fun times!

Ha, I finally found fish for sashimi use at the supermarket! I've been wanting to have a simple meal of sake don, as in uncooked salmon on a bed of rice, but for some reason, I haven't been able to find a pack of fish that says for sashimi use. I knew that in Japanese it should say 刺身用 (sashimi yo), but there just seemed to be no such option available anywhere. Everything was labeled as お造り用 (otsukuri yo), like the package in the below picture. But then, in the last supermarket I went to on my search for sashimi-safe fish, I realized that the ready-made sashimi portions next to the unprepared fish all said お造り, and after a brief dictionary search, it became apparent that sashimi in Kansai dialect is otsukuri. So I'm guessing that my inability to understand a lot of the stuff here is not only because I suck at Japanese, but a lot of it might actually be due to the fact that Kansai dialect is not the kind of Japanese that I've been learning before coming here. Another thing I've noticed now is how in stores, restaurants, and such, the staff always thank the customers by saying ooki ni, which is the Kansai equivalent to arigato. No wonder I've been so confused.

So that was probably the most enlightening moment this week. But what have we been up to, really? Well, on Thursday there was finally the Jidai Matsuri, which I wrote about a month ago when we mistakenly went to watch it a month ahead of time... But now it was for real, and our teachers took us all there to watch it, since the parade started at the Imperial Palace which is right next to the university.

Eagerly waiting to go; and Rachel absorbed in her favorite pastime: chucking pens at Dave.

Record-breaking ghosting.

A few hundred meters later Maija finally noticed.

There were so many people, though, that I hardly saw anything except for the flags that they were carrying, and the people that were riding horses. I also had to leave after a short while since I had one more class that day, so I didn't even get to follow the parade. It's quite a long walk that they do, I think it was 2 kilometers, from the palace all the way to the Heian Shrine.

So this is probably the best shot I got of the actual parade.

Yesterday, that was Saturday, my friend wanted to go skating as she had bought a skateboard a short while ago. She's also just a beginner, and I only remember one time before this that I've even stood on a skateboard - and even then I nearly tripped. HOWEVER, for some reason I was really good this time! I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and learned how to turn, even at a standstill, like when you have to lift the front side of the board to change direction... I'm bad at explaining this, probably there is more specific vocabulary for these things. In addition to Japanese, I'm gonna have to start learning skating vocab to gain some street cred. I wonder if I'd be able to do a frontside ollie at the end of the semester? (And oh my god, I was just gonna link the original song, but when I searched for it on YouTube, I got an automatic suggestion to search for 'frontside ollie in japanese', and that's what I found... I don't even.)

Here I come!

...and there I go.

In the evening, there was a friend's birthday party - well, a friend of a friend to me, actually, since I hadn't even met the guy before last night. First we went to have some okonomiyaki with Maija, and since we had some time in our hands before having to get ourselves transported downtown, bought pre-drinks at Fresco and listened to some good music at my place. The drinks were pretty interesting, to say the least. Sparkling sake was exactly as promised - a sparkling wine that tasted like sake. I still don't know if I really like it or not. Just plain sake is very good, once you get used to the taste, but I'm not sure whether or not it does it any good to sweeten and carbonate it... And umeshu was pretty nice, just very, very sweet. I wouldn't be able to drink a whole bottle of it. Kinda reminds me of Passoa or some other fruit liquor that has way too much sugar in it.

Sparkling sake & Umeshu

The party took place at a nice izakaya in Shijo, and we had a reservation in a private room downstairs, with nomihodai - drink as much as you can. A concept that would never, ever work in Finland. I think that there was actually an attempt to introduce a buffet kinda deal for drinks at some nightclub a while ago, but it goes without saying that the proposal got the red light. Nevertheless, in Japan, you get this offer everywhere, and the price of last night's nomihodai was 1200 yen for two hours, which is less than 10 euros.

Tried hot sake for the first time - and, quite surprisingly, liked it better than cold!

Pouring a beer for Jesus.

