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'm in Japan!!

I made it! What a loooooong flight! Today is my second (full) day in Japan. Unfortunately right now I only have access to internet through my host family's computer. I've written down stuff that's happened so far and once my host family fixes their wifi connection (a familiar scenario for me haha) I'll do a bigger, better update. Like a sequel to a movie. Except it won't suck.

On another note, Japanese tv is basically sports and round table discussion talk shows during the day. Denzel Washington was on a Japanese show and all the Japanese hosts reacted to him as if they couldn't believe he was there. They felt his abs and compared it to themselves and then they made him throw a little toy and a glass pane for some reason. I dunno.

Will update later! Until then, enjoy!

It Begins

I fly out tomorrow at 1:15pm from Pearson Int'l!!

I've been doing lots of running around and lots of packing and I've even had a few butterflies in my stomach.

This is my last post as an outbound. For the next year, this blog will be about my inbound experience in Kanazawa, Japan!

I'll try and make a post as soon as I can in Japan with as much info as I can. Enjoy the official start of the blog!


How I imagine my flight will be like

I Started a Video Blog

Hopefully I can make more in Japan, enjoy!

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!!

It's Official: Kanazawa, Japan

Yup, I just checked my email and the district chair for my Rotary district's exchange program sent an email my way with a file attached that (FINALLY!) gave me a bunch of info from Japan.

My official home away from home will be KANAZAWA, JAPAN!


The basic info from Wikipedia:

Kanazawa sits on the Sea of Japan, bordered by the Japan Alps, Hakusan National Park and Noto Peninsula National Park. The city sits between the Sai and Asano rivers. Its total area is 467.77 km².

There's a LOT of info on it. Basically it was one of the few major cities that was spared of bombing in WW2 so there's a lot of old architecture preserved and it looks BEAUTIFUL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanazawa,_Ishikawa <- go there if you want to read more Also, as of right now it looks like I'll probably be flying out August 21st so that's when this blog will (FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY) kick off into an EXCHANGE blog. The email also told me a few other things:

1. The trip costs are only around $250-260ish! It's especially awesome because Rotary over there pays for the other two thirds of the cost (yup, it's actually $750ish)

2. I'll get a monthly allowance of 15000 yen. (~$180 CDN) That's quite nice for an allowance (I don't spend lots of money so yeah...)

3. My first host family will be the Sugano family. No email was given :( It didn't mention any children but there was no space marked for children on the page anyways so I'll have to wait and see.

4. It had my Japan Rotary counsellor's info as well.

I'll update as I learn more :)

Coming Up

I definitely need to update more often but I like to save stuff up and then post it all together for whatever reason.

Anyways, I performed at another art show recently with my friend Kieron. We did a Flight of the Conchords song (Most Beautiful Girl in the Room). I also filmed a short film that was shown at the same show and people seemed to enjoy it. Oh yeah! I did improv that night too. So yeah, THREE different thhings featuring me in one night :)

I continue to practice guitar and I'm definitely improving. I've also been collecting little random instruments. In the pasy few months I've bought: A ukulele ($30) , a mini piano/xylophone thing (50 cents) , a CASIO WK-10 ($2 :D ) which is a funky 80s mini sample keyboard, and a "Concertmate 460" ($10) that's a little more versatile than the WK-10. I want to try and write more comedy songs to make an album's worth by the end of the month (good luck....).

A few weeks ago, there was an optional Rotary outing to Niagara Falls that a lot of the exchange students took part in. It was lots of fun, even if we went to things I've been to before many many times. Everything feels fresh when you're with exchange students. It was definitely nice to see everyone again and we all had good times. Afterwards we went to a Rotarians house and most of us slept over. Good times... I remember I woke up the next day and went to the bathroom and when I came back, Luis (one of the inbounds from Brazil) was in my sleeping bag and just said "Can I use this?"

Two major things are coming up:

Rotary Erindale Weekend - I'll make an update about it after it happens in about two week's time-ish. It's probably the most likely time I'll get some more solid info on where I'll be living in Japan and the time window I'll be flying out from here :)

Stache Bash - It's basically Improv Night 2 with an advertising campaign based around mustaches. I'll have to get working on that pretty soon since it's on June 2nd...