November 2012

Hey

First of all sorry for breaking my promise to update at least twice a month. Contrary to my former expectations I feel like I'm getting barely as much free time here as I do at Oxford. The work load is without-a-doubt lower here, but unlike Oxford everything you need to do it not conveniently situated within a 2 minute walk away. There is also the extra challenge of being in a strange country and speaking the language etc.etc. which also takes it out of you on top of the work-load.

Nevertheless, I feel like I've made a small breakthrough with my Japanese in the last couple of weeks. If you're reading this and studying a European language then what I'm about to say will probably seem slightly pathetic but this week I actually managed to have a 2 hour long, meaningful one-on-one conversation with a Japanese person. I know this is not exactly worthy of a Nobel Prize but this was the first time I've understood the other person well enough to respond properly to them and not just babble a load of irrelevant gibberish.

Now onto the bad news, a good friend of mine living in Osaka (Aerynn, a friend from Oxford, the girl pictures in the purikura in my previous post) has moved back to England having decided Japan wasn't where she wanted to be right now. Aerynn, if you're reading, thank you for some hilarious weekends in Osaka and I hope you enjoying being back in the UK whatever you may be up to.

Today I had my mid-term Japanese test, which our teachers told us would be quite important. Thankfully I don't think it went too badly since in all honestly I've found the Japanese language classes here to be a bit up and down. I think there are two reasons for this: Firstly the lessons are 1 1/2 hours long each here and with two of these every morning, this is slightly beyond my concentration span! Gone are the days of Oxford where I would reluctantly roll out of bed at 10.30 ready for my 11am class; here it is a 7am start every morning. I know what you're thinking: 'Sean welcome to the real world'. However I feel that this may be a somewhat by-product of the second, 'root' cause: As a westerner having been thrown directly into the Japanese education system, I was not prepared for how radically different the class environment would be here compared to Oxford. For language learning in the UK, there is a commonly-held perception that using the textbook should be avoided as much as possible in favour of productive activities such as debates, writing newspaper articles etc.. In Japan, however, the situation is the total opposite. The textbook is closely followed 100% of the time, and the majority of the lesson time is spent on absorption of information rather than creative production. Also, in contrast to the UK, it is the teacher, not the students, who does most of the talking. I should say that this is not a criticism of the Japanese system it is merely an issue of lessons being conducted in way that I am not used to.

Classes aside *yawn*, November has been quite an eventful month. I have been trying to get involved with more extra-curriclar activities here lately. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this already but from January I will become a member of Kobe University Symphony Orchestra. I also attended a discussion group called TEDee (don't know what this stands for sorry!) about gender-equality in Japan. It is there I met a friend called Naho, a graduate law student, who has set up her own presentation workshop called iCircle. In the new year I will be giving a presentation there about the university student experience at Oxford compared to Kobe, and a large part of that presentation will be related to what I was talking about in the previous paragraph.

There have also been some really fun days out to talk about. I will start with our trip to Kaiyukan aquarium in Osaka, about half an hour away on the train. Whilst we were in Osaka we popped into a lovely little manga cafe (surprisingly, a cafe with manga comics) with which not only served really good karaage (posh word for fried chicken) but also to my total delight CHIPS (with salt and vinegar!). Kaiyukan is supposed to be one of the biggest aquariums in the world, so big in fact that there was not only the usual things you would expect to find at an aquarium but also capybaras (For some reason Japanese people seem to love capybaras), otters, and one solitary baby monkey! Apologies for my photography skills:

After 1 1/2 months of chip-deprivation this was really exciting 

capybara- had to fight to the front to get this photo!

terrifying crab

funny worm-like things that pop in and out of the ground

Ferris wheel on the pier

Two weeks ago, our student supervisors helped us organise a trip to Kyoto. Kyoto is Japan's 'ancient capital', or more precisely the capital until about 1600 when it was moved to Edo, present day Tokyo. The remaining traditional architecture from Kyoto's glory days makes it a tourist hotspot. Kyoto is especially popular in November as millions of Japanese come to see the momiji (autumn leaves) before they are lost to the winter. Unfortunately, we only had time to visit Kiyomizudera (Kiyomizu temple), one of many beautiful temples in Kyoto. The fact that it is built of the side of a hill allows you to view the whole wood of momiji. We also stopped off half way round at a cafe where I ordered some Amazake, a warm sweet alcoholic drink made from rice but actually tasted like liquorice. Unfortunately it poured it down all day, although I thought this somewhat added to the mysterious atmosphere of the temple (cliche I know).

Our student tutor's suggested we hire traditional Japanese clothing to wear around to make our visit even more atmospheric, right down to and sandals.  Embarrassingly, I along with half of the Oxford group decided to take this offer up, and the results are quite hilarious. Needless to say a group of about 8 westerners dressed in Kimono attracted a lot of stares from the Japanese sightseers.

