Lovely title right? I made it with the visual people in mind :D
You must think I'm dead right now since I haven't posted in so long. And you'd BE RIGHT!! Click now to receive your free BS prize!!
The truth is much more simple, blog posts take time. Something of which I don't have a lot of - specifically my internet time is way way 少ない.
Gotta love that I now have 5 months worth of blog content and 35 minutes to post something.
My current life set up:
Living at 2nd host family's place. The dad is really awesome! He loves to try and repeat any English words I use or teach him. Example: *Dinner time* "Do-nt ureeabe uwauwanyshing"
Translation: Don't leave anything.
He repeats what I say because he knows he sounds funny.
It's a really funny contrast because I've got my host dad, my host mom, and a younger host sister (11 I think...) and my host dad's daily antics are barely even recognized by my host mom and sister. My host mom is a really 冷たい人...She only talks to me when she wants to point out something I did "wrong" or something that she wants me to do, always ending it with the most soul piercing "Wakatta?" I've ever heard. I won't use this blog to complain a lot since that's no fun to read (although some topics I could probably make interesting) - it also wouldn't give you a full picture on the awesome times I have here too.
I will say that I think my host dad is an incredibly awesome person for still being able to be so zany. My host sister...is 11 so just think of an 11 year old girl who likes to read books and does ballet. I'm not really sure how to describe her other than that.
I get up every morning around 6:20, take a shower (being the crazy gaijin I am I bathe myself in the morning), eat some breakfast (sometimes cereal, sometimes miso soup and onigiri) and then head off to the bus stop to wait for the bus that will take me to school. I could make an entire blog post about the FUN of riding busses to and from school with all the other students on the bus but for now I'll leave it be. Next is school, I've gone through that before so I won't repeat myself.
Now here's the new stuff, Tuesdays and Thursdays after school I have Japanese class at a local building called Rifare. It's me and a bunch of ALTs (Foreign English Assistants) learning intermediate Japanese grammar. We've gotten into stuff that's new to me now and I find that...exciting? I don't know, I guess I find it cool to go to class and then hear "Today we're learning THIS GRAMMAR" and then you realize you've heard that everywhere but never knew the meaning so it's kinda like I'm hearing "Remember those government fat cats who were talking in that secret code? WELL HERE'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY MEANT!!!"
Yes I just vaguely compared learning Japanese to being a spy of some sort.
Alright Agent Stryker, you've infiltrated their base...
Copy that Command
Now all you need to do is take down their top grammar particle agents ONE BY ONE
Agent Wo and Wa should be easy but don't take Agent Ni or Ga to lightly ok? You still need to be focused enough to take on Commander Keigo and those two guys are hiding all sorts of grammatical weapons
わかりました！
(If it were my host mom then it would be わかった）
On other days, I go to Track and Field Club. See, my interests are things like playing guitar and writing comedy or making small movies and such. So...I though the BEST club to fit my strengths would be TRACK AND FIELD!!!!
It was more of a decision that I though I would try and branch out to something else (plus, Japanese conbini bread doesn't exactly make you more fit and muscular).
Club goes from 4:05 until.....7ish I'd say. It's the off season so everyone does things like weight training or running exercises. I recently got some weird injury with my left foot while running so I'm left with weight training, stretching, and situps and situp like exercises basically.
The weekends are left for me to relax. Sort of. Track and Field is usually on Saturday too. So...make that Sunday to relax (although my host mom tells me I have to wake up by a certain time for....what reason? I'm not sure exactly actually) <- I thought I wasn't going to complain
In other news, any and all hospital tests I've gotten here have shown that I'm all fine and dandy. Although the fact that I used "dandy" might be cause for concern...
I have tons more to post but I don't like massive posts. Till next time! (Also, new Australian exchange students are coming on Sunday :D )
Showing posts with label host family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label host family. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Arrival
So I've been in Japan for a little over a week now. Everything has been going so fast it feels way longer than 10 days.
I left Toronto Int'l Airport on Friday with two other exchange students who I met an hour before the flight. They both are in areas close to Tokyo though so no dice on meeting up with them really.
One 13 hour, continuously sunny flight later I was in Tokyo! After going through some customs and baggage claims, I met up with the other inbounds in my district. They were there along with two Japanese guys related to Rotary (rebounds I think) holding signs for the district. All the other inbounds had taken a different flight than me and were taking a connecting flight at the same airport. I, on the other hand, hand to first ride a bus with one of the Japanese guys to Haneda Airport for my flight to Komatsu. Unfortunately, the bus was slightly late in dropping me off at the airport so the Japanese guy had to work it out at the flight desk. Luckily there was a flight leaving two hours later and they changed my ticket so CRISIS AVERTED. (I just realized if you're quickly skimming this then you'll notice the bold words first and think something really bad could have happened)
The cool thing about my flight being later is that it got dark so my one hour flight was accented nicely by the lights of Tokyo and all cities in between. I even saw some fireworks going off as I flew overhead. Tokyo at night is really a sight to see in the air.
I arrived in Komatsu and when I got to the baggage claim, the other inbounds were picking up their baggage! I was 2 hours late and somehow managed to be synced with the other inbounds...
