Week 4

Week 4

Tuesday 12 Oct
Picked up my alien registration card today ! =D

and also renewed my commuter pass. Kind of annoyed about my commuter pass though. I tried to get it extended to Sannomiya station so that I'd be able to catch the express trains since its only a 15min walk. But since i live on the other side of the river (the cut point between the two stations) my closest station is Kasunogamichi station (which is one stop before Sannomiya), which still takes a 10min walk to reach it. So what's happening now is that I renewed my commuter pass to Kasunogamichi for another month while waiting for permission from the uni and Hankyu to allow me to extend my commuter pass to Sannomiya =___=

the "River"
i live like 8 steps away from the right side of this... =___=

more to come...

Week 3

A mostly uneventful week...

besides....

Seeing Heidi (pronounced hai-ji =S i also dunno why...) at Nishinomiya Gardens!!!

my high school fangirlism was instantly reignited teeheehee XD



His name is Kiri and he's the drummer of the band. he's ちょうかわいい！ without makeup he's so kewt XD and done up he's so pretty!!!

Heidi gave a short performance and promoted their new album and upcoming tour. I'm SO GONNA GO!!! (and it's not that expensive at all *thumbs up* only 4000yen i think...)

Week 2

Okay I've been a bit lazy these days but here's a recap of what's been happening these days...

Sunday 26th Sept
Walked to Sannomiya and hung out with friends. We didn't do that much besides walking around Centre Street and checking out Namcoland here.

Monday 27th - 29th Sept
I don't think much happened besides classes.

UPDATE: oh yeah I remember now. On Tuesday night my host family took me to an izakaya and we drank a lot. Can't remember much besides drinking, and puking in the toilet back home. But it was fun =D *thumbs up*

Thursday 30th Sept
Had a full day of classes today. Then we rushed it to Cosmo Square Station to go to the Scandal concert at Zepp Osaka after class. We had to catch 3 trains to get there (first, Hankyu to Umeda, then switched to the JR Osaka Loop, and then change to some small subway line to Zepp Osaka). It took about an hour to get there, but it was all good.

I've never heard of Scandal before, but they're an all-female jrock/jpop band. The concert wasn't that bad and it didn't cost that much (only 4500yen at the door). But what was more surprising was how mellow the crowd is. There's no sticky floor, fighting to get to the front, or ppl on a high. All the crowd seemed to do was wave their arms to the beat, stand still, or nod to the beat. You certainly wouldn't really need all the security guards that you usually see at one of these events back home. Also, there was no pre-band performance that you usually get back home. It was only Scandal performing from 7pm as stated on the posters. They gave 2 encore performances and it ended at 9.30ish. Had 10mins to each curry flavoured instant ramen at the nearby 7eleven before making the long trip back home. Got home at about 11.40pm. It was the first time I actually tested out the enforcement of the '10pm curfew', but they totally didn't seem to care the next day. =S COOL! =D

Friday 1st Oct
just the usual boring classes.... =__=

Saturday 2nd Oct
Went to Sannomiya again. But this time I met up with my Nihongo partners to take me shopping =]

We went to Centre Street (got a suitable sized backpack for school now X]), Motomachi, and Harbourland. Went on a bit of a shopping spree. Oh and I learned how awesome Uniqlo is. I totally did not know that they sell shoes as well. It's like Cotton On back home but a fajillion times better -quality and price-wise.


Sunday 3rd Oct
Went to Beerfest in Itami and checked out Diamond City shopping centre there as well. The beer festival wasn't that great (perhaps the mood was ruined by the rain), so after a couple of fruity beers we went to Nipponbashi in Osaka to meet up with the others. While waiting for them in Denden Town (Osaka's equivalent to Tokyo's Akihabara) , we checked out a couple of manga porn. The intricate details of the drawings was amazing. you've even got the public hairs drawn on these characters, and the censorship was just thumbs up (12 pixel censorship covers a lot! lol). The porn that we checked out consisted of cute girls getting raped by some nerd, a busty teacher "teaching" her 13yr old male student about older women, and ....you get my gist. The stand out chapter we read consisted of a hermaphrodite dressed as a girl three-waying with young boys... i'll let you picture the rest haha

Then we tried to find a maid cafe but we didn't go into any... And the rain came down harder and we just went home.

more to come!

Week 1

So continuing on from the last post...

Saturday 18th September
The next day (Saturday before classes started) we went to hang out in Osaka. We stayed in Umeda area. It was surprisingly quick to get there. It took about 15mins on the Hankyu express train from Nishikita (Nishinomiya-kitaguchi station). I really gotta get used to the fact of how close Kobe and Osaka are => 30mins on the express train! Geez, if only Melbourne and Sydney were that close eh?

