin. Har glemt igjen usb kabelen til kameraet mitt hjemme, og uansett har jeg jo ikke nett paa hybelen, men jeg skal sende bilder saa snart jeg kan :)

Naa skal jeg dure videre og proeve og finne meg en ny skoleveske, siden den kule japanveska mi knakk paa veien fra flyplassen :( Og kanskje ogsaa et askebeger slik at jeg kan oppgradere fra den litt ekle vannflasken jeg bruker naa. Var forsaavidt veldig spennende aa proeve aa faa kommet til en pc paa dette stedet, da de skulle ha all mulig adresse, og de i tillegg snakket suuuuperfort :S Men det gikk jo paa et vis.

Fra naa av kommer jeg forresten til aa poste innleggene paa engelsk, slik at absolutt alle mine venner kan foelge med paa hva jeg foretar meg ;)

Siste dag i Norge

Første post!

Da var det siste kvelden i Norge på en stund, og jeg må innrømme at det kjennes litt vemodig, selv om to gode venninner og en super ektemann har bidratt til at kvelden og pakkingen har blitt gøy, og ikke bare en sippefest :P

Merker det er skikkelig tøft å reise fra mann, kjæledyr, familie og venner, og sommerfuglene er store som skyskrapere, men jeg tror nok det blir bedre når jeg faktisk sitter på flyet og alt er i gang. Det er ihvertfall det alle sier ;) Uansett fins både skype, brevpost, msn, ffxi, facebook og til og med vanlig telefoni. Håper jeg får internett på hybelen ganske kjapt.

Har vært en spennende og hektisk uke, men nå er alt i boks, og kofferten er nesten helt ferdigpakket. Har vært en tøff prosess med å pakke for 5 måneder i en eneste liten koffert, men det finnes da tross alt et postvesen i Japan også :)

Blir en kort post sånn i starten, for nå skal jeg spise speltrundstykker med leverpostei til kvelds, ta et glass rødvin og kose meg med den siste kvelden med ektemannen min på en stund. Neste gang jeg poster er jeg i Japan!