So that was a fun night, albeit detrimental... Nearly made it to karaoke afterwards, but as it was quite expensive, and I was about to die, anyway, we ended up going home quite early. Still had to take a taxi, though, since the last trains go before midnight. But fortunately it wasn't even expensive, only 700 yen! And there was three of us, so that made it like 230 yen per person. The train would've been only 20 yen cheaper (~10 cents), and a lot more troublesome. So there is something here that is cheap, after all! Anyways, had great time, thanks to everybody and congrats to Maiki, who's birthday it was. Next weekend: Halloween party and a chance to wear the Pikachu onesie! Yay! And tomorrow: Monday, lessons from 9 to 5, and a vocabulary quiz. Ugh.

i'm in love.

With this language. Every now and then - quite often, actually - I get distracted when I'm trying to read something in Japanese, and just stare at the piece of text, thinking of how amazing it is that written language, even if it's just used to express the most mundane information, can be so intricate and beautiful. And then I get the utmost urge to have a perfect grasp on the language, right there and then, although I know it's impossible.

See, whereas I'm desperately in love, Japanese, being very aware of its beauty (that's the worst thing, isn't it), is playing hard to get. The more I try to learn, the more difficult it seems to become. It's like my brain is just full of holes that all these kanji combinations fall through like water. I was just reading an invitation to a Halloween party, and it wasn't longer than a few sentences I think. However, I kept translating these kanji compounds using an online dictionary, and I found myself inserting the same compounds that I'd just had translated into the search field over and over again. That's how easy this language is to read - I'm not able to remember the characters I read five minutes ago, not if I'm not already familiar with them.

But that's also what makes it so attractive. I mean, you can use the certain amount of letters of alphabet... How many are there, by the way? I think this is something I should know. Alright, I googled, because of course I'm too lazy to count, and there's 26 in English language... although some sites argue that ampersand (&) is also a letter, which I don't really agree with. Anyway, that's beside the point now. Where was I? Yeah, right, so you can use the 26 letters of alphabet to write all the words in the English, and then if you want to write in other Western languages as well, just add a couple extra letters or accents here and there. In the end, it all just looks pretty much the same. I was reading a status update in Swedish yesterday, and although I've never really made an effort to learn Swedish, neither have I ever been in a situation where I actually needed to use it, I pretty much understood all of it (it was a long update). So, although it goes without saying that I'm happy I'm able to understand a bit of Swedish, it's just boring compared to the relationship that I have with Japanese right now.

So trying to learn to read and write in Japanese is like trying to memorize a thousand paintings by heart. The other day, in between classes, we were trying to find out what the most complicated kanji is. Our teacher drew us one that she thought was very difficult, and apparently even the Japanese themselves usually don't remember how to write it. And of course there are a lot of kanji that are like that, and this one wasn't even amongst the most complicated when it comes down to the number of strokes, but anyway... Here it is.

憂鬱

So the difficult bit is the latter kanji, but it's usually used in the above compound, which translates into depression. How fitting is that, right? So there was a joke about how that kanji is the actual reason for it's meaning, if you catch my drift. I learned to write it yesterday, although I'll probably forget soon... How very depressing.

Meanwhile, until I'll be somewhat able to understand written Japanese, I'll find comfort in the amazing cuisine that this country has to offer. Seriously, even the cheapest lunch bento at the university's co-op store is more delicious than most of the food I usually come across in Finland.

So strictly speaking this isn't Japanese cuisine, but it's food and it was made in Japan, so it counts, right? Banana nut cake at the café near our dorm. Heaven.

public enemy no. 1

Oh God, I'm so bad.

Yesterday we were going to a sento near where a Finnish friend of mine lives. For those who don't know what that means - probably a lot of you, I presume, as I only heard about this a couple of weeks ago myself. Also called furoya, they are basically just public baths. A long time ago, few people had  the possibility to bathe in the comfort of their own home and had to use these public places to freshen up. Today people of course have a bath at home, so there are a lot less of these sentos around, but I'm guessing they also offer a wider variety of different kinds of baths than before, and the one we were going to apparently even has some sort of a sauna in there.

