久しぶり！

Well it's certainly been a while. It seems I'm not really good at this whole blog thing as I'm far too dedicated a student to really take the half hour to write a blogpost. (yes, excuses. darn right!) I haven't even uploaded my photos from September.

Major things that have happened/ that I have learned so far:
1) I have been to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. Kyoto is about 45 minutes away, and only about 400Y to get there, Osaka is about half an hour but costs about the same. Nara was about an hour and twenty minutes but cost more to get there as it's a much longer distance. Some of my trips have been for classes and some have been for myself.
2) I have seen Noh, Kyogen, and Bunraku preformed live so far. This Wednesday I am going to Kabuki. All of these courses were actually for one of my classes which I highly recommend Love, Sex, and Death in Noh, Kabuki, and Bunraku although the title is misleading as there is not much content for any of the three keywords I find. Also, if you do not enjoy writing reports I would unfortunately suggest avoiding this course as well, after every play there is a 3-4 page report expected, and the term project is a group project or a 20 page essay.

3) I have learned the most important verb. 道を迷う-みちをまよう-michi o mayou. Which means I am lost. It cconjugates in the U-verb form.    My second most important phrase would probably be おなかがすいて which means I'm hungry.

4) I have joined the tea ceremony club. We practice for 6-8 hours a week on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the teacher visits on Wednesdays. At first this club was very dull as it moved at a zen-like pace, and due to the upcoming school festival the other girls in the club were only using me to practice on. Now I have started to learn things, however I do forget them between meetings. The women are wonderful though and very patient even with a strong language barrier. 

Tea ceremony along with koto playing, and ikebana flower arranging compose the basic tennants of a "proper" lady by traditional standards.

5) I bought a bike, which I still have to learn how to ride. That will be happening over winter break, and hopefully next term I'll be able to ride it to go places. At time it feels like I am probably the only person in this country who can not ride a bicycle.

6) Kansai Gaidai sets up visits with schools sometimes so that us foreign students may interact with Japanese students who are trying to learn a foreign language. Wednesday December 1st, I participated in a visit to Niwakubo Elementary School in Osaka (not anywhere near Shinsaibashi though, this was real residential Osaka) and talked about my country with two sixth-grade classes. It was an amazing opportunity to understand how they learn English, and see a school as well. The students varied in their willingness to talk, however at least one member (usually a girl) of the small 3-4 person groups I dealt with appeared to attend a juku (cram school) as their English was much better that the others.

7) I have also made a selection of amazing friends, and have a great roommate. As I'm staying here a year, I am going to miss most of my friends who are not staying. If my room mate was staying I would honestly be considering staying in dorms moreso next term, but I would really enjoy the opportunity to interact with a family sharing culture and language. I know that homestay can be difficult but I want to be able to put in the extra effort, and I am also willing to balance my school, friends, and family expectations.

8) Spiders are huge. I am learning to ignore them now but if one comes into my room whatsoever... I may develop suction-cup hands and end up on the ceiling.

Of course there are many other things that I could mention but over break I will for sure be posting pictures with captions explaining the days. Look forward to it. :-)

- Lost in Hirakata

Getting Here

I've been living in Hirakata, Japan for going on 3 weeks now so excuse the fact that this entry is very long, and only will cover the first few days. I'll post another entry in a few days with more about my trip so far.

