金の週間： Week of Golden-ness

Incidentally, crazy psycho schoolgirl from Kill Bill pt 1 has a singing career now...

I decided in the end that I will indeed take the JLPT 2 test this August (Potentially at the same time Sophie is here - yay to that one :-). Sophie coming, not the test, but never mind). My life has thus become fantastically study-tastic. I close my eyes at night and all I see are kanji :-(

So yea, the other major thing this time of year is Golden Week, which is a bunch of Japanese public holidays coincidentally in a row. It actually is only 4 days of holiday with a work-day and the weekend in the middle, so not really a week as such, but Japan has it's own "Special" attitude when it comes to time (the TV schedule occasionally has stuff like "2345-2600" on the schedule and opening hours can be stuff like 17:00-28:00).

Oh, and incidentally, in spite of those Kanji at the top, the Japanese just call it "Golden Week" or GW for short...

So, I exiled myself off to Yoo's for a few days in the middle of no-where. Yoo claims to live in Kyoto, but I discovered this time that infact his house is about 1km from the border with Fukui Prefecture ergo, BARELY Kyoto.

Oh, and a bunch of his Dad's German relatives were there as well, so I got to repair my German a little bit :-)

We also went to a town called Obama. Apparently Obama-sama (the real one, not me) wrote them a letter last year...

Oh, and we drove to the top of this mountain overlooking Obama and Wakasa-bay, then spent 2 hours trekking down it to go to this really pretty little cove. Obviously, given Water+Germans, inevitably there was some disturbing nudity involved...

For some reason we ended up climbing about 3 or 4 other mountains as well over those few days...

Yoo also came back to Kobe for a couple of days, and, in a really weird twist, introduced me to his half-Scottish friend (who lives in proper Kyoto) who went to Boroughmuir High school (about 500m from my High-School).

Incidentally, avoid Kyoto like the plague on public holidays...

I find it kinda hard to talk about "nothing" in Japanese to be honest... This probably wasn't helped by the fact that Yoo was being a bit quiet and rather annoyingly not telling me when I wasn't making any sense... grr.

EAT FEWER DOUGHNUTS

My dear friends and followers, I bring to you, from the farthest reaches of the Orient: "The world map according to a Japanese professor of Tectonic Sciences":

(Mid-lecture on tectonic plate separation in central Africa)

"By the way Thomas, have you been to Lake Victoria?" (Ie, Kenya/Tanzania)

"Er... no..."

"Oh, I just thought since it's pretty close to Europe you might have..."

Thinking of taking the JLPT 2 (2nd highest level) along with a couple of other exchange students this summer, but I kinda have to decide quickly because the application deadline is about the end of next week. JLPT 1 (top level) is crazy hard. Like, really really crazy hard. Absurdly hard. The Kanji section is pretty much designed to screw over Chinese people who have read them their whole lives (Although my teacher insists this is gives everyone else an advantage). One of my classes is an example class for the JLPT 1 test. I understand about 20% of what's written in this class without my dictionary. If I'm lucky. Just for an idea, here's some of the thing's we're supposed to read: 解熱剤 which my dictionary tells me is an "Anti-pyretic" My dictionary sadly does not tell me what an Anti-pyretic is (Anti-fever drug?). 主従, which is "relationship between master and servant" (Only the Japanese would have a word for that...) and 弔砲, which is apparently a funeral gun-salute "in a regrettable sense".

So yea, JLPT 1 is still a wee bit off...

My Physics classmates talked to me! Without prompting! Yay! That said, the first thing they said was "Hi", which was quickly followed up with "Are you French?". Apparently I have a French nose to go with my French hair from last month... (Incidentally, Ryota explained this as "For the Japanese, Big nose = French"...). Woo :-)

Oh, and the English Speaking Society (ESS) ambushed me the other day. I heard them talking behind me: "Quick! Ask him about the ESS!", shortly after which one of them came up to me, started leaning on my shoulder and said in (actually pretty good) English "Hi, which country are you from?". In what I believe is a thoroughly praise-worthy piece of intuition saw where this was going and replied in Japanese "Is this about the ESS by any chance?" to which he replied, I kid you not, with "No, no. But entirely coincidentally I am a member of the ESS. Do you know about us?". I guess this is what Chris calls an "Eigo-Bandit".