The sun had just set as I was biking over to the spot where I was meeting up with my friends. And just as I was arriving there, a policeman whistled for me to stop! So I did, although I didn't know what I'd done wrong as I'm being extra careful here with the bike - don't really wanna kill any pedestrians, and there are a lot of them around! But it was about my bike lamp. It's one of those dynamo lamps that only light up when you're biking, so I haven't been able to check whether or not it works since when it's supposed to light up I'm sitting on the saddle and can't really see the lamp from up there.

Such a pretty night! And just minutes after this I was seized by the police.

Anyway, this was my big crime, and I was like, sorry, I'll get it fixed tomorrow or buy one from a 100 yen shop or something... But he wanted to see my residence card, and took all my information down. He also wanted to know if it was my bike, and where I bought it from, which was a bit difficult to explain. I probably looked guilty as fuck, as if I'd stolen the bike or something, since it was quite difficult to come up with the right words seeing that I speak next to no Japanese, and was being interrogated by a police officer - not the most comfortable situation for a language learner.

Then he also wanted a phone number, which I still don't have. I have been convinced by several people that I really don't need a phone number here, it's enough if I just have the data service on my phone, but I think the majority of problematic situations I've encountered here have somehow been due to not having a phone number. Well, since I didn't have one, guess what he wanted to know instead? Not my email address, which I offered to give - always co-operate, right? Nope, my blood type. Yes, you read correctly, my blood type. I was like, um, I don't know what this has to do with any of this, but played along of course, telling him that I'm AB negative. He had an expression on his face that I couldn't read.

Later on I was again reminded about the Japanese people's obsession with blood types, as apparently they tell a lot about your personality, so this morning I went online to check what mine says about me. Well, AB types are apparently mysterious and unpredictable, so now I'm probably on their blacklist of immigrants, just waiting to be deported any day now.

And I'm still not sure whether or not I'm getting fined! I didn't get one at the spot, but as he took down my address and everything they could theoretically still send me one. But I don't think he said anything about that, so fingers crossed for that...

Oh, and wanna know what happened with the sento? It wasn't open on Thursdays. Like, the only day of the week they aren't open is Thursday. So, we popped by Fresco's, bought some beer and went over to my friend's house for dinner instead. Really hoping to go to a sento soon, though! But now I must go and buy a new bike lamp. Gah.

PS. This is something that I need. Desperately. It contains Star Wars vocab in both English and Japanese. I still haven't met a Japanese Star Wars fan, but I know they exist so of course I want to be prepared to discuss all aspects of the movies with them when I meet them.

about an, and life in general

This post is dedicated to the stuff you see in the above picture. It's called an (for once, a Japanese word that's not difficult to memorize...), and it's a sweet paste made from azuki beans. It's a key ingredient in most of the baked goods and sweets they make here, for example the famous anpan, a sweet pastry that even has a comic book hero named after it. Tried that for the first time last weekend, too, and it was pretty damn good! Anyway, about an - at first I was a bit weirded out by the fact that it's just a bunch of beans that's supposed to be enjoyed as a dessert, but as you can see, now I'm buying ice cream and shit just to have something to put it on.

Actually it was kind of an accident that I bought the stuff in the first place. There was a big can of it on sale, and by the look of it anyone would've thought it's just basic baked beans, of a red variety. I even thought, delusional as I am, that I completely understood the name of the product, which was yudeazuki. I was like, yeah, yuderu means boil in water, and azuki - well, it's azuki beans, right? And I guess that interpretation was partially correct... however, in addition, they're sweetened and made into a paste, which wasn't obvious from the label. But after the initial disappointment of not having beans on my rice (although I'm pretty sure that a dessert combining rice and red bean paste also exists), I realized that I had A HUGE CAN OF RED BEAN PASTE, which is not something to be disappointed about. So now I'm just coming up with all kinds of stuff to have it with. Last night, I had a peanut-butter-jelly-sandwich with bean paste instead of jelly, and it was quite delicious. And just now I tried it with vanilla ice cream - a match made in heaven.