My flight was moved ahead a day which was stressful but manageable. On August 29th I flew to Japan via Vancouver-LA with a stop overnight, then LA-Tokyo from where I proceeded to fly from Tokyo to Osaka. I was proud to say I had never been plane-sick before that trip and I've done a fair amount of international travelling. However, due to circumstances such as little sleep, recovering from a summer cold, and fairly turbulent flights- it was not really surprising. The last 5 hours of the journey (while in the air) was spent passed out or throwing up. I don't remember the majority of the flight between Tokyo and Osaka, other than the flight attendants being rather concerned, and waking up to having spilled my water after I blacked out on the tray in front of me. Positively the Japanese people around me were thinking I should have been deported or, at the very least, quarantined because of my evil gaijin germs. My first thought I had when I arrived was that I had made it and that hopefully I would survive to reach my dorm and sleep, which likely would have been that even at night it was disgustingly hot and humid had I actually been healthy.
At Narita I had had a fortunate moment of intellegence and managed to get my luggage shipped seperately to Hirakata, so I didn't have to lug them around which would have likely killed me. JAL provides a lovely service shipping bags domestically, and even people not flying on JAL can take advantage of it. It takes a day to arrive, and is very reasonable at 1790Y per suitcase. Even healthy it would be worth the money, unless you plan on taking only shuttles and taxis, which by themselves cost a lot more than the subway and bus systems.
I decided to take the trains into Hirakata (by myself!!) as I missed the pick-up time by Kansai Gaidai for the new ryuugakusei at KIX, and google mapped the train route before I left. It is far cheaper than taking a taxi (which operate on a base fee for the first 2 km, and then add about 100-200Y more per extra 0.5km travelled) as the distance to the dorm from the airport is about 83km. The first few trains were fine, no problems other than trying to stay conscious, but as soon as I reached Namba station in Osaka, I went the wrong way and ended up outside staring at the taxis. I could not remember the way in which taxis are signified as empty (red for empty,) and I was exhausted. After about 5 minutes contemplating how I would ask, a young Japanese guy about the same age as me, walked up and looked at the fact that I had a map and asked if I needed help. 
Between the two of us we managed to work out the fact that I was trying to get to Yodobashi station, and eventually to Hirakatashi. Yodobashi was easily within walking distance from where I was, and he showed me the way for an additional 2 trains, helping me manage to get to the train going to Hirakata-shi. This took about half an hour, and I feel extremely grateful for the help, however I unfortunately never even got his name. {So thank you random stranger, I hope that wherever you are out there that you realize how grateful I really am.} From Hirakata-shi I took a taxi, and in total the trip only cost me about 2000Y for the trains and 1400Y for the taxi. It was about par with what the shuttle from KIX would have been, and far more of a learning experience. However- pro-tip: Try not to travel extremely sick though if you have no idea where you are really going, especially if your body just wants to sleep.
The next morning my room-mate was happy to see I had not in fact died overnight like she suspected I might have. After hearing how sick I looked, I have a feeling that Japanese guy not only helped me out because he was kind but because he may have been worried that if he left me alone I may have collapsed in the street right then and there, which really would have created a great kerfuffle but more adventures. Of course, I woke up at 4:30am, which worked out to being around 12:30pm back in Victoria, and this continued for the first week as I slowly adjusted. I however do keep strange sleep patterns even normally, and even now I am sometimes still waking up at 4:30am but I am managing to fall asleep again afterwords.
The same day I had the excellent "fun" of going to the campus and writing my placement exam as well as doing a tonne of paperwork. I still was not feeling 100% after my travels, and the exam which should have been easy had I actually reviewed everything I had learned during the summer ended up in me not placing as well as I had wished for. However, I have dealt with this fact and the level I am in now I find suitable as I am very aware that I can not speak as well as I can write in Japanese. So even though grammatically it's review, it is useful in it's own way. A personal suggestion though is to review during the summer more than I did, because that avoids a lot of disappointment.
Also- buy a bike. I secretly cannot ride a bike and it takes about half an hour to walk from the dormitory to the campus, and even longer to the grocery store. It's excellent for fitness, however it gets really hot when the average temperature so far has been 35*c or more, and feeling your eyelids sweat is not sexy. I have been strongly considering buying a bike with training wheels and learning to ride just to make life much more convenient. However, there is a massive hill immediately outside the dormitory and people in Japan do not wear helmets. Plus it's embarrassing to not have biking knowledge when apparently it's an inherent global skill which is expected of everyone.
I could honestly go on forever with this entry as I have been here for going on 3 weeks now, but I'm going to sign off.  If you have any questions please leave them in the comments, or email them to me at hclanigan@hotmail.com

16 Days

In 16 days, I will be moving to Hirakata, Osaka, Japan to attend Kansai Gaidai University for at least one semester. To be honest, it doesn't even seem possible, and I keep thinking I'm going to be waking up to continue on with life in good old Victoria, BC, Canada. My plane tickets are booked, my student visa is in, most of my shopping is done, my hotel room is booked for pre-departure night, so I'd think with all of this it would at least hit me that I am returning to Japan. I even know what dormitory ("seminar house") I have been assigned to!
In 2004 I traveled to Japan for three weeks, on a high school trip, visiting most of the major tourist cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima. At that point I had already been in love with the country for several years, and was still going through my major "anime phase." Even before leaving Japan I decided to return, and instead of a "Hi Mom!" my mother had the lovely greeting of "I want to go back!" the moment that I walked out the airport's arrival doors.
With all this, I keep wondering when it will sink in and why it hasn't yet but it probably will sink in the moment I get to the airport if I'm not completely exhausted. (I have to be at YVR around 4am- far too early to be considered human unless you happen to have chosen that as a side-effect of your job.) If  it doesn't then, I expect it to when I'm struggling to get from KIX airport to the dormitory. Which shall be interesting to say the least. Fortunately, I have a bit of Japanese linguistic knowledge after taking it for two years at college. However, that doesn't change the fact that with my expected jetlag I will be losing making my way, alone, from the airport to a dormitory that google maps doesn't even know exists due to arriving later than the pick-up time.