The people sitting next to me in Mister Donuts (On a side note, I have WAY more points on my loyalty card than I really should...Bad Thomas!) were playing linguistic-chicken with me today. I was working on my Planetary Science notes (which are in Japanese funnily enough), so first they kept staring at them, then started talking rather stiltedly in what I eloquently call "That-way-the- Japanese-talk-when-they-know-the-random-foreigner-next-to-them-will-understand-that-causes-discussions-of-Touhoushinki-to-sound-like-spy-talk", then dropped all pretense and just started talking about "Foreign student guys" (Nicely I add). I was unimpressed. Final Score: UK 1: Japan 0.

On another occasion in a completely separate shop which coincidentally happened to be frequented by people in search of coffee and doughnuts, I was reading that manga that Tony lent me and I still havn`t finished 3 months later ("xxxHoric"? Yes, I`m reading a Manga. It makes a change from all my other Japanese books which are mostly Earth Science textbooks. Hang me or whatever.). Anyway, the Japanese person sitting next to me happens to be a Japanese-language teacher and so says to me "Can you get meaning from that?" "No, I`m just staring at the pictures...." (Actually, this being Japan, it is a distinct possibility for people "Reading Manga" to be ONLY looking at the pictures but we won`t go into that at this time... thankfully.).

It`s rather disheartening that there seems to be a certain number of Japanese language teachers (I am of course not in any way referring to any of the teachers I had last semester...no, not at all...) who seem to go into the job with the preconception that their pupils ARE NOT going to succeed in learning Japanese to a significant level. I get rather depressed by this.

Fortunately, Samurai-sensei and the new bunch are not so affected :-) It`s very nice to be treated as an intelligent human being after a semester of level 3 classes :-). That said, my composition sensei did ask me if I had the right classroom when I turned up to a room full of Chinese people and Monica. My case was not helped by "Early morning Japanese inability" syndrome which caused me to say "Yes, I took the placement test, I was Thomas Arnot"...

Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday...

Yea, 2 posts in the same day, but they didn't fit together as one, and it helps keep away from "Never-Ending-Monster-Post" Syndrome, which has, perhaps on occasion (note: deliberate irony), affected this here blog.

So, Tsukiko and Hirotake, two of my friends here in Kobe, are off to the UK for their years abroad. Sometime... Tsukiko was supposed to leave last week and is currently in a less extreme version of the same situation my little brother is in (Last I heard he was skiing with some NATO contractors heading back from Afghanistan. In Dubai.). Less extreme in that she didn't even get out of Tokyo Narita Airport in the first place and was thus able to just go back home. To Akita. Hirotake leaves at the end of the month and is off to Birmingham (!). Bham people, please say hi should you ever bump into him. Nice to know I can see them next year when I get back to the UK.

They also gave me a very nice and rather surprising birthday present, a book called "日本人の知らない日本語" (Japanese the Japanese don't know), which is about random stuff that foreign learners discover and torment their teachers with. In other words, oddly enough pretty much exactly what we discuss in Yamamori's Japanese Grammar class...

Kinda jealous in a way, given that they get to do the whole "Year abroad right from the beginning"-thing. I wouldn't change a thing I've done here, but it would be nice if I could have started this year with my current level of Japanese...

That's not to say I don't still have about a billion miles to go. We did a practice JLPT level 1 listening test. Bigorah, that be a tricky little leprechaun, though he does have a mighty fine crock 'a gold...

Harrison-sensei (One of the Japanese-language teachers. Who's white. And from Manchester.) mentioned one of the random little targets of learning Japanese; To make the Japanese stop complimenting you on it. Hehe. Silly but true.

Do I use ellipses too often?

Fourier has an "L" in this country...

I laughed at Japanese TV. This wasn't the first time I hasten to add, but it was the first time I laughed AT WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO LAUGH AT. I'm worried to be honest. I don't think this is a good sign in terms of my sanity.

The adverts are also starting to make sense. I don't mean language wise. I mean "I now can see why that talking dog is sharing an ice-cream with a 45 year-old woman, both of whom are dressed as high-school students, and I don't think this is not a particularly out of the ordinary situation."

Except that one with the female weightlifter and dancing riot police. That was just strange...

Tanaka-Sensei (of 2nd Language Acquisition Class- AKA Comme des Garcons discussion group fame), who is now my supervisor incidentally (She probably won't buy me as many beers as Ogasawara-sensei did. He went to London to teach at LSE by the way), invited me to what she called the "Department Tea-party". I thought "Oh, nice a tea-party, leisurely chat and eat some cake. Fashionably late is fine.". Turns out it was more "Formal introduction to the Faculty of Intercultural Studies, with cake and pizza tacked on at the end.". Fashionably late did not go down so well...