There was a big welcome group for me. I did a lot of handshaking and met my first host family some of my other host families as well as Yuki! Yuki was there with his family! That was cool.
It was physically hard to smile because of a mix of no sleep and holy-crap-this-is-happening
Everyone parted ways and I went home with my first host family in their car (with a BUILT IN TV).
I'll continue the rest later so I don't make a super large wall of text...
I left Toronto Int'l Airport on Friday with two other exchange students who I met an hour before the flight. They both are in areas close to Tokyo though so no dice on meeting up with them really.
One 13 hour, continuously sunny flight later I was in Tokyo! After going through some customs and baggage claims, I met up with the other inbounds in my district. They were there along with two Japanese guys related to Rotary (rebounds I think) holding signs for the district. All the other inbounds had taken a different flight than me and were taking a connecting flight at the same airport. I, on the other hand, hand to first ride a bus with one of the Japanese guys to Haneda Airport for my flight to Komatsu. Unfortunately, the bus was slightly late in dropping me off at the airport so the Japanese guy had to work it out at the flight desk. Luckily there was a flight leaving two hours later and they changed my ticket so CRISIS AVERTED. (I just realized if you're quickly skimming this then you'll notice the bold words first and think something really bad could have happened)
The cool thing about my flight being later is that it got dark so my one hour flight was accented nicely by the lights of Tokyo and all cities in between. I even saw some fireworks going off as I flew overhead. Tokyo at night is really a sight to see in the air.
I arrived in Komatsu and when I got to the baggage claim, the other inbounds were picking up their baggage! I was 2 hours late and somehow managed to be synced with the other inbounds...
There was a big welcome group for me. I did a lot of handshaking and met my first host family some of my other host families as well as Yuki! Yuki was there with his family! That was cool.
It was physically hard to smile because of a mix of no sleep and holy-crap-this-is-happening
Everyone parted ways and I went home with my first host family in their car (with a BUILT IN TV).
I'll continue the rest later so I don't make a super large wall of text...
Saturday, July 18, 2009
1 Month 3 Days
That's the official time left before I leave for Japan! It's coming up so quickly!
A picture of my future school...looks nice!
A few things have happened since my last post. I've booked my flight so I'm officially flying out on August 21st. I also applied for my visa a few weeks ago so everything is going smoothly. Canadian things continue to pile up on my desk such as Canadian ties, mini hockey sticks, socks, playing cards, magnets, stickers, pencils, bandanas, and of course I'll be prepared for the countless situations in which I'll need an inflatable Canadian baseball bat...
I also contacted my host club counselor in Japan and he/she (the name was pretty ambiguous) passed on the email address of my first host family. In my last post, I had been kinda worried that there might have been no host siblings since the papers didn't mention any. It turns out I'll have THREE host brothers! One is 20 and off at a university in Yokohama (pretty far away from Kanazawa), one is 18 and "busy studying for college entrance exams," and one is 16. My host club counselor told me that the 16 year old will be my best friend. Wow, they've planned out EVERYTHING for me over there...:P
So I sent my first host family an email and the father responded back in an email with a mix of English, Japanese, and Japanese written with English letters. The cool part was that he sent a picture of the family and they look really cool. When I showed my parents, I pointed to an empty space high above everybody's head in the picture and said "That's where I'll be."
The only stuff left to do now is get more Canadian stuff, get some nice host family/Rotary gifts, get a better camera (so I can post all the professional top quality photos on this blog that everyone will shed a tear for at the very first sight), and maybe some new clothes since I'm sure they'd have to special order everything in my size over there.
I'll make a post closer to my departure date and from then on this will be a blog coming from a Rotary INBOUND!!
A picture of my future school...looks nice!
A few things have happened since my last post. I've booked my flight so I'm officially flying out on August 21st. I also applied for my visa a few weeks ago so everything is going smoothly. Canadian things continue to pile up on my desk such as Canadian ties, mini hockey sticks, socks, playing cards, magnets, stickers, pencils, bandanas, and of course I'll be prepared for the countless situations in which I'll need an inflatable Canadian baseball bat...
I also contacted my host club counselor in Japan and he/she (the name was pretty ambiguous) passed on the email address of my first host family. In my last post, I had been kinda worried that there might have been no host siblings since the papers didn't mention any. It turns out I'll have THREE host brothers! One is 20 and off at a university in Yokohama (pretty far away from Kanazawa), one is 18 and "busy studying for college entrance exams," and one is 16. My host club counselor told me that the 16 year old will be my best friend. Wow, they've planned out EVERYTHING for me over there...:P
So I sent my first host family an email and the father responded back in an email with a mix of English, Japanese, and Japanese written with English letters. The cool part was that he sent a picture of the family and they look really cool. When I showed my parents, I pointed to an empty space high above everybody's head in the picture and said "That's where I'll be."
The only stuff left to do now is get more Canadian stuff, get some nice host family/Rotary gifts, get a better camera (so I can post all the professional top quality photos on this blog that everyone will shed a tear for at the very first sight), and maybe some new clothes since I'm sure they'd have to special order everything in my size over there.
I'll make a post closer to my departure date and from then on this will be a blog coming from a Rotary INBOUND!!
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