Is it bad that I found this hilarious? (sorry it's in Japanese)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9YUH0cFNg&feature=related
Anyway, havn't written anything lately, basically because my life has been one thing for the entire month before Sophie arrived last week (yay!). That is STUDY...
Since I get distracted way to easily in my room, I've been camping out in various cafes around Kobe... In spite of my rotating around various places Starbucks have started preparing my order as soon as they see me in the door and I swear that "We may ask studying customers to leave during busy times" sign wasn't there in Mr Donuts 3 weeks ago...
(Just to put this into context, Kobe University's top level Japanese-writing class is currently now in its 3rd week of teaching us exactly where brackets are supposed to go in kanji-square paper. Helpful as ever...)
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Saturday 12 June 2010
The Madness continues...
Do you remember AKB48? They're back...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYCmdkb5oZ4&feature=related
This is No.1 at the moment... I give up.
The two guys sitting in front of me in Earth and Planetary Sciences (This is the class where the only person who ever acknowledges my presence is the lecturer. By staring at me with a shocked expression.), randomly started talking to each other in English at the end of class. Sounded a bit like they'd learned their whole vocabulary from Mario Kart 64 to be honest...I don't really know have a clue if they were trying to impress me, make fun of me or try to get me to talk to them...
Things took a more surreal turn in Classical Mechanics (This is the class that talk to me from time to time. Usually to ask me if I'm French...). A photographer came round to get some snaps for the department prospectus... can you see where this is going?
So she asks if it would be possible to get some "action shots", like, people doing physics-y stuff. Like, maybe someone could write a problem on the board and the rest of the class look interested... someone like...
I didn't really feel that I could refuse, but I was pretty annoyed with it. I wouldn't care if they had me sitting around randomly in class (like I do normally anyway) in a kind of "look! We have foreigners as well!" way, but having me standing up front and center just looks ridiculous and contrived... And besides, my handwriting sucks...
So, JLPT in less than a month... Basically this means 4 hours of studying a day... fun times are being had here :-)
Oh, and I had 2 reports on Satellite Laser Ranging and the Indo-Eurasia plate collision to hand in last week. At least, I though we had 2 reports to hand in. When I stuck my 1000 character, thrice checked and fully referenced Laser Ranging masterpiece in the box I noticed everyone else had written 3 sentences on this tiny A5 scrap of paper... :-(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYCmdkb5oZ4&feature=related
This is No.1 at the moment... I give up.
The two guys sitting in front of me in Earth and Planetary Sciences (This is the class where the only person who ever acknowledges my presence is the lecturer. By staring at me with a shocked expression.), randomly started talking to each other in English at the end of class. Sounded a bit like they'd learned their whole vocabulary from Mario Kart 64 to be honest...I don't really know have a clue if they were trying to impress me, make fun of me or try to get me to talk to them...
Things took a more surreal turn in Classical Mechanics (This is the class that talk to me from time to time. Usually to ask me if I'm French...). A photographer came round to get some snaps for the department prospectus... can you see where this is going?
So she asks if it would be possible to get some "action shots", like, people doing physics-y stuff. Like, maybe someone could write a problem on the board and the rest of the class look interested... someone like...
I didn't really feel that I could refuse, but I was pretty annoyed with it. I wouldn't care if they had me sitting around randomly in class (like I do normally anyway) in a kind of "look! We have foreigners as well!" way, but having me standing up front and center just looks ridiculous and contrived... And besides, my handwriting sucks...
So, JLPT in less than a month... Basically this means 4 hours of studying a day... fun times are being had here :-)
Oh, and I had 2 reports on Satellite Laser Ranging and the Indo-Eurasia plate collision to hand in last week. At least, I though we had 2 reports to hand in. When I stuck my 1000 character, thrice checked and fully referenced Laser Ranging masterpiece in the box I noticed everyone else had written 3 sentences on this tiny A5 scrap of paper... :-(
Tuesday 8 June 2010
E-Mails
I just got a nice if slightly odd e-mail off one of my sensei...
Basically I decided there was pretty much no way I would have the time to do the study required to pass 3rd year quantum mechanics at the same time as the JLPT test (Ironically it was the physics that was the problem, not the Japanese), so I e-mailed the lecturer to say I was dropping the class. Before I sent the e-mail I got Ryoko to check it over for me.
