Day two
Today I got a bigger dose of this city. It’s big and spread out just like Calgary. My neighbourhood is pretty quiet, I think its an older neighbourhood. My host father and I went to the weekly meeting,
The subway is probably the fastest thing in the entire world. And its so smooth I don’t even know how it’s possible.
I finally met the other exchange students today. There is a girl from Finland, she got here Tuesday, her English is really good and I’m glad for that. There are two Australians, one who has already been here for six months, and already studied Japanese for 5 years >_>. The other one I couldn’t meet because she’s at home with an injury. In our district at home in Canada we must have had 20 exchange students from all over the country, but there are only four of us here, and they only accept/send students from/to Canada, America, Finland and Australia, that’s it! Not to mention, there are no male inbound exchange students but me, and all the Japanese students who just got back from their outbound exchanges are also girls.
After that, a bunch of us went for karaoke, which I’ve never done before.
Now you should know that I’m no singer, especially if you're an ex member of the band Dead Reckoning. HA. But this was really fun; we went into a little dark room with a table and sang to words on a screen and They made me sing when a song came on like, I think I’m turning Japanese, or Barbie girl, or hey hey you you I don’t like your girlfriend or whatever, it was quite a good laugh, I was happy just to have English speaking people around me.
Since I don’t even know my way home one of the girls who takes the subway in the same direction got off where I get off and waited with me for my host father to walk and get me. I could recognize some of the buildings when we came out of the station, and I felt like an big dork when I saw that the station we got off at had been only like 200 feet from home all along.
As much as I liked Japan yesterday, I like it more today.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
There were about 5 people at the airport and they all introduced themselves and shook my hand and bowed and I didn’t catch any names. Then in about one minute we took a picture as a group, said sayonara, and then it was just me and the man who introduced himself as my first host father.”
The airport turned out to be attached to a train station and after hauling my bags down a few escalators we were on a train. It was pretty much empty and we spent an hour working out what we could in English and Japanese. He has very little English but I think he understands more than he speaks. He explained that I was to call him Otou-san which is literally father, and his wife was to be called Okaa-san, which is mother. We got off that train and on to another. This one had a lot of people, they were all dressed in different Japanese fashions and school uniforms and suits, and they were all looking at me. I’m going to have to get used to this staring thing, or perish.
After the train we hopped in a taxi, the cars are almost all different in Japan, everything is small, but occasionally you see a model you recognize. They drive on the left side of the road here and the steering wheel is on the right, they drive very fast and it didn’t appear to be important to have your seat belt on, I attempted to put mine on but it was some complicated high tech thing, I think.
Our apartment is on the third floor above my host fathers shop, he sells house and car paints on the first floor, and has an office on the second. There is an elevator. The house is very clean and has lots of floor space. Everything is hardwood. My room has a sliding door and a very hard bed (wood with a thin mattress on top), but that is something I really like. I have two huge windows but the only view is of the tops of the tall buildings around us.
We spent an hour attempting to communicate at the dining table, and then went to bed. I woke up to find breakfast on the table. It was really good, but I have no idea what it was.
Then okaa san took me out to register for something at the government office because I am staying longer than 90 days. Sapporo is hard to describe, the air is humid and the sun beats down on you, people are riding bikes everywhere, the trees completely alien and usually huge. Unlike Calgary there is no litter, and unlike Calgary not everything is brand new, many roofs and drainpipes are rusted and the rust has stained the buildings. There are bumpy strips in the center of the side walk absolutely everywhere, for the blind to feel their way along I guess, but who knows. There are constant sirens and tiny ambulances go by once in a while.
After registering for whatever it was, we walked to my school to meet the principal. My school is 5 stories high, and from what I can gather it is the top rated sports school in all of Hokkaido prefecture (province), with the number one rugby team in all of northern Japan. It is baby blue and yellow and everyone wears uniforms and looks at me like I am very interesting, or very disgusting.
We met people my host father knew as we walked, it was strange to me that something like that should happen in such a big city, but I realized everyone here runs a shop, and lives in/above it, or lives in complex, Whereas in Canada we all live in suburbia, and drive everywhere in our SUVs. My host parents are maybe the nicest people in the world they keep effusing to let me pay for anything and are so patient and so happy when we are able to communicate. I’m surprised at the amount of Japanese I know and how much I understood today, even though they we’re all single words and I just guessed at the rest of the sentence.