Anyway, aside from occasional dessert experiments, my life here has been pretty uneventful for the past few weeks, since the school started. I'm buried in homework, tests and writing tasks. Mondays are the worst; school starts at 9am and I'm back home by 5pm. Then I have a couple of hours to do homework, which isn't nearly enough to complete the homework for the 4 classes I have that day, especially if, for just one of the classes, you need to write a mini-essay, fill in two pages of exercises, and do two listening tasks. But luckily the rest of the week isn't as bad, and I have plenty of time to do Monday's homework later during the week... Admittedly, though, this is exhausting!

But I get a strong feeling that I'm learning the language quite fast, so in the end I feel very lucky to be here. Today was a fun day, and the weather was so nice as I was biking home that I just couldn't help but smile to myself when I realized that I'm actually in Japan, studying Japanese. Since I was about 15, I've wanted to go on a student exchange - to live the life of an American high school kid, what would be better than that? Just like in the movies... Oh, wait, nevermind. Now that I'm an adult, though, the main reason I came here was to become fluent enough in Japanese, so that I would be able to utilize it in my future career as a language teacher. But today, as I biked through the Imperial Garden, passing a bunch of tourists, I thought, hey, I actually live and study here, which is the coolest thing ever. And before coming here, I didn't really speak Japanese at all, but now I'm starting to! Learning by doing, yay!

Although a lot of the times I just get so frustrated when I still cannot communicate well enough to express myself fully, and I still have to ask people to repeat something a dozen times, and even then I might not always understand what they're saying. But every time I'm meeting up with Koami, she says that I've improved a lot, and today I even managed to ask for a student's loyalty card at the supermarket! So just need to be patient, I guess...

So that's all for now, just wanted to let everybody know that I'm still alive. And every time you're wondering what's going on with me since I havent' been posting for a while, it's probably just this:

takoyakiiiiii!

Last weekend we went on a day trip to Osaka. Left really early in the morning and came back late in the evening. Sunday, the only day of the week when I didn't have to wake up at 6am (since on Saturday we had a welcoming ceremony for all the new students), yet I chose to wake up at 5am in order to make it to Osaka by 9am. We had decided to buy a one-day tourist pass so naturally we wanted to get everything out of this purchase. It was a really good deal, though - the pass cost us 2,300 yen each, and it granted us unlimited access to public transport and dozens of popular tourist attractions, and we would've also been entitled to a bunch of discounts at different restaurants and stores, but didn't really get to take advantage of those as the only thing we had time to eat was takoyaki and the occasional ice cream...

I was told Osaka was an ugly city. I disagree.

Ground level view

If my memory serves me right, the first thing we did was to climb the Umeda Sky Building, also known as the Floating Garden, which neither had a garden in there nor was it floating... But I still give it a 5/5 since the view was amazing!

Sky Garden view

From this height it looks bigger than any city I've ever been to.

The next attraction we headed to also offered a cityscape view. When you look at the picture above, it's no wonder that quite a lot of the attractions are located quite high - first of all, there are many places available for that; plus, from the shadows of the high-rise buildings you really don't see too much at all. So gotta get up! Having started with the Sky Garden, though, the next view was a bit disappointing... And also really difficult to get to! At first we couldn't even find the entrance to the tower. There was a sign saying "The entrance is in the back," and when we walked into the back of the building in front of which the sign was placed, there was nothing. When we read the sign again, in Japanese this time, it actually said the entrance is behind you. So, in many cases, although reading the Japanese version takes more time, you should just take that time and read it anyways since the English version probably makes no sense.

Another high spot: Tsutenkaku!

Oh, and inside the Tsutenkaku we made a new acquaintance: Kinnikuman, which in English would be Muscle Man. We just ended up calling him Nikuman, which translates into Meat Man, and is in many ways a much better name than the original one. I'm not sure as to why he has a donut as a mouth but I really like the tattoo on his forehead that says "meat".