I got a reply this afternoon, and basically what it says is "Ok, good luck with the test", followed by literally a sentence by sentence analysis of the grammar and structure of my e-mail, with comments such as "The possible usages of this particular phrase are increasing in modern Japanese, which may cause problems for the older generation."
Nice, but odd...
Basically I decided there was pretty much no way I would have the time to do the study required to pass 3rd year quantum mechanics at the same time as the JLPT test (Ironically it was the physics that was the problem, not the Japanese), so I e-mailed the lecturer to say I was dropping the class. Before I sent the e-mail I got Ryoko to check it over for me.
I got a reply this afternoon, and basically what it says is "Ok, good luck with the test", followed by literally a sentence by sentence analysis of the grammar and structure of my e-mail, with comments such as "The possible usages of this particular phrase are increasing in modern Japanese, which may cause problems for the older generation."
Nice, but odd...
Sunday 6 June 2010
Dad and Roda arrive :-)
Parents! Yay!
I told Roda in advance that she should try to sit on the left side of the plane on the flight from Paris to get a great view of Kobe and Osaka as you land, which she managed to get. I woke up that morning to find it was so foggy I couldn't see the apartment block 200m in front of my window... cest la vie...
So, another trip down the Osaka bypass at silly AM to pick up Roda from Kansai Airport. Guess who I bumped into there... Hiro. As in, "Off to Birmingham for a year, see you in September" Hiro (Incidentally, Thank's to family for kindly adopting him!). Turns out he had a research conference here and so came back FOR A WEEK... that's dedication...
Incidentally, Hiro's last words before heading back to the UK (more or less): "Enjoy the summer hahaha"
Speaking of the Summer, it seems to have arrived... apparently we're in the rainy season, but it hasn't dropped below the high 20s for about 3 weeks now (I'm tanning! In a kind of... Scottish way...).
Except of course for about 4 of the 8 days Dad and Roda were here, where it chucked it down...
Dad arrived the next day from Shanghai (where the food was terrible, so he said), so that was another trip to Kansai airport (this time we took the boat! Novelty!)...
Sadly we didn't really have time to do any traveling outside of Kansai, but I took them round Kyoto, Osaka and Nara etc. The torrential rain actually kept the hordes of Kyoto tourists at bay for once :-)
The (for once not-raining) day we went to Deer-town (Nara), where randomly 5 million billion middle school kids from Gifu (AKA Kaori-town. That's like, just north of Nagoya, half-way to Tokyo) were on a school trip. I don't know exactly what their teachers had told them, but it seemed to have been something along the lines of "If you see a foreigner, run up to them and ask them this questionnaire about their home country.". Actually, knowing Japan it probably was exactly that... This got a little irritating after like, the 100 time...
Oh, and Dad did a presentation at Osaka University, which went really well, and one of the Professors and his wife took us out for lunch in Umeda (central Osaka). It was Kaiseki (very elaborately presented set menu dishes. I think it cost something like ￥10,000 per-person...), and was so delicately made it was really a shame to eat it...
Oh, and some of the tempura was Ayu (a fish), so I made a joke about Ayumi Hamasaki (Who's also called Ayu) in Japanese, to which the old lady explaining the meal replied with "This fish was raised very well and has a most delicate flavour and is generally excellent. Ayu eats junk-food all day. Please do not compare the two!" hehe.
Oh, and the professors wife very kindly explained "子" to me (It means child and is probably about the 3rd Kanji I learned...)...
I told Roda in advance that she should try to sit on the left side of the plane on the flight from Paris to get a great view of Kobe and Osaka as you land, which she managed to get. I woke up that morning to find it was so foggy I couldn't see the apartment block 200m in front of my window... cest la vie...
So, another trip down the Osaka bypass at silly AM to pick up Roda from Kansai Airport. Guess who I bumped into there... Hiro. As in, "Off to Birmingham for a year, see you in September" Hiro (Incidentally, Thank's to family for kindly adopting him!). Turns out he had a research conference here and so came back FOR A WEEK... that's dedication...
Incidentally, Hiro's last words before heading back to the UK (more or less): "Enjoy the summer hahaha"
Speaking of the Summer, it seems to have arrived... apparently we're in the rainy season, but it hasn't dropped below the high 20s for about 3 weeks now (I'm tanning! In a kind of... Scottish way...).
