November 2006

Hey

Only eight more days to go. That:s really close.

Although we have been here 9 weeks and 4 four days, so that is ages. But it:s definitely time to go home. Sarah, Kara and I are loosing the ability to form coherent sentences in English. Truly, truly depressing. Probably the best example of this is Kara saying, on the train platform, waiting to meet Saki and Aoi to go to Harajuku ‘’Sarah, stop trodding on my dreams.’’ So all we:ve been saying since then is ‘’Don:t trod on my dreams.’’ Because we:re idiots. But whatever.

It:s been scaring me slightly whenever I write in my diary, since my writing is now full of crossings out as I try to start the word ‘with’ with the letter ‘u’. It:s better on the computer though. Then I can just blame my inability to type.

The really depressing thing is though that although my English is going downhill, my Japanese isn:t improving all that much.

I hope very much that you can understand this, because judging by how I:ve been speaking lately, you might be hard pressed to understand a single word I:m saying.

See you soon!

…is so awesome. Love it, love it, love it. Can:t be bothered typing anymore.

Toodles.

P.S. I got a really cute T-shirt today. ‘This is good in this unexpectedly. I am good for anything for few one day.’

Uh, wakarimasen. (For those of you who haven:t been using this phrase every couple of minutes for the last two months, wakarimasen = I don:t understand.

Hello

Okay, so maybe this was originally an activity one of our teachers had Sarah and I doing in our Japanese lesson, but whatever.

1. Vending machines. I want to pack up a couple and take them home, but I:m not sure they:d fit in my suitcase. I can:t get over how many of them and how many different flavours and stuff there are.

2. Purikura. (The little pictures you take and then draw on.) See comment for vending machines. Love them, love them, love them!!! They:re so cute and they have the added bonus that I can actually take the pictures home, just not, you know, the entire machine.

3. The totally adorable clothes people over here wear with the Japanese – English that doesn:t make any sense. I saw a T-shirt yesterday that had mushrooms on it and said ‘Let:s grow up together and become delicious.’ I laughed so hard.

4. Everyone over here is really nice. This impresses me.

5. Also it:s busy. Like, really busy. Elanora doesn:t DO busy. At least not like Japan.

6. I am quite convinced that Yokosuka Sogo High School was built for the sole purpose of making Elanora High look bad. Mission completed. Three storeys for crying out loud. Three! And it:s just all so beautiful. Everyone who knows me who:s reading this, when I get back, you will be seeing photos. Just a warning.

7. The uniform and the fact that everyone wears it over here. It:s so cool. I know I;ve described it on here before, but whatever, I:m doing it again. Long white shirt, navy blazer, tie, high checkered grey skirt (with the shirt tucked in, no less), long navy socks, black shoes. I love it so much. Our uniform back home is just…blergh compared to this.

8. The trains. They are the best, I love them so much. Probably because of the Gold Coast:s train system, or complete lack thereof. I like the fact that if I wanted to I could walk five minutes to the station and go to Yokohama or Tokyo. Well, I could if I was Japanese and therefore born with a instinctive knowledge of the public transport system, but seeing as an Australian exchange student I don:t possess this handy quality, it would probably be better if I were to limit my Yokohama – Tokyo excursions to when I have Misato or some other equally instinctive Japanese person with me.

9. Natural disasters. They rock! In the space of the two short months I have been in the country, Japan has experienced a typhoon, god knows how many earthquakes, a tornado and a tsunami. And so what if the tsunami turned out to be about ten centimeters. There was still full on warnings on TV all night. This was for my area too. Very exciting.

10. Hot cocoa. I know this probably should be under the ‘vending machine’ heading, since that is where it comes from, but it is so good it deserves section all to itself. Oishii is all I have to say here. Oishii, oishii, oishii.

11. I am still incredibly impressed by the fact that I am in Japan. I have been here for 2 months and 1 day and I still cannot get over the fact that I am not in Australia . Sad, huh? Whenever I think about it I can feel all this insane laughter welling up in my thoat.

12. The TV over here is classic. Even the ads. I love it all. So many of the TV shows have subtitles popping up all the time and everything, it:s so cute. And in large quantities of the ads, at the end they have heaps of people standing in a clump dong the same action, like flopping their heads from side to side or doing freaky things with their hands. I also love the anime they have on here. There are certain ones Misato watches every week. My favourites are ‘One Piece’ and the weird one were there:s a girl and a guy who have this special power where they can make these cbe things around the baddies and blow them up. It sounds sad, but it:s actually really, really cool.

13. Japanese music is so cute. It:s about three or four years behind Australia and America and stuff, which is funny. I have to say though, SMAP is the single most hilarious band on the face of the earth. I know quite a lot of Japanese people love them (Case in point: Okaasan. She does all the dances along with them whenever they come onto TV) but I just laugh and laugh. I am planning on buying their album, purely for it:s unintentional entertainment value.

14. My host family is so freakishly nice I am starting to get paranoid they:re secretly plotting against me. Maybe that was why I got sick. They fed something to my voodoo doll.

15. Everything.

Sarah told me we have about 18 days left. I am afraid. I am very afraid.

What to rave about today?

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah pointed this out to me and ever since it:s been weirding me out. Around the place there are buildings and on random windows they have stuck on red triangular arrows pointing downwards. Emergency exits, we:ve been told.

But I have a slight problem with this. Many of said emergency exits are a tad too high in the air for me personally to consider leaping from. Of course, not all of them are like that. Quite a few are sensibly placed so you can get onto the balcony roof or whatever. But then of course there are the ones which, were you to make an emergency exit from, would have you plummet ten storeys into the street below, to become a pancake. Literally.

I saw one building in Yokohama yesterday that was probably about 15 storeys high, with an emergency exit on every single floor, arranged so they were all in a line.

Sarah, Kara and I have decided that should we find ourselves in a situation where an emergency exit is necessary we will NOT, repeat NOT, condemn ourselves to a certain death, but instead take our chances with the raging wall of fire threatening to consume us (and/or troll trying to hit us with it:s club, like in Harry Potter).

Okay, rave complete.