Me and my friend Sarah in Kimono (traditional Japanese clothing)

Entrance to the temple

Lovely cafe we stopped at to get Amazake. Pictured with my Japanese friend Moe

Red momiji

Admiring the momiji

Kiyomizu temple's main hall 

Side on view of main hall

View from the main hall

Finally, last Friday I visited a city called Nara on a university-organised trip with my Japanese history class. I know I said earlier that Kyoto is though of as Japan's ancient capital, but Japan's first capital city was Nara. From what I remember of my Oxford lectures, Nara was established as Japan's first capital city in about 800 AD, representing the culmination of the Taika reforms. These reforms aimed to unite familial clans (uji) dotted all over Japan under one emperor seated in Nara, to bring Japan in line with the Tang (china) and Silla (Korea) empires on the continent (sorry about that impromptu history lesson).
Nara has been my favourite destination in Japan so far since it has retained a large part of it's historical architecture without turning into a huge tourist destination on the same scale as Kyoto. In the morning we visited Daigokuden, the headquarters of ancient Nara where Japan's first emperor took office.

my friend Sarah in front of Daigokuden

The throne

What would have been the emperor's view

In the afternoon we moved on to Todaiji (great temple of the east). Todaiji houses the daibutsu, the world's largest bronze statue of the buddha. Todaiji is also famous for its deer since (according to wikipedia) Shinto (Japan's other major religion) believed deer to be messengers of the gods. The deer in Nara were (amazingly) free to roam the streets with everyone else which was somewhat surreal. From what I could see the deer had enough fun pillaging tourists for food that they had no reason to leave.

Chinese tourist being mobbed by the deer

Todaiji

Lantern in front of Todaiji

Daibustu

more momiji

my friend Sarah trying to tame a deer

That pretty much rounds things up for this month. Thanks for checking up! Next weekend is my 20th birthday so I'll be sure to get up to something fun. Hope you all have a lovely christmas holiday, unfortunately my classes continue right up to christmas day. I'll try to update again before the year is over. Apologies for typos I haven't bothered to proof-read (naughty naughty)

Best,
Sean

October 2012 (part 2)

Hi! In true Japanese style I will start by talking about the changing seasons (In case you were not familiar, it is customary in Japan to start a formal letter with a seasonal greeting e.g. "Dear so-and-so it sure is bloody chilly isn't it!?"...well maybe not quite like that). Even though two weeks ago the weather felt like sweltering heat its pretty nippy outside now! Thus today I went winter coat shopping with a good friend from Oxford (Sarah if you're reading HELLOOO!). I'm sure you'll be aware that Japanese sizings come up small on westerners (walking into that shop was like walking into mothercare). In the UK I'm somewhere between a M and an S (I'd like to think) but even with an L the coat still comes up a wee bit short. I think slim-fitting clothes must be what's hot in Japan at the moment, or perhaps I'm just a lanky westerner.

Even more exciting than coat buying, on Thursday a group of us managed to spend the whole afternoon in Ikea (it's easily done).  In all honesty we mainly went for the fish and chips at the food court but I also got hold of some awesome stuff for my room. Firstly I've had the curtains replaced since the ones the room came with (originally from the pound-store it turned out) didn't block any light out. I also bought a tiny chair for my (ground floor) balcony, a solar-powered desk lamp (pointless yet amazing). My favourite purchase has got to be a mini tray table that allows me to work in bed despite it being less than a metre from the desk, a new personal best for sheer laziness.

Just when you think things couldn't get any better...

Two weeks ago I was back in Osaka for a halloween night out with Aerynn (another Oxford friend), once again failing to fulfil my goal of seeing Osaka 1) in the daylight and 2) sober. I did have a magnificent time though, as I'm sure you can imagine the Japanese really go to town on the outfits. I saw mermaids, convincing zombies, vampires, there was even a guy dressed as a giant Iphone. After spending a couple of hours chatting to people in the square we headed to an izakaya (pub) for some more drinks. After this things get a bit hazy. At one point we ended up in Korean club where I drunkenly attempted to speak Japanese above the blasting K-pop to some very confused people.

To pass the time until the first train home we went to a Purikura. I love Purikura so much I have decided to give it its own whole paragraph. Purikura is essentially a photobooth (not the kind you go to to get a passport photo). You can customise the image to your heart's content with backgrounds, props, writing etc.etc.. The reason I love Purikura so much is that automatically airbrushes you with humungous eyes and perfect skin making you look 100x more attractive than you actually are at 6 in the morning, baggy-eyed, clothes creased and stinking of booze. Here's the result:

What do you mean? I always look like this after a night out. In case you're worrying, I wasn't in charge of the customisation hence the super-imposed crown and the lipstick.

On a more cultural note,  last weekend we rode the cable car up Mount Yama, at the foot of which sits Kobe. The view from the top can only be described as stunning, rated by wikitravel as one of Japan's 'Three Great Night Views'. Not only can you see Kobe but a significant chunk of the Kansai region and most of Osaka bay. The photos don't really do it justice unfortunately:

After admiring the view we set off to explore more of Mayayama. After about 30 mins of exploration time we came across a relatively small temple at the top of the mountain. I have seen a good number of Buddhist temples during my time in China and Korea but I can safely say that thanks to the remote mountain-top location, relaxed atmosphere (first temple I've seen with a smoking area), lack of tourists and free green tea this one surpasses them all. I know it's cliche but this has got the be one of the most spiritual places I've ever been to.

Whoops its gone 2am time for bed I think. Tomorrow I'm going the Osaka Aquarium, apparently the third largest in the world. Time to put the camera on charge!

Thanks for reading! Sorry the quality tails off a bit towards the end- it's pretty late.
Sean