The end?

Well, that's mostly it. After but a few days I will arrive home in Australia a most confused person. I will greatly miss all those I met this year, and be ecstatic about meeting my friends and family again. This year has been a very new experience for me. Even though I came to Japan for a week or so about 4 years ago, so much this year was new and exciting.
My last time coming saw me enter the building for a Japanese junior high school, but I didn't attend it. This year I was attending a senior high school, going to lessons, obeying school rules (to a degree), and the most characteristic part of Japanese schools, attending after school club activities.
The club activity I joined this year was probably the most fun I had. I made the most friends there and they were the hardest to say goodbye to on Friday.
On countless occasions this year, together we have performed with these Japanese instruments, and on one occasion we performed with the local army base's mini orchestra.
With my host family constantly changing over the year, and my classes being spread out around the school more than the rest of my class, club was the most stable part of the trip. Every day after lessons I would go to the practice room, a fine room with a genkan (small area for leaving your shoes, a small entrance room, and a tatami room with a size of 40 tatami mats. Every day I would go there and we would practice for about 3-4 hours a day.
For the first half of the year I played the Koto (a long instrument like a zither, played by plucking it's 13 strings with 3 picks attached to your thumb, index and middle finger), and greatly enjoyed it. After the summer holidays (which was spent doing 5 hour practice days for most of it), I decided to try the Shamisen (like a banjo with 3 strings and played with a very large pick called a bachi). My teacher told me she's had a few foreigners join the club over the years but none had tried the Shamisen before, and to be sure it's a difficult instrument to get the hang of.
These people were the closest to a family I had in Japan, and saying goodbye to them, possibly forever, was very hard. I was moved greatly (and that is no small thing for me) when one of my club members told me "though you can't enter the prefectural competition in January, it will be as though you're there playing beside us."
I was gifted with a Koto to take home (damn expensive to actually send home), and whenever I play it, I hope to remember the year I spent with these people.

Though they aren't the only people I'm saying goodbye to tomorrow when I get on that plane. My host families, other school students, friends I met outside of school, other exchange students, I leave them all behind when I return home. In various school activities like the sports day and the culture festival, our class worked together and we had fun.

This year has taught me many things too. That may be said too much by people on long trips, but it's true. Mostly about language, not just Japanese, but also some English, and how language works. I got to be acted against for my appearance, nothing serious, just people moving to another seat and sometimes glaring at me a bit. But it's interesting to experience. (though it could also have been my hair...)

I completed some life goals too, I can make myself understood in most situations in Japanese, not very well but well enough. I also ate some largely controversial food that I've wanted to consume for some time. Though now I have to try it cooked not raw.

One of the hardest parts about Japanese culture is their constant attempt to tell you what you want to hear, which often means praise. I like praise to a certain extent, but I also feel it adds responsibility, responsibility that I don't want. For example when I play a phrase of music in my club well, the teacher praises how good it sounds and then I have an obligation to do as well ever after or cause disappointment, which I then proceed to do the next time I try. Or at least that's what goes through me head. Either way this year was full of moments of me thinking "don't say that, there's no way I can live up to that"...

So this year comes to a close, I am leaving this place. Yet it's not so sad, I have done too much here, seen so much, made so much, so much that I can't possibly not come back again sometime. So, assuming life continues, when money allows, I will come back. Maybe for a holiday, maybe for study, maybe to find a way to live and work. In any case I don't intend on staying in Australia forever.
Congratulations Japan, you've made another regular visitor whether you want me or not. Though... only as regular as money allows.

Goodbye Japan! 又ね　(^o^)/

274th day

(Apparently)
Well I'm nice and settled back into the internet, with some wonderful news. I'll be with this host family for the rest of my stay so no need to worry about me disappearing again unless I die.

Well, not a lot new has happened since my last, but I went on a trip with my host family last week up to Fukui. The fishing trip before was in Fukui, but I never went anywhere I had been when I stayed there last time I came to Japan.
This time I found my way to the Fukui dinosaur museum. It was great visiting that place again. I probably took twice as many photos as I did last time.
Only probalem is, in those places I want to look at everything and take my time, but my host siblings just wanted to take a quick glance at everything and run off... so I went a bit faster than I'd have liked.

I've had this open for over 24 hours waiting to be finished so I'm gonna stop here with a couple pics from the trip.

I'm alive!!

It has been some time...
I will start from the start, after I start from the latest...