By midday I was really tired of walking, and reaaaally jet lagged, and really hot, and really worried about the speech I have to give tomorrow, and the one I have to give on Monday, and starting school on Monday with pretty much no school supplies, and no uniform, they told me I could wear suit pants and a shirt and tie instead. I guess that means the same one for a whole week until my uniform comes in.
Right now I’m in my room, but since they don’t know the password to their own wireless network I have to go into the kitchen and use a cord when I want internet. I’m Still on Calgary time, making it 5:08 AM for me, and 8:08 pm for Japan. Everything is super formal, really hard to understand and kind of scary, but I’ve got 364 days to go.
p.s. you can't indent your paragraphs on here. I'm going to have to work on that.
The airport turned out to be attached to a train station and after hauling my bags down a few escalators we were on a train. It was pretty much empty and we spent an hour working out what we could in English and Japanese. He has very little English but I think he understands more than he speaks. He explained that I was to call him Otou-san which is literally father, and his wife was to be called Okaa-san, which is mother. We got off that train and on to another. This one had a lot of people, they were all dressed in different Japanese fashions and school uniforms and suits, and they were all looking at me. I’m going to have to get used to this staring thing, or perish.
After the train we hopped in a taxi, the cars are almost all different in Japan, everything is small, but occasionally you see a model you recognize. They drive on the left side of the road here and the steering wheel is on the right, they drive very fast and it didn’t appear to be important to have your seat belt on, I attempted to put mine on but it was some complicated high tech thing, I think.
Our apartment is on the third floor above my host fathers shop, he sells house and car paints on the first floor, and has an office on the second. There is an elevator. The house is very clean and has lots of floor space. Everything is hardwood. My room has a sliding door and a very hard bed (wood with a thin mattress on top), but that is something I really like. I have two huge windows but the only view is of the tops of the tall buildings around us.
We spent an hour attempting to communicate at the dining table, and then went to bed. I woke up to find breakfast on the table. It was really good, but I have no idea what it was.
Then okaa san took me out to register for something at the government office because I am staying longer than 90 days. Sapporo is hard to describe, the air is humid and the sun beats down on you, people are riding bikes everywhere, the trees completely alien and usually huge. Unlike Calgary there is no litter, and unlike Calgary not everything is brand new, many roofs and drainpipes are rusted and the rust has stained the buildings. There are bumpy strips in the center of the side walk absolutely everywhere, for the blind to feel their way along I guess, but who knows. There are constant sirens and tiny ambulances go by once in a while.
After registering for whatever it was, we walked to my school to meet the principal. My school is 5 stories high, and from what I can gather it is the top rated sports school in all of Hokkaido prefecture (province), with the number one rugby team in all of northern Japan. It is baby blue and yellow and everyone wears uniforms and looks at me like I am very interesting, or very disgusting.
We met people my host father knew as we walked, it was strange to me that something like that should happen in such a big city, but I realized everyone here runs a shop, and lives in/above it, or lives in complex, Whereas in Canada we all live in suburbia, and drive everywhere in our SUVs. My host parents are maybe the nicest people in the world they keep effusing to let me pay for anything and are so patient and so happy when we are able to communicate. I’m surprised at the amount of Japanese I know and how much I understood today, even though they we’re all single words and I just guessed at the rest of the sentence.
By midday I was really tired of walking, and reaaaally jet lagged, and really hot, and really worried about the speech I have to give tomorrow, and the one I have to give on Monday, and starting school on Monday with pretty much no school supplies, and no uniform, they told me I could wear suit pants and a shirt and tie instead. I guess that means the same one for a whole week until my uniform comes in.
Right now I’m in my room, but since they don’t know the password to their own wireless network I have to go into the kitchen and use a cord when I want internet. I’m Still on Calgary time, making it 5:08 AM for me, and 8:08 pm for Japan. Everything is super formal, really hard to understand and kind of scary, but I’ve got 364 days to go.
p.s. you can't indent your paragraphs on here. I'm going to have to work on that.
day zero
At the Calgary airport, my family, my counsellor and three of my close friends saw me off. The flight was over so fast, and then I had a two hour wait in Vancouver.