Nikuman and Nikuwoman

After we got back down, it was about time that we had some takoyaki! I actually didn't have any specific places that I wanted to see or things that I wanted to do here. Sorry for being an ignorant asshole and not bothering to look up anything before the trip, but when you've got no expectations, you'll just be pleasantly surprised about everything, right? However, one thing I knew about Osaka was that they make the most delicious takoyaki, which are octopus dumplings that can be seasoned with basically whatever. We had ours with scallions and mayo; it was their bestseller so of course we went with that. Not disappointed at all! This was actually my first time trying out takoyaki, and now I've got pretty high standards when it comes to this delicacy. Will only have it like they make it in Osaka!

The sole reason I came here.

Next up: the zoo! I think we'd all been to a few zoos before, but hey, if you get to go free, of course you need to go! A person who gets tired of watching animals being all cute and weird and shit is a person who is tired of life. To save space here, though, I'm not posting a bunch of pictures of different animals (although, as you might guess, I did take a bunch of pictures of different animals), but there is one that I want to share with you - so lucky to have stood in that precise spot at that precise moment.

I knew their necks were long, but...

After the zoo, we were already pretty exhausted (my iPhone counted 30,000 steps and 25km of walking done that day!), but there was still one thing we wanted to do... So we made our way towards the bay area, where there was, to my knowledge, Osaka's biggest ferris wheel. There's a bunch of them around the city, but this one I had actually seen from the plane as we were landing - by the way, that's pretty much a month ago now! Wow. Time flies, huh?

Yet another climb...

Well worth it!

There we were!

Oh, and the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me... I've been wanting to buy a Pikachu onesie ever since I saw a schoolmate wearing one to a Halloween party a few years back. Well, she'd bought it in Japan, and I really can't be arsed to buy such stuff online, so I really just forgot about it until I came here. I've been searching for places where I could buy one here, and actually found a couple of stores around Osaka and Kyoto where they might sell these onesies. I hadn't been to any of them yet, and totally forgot to look around in Osaka, but luckily we just happened to come across one of the biggest stores selling these sorts of things as we were on our way to the zoo. And even more luckily, there was this one left on the shelf, and it was just my size - so it was one of those rare occasions where I didn't hesitate to buy something I really didn't need!

Realizing my childhood dreams of becoming Pikachu. Next level: Raichu?

So that was a great day, although I'm still slightly exhausted as I haven't really had time for a proper sleep after that - school's very busy and since I'd also like to have a social life and meet new people, I've been trying to be active on that domain, too. Yesterday I met my peer supporter who took me to an office where you can send an application to join different clubs and circles that the students have here. I had already decided to join a club where they design and illustrate papers and ads and stuff when I saw a bouldering club on the list! So I sent mail to both of them asking to join... I don't know how I'll have the time to do everything that I want to! Blah. And now I should be in bed already, so good night y'all!

back to school and loving it

After two days of school, which has now officially started, it's the weekend again. Personally, I could've lived without, since I'm now feeling all warm and fuzzy inside - giddy, even - about having a daily routine. This morning, I even got to say ittekimasu when the dormitory's caretaker wished me itterasshai as I was walking my bike out through the gates. I've never felt this Japanese in my life.

The weather's still all sunny and summery (after a couple of days of rain and intolerable humidity), and I just had to take a longer route along the riverside as I walked to the supermarket after school. The Kamogawa is such a neat river - I've posted a couple of pictures of it earlier, but I don't think that you can really see much of what makes it so great in them. It's really shallow, like ankle-deep at some spots, and the water is so clear. Really just makes you want to jump in on a hot, sunny day like this. And people do that, although, for some reason, it's always fathers with their sons that are walking in the river.

But although weatherwise it feels like the middle of the summer to me, apparently for Japanese standards it's getting cold. I'm starting to hear a lot more samui ne~ comments compared to the atsui ne's that people kept repeating a couple of weeks ago. I'm still sweating like a pig whenever I'm walking in direct sunlight, so no, not very samui to me! Admittedly, though, the leaves are also starting to turn red, and with the school having started and all I guess it's officially fall now.