This being Tanaka-sensei, naturally there was a "Thomas, say something!"-style ambush. Knowing this was Tanaka-sensei, I was prepared :-)

Incidentally, I met a guy from the Kobe University Double-Dutch team (Yes, they have a University Skipping team). One of the great mysteries of Japan is quite how guys like this manage to maintain their elaborate hairdoos in spite of these sports...

Strangely enough, Miyata-sensei from "Introduction to Planetary and Earth Sciences" class seems to have inherited Tanaka-sensei's mantle of "Ask the foreigner random questions about anything unconnected to Japan". For example: "Thomas, does the Thames freeze over these days?" What I thought: "What the hell do I know, I live in Edinburgh!" What I said: "Well, not really. Maybe sometimes"; "Thomas, have you been to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines?" (Yes, he seriously asked me If I had been to a random volcano on the other side of the world from the UK) What I though: "Well, yes, 3 weeks ago, but if I say that I'll have to explain why...". What I said: "No, sorry".

So, I had my first Quantum-Mechanics-in-Japanese lecture this morning (Note: 08:50 is far FAR too early for linear algebra in a foreign language...). Rather worryingly the Japanese part wasn't so tricky (Sensei's illegible kanji aside. Even the Japanese were complaining...), the maths on the other hand... some revision is clearly required... Still, I'll be well chuffed if I manage to pull this one off.

I went along to Yamamori-sensei's Japanese Grammar class. For some reason the name lead me to expect a Japanese grammar lesson. Turns out the class is a Japanese Grammar DISCUSSION class. We spend an hour and a half discussing such things as the difference between は and が. Basically, two ways of saying "is". A paraphrase of the discussion was:

Sensei: "Does anybody know the difference between these?"

Class: "No, not really..."

Sensei: "Shit, I was hoping you guys did... What, you all thought I knew? I'm Japanese, I don't care."

Somehow the class manages to be really interesting and deadly dull. At the same time.

Random side note: I heard from Alexis that the French TGV staff have gone on strike. Of all the frikkin times they could have picked...

Life and Movies

11 Umbrellas...

I've got a few classes up in D-building of the Intercultural Studies Faculty this term. No-one has been able to provide me with an adequate explanation of why this building starts on the 3rd floor...

Perhaps it was because the Intercultural Studies faculty was more used to dealing with and to an extent simplifying their content for international students, or maybe it's just because I understand the lectures more this time around, but the science lectures in particular have felt more like "real" university than my classes did last semester.

Also, in something of a reversal of the norm when it comes onto the topic of Japanese language classes, they've actually been rather good lately. They're mostly focused towards preparation for the JLPT level 2 and 1 tests, (level 2 isn't actually as hard as I expected. Level 1 is frikkin insanely difficult...). A nice up-shot of this is that we're actually treated as intelligent human-beings at this level, as opposed to the ones last year which could often be... not so fun.

Also, a bunch of us international students went to see a Japanese movie "ダーリンは外国人" (My Darling is a Foreigner) at the cinema the other day, partly out of curiosity, partly out of wanting to see what the Japanese were saying about us behind our backs hehehe. Basically it was about inter-racial relationships in Japan, though we were all a bit disappointed that it was about what I call "The boring kind" (Western guy and Japanese woman, as opposed to vice-versa which is much less common). While the whole story was basically one cliche after another (cultural differences, parents disapprove but later come around and they get married and live happily ever after), it was interesting to watch for us in a way that I suspect the Japanese didn't really get, in terms of the portrayals of the foreign characters. The main character was an American guy, who, in order to play-up the "Foreigners are a bit odd" concept in Japan, was at one point skipping down the road waving flowers in the air... It would have been nice to see at the very least one foreign character who was normal, well adjusted, competent and spoke reasonable Japanese (I was rather amused to see that they've imported the "Evil Brit" stereotype, complete with horrendous Japanglish lines such as; "You know, Japanese girls are so 簡単(easy). They just fawn over me because I can speak 英語(English)"). Though, to be fair, there are foreigners who are exactly like that in Japan (pretty much the only thing I don't like about Kyoto really; it's full of foreign tourists who can't be bothered to learn Japanese).

