after a good night's sleep

Konnichiwa~ (~ is for a lengthened sound)
It's weird, I thought I'd never learn the Japanese intonation and would always sound so dull and monotonous, but it seems that's among the first things you start picking up. I mean, when you have an extremely limited vocabulary, you gotta express yourself somehow, right? Although I'm pretty sure that, compared to the natives, my intonation will never be as lively as it should be.

I now have about two hours to spend before going out to have some okonomiyaki for dinner. I'll finally get to try the real thing, my homemade okonomiyaki always lacked some essential ingredients that were unavailable in Finland... well, don't know about Helsinki or other bigger towns, they might have shops specialized in Japanese foods, but I haven't found one in Joensuu. Anyway, I'm rambling now, where was I? Oh, right. So my new Taiwanese friends went to the post office to pay the rent which I decided not to do right now, so I've got a bunch of time just for myself. At first it felt like a lot, but here it takes me a lot more time to do things because of the language, so I know I won't be bored. For example, this morning I spent half an hour trying to figure out what my margarin contained. Turns out it's margarin made with butter so it's not even a proper margarin. Not that this information was in no way hidden - the name of the product was literally margarin made with butter, but as it included two kanji that I recognized but couldn't read in that context, it took me a while and a dozen dictionary searches to interpret it. And having achieved that, I left the backside of the box alone completely.

I also had to count my cash, because I had no idea how much I'd spent. It's so difficult to understand the value of stuff here because the numbers are so big. For example, a single fruit might cost me several hundred yen, but it's only a few euros, and you still pay with small coins. Nevertheless, fruit and vegetables are still very expensive here.

131 yen + a 50-yen discount coupon for the nearest supermarket. That'll probably buy me a banana! Or, if I'm lucky, an entire apple.

As I mentioned, I've got new friends here. They all live in the same building, and they're all Taiwanese. Their Japanese is quite good (to me it sounds fluent), and we all speak Japanese with each other, which is really good 'cause now I've got people I can try to communicate without feeling embarrassed all the time. We went out to eat and ended up having soba, which is a type of noodle. It was good, but everything here is pretty salty. I've heard that the Japanese often suffer from high blood pressure, and I now understand why. Anyway, my portion was around 800 yen (~6 euros), so it's really not that cheap for a bowl of noodles. On the other hand, you get unlimited refills of tea, which is, to my knowledge, the custom here. I know I sounded like an American tourist just now. Deal with it.

Friends!

Food! ...So, in other words, all is well :)

In the afternoon, we had, according to the schedule I was provided with, "a meeting about firefighting". It was also called a fire drill in another handout, so I really wasn't sure what to expect. Turns out it was neither. My professor in Joensuu was right about me being forced to use Japanese all the time, as they speak spaghetti bloody English (his words, not mine). Anyway, basically we had a briefing about emergency procedures, like in the case of an earthquake. I hadn't even thought about the possibility, so it took me a while to figure out that they were talking about earthquakes as I didn't know the word jishin. Now I do, so here I am acquiring a language! Feels good, man. Then we got to use a fire extinguisher, but we didn't even have a fire to extinguish! In Finland, there would've been a small fire in a bucket or something. Goes to show how strict about safety they are here. But there's also something our countries have in common when it comes to firefighting (using the term in the appropriate context now); the firemen are very kakkoi! All the girls wanted to take pictures with them. I played it cool and just took pictures of the fire truck. By the way, the emergency vehicles actually speak here! In addition to the basic sirens, there's some kind of a recording that they play as a warning sound. And they're not the only vehicles to do so. I don't know what the others are, but it sounds like some sort of a commercial when they pass the house.

No, I didn't try to get the fireman in the picture, he just stood there, and it would've ruined the composition to cut him out...

Okay, so I've now spent an hour writing this. I've got so much to say and it's so difficult to switch my brain to the English frequency when it's already overheated from struggling to speak and understand Japanese. Next, I could try to find out what my peanut butter contains, aside from the peanuts. I've got a feeling that half of it is actually sugar and salt and extra oils, but it's probably another hour from now until I have that confirmed. And then I'll be hungry for some okonomiyaki!

We've got a rooftop and from up there, too, everything looks very Japanese. Who would've thought.