So, about school. The first few classes I've had have been very easy. Well, except for one seminar which is actually for higher levels but we were allowed to take it if we felt a strong urge to do so. I'm pretty sure these were the words that they used in the course registration papers. Anyway, I had the aforementioned urge, and so I registered on the course, and it was on the schedule on my very first day. Before the class, I had just had two Japanese language classes, the really easy ones where we are for now just revising the basics before moving on to the serious stuff (I'm really hoping that'll happen... preferably in the near future!), and for the first few minutes in the more advanced class I had to put all my brain capacity into focusing on the teacher's speech. She instantly started to go through this multiple choice exercise, explaining the meanings of the different options so that we could understand why the correct answer is correct. But, as I said, it only took me a few minutes to get the hang of it, and from that point onwards, it was such an exhilarating experience to learn a foreign language in the said language. It's almost like... language acquisition. (Which, of course, is a vague term and is used a lot as a synonym for language learning, but here I'm talking about the distinction some researchers make between learning a language in a classroom situation as opposed to acquiring it from the environment.) But yeah, at the end it wasn't too hard, either, since she drew a lot of pictures and listed a bunch of synonyms whenever there was a concept people seemed unable to grasp.

Oh, and as if I wasn't enjoying this enough as it is, I got a surprise scholarship! I vaguely remember filling out an application as it was posted to me along with a bunch of other papers, so naturally I just filled out everything to the best of my ability, not even really knowing whether or not I was eligible for this scholarship. To who and on what basis it would be granted I never even bothered to look up, and until today I have no idea as to why I'm among the few people that received it. It's a lot of money, too, more than I'm receiving from the government in Finland. I just got an email a few days ago, saying that I should open an account at a Japanese bank for the payments. So I went to Shinsei Bank yesterday, and as I just had survived Japanese language seminar B, I thought I'd be able to make myself understood at the bank... Well, in the end, I think I did, at least I walked out with a debit card and a statement holder, but, boy, was it a struggle! Anyhow, now I've got no financial worries whatsoever. This is just too good to be true.

And as a cherry on top of this content-heavy post about my current state of happiness, a few words about Japanese sweets, one of which I enjoyed while typing this (see picture below). I'm in a constant state of wonder as to how foods that really don't make you think of sweets, such as beans, rice, tea, potatoes, and sesame seeds, are used here as ingredients for the best tasting sweets I've ever had. For example, we have the mochi, which are sweets made out of starchy rice so that the consistency is very gummy and kind of sticky. They come in dozens of different flavors. I've tried the basic ones with red bean paste (more about red beans later), and then ones flavored with fried potatoes and black sesame seeds. Oh, and the mochi can even be made out of potatoes entirely - this version was also delicious.

The aforementioned red beans are used in sweet stuff as jellied versions. I've seen them in bubble teas, ice creams, mochi, and in almost all kinds of traditional Japanese sweets, where they are usually in the form of a sticky paste. Anyway, the best bit about Japanese sweet stuff is that much of it is really not that sweet! So you're spared from the sugar rush and all the other unpleasant side-effects when you end up consuming too much candy. Because, with the overly sweet stuff, that's how it always goes - it's so addictive because it doesn't really fill your stomach and it's so full of sugar that you just want to keep eating. But the sweets here are actually filling as they're made out of food stuff, and not too sweet, so you usually just eat the right amount.

This is an ice-cream version of a traditional sweet called monaka, and the little dark bit peeking out is, surprise surprise, red bean!

Perfect examples: On the left, black sesame seed flavored ice cream with red beans; on the right, matcha-flavored ice cream with rice balls.

And just a quick clarification: They do have plenty of "normal" candy here as well, but as it's on the other side of the spectrum and tastes like soap and other things you're not even supposed to insert into your body, I've steered clear of it.

Now, though, I have to apologize for the huge amount of text which you probably won't be reading, and end this for today. I'm even too lazy to read it through myself before clicking on "Publish", since I have to focus on my homework now. YAY! (Without the least bit of irony in that exclamation!)