Japanese Drivers

I've heard it said by some individuals that Japanese driving sucks. At the time I thought it nothing but a racist comment.
However, during my time here I have come to a different conclusion. To a degree I think the person's comment was semi justifiable. In Japan, courtesy when driving is very different. It is normal course to jut out in front of other cars in small back road t-intersections, or anywhere that you want to enter the flow of traffic.
In Australia this would be considered rude and dangerous and would yield comments such as "Japanese people are shit drivers".
I think this works in Japan because these people are perhaps in general more attentive, and are 'better' drivers than most Australians.
If an Aussie went to Japan and drove like an Aussie, they may also be considered a bad driver in some ways.
In the end I think driving in another country is like learning another culture, you need to be open to the differences, on both ends, though still try and adapt to the local customs.
Fascinating the things I think about.

Week... 3

Well I appear to have failed at coming up with an interesting name for this weeks update.

First things first, or last cause I'm doing the last things first... Anyway, I can see Mt Fuji out my window, though not for much longer cause it's getting dark. I didn't really know where it was, so I thought it was further north. I saw it, checked my computer for it's location, cause I didn't think I should be able to see it out that window, and yay for me I was wrong. It was Mt Fuji (which is very distinctive anyway). Though I asked my host sister about it by pointing and saying 'fujiyama' (yama meaning mountain) and she laughs and says Fuji-san, as though Mr.Fuji. My host father did the same, so I'm gonna assume that this is normal practice, and a part of the culture that I hadn't come across before. It's seems they anthropomorphosize their mountains, or at least mt Fuji.
Quite awe-inspiring, seeing it's vast form silhouetted against the sunset sky. A sight that my camera does absolutely no justice...

Slightly further back in time, two days ago to be precise. I was walking with another 2 of the Aussie students, and I see some tourists taking a photo of a vending machine, or of one of the drinks in it. So I say to my fellow companions "Look, taking photos of vending machines. They must be tourists." Now, I hurry to point out that from my last trip here I have quite a few photos of vending machines, and while it does rather suggest you're a tourist, I see nothing really wrong with that.I thought I said this quietly enough so m companions may hear and the a fore mentioned tourists wouldn't, as they may take offense, which apparently they did. I also probably embarrassed my companions. In any case, I apologize for the encounter, and I've felt kinda bad about it since.

I think I want to get a new DS, however if I manage to find a cheapish one, I don't know what I want. DS, DS lite, or DSi? Furthermore, it would be most useful if I had my R4 card with me, as I don't know how I can get one here, aside from over the internet. As such I don't think I'll be able to decide before the week is out and I'll have to find a new place to get one once in Nagoya.

I get the feeling I wont know enough Japanese by the time I get to the school tobe able to understand what's going on. This could be fun...

Ooh, I was planning some afternoon to go to Jasper's host family's candy shop, cause I like candy, and it's close. But I didn't need to go later cause my host mum took me there today with my host siblings, cause they go there often. We played SSBB, and I pwned them. We played Wii Resort, and I lost horribly at the sword swinging, cause he had unfairly played before...

I got me a little notepad that I shall endeavor to keep on me at all times and a pen, so I may write all the little words I hear and need to know what they mean when I don't happen to have a dictionary on me at the time.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for the moment, so till next week, or before if I think of anything, Fare thee well.

Week 2

I'm hoping I don't end up sticking to a boring update every week with what I did and name each update 'week x'. I think I'd find it tedious.

Ooh, I wrote the last one just before the Onsen didn't I. Well, if you ever get the chance to go to Japan, and if you ever get offered a chance to go to an onsen, ignore your usual "omg I don't wanna get naked in front of strangers." and try it. For them it's normal that people go to onsens, and they don't make a huge fuss over being naked, you're being typically foreign if you hesitate, and you all know how much you hate 'tourists' (using the term with utmost derision).
Anyway, after ignoring all that and not thinking about everyone else, you can have a very relaxing time, and it's an experience you wont experience elsewhere.

I've had a couple of interesting meals in the past week, one last Sunday, called Shabu shabu if I remember rightly. We had 2 pots boiling away and we'd dip various meat, vegetables, and fungi and cook it. The meat cooked in seconds, then I was dipping mine in sesame sauce and eating with rice. Quite nice. The second involved a similar principle, though employed a fry pan rather than a pot of boiling water. I also had that for lunch today at a restaurant.
That brings me to noodles for some reason, slurp, loudly. They do it, and it cools the noodles as you slurp them. Very handy.

Yay I got to play with Lego, so much fun, and they have more than we ever did, but then so do alot of people. I made a gun, and pretended to shoot people, but they didn't pretend to die. Perhaps its cause last time they did the same to me, I pretended the bullets bounced off my chest, as though my chest were a magic mirror for bullets.