On the other hand, there were a few moments where they got the foreigner-in-Japan experience spot on, with the "日本語はお上手ですね" (You're good at Japanese) and "いいえ、いいえ、英語ダメです"(Sorry sorry, I can't speak English) lines in particular (We hear these like, every other day.).

Also, I'm guessing this was entirely accidental, but the way the story went resulted in some rather hilarious anti-Japanese-ness. After he meets her family in the middle of the story, where the mother tells her daughter "He'll cheat on you because HE'S A FOREIGNER!" and the father says he's against the relationship and will absolutely never recognise it, the couple make up again and go to New York for his sister's wedding and the happy ending, where his family welcome her enthusiastically and without hesitation.

That said, her mother did at one point say "It's got nothing to do with being Japanese and not-being-Japanese, it's about the differences between two people.". To reference tv tropes, some anvils like these need to be dropped in Japan, where dating a foreigner sometimes seems like A REALLY BIG THING for them.

Oh, and on a total side note, it was nice to see from the trailers that the Japanese make exactly the same throw-away pop-corn movies we make, just in Japanese :-) I do think it's a bit unfair that the only bits of Japanese cinema that makes it to the UK are Studio Ghibli (New movie coming out!), violent psychopath movies and freaky pre-teenage-girl ghost movies.

Oh, and after 5 1/2 months I have bought a fork. I got tired of eating pasta with chopsticks.

Bye Bye Brother

Why is everyone complaining about it being cold? Silly Australians and American Southerners... Except the Swedes and Austrians were also saying that...

Saw Sean off at the airport, (Wooo! hour each way on the airport "limousine" bus!). We had some ups and downs while he was here, though I guess that`s kinda normal. I sort of miss him now as well, I keep having to remind myself that he`s not around now. On the other hand, I can now get back to the none to minor task of my own life now...

Also, news just in, but he`s stuck in Dubai due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. I seem to be missing all sorts of calamities befalling the UK this year; the snow, now this. Maybe safer not to go back...

Back on campus most days now, though I have Mondays off this term due to timetable oddness...

First Physics lecture in Japanese! Not too bad actually... I`m unsurprisingly the only non-Japanese person in the class, so there were many odd looks of "are you sure this is the right class room for you?", although due to the massive class and tiny classroom they couldn`t really avoid me hehe.

The lecture it`s self was a first year classical mechanics one, and I`m not yet sure if they just have a different system from us and do all their practice questions in their tutorials, but we basically seemed to be running through a list of coordinate systems with very little explanation of how it works and what it does... Fine by me, as I basically took the whole thing as a useful little (if rather obscure) vocabulary lesson: 微分方程式（Bi-butsu-hou-tei-shiki), which is obviously "Differential Equation", and 位置ベクトル （I-chi-bekutoru, location vector) Which everybody of course says every day... (Ironically, one of the other exchange students mentioned they learned the Kanji for "vector" today. Someone should tell the physics department about it. They just write it in English with Japanese phonetics lol)

Placement tests are, as always, ongoing. Today was essay writing. I chose my question of "a social problem in your country" and wrote a fairly horrifically fascist piece about refugees and Immigration, which rather quickly became a celebration of what I called "The UK`s brave defence of humanity". Obviously this isn`t really a social problem so I tacked on a "On the other hand, native British culture is disappearing. The future of my country is uncertain..." on the end.

The best bit about this whole thing was I basically just wrote out the trailer for "Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society", which I bought a few months back and only watched the trailer of because it was so frikkin hard to understand (it didn`t even have Japanese subtitles). Anyway, from the trailer I did manage learn "The policy of refugee naturalisation will have unexpected consequences", which I basically rephrased and wrote variations of throughout the essay...

Geek moment: Sean bought me the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie for my birthday (thank you very much also to Stevie for the Vivienne Westwood sweat-rag/hand-towel :-)). It`s cool.

Hmm, seems Minami (陽) and I have entirely given up on even pretending we still like each other...

Back to School

It's been rather variable on the old Japanese language front recently. What with Sean here I've been speaking almost exclusively English and I've noticed a definite decline in Japanese ability. On the other hand, I did get a break while Sean was moving into his Kobe hotel-room to go and have dinner with Mayuko and Ryota, who rather amusingly mentioned they it was weird to hear me speaking English again (on the phone to Sean), which I was very pleased to hear :-)

The quadrennial ritual of the language course placement test came round again today, with the added novelty of a) punch-card answers and b) massive hangover.