Today I went to Nagashima Spa Land. It is not full of Spas, and the pool area is only open summer so I didn't get to go there.
But the rest was awesome. Very.
See here I'm enjoying myself thoroughly on the "Steel Dragon 2000"

Lots of rides and a free pass for all rides makes for a fun 4 hours of school.

Anyway, let us go back in time to about 2 months and a week ago. I left my 4th host family to brave the harsh world of another family. Wasn't that harsh really. A very nice family even.

However at the beginning, as with all new host families, I was too nervous to ask things and too worried about offending in some way so I never got around to asking about internet. I didn't forget though. When I was in the main room I looked around for a router or anything to connect to the internet and saw nothing, and I never saw them using the internet so i came to the conclusion they didn't have it.
After about a month or so I started to get suspicions that maybe they did have internet, but still didn't see a router so figured that it may have been one of those USB connections that I wouldn't be able to make use of anyway.
Finally, last week, I discovered they did indeed have internet and that it was something I could connect to with my computer. So I made a tentative inquiry about what would happen to the cost if I were to use it too. They got surprised thinking I'd been using it the whole time. That was their assumption so they'd never mentioned it. So that night we set up my computer to connect and now I have internet again, just in time to go to a new host family in a week or so and start all over again...

Since then in short... Watched all of Red Dwarf, started new school term, German exchange student "Maurice" rocked up there, visited various Japanese places with him, performed a few times with club, performed an awesome show with club in collaboration with the local Japanese defence force's orchestra (awesome), went fishing and caught a nice fish, had a birthday, bought The Hobbit in Japanese, went to Nagashima Spa Land, got bored in lessons, bought the new pokemon black, saw a toucan in the turtle exhibit, and many more, but to go into detail might take some time, so instead I'll put up some pictures and might go into detail if it's requested later.

全国大会 - 宮崎

For those who can't read Japanese Kanji, that says "Zenkoku Taikai - Miyazaki" which in turn means "Whole country big meet - Miyazaki" or something of that nature.
It's an annual event, possibly always in Miyazaki, not sure... The event seems to be a cultural festival of sorts, that Japanese people seem to love holding. However it was less focused on showcasing to the general public. I think most of the audiences were families of those attending, and a few people that just happened to be interested in watching.
Various events included drama, chorus, various instruments, Japanese style music, various martial arts, baton twirling (which is big in schools here), art, calligraphy (Kanji), shogi (Japanese chess), speech, flower arranging, and others...
My school club, earlier in the year, attended the 愛知県大会 (Aichi-ken Taikai (Aichi prefecture big meet)), and being in the top 2 or 3, qualified to attend this event in Miyazaki. By earlier this year, it was 2010, but in the previous school year, before I started.

And so at about 9:55 pm on the 31st of July 2010, 18 students, 2 teachers, 2 past students, and 2 bus drivers got into a big bus loaded with instruments and luggage, and departed on a 16 hour drive to the south of Japan.

For those who don't know, a bus is like a plane when it comes to sleeping, except slightly better cause you might be able to stretch your legs under the seat in front. Bus trips are boring so I wont go on about it but to say I played games on my DS, spoke a bit, and nearly lost parts of my earphones on numerous occasions.

So we arrive at the Miyazaki. We're all a tad buggered, due to it being near impossible to sleep properly on a bus, and at the venue we unload our instruments and are led to a place to unpack and set them up. Then we get led to a little room to tune our instruments and have time to run through once. We then proceed to be led back into the main building where we wait outside a door to the stage, we then enter, wait, go on stage, play, leave stage, go back to the first room and repacked our instruments.
During this practice I was a tad confused due to language, but I managed to work out it was a practice run-through of the actual thing about the time we were lining up to enter the stage...
I also noted we would only stay in Miyazaki for a tiny length of time compared to the event being 2 days long.
We got back on the bus and drove further south to Kagoshima prefecture to our hotel.

More practice was done there, as well as dinner and... the hotel had an onsen. So I went in that both nights at the hotel.

On the second day at the hotel, we were given free time, yipee. We split into groups, basically our parts for the music, and the part leaders decided where each group would go. Then the groups were mangled and everyone changed cause they wanted to be with this friend or they wanted to go to that place or they didn't think the one guy in their group (me) would enjoy what the rest of them wanted to do.

So I ended up going to the Kagoshima Aquarium with 2 of the other guys and about 5 of the girls.

"It was pretty cool :D"

I also had ramen that day, and remembered that ramen freshly made in a ramen stand is still infinitely better than instant ramen, which in turn is infinitely better than Aussie instant ramen...