I notice slight improvements in my language skills. I remember more words, but I still have little confidence in actually speaking, listening is easier. The lessons are mostly fine. There is one teacher I don't happen to like as much, but not for any reason I can think of. Perhaps I just don't like them as much as the others so my mind decides to dislike them, cause it thinks I'm supposed to. My mind is a fickle thing at times...

I've been exploring every afternoon a bit to see what's around, I ended up in Akihabara again, cause I love that place so much. I didn't buy anything, but I do find things I may think about buying later. Akihabara is the place for all computer nerds, electronic nerds, and otaku (very nerdy anime nerds). Though, there are quite a few things that our culture would consider a bit questionable, so it's not a place for the innocent. A while back I, when with someone else, we found what at first appeared to be just a cosplay shop, upon closer inspection we discovered it was a bit more particular than just 'cosplay' so we left...
So many computer shops though, and I've managed to find that I can get a hard drive case for 3.5" IDE drive for about $20 or an IDE-USB cable for about $25, not sure what is the norm though, so not sure if this is worth it.

We visited a girls senior high school on Thursday, and had to make a small presentation about Australia. It was a short speech followed by a quiz to see if they were listening, all in Japanese. That was also the day the Thai students came. So there was, a Korean, European (Germany, Finland, Sweden), New Zealand, Aussie, and Thai presentation. Oddly enough, the one NZ girl is Asian, can't remember which specific part though... Aussies being Aussies went on about the sheep to her.
We got a tour of the school, there were koi in a pond. I don't think I'd seen any that big before...

A button came off my Pj's! Some people I know may wonder how that is possible...
Odd the first time I vote I'm not even in the country, let alone the electorate I'm supposed to be voting for.
Panoramas are fun to make with Hugin.
Kohane-kun like soccer, so does Ashita-san. Ooh, he got me to tell him how to type in an underscore on his keyboard, what's worse, I knew how... I have been in contact with Japanese keyboards for only the past 2 weeks, and for about 10 mins 4 years ago, and he's had them most of his life presumably. Ah well, perhaps they just don't use that key often, try asking an Aussie where the 'tilde' key is.
I've been noticing my lovely gaijin powers on occasion, for those of you who know what I'm on about.

Anyway, I'm getting a touch sleepy right about now, in fact I'm getting sleepy about all the time. So I bid thee all farewell again till next time.

Week 1

Well hai thar everyone,here I am after having partially settled in for the past week.
I am currently living in a building on the third floor, I'm not sure if the second floor has anyone in it... and the bottom floor is like a garage and my host father's dogs are kept there. They keep 3 goldfish, 2 turtles and an axalotl in the main room, and a bunch of dogs, Ashita-san breeds them, in cages in the 'garage'. The other family members are Shinobu-san, host mother, Kohane-chan and Tsukino-chan, host sisters 9 and 8 respectively. I always note that Japanese people seem younger than they are.

EDIT: Umm... interesting update, Kohane is a actually a guy. The forms I got were apparently wrong.

Every day I get up at around 6:45 and have a shower, eat breakfast, usually bacon and eggs, and then walk most of the way to the train station with Kohane and Tsukino. We split off and they go to school and I get on the train to Funabashi, meet up with Jasper, though probably not anymore cause he said he'd be going on an earlier train now, and travel to the language school with another 3 train changes.
I'm hoping the constant exposure to Japanese will help improve my Japanese faster, so having the rule that we are only supposed to speak Japanese in the lessons should help. But rules are made to be broken it seems...Nah, we do alright.
On Monday we were given a test to sort us by our Japanese skills. We were split into 2 classes and I'm not in the higher class. One from teh lower class has moved to the higher class, but I don't know if it would be a good idea for me...
Just about every day I've been having ramen for lunch. とてもおいしいですね～。However if I do that every day I'm gonna use up my monthly allowance on ramen alone... So I need to find a cheaper lunch, probably from the supermarket, which is also close.
After school, I usually have a bit of time to explore some part of Tokyo. So far I've been to Akihabara, where I bought a Aussie-Jap power adapter cause there are few power points in Japan that use the ground pin, and it works fine. I've been to Shibuya, where I walked around and took photos that will make my siblings jealous, various landmarks that they'd recognise. I've been to a couple of book stores and gone crazy over the manga section, but haven't yet bought anything, I don't know enough Japanese to read them well enough.
Last night, m host family took me to a ramen place, cause they knew I liked ramen. There we met up with some family friends and I discovered that Japanese people can be just as crude as the rest of us. Ashita-san was constantly calling one of the other guys gay. But it was all good. I did notice that kids in Japan are very quick to trust you. There was a little girl there, I think a bit younger than Tsukino-chan, who was by the end of the night treating me just like all the other adults, a leaning post and seat.
This morning I woke and found I don't know where anyone is... and I don't know what I can do about breakfast...
Ah well, in short I'm having an awesome time here, though there are people home I do miss, some more than others. Oh and btw, I'm apparently returning on the 23rd or 24th... Really 'just in time' for Christmas.