Before I even left the Vancouver airport (where there are by FAR more Japanese speaker pages than English ones) There was this little kid running around, I kept noticing him because he was in all lime green. I thought he was lost, he was miles from anyone, and then later at our gate I saw him with his dad talking about where he had gone in Japanese. If I was in an international airport at that age, my mom would have had me like tie to her leg. I guess Japan is just really safe.
The plane was serious business; let me tell you I’ve been on my share of planes, but I've only ever been to Canadian destinations and the north western US. This was very new for me.
I should add that my original flight plan was Calgary > Vancouver > Osaka > Sapporo
But THE DAY BEFORE I LEAVE Air Canada calls and tells me they're canceling the Osaka flight, instead I’m going to Tokyo, but my dad got me bumped up to first class for the trouble, so it went
Calgary > Vancouver > Tokyo Narita airport> Sapporo.
Now, I have extremely mixed feelings about first class air Canada. Maybe I'll make a list to save some time.
Good:
-HUGE seats, more leg room than anyone could ever need
- Three windows to myself
-The seat lies down like a bed all electrically
Now this is all exceptional, but
Bad:
- Everyone looks at you like, hey what is this kid doing up here with these fancy business men.
- Everything is glass and ceramic instead of plastic and you have to grab onto it when there is turbulence.
All the Japanese people want to sleep. If you want to look out the window for the whole 9 hours and 10 minutes, you're out of flippin luck. The stewardess will ask you to shut your window, and when you open later she will just walk up and shut it, and you will watch a bad movie. I did get a few glimpses of tundra though
Coming in to Tokyo was nuts. We we’re going through these 1000 foot tall clouds, and there must have been 5 other planes, so close to us, I guess it’s busier than in Calgary. Then I could see huge ships going out to sea, and miles and miles of industrial compounds and buildings.
Oh yea, I should say that when I got to the airport everyone was wearing like doctors sanitary masks. I guess just because we’re foreigners, but for a minute I thought there was like some outbreak and I was going to die. Especially when they made an announcement that anyone with flu like symptoms should report to some desk immediately.
Next I went to immigration. It all went smoothly despite the man knowing no English and being muffled behind his mask. I walked away and picked up my baggage, which came like first because I was first class priority. And I realized I didn’t have my boarding pass. I almost died on the spot, but I ran back up an escalator and there it was on the table I had set it down on. Close one. I actually got on a bus that took me to my plane, that was really different, and when the plane from Tokyo to Sapporo was loaded I was pretty much the only white person. After my two hour flight through a huge purple lightning storm, (which would have been more frightening if I could have kept my eyes open,) I picked up my luggage and went through a glass door into the main airport, and that’s when i really started to feel like I was in somewhere brutally and completely different from home.
Before I even left the Vancouver airport (where there are by FAR more Japanese speaker pages than English ones) There was this little kid running around, I kept noticing him because he was in all lime green. I thought he was lost, he was miles from anyone, and then later at our gate I saw him with his dad talking about where he had gone in Japanese. If I was in an international airport at that age, my mom would have had me like tie to her leg. I guess Japan is just really safe.
The plane was serious business; let me tell you I’ve been on my share of planes, but I've only ever been to Canadian destinations and the north western US. This was very new for me.
I should add that my original flight plan was Calgary > Vancouver > Osaka > Sapporo
But THE DAY BEFORE I LEAVE Air Canada calls and tells me they're canceling the Osaka flight, instead I’m going to Tokyo, but my dad got me bumped up to first class for the trouble, so it went
Calgary > Vancouver > Tokyo Narita airport> Sapporo.
Now, I have extremely mixed feelings about first class air Canada. Maybe I'll make a list to save some time.
Good:
-HUGE seats, more leg room than anyone could ever need
- Three windows to myself
-The seat lies down like a bed all electrically
Now this is all exceptional, but
Bad:
- Everyone looks at you like, hey what is this kid doing up here with these fancy business men.
- Everything is glass and ceramic instead of plastic and you have to grab onto it when there is turbulence.
All the Japanese people want to sleep. If you want to look out the window for the whole 9 hours and 10 minutes, you're out of flippin luck. The stewardess will ask you to shut your window, and when you open later she will just walk up and shut it, and you will watch a bad movie. I did get a few glimpses of tundra though
Coming in to Tokyo was nuts. We we’re going through these 1000 foot tall clouds, and there must have been 5 other planes, so close to us, I guess it’s busier than in Calgary. Then I could see huge ships going out to sea, and miles and miles of industrial compounds and buildings.
