Foto update

I know it's been long... En omdat een aantal mensen het mij gevraagd hebben zal ik vanaf nu in het Nederlands schrijven, ik heb toch niet het idee dat er veel Engelstalige mensen zijn dit lezen :P

Alleszins, hier de link naar mijn foto's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42370919@N07/ Ik heb ze nog niet in sets georganiseerd maar dat komt wel. Uitleg staat meestal onder de foto's. Ik publiceer nog wel eens het volle verhaal. Ofzo.

Anyway er zitten ook een aantal foto's tussen die niet in een set horen, maar gewoon spul dat ik getrokken heb hier thuis of op school of zo ook dus. Ach wel.

Joren out.

My former host family's house in Yamato

This will be a short post: my former host family's house is located at these coordinates: 35°27'45.04"N 139°27'57.66"O. It's the white one :P I had quite a lot of trouble locating it though... But then I realised I lived really close to the railway tracks so I just followed them until I saw a crossing I knew :)

Where my house is at!

Due to the fact that a few people have asked me to post this I've gone through the trouble of looking it up. The thing is the home adress of my host family here doesn't say anything at all about the location of their house because the postal system in Japan is so completely different from ours.

Grotere kaart weergeven

shows you my house. It's the one with the 2 garages. Normally you should scroll to the right to be able to see it. It's the only plainly visible red-brickish house in that shot. Using that tool you can also look at it from a different angle and take a little walk down my street. Also notice the huge Nissan factory across from my house. I live in a rather industrial area at the moment.

Bunkasai! (+Typhoon)

Yes, I know it's been a full week...

I've just been busy... uhm... resting...

UUUUUuhm ok to the point!

I have so much to say that I don't really know where to start. Except for the fact that I do!

In this episode of "A Wacko in Japan":

- Culture Festival!

- First classes! (In part 2)

- Typhoon! (Might be in this part... Because it was today...)

As you see, I actually háve been quite busy, I just sort of failed to notify you! Or something.

The thing is there are times when I'd rather spend my time bothering my sister than writing stuff on this page :D

So let's start with Culture Festival (hereafter referred to as Bunkasai, which literally means exactly the same thing)!

Bunkasai is an event held at the school where every class and club does something like a small food stall or a dance performance or something along those lines.

My class did Belgian waffles! :D They called themselves "Aressaffuru", Aressa- because our homeroom teacher's name is Alessandro (he's Brazilian, but I actually didn't notice, his accent is just too perfect). The -ffuru comes from the Japanese (Katakana english) way of writing waffles.

>>> Nihon no Kotoba intermezzo: Katakana: The name for the "alphabet" Japanese people use to write English words in a way they know how to pronounce. Only it's never the right way. In japanese a consonant is always followed by a vowel. The only exeption to this rule is n. But the n in nani is different from the n in kenshin. They are pronounced differently. It is actually impossible to have a word begin with that specific n character. A few examples:

- Text: TeKiSuTo

- Smith: SuMiSu

- White: HoWaiTo

- Vietnam: BeToNaMu

- Horror: HaRaa

- ...

Sometimes they're so different that I only recognize them when they try to write them (the spelling sometimes going quite haywire of course :D)

Anyway surprisingly enough my class had gotten hold of actual imported Belgian waffles. When they asked me if we ate waffles hot or cold in Belgium I answered that both were ok, but because I thought at first that they were going to bake them themselves I said that hot was best. It seemed quite weird to me because in my experience such a thing as a waffle iron doesn't really exist in these parts.

What they did was take a small gas fire, put a pan on it and heat up the pre-baked (imported Belgian) waffles and pour stuff like chocolate sauce over them. I had quite a good laugh as you can imagine, but they did a good job :)

I also participated in a presentation. The international club (that I am a member of by default) gave a small presentation about a few "international culture items". I had to say 3 lines which were all weird laws they have in America. Stuff like "It is forbidden to play Dominoes on Sunday." Yeah, those Americans... My impression of them ain't improving :D

Ami-sensei (the teacher in charge of the international club) also did a dance performance with her first-year-students' "Daigo Crew" (Daigo is her last name).

It was really good :O They did it in 2 groups and the first one wasn't that good so I didn't bother, but the second one was good so I taped all of it :D I might be putting that up on Youtube one of these days...

Speaking of putting stuff on Youtube, I taped my way to school on Sunday (That's right folks, I had a full 7 days of school last week)! It's a bit big and stuff and it's still like splitted into 2 parts so I still have some work on that... I'm also going to put the stuff I taped at the matsuri up for your enjoyment (not mine, obviously, do you know how mendokusai it is to mix all that stuff?)

