13:38 [fail]

This little badboy decided to join us for lunch last Monday, and ended up being the target for my beloved camera.

Pretty spider :)

Good times in Japan :)

Purikura!

I love these silly machines, and I tend to drag Yumi with me every time I see one. I’m not particularly fond of having my picture taken, but there’s something about these weird photo booths that just make me smile. I just watched Amelie the other day - I wish I’d meet someone with a photo album full of purikura photos of random people. I just might fall in love.  

/Lucky? Oh yes.

I can’t get over how incredibly lucky I’ve been. Things like this do not usually work out for me.
I’m in Japan, I’m staying with some of the best people I’ve ever met, and I’m able to work for my office back home. It’s not often you get to travel this far, learn a new language, experience a whole new culture, and at the same time have a job you love and the possibility to work from abroad. A big, fat thank you to all those who made this possible for me. You know who you are :)

I’ve finally settled in to a nice rhythm here. Monday to Friday I work from nine to five (what a way to make a living! lol), then I study Japanese for a couple of hours, then Yumi’s mom make me practice my Hiragana for a while, and then we chill for the rest of the evening. I still cannot get over how nice everyone are to me, not to mention their incredible patience regarding my Japanese skills (or lack thereof). As I’ve mentioned earlier, they’ve declared me their second daughter, and they treat me one hundred percent as if I were. They refuse to accept any payment for food and lodging, no matter how much I try to insist. I feel a bit awkward knowing that I probably make more money than they do, yet they are covering all of my expenses. I really have to pay them back somehow, but I’m at a loss as to how I can do that. If anyone reading this have any suggestions - please let me know. The only thing I’ve planned so far, is a Scandinavian dinner next week, where I’ll do all the cooking, cleaning and shopping. That isn’t enough by far though.

During the weekends, Yumi and I will travel the country. Last weekend, we went on a road trip to Japan’s geographical centre, followed by a small Japanese village further north, and then we finished the trip by going to an old Ninja village.
Japan’s geographical centre wasn’t too exciting to be honest - it was just a big building in the middle of nowhere, with a huge needle marking the exact location.
The little village we went to was much more interesting. It’s on Unesco’s World Heritage list, and I could really see why. Shirakawago is a very peaceful and charming old village in the middle of the mountains. It consists of a lot of huge, old houses, a couple of temples, a lot of ponds with pretty fish, beautiful flower meadows and stunning nature.
The Ninja village was also pretty cool. We went to an old house which had actually been used for Ninja training way in the old days, and now functioned as a museum. We were told elaborate stories of how the Ninjas used to live, and were shown some of their tricks and way of escaping.
All in all, it was a very nice trip :)

The next day, we went shopping and sightseeing in Osaka, followed by dinner and karaoke with some of her friends.
When we came to the restaurant, everyone introduced themselves. It was really weird, kind of like the introduction rounds you do the first day of school. Everyone had to introduce themselves with name, age and what they did, and then tell everyone a little bit about their hobbies. Apparently this is a normal thing to do in Japan.
When the introductions were all done, we started eating and drinking. They place we went to were one of those all-you-can-eat-and-drink-in-90-minutes places, and believe me when I say that Japanese people are very good at eating and drinking a lot. A lot. Some of them even outdid me, the Scandinavian. Luckily for me, it turned out that I’m way better at handling my alcohol than they were and a few of them were actually impressed (!) that I didn’t seem drunk or fell asleep. I knew something good would come out of me and my Norwegian partners in crime’s work back home ^^

When we were finished at the restaurant, we continued on to a karaoke place nearby. If you think I suck at singing, you should have seen the others. Holy shit. Japanese “singing” is more like screaming/shouting in a high-pitched voice. Check out the video below (from the road trip), and you’ll see what I mean…

Now: Work
Soon: Japanese traditional festival in Osaka

/Fanatics

Picture this - you’re staying with a family in a foreign country and you don’t know the language. They’ve all gone to work or are out running errands, and you’re alone in the house. Someone knocks on the door.  Do you open or pretend like nothing happened? Is it Otosa or Okasawho’ve simply forgotten theyr keys? Is it a random stranger? Only one way to find out. I braced myself for the worst, and indeed that is what I encountered.

Three nicely dressed Japanese people where standing outside, with the craziest smiling faces I’ve ever seen. Oh-oh..And Oh-oh it was indeed. A lady started yapping away in Japanese, and as soon as I picked up the word Bible, I knew I was in trouble. Jehova’s effing witnesses were at the door. They can be hard enough to get rid of in Norway, try making them go away when you don’t even speak the language? It took forever. They made me read a bunch of bullshit in English before I politely said that I was sorry, but I had to work. Would I like to come to Bible Study with them? They could teach me Japanese. No thank you. I’m not desperate enough to learn the language, that I’d join some crazy ass religious cult. Hell no.

So now I’m sitting here, feeling slightly annoyed, with The Watchtower lying in the garbage bin behind me.



I will never walk towards the light.


Now: work
Soon: Update from the Road Trip

/Toilets and Typhoons

Apparently Nara, the city I’m staying in, is trapped between two typhoons at the moment. None of them have struck the area yet, but they’re both approaching from different sides. I’ve never experienced a typhoon before, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. I’m kind of looking forward to it in a weird way. I guess I’ll find out to night!

According to my dear friend Mr. Google, two typhoons would look something like this:




In other words, dear colleagues / bosses; if I’m not online tomorrow, you know why.

Now, on to the second (non related) topic; the toilets.

