Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
October
Much of our timetable remains the same as we went into October. When we have free time at school we head to ECZ to have fun. On Thursdays we spend time at the CESA. Which is the gaming circle Coral was invited too. On the weekends, who actually knows? So instead of a dairy like entry for this month I've put everything in to groups. To make it a bit easier.
ECZ - English Community Zone.
Lots of fun to be have here. If we have a spare few hours we already head up here. Other than the standard games, we also make up our own fun. Including KANJI BATTLE!!! Which involved three contestants writing out Kanji as quickly as possible. Lots of fun and giggling. Especially when we asked them to write coffee and the two Japanese people wrote it in Chinese, while the Chinese contestant wrote both the Japanese and the Chinese. XD Then it was our turn and things turned kind of interesting.
Points to Coral for learning how to write the place names in Kanji though!
For Halloween they held a Halloween Party. It was very fun and a bit like those school parties we had when we were younger. With activities etc. We had Halloween Bingo, with scary words to listen out for. Halloween A-Z. The Mummy game, which involved using toilet paper to wrap someone up like a mummy. Very funny XD. Some people were hilarious. Coral won the costume competition. The profession cosplayer* that she is J.
There was also a game of 'what's in the box' which had some interesting unknown things. Slimy and strange. Some of the unseeables were mushrooms, pasta, cauliflower and more. Reactions were brilliant. A few people jumping back from the boxes after touching whatever was hidden within.
Muhahahahaha..
Yer… Moving on.
Gaming Circle stuff.
We have made lots of friends here. We play smash brothers and Mario carts. What more could you want?
We went an evening in Akibahara with them. Which was very funny. We gamed some games. Including air hockey, which was hilarious. Coral and I vs the boys. We won two games but lost against the King of Games, Tomoya. Tomoya is the best player at smash brothers as well, much to our amusement. However his cool and aloof façade was rather broken by the end of the trip. Mostly because of his 'fangirl' mode over several manga idols. Also he kept trying to get into the gambling places :P
One of the boys also spent a ridiculous about of money trying to win an idol figurine on one the crane games. Made funnier by Ren trying on a different machine and winning it in like two goes. Lucky! Those games are so hard! But I don't tend to play them too often.
They also get together once a month for a 'big' event. Which this month was a BBQ. Which proved more different than first expected. Coral and I headed to the location and were able to location our friends pretty easily. Unlike the Akibakara trip, there were girls there this time as well. Kotomi spending the entire time complaining Coral was too tall bless her.
The girls cut up the food, while the boys lit the fire. Kind of. Two hours later, all the food was ready but the fire still hadn't taken. While the boys were still fumbling around with the fire, we and the Japanese girls (plus Ren) played a few games of Ninja. Eventually one of the park attendants came over to assist the boys in lighting the fire and after about 5 minutes the fire was roaring and the food was finally cooking.
YUMMY. It was delicious. BBQ meat is the best! And at the end they made yakisoba which is also delicious. I love Japanese food! So MUCH!
LEPS
We started meeting up with our LEPS once a week, alternating on Wednesdays and Tuesdays. So people have a chance to see if it they are busy or not in university on one of those days. The first one was fun and casual. It's fun talking to them. Martin showed up and sat at our table, only to break his cup. The guy is hilarious! But very closely. One of our male lecturers referred to him as charming, which had us all in tears laughing.
Or at least the intension was to meet up with our L.E.Ps once a week but it failed to happen unfortunately due to organization issues. We did met up with Maki and Kanae twice more but the others never showed up which is a shame. Starting to speak a bit more Japanese as well which is a relief.
Learning
As far as my business classes are going, I'm enjoying them. Mondays I have multinational corporations which involves us reading a chapter of the book and discussing it in class. It's quite fun and only a small class. I've presented the lesson once, which was fun and went well. I think. XD. By the feedback I got back, everyone understood what I was saying so. Must not have gone too badly.
Politics on a Friday is fun. I miss learning about history and politics. I like learning why things are the way they are and what caused them to be like that. Friday is a tad annoying though, because we have four hours in-between politics and economics to kill. We usually hang out at the ECZ with people but it can get a little tiresome sometimes.