I might be doing vlogs in stead of blogs in the future, because it's such a pain to type these long messages :D

Anyway I had fun at Bunkasai! Watch the pictures on my Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42370919@N07/sets/72157622542110506/

Oh and I haven't told you the best part! I walked around on Saturday in traditional Japanese clothing the WHOLE DAY :D If that ain't cool :P Only thing is, my host dad doesn't really have that kind of stuff, so I had to borrow one of my host mother's yukata's :P (If you're wondering what it is, it looks like a kimono but isn't. Just watch the pictures! :D

As an extra, because I am kindness itself, I'll give you a little info about the big typhoon we had.

I had so much fun!!

Might sound a bit weird, but that's how it is :D In the area where I live we didn't have like the big storm stuff, so it did rain quite a bit but it was still ok. Actually even though today was the peak of the typhoon it was really sunny for most of the day. The wind was strong though. REALLY strong. I walked over the court with a plate in my hands and it was almost torn out of them by the wind. THAT strong. It really was quite unlike wind in Belgium. But because it was warm wind I had a lot of fun just standing there getting blown away :D

Hai, shuuryou!! (Let's put an end to this!)

Niban no bun ni o-tanoshimi ni kudasai! (Please look forward to part 2!)

BeSuPyuTo YoRen

Matsuri (part 2) + 20% free added value!

Gokigenyou! (btw it means "you look healthy today" or more accurately it's like "tu as bonne mine" in French :D)

My most humble apologies, I told you guys that I would write more yesterday and I didn't...
I somehow ran out of time (and preferred spending what was left of it with my sister who was actually home yesterday but ok :P)
So yeah about the matsuri!
I ate takoyaki (balls of vegetable something with fried octopus in them), okonomiyaki (more veggies! But I can't really explain what it is exactly... And apparently the sauce they put on it has a very recognizable smell because my host mom instantly noticed I'd eaten it). Also had some mizu-ame... Apparently I had a bit of an unlucky streak because normally mizu-ame is a grape or small apple in liquid candy but I got an umeboshi-flavoured one (I don't like umeboshi, it's incredibly sour AND bitter AND salty. They make it by placing some kind of fruit in a lightly salted liquid for a certain time). I did have some luck though because due to winning against the stall owner with Rock Paper Scissors I got an extra no-fruit one so that was ok. And I drank Ramune Soda! I love Ramune Soda! I had it in Belgium as well but I only really appreciate how specific it's taste is over here. They even have Ramune Soda flavoured ice cream over here... It's yummy...
Anyway, back to the matsuri
After all that munching I watched a show at the primary school where they had invited some (locally) well-known enka (traditional japanese singing) performers.
I got quite bored after a while and walked around some more.
In the evening I watched the aomori nebuta parade.
>>> Nihon no bunka intermezzo: aomori nebuta: Movable lighted statues made out of rice paper and metal wire that are painted to depict traditional japanese themes. They are originally from Aomori prefecture so everyone calls them aomori nebuta.
Apparently they let Hadano's middle schools enter some simple square ones that they'd painted so that was quite interesting :) Some of them were really pretty :O (watch the pictures, they're worth it)
After that was finished the fireworks started. Because it was really dark by then the pictures I took then are quite worthless but they should give you an idea of what I'm about to describe. They started by lighting up piles of wood along the river and playing drums and stuff, and after that the real spectacle began: they lined the full length of the river with a rope filled with a kind of giant sparklers that rained down colourful sparkles for like 10 minutes or so.
Japanese people really turn fireworks into art.
In the regular air fireworks I saw some quite amazing stuff, like smileys with the outside and the eyes in different colours and things like that. Really pretty.

And now for some added value!

It's small, silent and pokes at your back in an attempt to get past you.
Old ladies at the matsuri.
It's large, loud and pokes at your back before pushing you aside.
3 Old ladies at the matsuri holding hands.
How do you recognize a drunk at the matsuri?
He's holding a paper cup with "KIRIN" on it and trying his very best not to fall into the river :D

Then something about yes and no.
Yes and no are very complicated over here... You have to listen very carefully to what they say. And on top of that it differs from person to person because some people know that it's different over here and adapt to our way of thinking, which only leads to misunderstandings.
When someone asks you "Aren't you going to eat?" in English you can answer "Yes, I'm going to now." In Japanese you'd have to answer "No, I'm going to now", because the other person said Aren't, which is a negative form.
The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that my family assumes that I'd say Yes and No in English instinctively. So every time I say iie, which means no in Japanese, they think I'm saying Yeah in English... Every time that happens I say "NI-HON-GO" (Japanese) quite expressively :P

Some more added value! (all to make up for the lack of content the past few days :D)
The water over here is completely crazy. For example it's full of air. Whenever I take a bath all the hair on my body fills up with bubbles and the bubbles start creeping up my back and irritating me :P
Aside from that it seems strangely more viscous than Belgian water... Strange.