Then came THE DAY. It was a Tuesday, 3rd of August to be precise. We woke at 5, got into school uniform, had an early breakfast, packed our bags and instruments into the bus and left the hotel at about 7.
We arrived back at the venue, the nerves were starting to be felt by some. I just figured it felt much the same as opening night for shouts, even if there was a bit more riding on how well I played...

We went through just the same as the practice 2 days prior, but then while waiting backstage, we could actually hear the group before us playing. Then we got on stage. I remembered to slightly close my eyes so I wouldn't be stunned by the sudden brightening of the lights.

And we played.

I have to say playing in a group is so much more satisfying than playing by yourself, being able to hear all the other parts of the music while playing something completely different and yet complimentary is just amazing. The only time apart from this year I've played in a group was in year 8 or 9 where I hit a tambourine a bit during presentation night.

I thought we'd done alright, not excellent, but fairly good. I had made a few mistakes, nothing I hadn't expected. The only effect of nerves was a bit of shaking in my hands, which does make it interesting playing.

We then packed our instruments back into the bus and had lunch at the venue, and to my joy we had a chance to listen to some of the other groups. I quickly realized that perhaps we had not done as well as I thought...
The first group was particularly notable for the fact that they were singing. Traditional Japanese singing is very different from anything else I'm used to, and it's not something I'd go out of my way to listen to. That being said, when you hear music live, it becomes amazing, unless they really suck... But they didn't so it was cool. My favourite was the 3rd group we watched. They played a song that used some horrible chords, but in a way that they worked. It was a very evil sounding bit of music.

After these mostly magnificent performances, we got back on the bus and headed on. We stopped in the next prefecture north, called Kumamoto, and made our way to the Kumamoto castle. I remember the name as one of the 2 past students was acting as a guide for the fun of it and kept saying "Oraiasu, this is Kumamoto castle". I was told she apparently only knows about this much English and so kept saying it to me. 'Twas amusing.

Japanese history I find more interesting than a lot of other human history, maybe because a lot of it is so recent in comparison. Because of the way Japan closed itself from the outside world except through Nagasaki, it retained it's medieval culture for longer, and still does to an extent today. But also, Japanese castles are always fun to look at, and this is one of the 3 biggest in Japan.

Unfortunately it started raining and we didn't have much time so I couldn't enjoy it to the full extent I wanted to, so I dashed to the top, took some photos, and had to dash back down.
We returned to the bus and headed on... to an onsen. That's 3 times in 3 days. Though this one was a meager 39 degrees compared to 40 something. I preferred the heat of the hotel's onsen.

After a refreshing bath, we finally got out of our uniform and headed on our way back to Aichi, after a brief stop for dinner.

So in all it was an excellent experience, much discussion was had on the bus after the competition. We all had to give our impressions, and what we felt about how it went etc. There were a few tears when it came to the third years as it was their final chance to have gone to a zenkoku taikai (apparently we qualify pretty much every year). Being unable to understand the finer points of the language this didn't affect me so much... Though I did get my chance to be greatful for everyone making my 'only' zenkoku taikai experience a good one. Which was the followed by exclamations of how good my Japanese was getting... I still don't believe them.

I haven't found out what we came, but I 'think' today it was mentioned that the other Aichi prefecture school came first. But they may have been talking about something else...

Well that's that, the August-June students have partially arrived in Tokyo. But the student coming to join me at Kikuka hasn't arrived in Japan yet. The Germans and another group get here on the weekend I hear. Then they'll study in Tokyo for a month before being separated around Japan. Just in time for the start of term in September.

Tis all for now, but it is a fair bit... so be happy. Tata.

Semi-season

No, it's not half a season. Semi (せみ ( 蝉 )) in this case refers to a semi large insect, with a squat face, large wings at maturity, and appears to have a long proboscis like mouth. It has 2 main stages of life, that I have observed, juveniles are wingless and have more claw like forelegs for climbing, I assume. Where as the adults have large wings and more leg-like forelegs, as they don't need to attach to trees, falling shouldn't be a problem.
Oddly enough, every time I see them they do have a problem with flying... They don't seem very good at it. They give off an aura of clumsiness and seem a bit stupid (as far as insects go).
I've come across 3 in the last few weeks, a juvenile, and adult, and what my host brother described as a nearly dead one (death by aging), that one was interesting, seeming to have lase transparent wings that seemed more like moth wings, but you could still see the partitions of wing segments. I figured it might just be a different species of cicada, but i really have no idea about these things.
Although I've only seen 3, and various empty husks from when they mature, they will become more and more apparent in the coming weeks by the characteristic noise that they are infamous around the world for...
If you hadn't guessed yet, it's a cicada.