Other
On the 5th we had our first Typhoon day! So we all woke up and then went back to bed after checking Facebook XD. To be fair the rain was really impressive early on. But then it settled down and by noon the sun was out and the weather turned hot. So Coral and I took advantage of this lovely weather to head to Tokyo to find a HSBC bank. Not getting into that much, but basically Coral had thought of a cool way to save money but HSBC doesn't do personal banks in Japan anymore so it fell through. Instead we headed to Ikebukoro to have a wander and let our troubles go away.
Coral and I are together, (when we are awake) pretty much all the time. But we do occasionally gets breaks from each other. Once Sunday, I spent a lovely day in Akihabara with Liz and Carla. Two of the other girls from York st John, who study English and so we didn't know them before this year. They are great fun and we spent the day looking for Halloween costumes, doing PuriKura and giggling at various things that the Japanese do. Had some awesome food as well. I get tired of convi food and I think Coral and I are going to try get back into cooking a bit more. It's just a case of going shopping.
As far as meals go, we have quite a few meals with Ethan and Issie. The four (occasionally five) have meals and a giggle. We have nicknamed the group 'Food Club'. Occasionally with alcohol and poker :P. We each take turns playing for the food and then Coral cooks it for us. Mostly because I'm a messy cook, Ethan is similar and Coral doesn't let the rest of us near her neat kitchen.
Other things I have gotten up to include spending the day at a cosplay* parade with Coral. Coral dressed up as one of her favourite characters at the moment and buzzing with happiness and excitement. It was a good laugh and I had lots of fun taking pictures of her in various different poses. 43 people asked her for a photograph. Which made her very happy.
It was funny because a lot of people were too scared to come up to her and ask for a photo. 'sugoii' (Cool/awesome) and then 'Kowai gaijin!' (Scary foreigner). Which made us laugh because they didn't realise we understood them perfectly. But normally once one person was brave enough to ask, several others would appear. At least twice we had about 7 people in a row take photos of her.
Anything else? …. Properly but I think I've put done all the main things which occurred during October. Though I'm sure one of the others will tell me if I've forgotten something. My next blog should be able the Homestay weekend I went on. So look out for it ^^ Below are some thoughts on a few of the differences I have noticed between Japan and England. Some people may disagree with them but I thought they were worth putting down anyway.
Differences
The I-house regularly gets noise complaints from the neighbours as it is the loudest place in the street. Now if you come, you will soon realise that compared to England, it is very quiet. But in Japan noise travels really far because of how packed together everything is. It makes its awkward though as we can't open the windows or be on the balconies after 9pm without risking the neighbours calling the police. Which is a tad annoying. Especially when you consider how much student neighbourhoods in the west get away with. But yer.
There are a lot of differences between Japanese Universities and English University. One is how much people are in university. In England there is a big push for 'independent learning', whereas university in Japan is much more classroom led. There is a lot of homework and background reading expected but unlike university in England, your teacher does actually check what work you have done. It's some ways it makes me think of how easy it is in England to fall into lazy habits but here you can't slow down for one moment. However if there is an unexpected day off, the schedule gets moved along accordingly. They don't trust the Japanese Students to just 'do the work', they have to change when they are doing things to ensure they have done the work.
Also we have lunchtimes again and like in secondary there is a massive rush during these times. It's not so bad if you have third period off but if you don't, it's hard to get any food. Especially for those of us who have class second period, every day.
Another difference is a big portion of our grade is based on us actually showing up for class and participating. I think 30% of our grade is done based on tests in class. It's an interesting different and if you don't show up for 3 classes, you fail. Which would put an interesting spin on things if a similar system was introduced in the Uk.
There is also how far people travel to come to university. Many of the other students travel up to an hour to get to university. Most, if not all, still live with their parents at home. That might be different as where Tokyo housing prices are expensive, but it is still interesting different. Not many universities in Japan have dorms either. Which means for most universities if you want to attend from far away, you have to rent an apartment.
Thanks for reading :)
*Cosplay/Cosplayer. = The act of dressing up like Japanese Anime Character and acting like them/ taking photos. Very expensive but also very impressive how dedicated some people are to getting the character's just right.
- comments