Oh yea, I should say that when I got to the airport everyone was wearing like doctors sanitary masks. I guess just because we’re foreigners, but for a minute I thought there was like some outbreak and I was going to die. Especially when they made an announcement that anyone with flu like symptoms should report to some desk immediately.
Next I went to immigration. It all went smoothly despite the man knowing no English and being muffled behind his mask. I walked away and picked up my baggage, which came like first because I was first class priority. And I realized I didn’t have my boarding pass. I almost died on the spot, but I ran back up an escalator and there it was on the table I had set it down on. Close one. I actually got on a bus that took me to my plane, that was really different, and when the plane from Tokyo to Sapporo was loaded I was pretty much the only white person. After my two hour flight through a huge purple lightning storm, (which would have been more frightening if I could have kept my eyes open,) I picked up my luggage and went through a glass door into the main airport, and that’s when i really started to feel like I was in somewhere brutally and completely different from home.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
japanese giant hornets?
Hey kids, 10 days to go.
Just got my wisdom teeth out two days ago and I'm still pretty much out of commission.
Here’s something interesting, but I’m just putting it here to scare my mom/give me a chuckle when she starts reading this once I leave. See, she doesn’t like bugs.
Japanese Giant Hornet (vespa mandarinia japonica)
From: Japan, obviously.
Why you must fear it:
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because dang, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.
More scary stuff:
Here's how the Japanese hornet treats other insects (and would presumably treat us, if we were small enough). An adult hornet will fly miles to find something squishy to feed to its children. Often times, it finds its food in, say, a hive inhabited by thousands of bees.
What to do? Well, Vespa japonica sprays the nest with some of the acid/pheromone and brings in reinforcements, usually consisting of 30 or so fellow hornets. They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.
:D
Just got my wisdom teeth out two days ago and I'm still pretty much out of commission.
Here’s something interesting, but I’m just putting it here to scare my mom/give me a chuckle when she starts reading this once I leave. See, she doesn’t like bugs.
Japanese Giant Hornet (vespa mandarinia japonica)
From: Japan, obviously.
Why you must fear it:
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because dang, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.
More scary stuff:
Here's how the Japanese hornet treats other insects (and would presumably treat us, if we were small enough). An adult hornet will fly miles to find something squishy to feed to its children. Often times, it finds its food in, say, a hive inhabited by thousands of bees.
What to do? Well, Vespa japonica sprays the nest with some of the acid/pheromone and brings in reinforcements, usually consisting of 30 or so fellow hornets. They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.
:D
Monday, July 28, 2008
ohaiyou gozaimasu lol
Hey team,
22 days and 11 hours to go.
I'm starting to feel kind of prepared. I have lots of pins and flags and a few t-shirts to give away. Oh, and today I got my new laptop, it is so choice.
22 days and 11 hours to go.
I'm starting to feel kind of prepared. I have lots of pins and flags and a few t-shirts to give away. Oh, and today I got my new laptop, it is so choice.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
42 days!
This is gonna be quick.
What I wanted to say is that my friend Allen, another outbound, left for India today! India was one of my top choices, he is going to have such an awesome experience, completely different from mine I think.
august 20th is getting closer, but I think I will be one of the last of us to leave. Most of my friends leave for their countries late in this month.
I've started buying lots of Canadian flags and touristy stuff to give away, but there are a million more things i should start working on. I pretty much completely gave up on my online Japanese studies about 4 months ago. that was probably not a good idea. i'll see if i can get a tutor for the next couple of weeks. I've taken more hours at my job so i can have spending money, and so i can buy a laptop, and maybe a low end DSLR camera.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Got my departure date!
I got my Japanese student visa, and sent it off to the travel agent. she just mailed me my ticket the other day. They originally told me I would be in Japan by august 1st or so, but the ticket says august 20th!
This is good and bad. It's good in that I get more time in Canada, more summer with my friends and family. It's bad in that i miss most of Japanese summer vacation, which is only one month. so I will be going straight in to school when i get there, rather than having a month to just get settled and get to know my host family.
So 57 days and 8 hours left before I'm on the plane, but i'm getting pretty stoked.