Except of course for about 4 of the 8 days Dad and Roda were here, where it chucked it down...
Dad arrived the next day from Shanghai (where the food was terrible, so he said), so that was another trip to Kansai airport (this time we took the boat! Novelty!)...
Sadly we didn't really have time to do any traveling outside of Kansai, but I took them round Kyoto, Osaka and Nara etc. The torrential rain actually kept the hordes of Kyoto tourists at bay for once :-)
The (for once not-raining) day we went to Deer-town (Nara), where randomly 5 million billion middle school kids from Gifu (AKA Kaori-town. That's like, just north of Nagoya, half-way to Tokyo) were on a school trip. I don't know exactly what their teachers had told them, but it seemed to have been something along the lines of "If you see a foreigner, run up to them and ask them this questionnaire about their home country.". Actually, knowing Japan it probably was exactly that... This got a little irritating after like, the 100 time...
Oh, and Dad did a presentation at Osaka University, which went really well, and one of the Professors and his wife took us out for lunch in Umeda (central Osaka). It was Kaiseki (very elaborately presented set menu dishes. I think it cost something like ￥10,000 per-person...), and was so delicately made it was really a shame to eat it...
Oh, and some of the tempura was Ayu (a fish), so I made a joke about Ayumi Hamasaki (Who's also called Ayu) in Japanese, to which the old lady explaining the meal replied with "This fish was raised very well and has a most delicate flavour and is generally excellent. Ayu eats junk-food all day. Please do not compare the two!" hehe.
Oh, and the professors wife very kindly explained "子" to me (It means child and is probably about the 3rd Kanji I learned...)...
Saturday 5 June 2010
Escaping Tokyo
So, after being hit on by some random 45-year-old Japanese guy in a sombrero in Yohji Yamamoto in Ginza I headed back to Tokyo Station to catch my Shinkansen back to Kobe.
I'm sure I mentioned this when I first arrived here, but you can get pretty much anything served with ice here. It wasn't until this point that I discovered this extended to cream-cheese bagels...
Me: "Oh, can I have one of those little cream-cheese pots as well please?"
Bagel shop girl: "Yea sure. Would you like ice with that?"
Me: "Er, did you say ICE, as in, like, ice ice? Like, glaciers and stuff? What on earth would I need ice for?"
At this point she decides that the reason I'm struggling to get my head around this question is that I don't understand Japanese (Never mind the fact I just dropped about 2 other synonyms for "ice" not to mention "glacier" into the conversation...)...
Anyway, turns out you can get a little bag of ice to keep your cream-cheese cool if you're saving your bagel for later!
I also accidentally left the little bag of deodorant I'd just bought earlier lying on the counter, so they handed it into lost property. Anyway, I got there about 7 minutes before my train left, and very hurriedly described the exact brand of deodorant, that the receipt was in the bag and where and when I had bought it.
Security guards response: "Ah yes, we have it here. Please sign here, fill out these two forms and could we please have your passport to copy?" WTF...
Anyway, I made it to my train (just).
Sadly no nice beer-buying business man this time :-(
Arrived back in Kobe and was rather (stupidly) surprised to hear everyone speaking Kansai-ben... And I also forgot which side of the escalators we stand on here...
Oh, and I really wanna go back :-) Tokyo's cool.
That said, I REALLY think that it would be pretty difficult to handle if you'd never been to Japan before...
I'm sure I mentioned this when I first arrived here, but you can get pretty much anything served with ice here. It wasn't until this point that I discovered this extended to cream-cheese bagels...
Me: "Oh, can I have one of those little cream-cheese pots as well please?"
Bagel shop girl: "Yea sure. Would you like ice with that?"
Me: "Er, did you say ICE, as in, like, ice ice? Like, glaciers and stuff? What on earth would I need ice for?"
At this point she decides that the reason I'm struggling to get my head around this question is that I don't understand Japanese (Never mind the fact I just dropped about 2 other synonyms for "ice" not to mention "glacier" into the conversation...)...
Anyway, turns out you can get a little bag of ice to keep your cream-cheese cool if you're saving your bagel for later!