An important note on the side: My class is making "Belgian Waffles" for the school culture festival tomorrow... LOL :P

Das Jorenness, over and out.

Update: Matsuri! (Part 1)

Hi everyone!

I know I've been a bit of a no-show the last few days but yeah... I had stuff to do.

I've been preparing for a speech I was supposed to do at our school's annual culture festival (which is this friday and saturday) but now got postponed to somewhere in november or something.

But the important news is: I went to a matsuri! A matsuri is like the Japanese version of what I would call a "kermis" in Dutch. Only it's filled with food stalls and street performers (and cute kids in traditional Japanese clothing (there is NOTHING on this earth that's cuter than grade school girls in kimono. Nothing). Besides that there are traditional Japanese dance performances and they go around with like stuff from local shrines and big statues and stuff!

For the pictures see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42370919@N07/sets/72157622479998980/

Yeah!

Anyway so saturday evening my sister comes up to me and says like "Hey, you wanted to go to a matsuri right? There's one in Hadano tomorrow!"

By pure divine luck my o-nee-chan found out about what I think was the last matsuri in our province. (I'm not even sure Hadano IS in our province though... It was quite far by train. It's on the Odawara line I think, about half an hour from Sagami-Oono or something, I don't quite remember. It's after Hon-Atsugi anyway so it is quite far).

The thing was: I had to go alone. My host sister had part-time job on sunday, my host father had football training and my host mother had something else that I don't quite understand to do. So I was completely alone.

But, despite that, I bravely stepped on the train on sunday morning and found my way quite easily to Hadano.

Arriving there the matsuri was noticeable from within the station. They were handing out flyers with maps and event time tables at the station exits. Outside the station I saw some wacked Japanese young'uns doing some serious breakdancing! (I think I taped it but by the time you get to see that video it'll be next week I think :P I'll put the mix of everything I taped on youtube soon enough).

The food smell was... everywhere. And not just meat or sweet stuff, anything.

They were selling drinks and stuff down the stairs to the station. And giant Stitch teddies.

Anyway I had a rather good mental image of the town map in my head so I walked upstream (sort of quite literally) to the local primary school (that's where most of the events were being hosted).

There I bought myself a bag of strawberry icy lemonade (a bag, yes).

Though it was good and refreshing the guy at the stall selling it was a total creep. (Creep, not Creap. Creap is the stuff my host mom puts in her coffee. It's short for CREAmy Powder. It cracks me up every time).

Apparently I was there just in time to see the parade leave. Wasn't much of a parade. Some people in like traditional Japanese outfit but it was mostly parents of children from the local schools. Apparently I missed the awa-odori (traditional japanese dancing) because it was saturday. Zannen deshita (too bad), as Toyomu would say :D

That's all for today, I'll post more tomorrow!

O-tanoshimi-ni! (Look forward to it!)

A new family!

Minna-sama gokigenyou from Japan!

I've moved to my new family! From now on I'll live with the Sato family for the rest of my exchange. My host parents are called Yumiko and Tadao (1: names ending with ko are always female. 2: from now on they shall be called okaasan and otousan (mom and dad). To distinguish between my family here and my family in Belgium I shall always denominate the Japanese ones in Japanese.
I also have a brother and sister: Keisuke and Moeko. 21 and 18 (soon to be 19) years old respectively. Although I've already been here a full day I haven't seen any of them (though I've been told that Keisuke came and left while I was sleeping).

Besides that I have another quite important announcement to make: I bought a keitai!

Nihon no Kotoba intermezzo: Keitai: To distinguish between ordinary rest-of-the-world mobile phones and Japanese ones I shall use the word keitai. Japanese keitai can do a whole lot more than make phone calls! They send mails (real ones, no texts/sms, thus eliminating that concept from Japanese collective consciousness), browse the web, pay at the supermarket, exchange data with infrared, act as gps, can be used to watch television channels, ...
Now most of these functions cost money so you have to be careful while using them but still it's quite cool they have a nationwide 3G network that those phones use.

The whole discussion at the au store (a mobile phone provider, we went to softbank too but softbank suck) was done in really fast Japanese by okaasan with the really polite store clerk so I didn't get most of it... But in the end I think I got quite a good deal. I took the package where the phone itself was free and I only have to pay for my monthly fee. They calculated it at the store and it eventually amounts to just over 200 euros for the full year that I'm here (including 9000 yen cancellation fee because the shortest keitai contract over here is 2 years. bloodsuckers)
I think I made a good choice in which set to take, I have an "international" sony ericsson so I might be able to use it in Belgium as well...

Take care! I'll write more later.

Joren