Japan, as you all probably know, is a very high-tech country. Everything is very fancy-schmancy, and there are so many buttons on everything, that you hardly dare use anything in this country at all. Even the toilets.
The thing that strikes me as slightly odd though, is that there is no thing in between completely outdated or über-fancy.
Take the toilets for instance. The toilet in the house I live in is one of the fancy ones. It has a billion buttons which do anything from wash your asshole to make weird sounds and deodorizing the room. Scary. The one where I work though, looks more like something from a concentration camp. It’s one of those weird things on the floor that you have to squat over. I don’t get that. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on the fancy buttons - shouldn’t you be able to at least get something you can sit on? Jeez. Fine, all the people where I work are men, but how cool can it be to shit in a squatter? We all know how good men are at aiming, and if they miss the hole, the shit hits the floor. nice.

And with that said, it’s Sayonara for the day.
If you need me, you can find me squatting somewhere.

/Back to Basics

Yesterday was quite hard on my ego. The continued struggle with the flashcards and the children’s book did not exactly make me feel clever. It kind of feels like the part of my brain that contains things you’re supposed to know has been completely wiped out. Yesterday I had to learn how to count again. And it was hard. I did however succeed after a lot of memorizing, and I can now proudly count to 9999. I guess I should be excited about that, but after discovering that these numbers aren’t used when describing things (like 5 bananas or whatever) it felt like yet another setback. Apparently I have to learn how to count twice. I’ll stick to what I know for now though, if whoever I’m trying to ask for five bananas doesn’t understand me, then that’s their problem. Hah!

Mama was really sweet yesterday. When she found me hunched over my books after work, she decided to join in and give me a few lessons. Apparently my attempt at writing hiragana was quite shitty, so she kindly showed me how it was supposed to be done, and then made me repeat each letter/sign a billion times. I now kick ass at Ru, E, O, I, Ri and Ka. Even though that’s only six of a billion signs, I can already spell out a few words. Like Kaeru, which can mean anything from frog to change and to come home. Three words in one? Check. Hopefully I’ve mastered the pronunciation as well, so that when I tell Papa that I want to go home after work, he won’t look at me like I’m a retard for telling him that I want to change into a frog.

I’ve also learned how to say that I’m hungry or thirsty, that I want to go out, to say when I want to wake up or go to sleep, and the words open and close. Baby-steps, but I’m getting there!
Today, I’m going to learn what all the different body parts are called in Japanese. I’m thinking this might come in handy for my “secret” project - haha, I should totally send in an application to Myth Busters for this one.


Now: Work
Soon: Body Parts

/Time for Action

OK,

I’m fed up with understanding fuck all, and it’s time for action.
I’ve got Pimsleur - learn to speak and understand Japanese pumping through my headphones, and I’m never taking them off. Except when I’m going to attempt to put any of it to use. Hah, I’m going to start sleeping with my iPod. Maybe there is something to the whole learning-while-you-sleep thing? I’ll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

My lunch break started out pretty awkwardly today. Everyone were just sitting there, not saying a word. It turns out you’re not supposed to speak before the boss starts yapping away, so it was lucky that I kept my mouth shut for once. Couldn’t say anything if I wanted to anyways. After a while, they all started talking about me. I could tell from the few words I understood (like English, Norway, Japanese, Yumi, English, blabla, Nara, blabla etc). They tried to include me in the conversation, but you know - just wave and smile! I think they’re planning on taking me on some sort of sightseeing today, but I’ve no idea where, with whom or what. Or if, for that matter.

Time will tell.


Now: work
Soon: Sightseeing?

/Let There Be Pictures

she said, and there were Pictures!

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a lovely Hello Kitty carpet on the floor of my room.

..and SpongeBob? He’s everywhere. EVERYWHERE!
Japanese people are crazy, but in a good way.

 So yeah. This is what I’m surrounded by while I sleep, and every morning I wake up to a thousand creepy looking SpongeBob’s staring down at me. I just hope they never pull a Toy Story thing and start moving around at night. You never know, I’m not that far from Hiroshima, and who know’s what all that radiation could have done to Mr. SpongeBob? - I don’t, and I’d rather not find out.

After work yesterday, Yumi decided that learning to speak and understand Japanse wasn’t enough, I also have to learn to read the god damn language. And write. Yeah. As if just learning the words and grammar wasn’t difficult enough..
So she and her mom [Mama] dragged me off to the 100 Yen shop, and refused to let me bring my wallet. I tried to go get it, but then they started shouting at me in Japanese, and that’s never a good thing. Apparantly, as I’ve been declared one of their daughters, I’m not allowed to pay for anything. They even buy me cigarettes. I feel really weird accepting all these things, but in this country you’re basically not allowed to say no. So I keep saying Hai! and Arrigato gozaimasu all the time, while nodding and smiling and flapping my arms around like the oversized idiot that I am, trying to make myself understood. Easier said than done. Anyways, I ended up leaving the shop with a learn-to-write book meant for four year olds, as well as word-cards and lot’s of other practical things, such as pink hangers (Lovisa would LOVE them) and towels and other weird things I’m not quite sure what to do with

Yup… Learning in progress! Not going too fast, but hey - I blame it on the jetlag.

After a lovely homecooked Japanse dinner, Yumi, Mama and I finished off the evening watching Anaconda 4 in Japanese with English subs. Interesting, to say the least. Btw, snake in Japanese is Hebi. Just in case you were wondering.

Now: Work
Soon: shopping?

TTYN!