I also accidentally left the little bag of deodorant I'd just bought earlier lying on the counter, so they handed it into lost property. Anyway, I got there about 7 minutes before my train left, and very hurriedly described the exact brand of deodorant, that the receipt was in the bag and where and when I had bought it.
Security guards response: "Ah yes, we have it here. Please sign here, fill out these two forms and could we please have your passport to copy?" WTF...
Anyway, I made it to my train (just).
Sadly no nice beer-buying business man this time :-(
Arrived back in Kobe and was rather (stupidly) surprised to hear everyone speaking Kansai-ben... And I also forgot which side of the escalators we stand on here...
Oh, and I really wanna go back :-) Tokyo's cool.
That said, I REALLY think that it would be pretty difficult to handle if you'd never been to Japan before...
Tuesday 1 June 2010
東京! Tokyo! Part 2
So, went back into Tokyo on the Sunday (after running into a rather odd international food fair in a Tsukuba car-park...shame we'd just had a whole load of Cake for breakfast) with Mei and Naru.
Headed to Akihabara first off (wandered around the Yodobashi Camera store there; SOMEHOW Tokyo's one is EVEN BIGGER than Osaka's... Paul said he thought it was a sports stadium when he first saw it...Yodobashi Camera is a bit like Curry's/Dixon's by the way, just 10000000x better...). Oh, and we met up with Paul (久しぶり) and went for a wander around the place. There's a Gundam cafe there, but it had just opened and the queues were around the block so we didn't go in...
Paul left us and we headed over to Nihonbashi where we sort of accidentally walked into a MASSIVE festival at Asakusa Temple.
It's a bit embarrassing to admit it, but the reason I particularly wanted to go to Nihonbashi was because I watched this Japanese detective drama (新参者) set there which featured these little sweet/cake things called 人形焼き (Ningyouyaki- Grilled dolls) and I wanted to try some... Yes, Japan has made me ludicrously to susceptible to suggestion... and food in general...
They were actually really tasty! Unfortunately 黒木メイサ was not hanging around outside the shop... shame...
Found some rather bizarre snack there as well, rather vaguely called "Osaka-yaki"... turned out to be pretty much perfectly normal Okonomiyaki, just in pie form... not bad actually...
Met up again with Paul, Louise and Fifi for dinner in Shibuya (Rendezvous at Hachiko no less! I somewhat predictably got horrendously lost in Shibuya station on the way...) where we went for Shabu-Shabu :-P
Had to leave midday on Monday, but I took a quick trip to Ginza on my own before I left. I'm pretty much certain I walked past Yumiko (Bham exchange student from last year) there... she seemed to recognize me... didn't say anything, but then again, not sure what we would have to talk about these days...
Headed to Akihabara first off (wandered around the Yodobashi Camera store there; SOMEHOW Tokyo's one is EVEN BIGGER than Osaka's... Paul said he thought it was a sports stadium when he first saw it...Yodobashi Camera is a bit like Curry's/Dixon's by the way, just 10000000x better...). Oh, and we met up with Paul (久しぶり) and went for a wander around the place. There's a Gundam cafe there, but it had just opened and the queues were around the block so we didn't go in...
Paul left us and we headed over to Nihonbashi where we sort of accidentally walked into a MASSIVE festival at Asakusa Temple.
It's a bit embarrassing to admit it, but the reason I particularly wanted to go to Nihonbashi was because I watched this Japanese detective drama (新参者) set there which featured these little sweet/cake things called 人形焼き (Ningyouyaki- Grilled dolls) and I wanted to try some... Yes, Japan has made me ludicrously to susceptible to suggestion... and food in general...
They were actually really tasty! Unfortunately 黒木メイサ was not hanging around outside the shop... shame...
Found some rather bizarre snack there as well, rather vaguely called "Osaka-yaki"... turned out to be pretty much perfectly normal Okonomiyaki, just in pie form... not bad actually...
Met up again with Paul, Louise and Fifi for dinner in Shibuya (Rendezvous at Hachiko no less! I somewhat predictably got horrendously lost in Shibuya station on the way...) where we went for Shabu-Shabu :-P
Had to leave midday on Monday, but I took a quick trip to Ginza on my own before I left. I'm pretty much certain I walked past Yumiko (Bham exchange student from last year) there... she seemed to recognize me... didn't say anything, but then again, not sure what we would have to talk about these days...
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