Pleasantly short analysis: It was crap and pissed me off. They told me to take the same classes I passed last semester (Better than someone else who got told to take classes 4 levels below what he passed last semester...). I politely told them I disagreed with their assessment.

Back to uni! After being on holiday since mid-February I`m actually quite glad to be back to work and have something to do every day. It also means I can stop pestering every Japanese person in my phone book for conversation practice.

Sean's still around, back from Kyoto and have spent the last few days in Kobe, with a day trip to Nara today, where it rained a lot and we got attacked by the deer as per usual. One of them stuck it's head into my back pocket and ate the tickets and fliers from the botanical gardens...

Cherry blossoms and deer, how stereotypically Japanese...

Went on a quick dinner trip to Osaka as well, took Sean round Umeda and Shinsaibashi (took a detour to the Glico man as well). Perhaps understandably, he was so shell-shocked he's refusing to go back hehehe...

On the other hand, how are my Dad and Stepmum going to cope with it? Turns out Dad's going to be doing a lecture at Osaka University... He gave me the address. WHAT FRIKKIN USE IT THAT TO ME!!!!!!! I TOLD HIM MAP AND DIRECTIONS FROM UMEDA OR JR OSAKA OR NAMBA... groan... Oh, and he phoned me up on my birthday (Yesterday, thanks for the messages everyone!) and called me Sean... cest la vie... (He's also holding my birthday present hostage until I send Granny a postcard written in Japanese)

Worry number 2: Dad likes to imitate the accent of anyone he talks to... this could be embarrassing...

An odd thought I had; given the Japanese believe that all foreigners speak English and only English, why do none of the people you see in Starbucks pouring over English textbooks ask a question or two?

兄都- Kyoto

Astute readers will no doubt have noticed that those are not in fact the correct kanji for Kyoto (京都). It is infact a hilariously witty pun I created by replacing the Kanji for "capitol", with the one for "brother", both of which can be read as Kyo (きょう For all you Romaji-nazis I know are out there who complained about Yoo`s name last time around.

Anyway, to the point, It does infact seem to be the case that no matter where you go in the world, no matter how hard you might try, you just can`t avoid your family for ever. Drat...

So, here he is, being "Big in Japan" (in a height sense at least). Luckily for him he`s arrived right in the cherry blossom season here in Kansai, and he was even kind enough to bring some good weather with him! (Though I was less thilled about the 6am phonecall from Dubai Airport while he was en-route... Also apparently the immigration official at Osaka Airport gave him a horrified look when he explained that he was in Japan to visit "his brother", until he hurridly explained that I was a Kobe University student. All foreigners living in Japan being of course drug-dealing terrorists hell-bent on destroying Japanese society...)

I was a bit of a rebel and let him stay over in my room in Sumiyoshi for a night (Which is in theory ganz verboten but in reality nobody cares), telling him to keep a low profile and be discrete. Not 10 minutes late he comes back from the shower room at the other end of the corridor wrapped only in a towel and having taken (i.e STOLEN) one of the clothes baskets... dear dear (facepalm)...

So, off we went to Kyoto for a bit off culture, we went to Fushimi-Inari, (which I kept accidentally calling "Inari-Zushi", which is a kind of sushi...), which has an endless passage of over 10,000 torii gates running up, down and around the mountain overlooking Kyoto, as well as the Kodaiji (I again screwed up and asked for directions to the Todaiji, which is in Nara (Que puzzled looks on old woman`s face...) and the Kyomizudera (both of which I had never seen in the day). I`d forgotten Kyoto was abosolutely hoaching with foreigners (cherry blossom season not helping this situation), seriously, they`re everywhere (freaks me out a bit). Anyway, since the vast majority can`t speak a word of Japanese (Sean has since developed his own "unique" variation of "arigatou gozaimasu"), while at the Kyomizudera I was trying to fight my way through a massive group of Japanese school kids, so I said すみません (excuse me). BIG MISTAKE. IMMEDIATE 30 STRONG SCREAMING FAN CLUB SURROUNDING US.

Had some lunch in a tiny place in the backstreets of Kyoto, where I singularly failed to impress Sean with my linguistic performance. According to the old lady running the place, among the things I said were "My mother is very sick." and "My older brother lived in Japan for 4 years."... In my defence, she was deaf...

Sean seems to be enjoying it here, I can see he finds it very weird through, and also that he can see that he doesn`t really fit in here at all... (Seriously, I swear I get stared at 10x more with him than when I`m alone).