And they're so damn cute:












I've always wanted a new pet, no actually that's kind of a lie.
But these things are fascinating.

... Now I do know some stuff, there are apparently over 30 species in Japan alone (200 odd in Australia by the way), so perhaps the early post-shedding one had shed that day, while the later one was as my host brother suggested, a lot older.
Also apparently the adult males, who make the loud noise, can 'turn off' their ears while calling. That could be handy in many a domestic home.
They can reach sounds of 120dB, which is enough to cause permanent hearing loss to a human if placed next tot the ear...

From what I can work out by image similarities, the 4th image is of this species http://homepage2.nifty.com/saisho/photo/abura/aburazemi.html .
I would assume most of the cicada in the same street would probably be the same species, but I can't say for certain... they seem too different to me. The markings behind the eyes are completely different, so I think I'm gonna stand by saying they're 2 different species.
Still fascinating, I wish I had a camera with better macro... I shall endeavor to find out more about the ones living in my area, but I was told it's very hard to catch them... I've not yet had any problem...

In other news, I can hear fireworks in the distance, as that is traditional summer festivities. Speaking of which I finally found out where to buy some... From a convenience store, they are so very convenient here. Small, everywhere, with everything.

Now let's look in my little notebook that has been sadly neglected too much... resulting in few points to talk about.

We were playing through what we could during club, and the end of the song gets pretty epic in my opinion. So as we're getting all crescendo-y and the songs about to finish, rain starts to build. And when we finish, everyone ends up staring outside cause it is hammering down with rain. The teacher suggested it was the awesomeness of the song that did it. I agree.

I was standing on one side of the pedestrian crossing just outside the station near my school, with my umbrella above my head stopping me from getting wet. It's a nice big one that makes a good walking stick too. I look to the other side of the road, and think nothing of the 6 or 7 people standing there. Till I notice they're not using umbrella's... It wasn't raining.

Oh! I was on the train coming home from Saturday club last Saturday, believe it or not, and out the train window, when about to stop at the station near my house, I see a hedge. But not just any hedge I hasten to add. It was a dragon, a typical eastern dragon, made from a bush.

Hmm, again club related, we were doing an excessive on timing, in this case semi-quavers, so we were saying various 4 syllable words, like 'takahashi' and others. The teacher then made me have a go, I can't remember the word, but after a couple of times saying it the entire club was laughing at my accent. Apparently I was saying the 'o' part slightly wrong... Then I deliberately exaggerated it, just for giggles.

And that's all my notes... So the rest is off the top of my head (as was the cicada bit)

I'm going to go and see the new pokemon movie soon, not for the actual movie itself, but for the pokemon I can download onto my game. A shiney 2nd Gen legendary dog, and Celebi, for those that understand.
I've also pre gotten my ticket to see the new Studio Ghibli movie when it hits theatres, which it may have done already... Going to see that one with my host brother. It has something to do with a very small girl, bug sized, but I only know this from posters. So the story is a complete mystery to me, and I probably wont be able to understand half of it. Good fun.

Well that's it for now, my mind has blanked and I can't think of any more at the moment. I shall endeavor to use the little note pad more so I can tell you all the awesome things that happen, but we shall see.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

July

It's hot, often wet, and PE these days is horrible... So I like to stay inside and do stuff in the house.
But I have school everyday so that's not so easy... And from next week I also appear to have club activities on Saturday. This isn't a problem cause that's the best thing about school at the moment.
Should be, depending on circumstances, heading down to Myazaki to perform in a country wide soukyoku competition, at least that's what I gather it to be... However circumstances include, a form I need to fill out requiring host family's signature, and seeing as I'm supposed to be changing host family sometime I don't know what to do about that yet... Actually that's pretty much it, but it is a problem, I think I'll call up YES and ask them what to do...

Now to my notes, that are few...

I saw a dragon fly on the train... I got on after school, and a large black dragonfly was flying around inside... Made my day. On another day, I was on my last train for the day, and I looked at one of the seats. On it was a woman, and a man sleeping with his head on her. So I assumed they were probably partners. Then I saw the woman give his head this look that said she had no idea who this guy was. Then when we got to my station, she got up and left, he looked around for a moment looking almost asleep still, then I left the train and didn't see anymore. I thought it amusing.

I discovered there is a family of cats living nearby my school. I saw a bunch of kittens playing around outside the school, and had to be careful not to chase one of them too far away from home... Another day I saw their mum, a white bedraggled looking thing with a green eye and a blue eye. Looked incredibly evil, and just glared at me as I passed. I see them every now and then after that.