We did a whole bunch of things that day. We first went to the big Yodobashi store opposite Umeda station. Yodobashi is an electronics chain store, but this particular store was like 7-9 floors or something of electronic goods. O___o!!! Friends bought the newly released Pokemon black and white versions and we had some fun in the Gachagacha corner (the little toy dispenser machines), before going to the Pokemon Centre. This ended up being a store full of Pokemon merchandise. (Pokemon is still pretty big here in Japan, and in the US and Canada apparently =S)

Then we went to the Hep5 building and rode the big red ferris wheel before going into Namcoland and played taiko and took stickies with the machine that gives you creepy eyes. Then we went to the nearby shopping mall street and had some ramen, where we bumped into a couple other KGU exchange students, so basically the whole ramen place was bombarded with KGU exchange students =]. Then karaoke! Then we caught the train back home.

Sunday 19th Sept
ME DAY! Was feeling bored at home so took a stroll to Sannomiya and explored Centre Street again.

Monday 20th - Wed 22rd Sept
First week of classes
Monday was a public holiday (Day for the Respecting the Old or something) but us exchange students still had classes. Nothing too exciting happening besides classes.

Thursday 23rd Sept
This day was also another public holiday (Autumn Equinox Day). I asked my host family what do Japanese people do on this day every year and they said that nobody does anything and the reason why this was special was because the day was gonna be exactly 12hrs of day and 12hrs of night. [I wish Australia had as many public holidays as over here....]

So on this day, we went to Takarazuka and checked out the Tezuka Osamu museum. For those of you who dunno, Tezuka Osamu was the creator of Astroboy. *thumbs up* Had a bunch of fun there, camwhored, became amused with the halograms, and watched a biopic of Tezuka Osamu where we all felt sleepy afterwards. Afterwards, we had lunch at Lotteria (ebi-mayo burger is *thumbs up*)and then went bowling at Round 1 =]

Friday 24th Sept
Back to uni again. Nothing too special besides how unfamiliar this Japanese tertiary schooling system is to me..... It seems a lot less stressful and disorganised....

Saturday 25th Sept
Sports Day
Went to Nigawa and checked out friends' host siblings' sports day (undoukai) at their primary school. It was quite the experience. Very very different to the Athletics carnivals we have back home. Got to see some events, such as the one where the kids have to throw as many of their coloured balls into the basket above. Another was some sprints. It looked kind of like a production line the way they went through all the races. All the relevant kids were lined up near the starting area, and one after another they went through all the sprints. It was done very methodically and efficiently. And then we tried to explore a bit of the school before checking out the finale, which was a whole bunch of human pyramids made by the students and even some of the teachers participated in them too. You could really feel the mentality of working in a group is so strong here. The coolest one was perhaps the 6 storey one. And the way they set it up and went back to the ground... wow...

Afterwards, we met up with Evelyn who was also at the undoukai (Turns out she was in my Japanese class last year.... and totally did not know that... >____>) and we went k and had dinner at Denny's, which turned to be not the Denny's the north american kids were used to.

Orientation Week

Okay I know this entry is a tad overdue but oh wells. So much has been happening these days... Firstly recount of orientation week which was 3 weeks ago.

So moved into my host family's house on the 11th Sept. It was a bit awkward at first... meeting a middle aged Japanese man who was struggling with helping me carry my large suitcase... but yeah... that awkwardness has eroded somewhat and I'm feeling a lot more comfortable staying with them now.

So recap of orientation week...

Day 1 (13/09/2010)
Placement test day!
Had to attempt 3 exams in the morning. First was the grammar and reading paper, then listening. Afterwards it was speaking exam in the form of an interview, and while people were waiting to go for their interview, we had the writing paper to complete. Then afterwards, we went to the Fujita Lounge room and had lunch and some introductions. And then we met our nihongo partners.

Day 2 - 4
yeah... mind's a bit fuzzy atm. I think we had a bunch of orientation talks about life in Japan and such. Perhaps a campus tour to the library and computer room... We also received our placement exam results. I got placed into Level 3 with a side note that my grammar level is lower than required (><') So yeah had to e-mail Iida-sensei and get my subjects sorted again. The one part of orientation I remembered distinctly was the one on what do to in the situation of an earthquake. During this segment you could really feel that they've never forgotten the Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 whereupon Nishinomiya, where the uni campus is, all the way to Sannomiya went down. My host mum told me that the Sogo in Sannomiya used to be much taller before the earthquake and how unexpected it was. But looking at the Hanshin area and Kobe, it's been rebuilt so well that it looks like it never happened though.

Day 5
Field Trip!
... to NARA!!!! Even though I just went to Nara to see the Daibutsu like just a week before it was still heaps of fun. Had to get to KGU at 8.30am (eurgh +__+... soo early!) and caught the bus to Nara. We saw the Daibutsu, then we went to some Japanese restaurant and had lunch there (超うまかた！） and then to Kasuga Taisho, which was some famous shrine of love or something =S.