I think I like Celtic music...

I lost track of what else I might have been going to say here, so I'll end with this final note.
My host families have all had previous students, bar the second that I only stayed with for 3 nights. So to make a good impression you have to be better than previous students, and then life is easy... Though I dunno how well I'm doing at that cause it's rude to ask.

So farewell for now. You have not yet seen the last of me...

2 weeks...

...and a day of actually living in the same prefecture I get my education. That's a new record, by 2 weeks and a day. I must say it's quite refreshing not having to get up so early... except that it's not cause I get up at the same time, it takes just as long to get to school, well a bit less, and I've decided to start attending the morning sessions of my club so I end up leaving earlier and I've lapsed into the habit of evening showers. Except that I have them when I get home from school, which this week happens to be about midday, due to end of semester tests. That happen to be starting almost exactly a month before the actual end of semester...But short days for the rest of term, is a good thing. I' have also worked out why the total holidays for students in Japan is shorter, it's cause half the actual schooldays are short for some reason...I have been typing like I think...jumping here and there in one long paragraph that can't really be separated easily... ごめんね

I was doing some study in my club time last week, as the club decided to spend the first hour of club time studying for tests, and I read someones English lesson book. It had a phrase "don't stop to translate every word." I like this, and have decided to try it while reading my manga, with limited success. I have to find the right words to stop and translate so I can follow whats going on, but skip the superfluous ones so I can read at a decent speed to keep me engaged...
むずかしい

Well another thing I did last week was rather stupid... You play the Koto with a kind of pick that loops around your thumb, well 3, one on the thumb and one on each of the index and middle fingers. My thumb one broke, glue probably was dissolved by my acidic sweat of death or something... So I put it aside and decided to try without it. Then we decided to play all of what we could, this ended badly for my thumb, I spent the rest of the day with a nice blister. Which I eventually got sick of and I wont go into he gory details of what happened then....

I'm reading off a list of things to put in my blog, and next regards LANGUAGE!! In particular the horrible situations that can potentially be caused by differences... Honky, this is a fun word, a playful word, one that you could snigger at easily... However, in Japanese there is the unfortunate word 本気 (hon ki) which sounds remarkably similar... It means "serious" as in "I'm deadly serious so you'd better not laugh", at which point English speakers will burst into gleeful giggling at the serious look of the mans face as he says "honky". Most unfortunate... I have yet to have this happen to me, but it will...

I got a chocolate euro the other day, it was tasty.

The principal at my school, I had been told, was a most interesting man (the word interesting that I know is generally used for "entertaining" as it can mean humorous). So today, as I was studying hard (hardly studying, looking at my test results) in the kokusai center (international room), and having a light conversation with Watanabe Sensei, the principal comes in. Both of us are quite surprised, I'm supposed to be very polite to him... We then have a short conversation, Watanabe Sensei explaining that I'm studying for my test the next lesson, and at the end of that I do my new habit of sticking up my thumb in a sort of "good on ya mate" fashion (while not meaning exactly that). We then get onto how up is good and down is bad, then the principal starts to show off other finger gestures he knows... Peace sign with back of hand facing outward, I quickly explain this is rude. Then he closes his fist and puts up his little finger, and says this is Watanabe Sensei, we all just cracked up. I think I can agree the principal is an interesting man.

Trains are an endless source of entertainment thankfully, as I spend a lot of time on them. It's just fascinating to watch the train staff go about their business. They have windows into the cabin, and most train drivers and, I'm gonna call them back-men cause they sit in the back and do everything else that isn't driving, leave the blinds up. This means I can carefully watch what they do. They do everything so precisely and to the letter. When driving, you see them point at their papers, then point to their eyes, and then point ahead, and then point at their eyes. Maybe they're on camera and they're showing that they're performing the checks correctly. I dunno...
The back-men make all announcements required, assuming they don't use the automated ones, like in Tokyo. But the curious thing is, they all have exactly the same slightly higher than normal pitch nasal voice when doing this... I start to think they train them almost too carefully. (lol train)
But they do what a lot of people don't, they appear to take great pride in their work. I have utmost admiration for their work, and I am proud to be able ride their trains.

In other news, a fish tried to eat my finger. Warning, this is not for the faint of heart. The fish is extremely aggressive and I could have lost my finger...



I want to keep him, he's so cute...

Farewell Olly-Watchers! Till next time (find me if you can)