Bicycles

Things Japanese People Can Do On Bikes Which Apparently No-One Else Can

1) Hold umbrellas

This is technically illegal, but everyone does it. You cycle on the pavement so you don't need to signal, leaving one hand free to hold the umbrella and the other to steer. Usually safe enough, except when holding the umbrella right in front of your head against the wind, which blocks your view. Yes, I saw a guy doing that.

2) Text

This is quite an incredible skill. I've been able to hold a phone to my ear while cycling, since you still have eyes on the road, but to text you need to be able to watch two things at once. To be fair, I have seen mostly girls doing this (it is multi-tasking, after all), but I would definitely crash into the nearest lamppost/wall/pedestrian/small child if I tried it.

3) Smoke

Okay, so maybe anyone could do this, but wouldn't the cigarette just blow out?

4) Ride up ridiculously long hills without gears

Japanese bikes are available very cheaply, because everyone has them, so they come without gears. The hill on the way back to our dorms is hell, but the guys seem to cycle up it with absolutely no problems. Maybe it's a proof of manliness thing and actually they're dying inside.

Christmas

Contrary to popular belief, Japanese people do celebrate Christmas.

Well, they celebrate Christmas the same as how it's becoming in the West: as an entirely commercial holiday. Our Christmas, where everyone in the family gets together and exchanges presents, is their New Year; their Christmas is more like our New Year (an excuse to get drunk, mostly).

A couple of weeks ago we saw the first Christmas decorations being sold in the home store, and about three days ago I heard the first Christmas music being played in a shop. It was one of those moments when you hear Mariah Carey's voice singing "I don't want a lot for Christmas..." and you feel like curling up in a ball and screaming NOOOOOOOOOO...

Generally my rule is: If it's not December, it's not Christmas yet. When it becomes December, I shall give in and buy a very small fake Christmas tree from the 100 yen store to put in my room, but until then I shall not acknowledge it.

Oh, hang on... by writing this, was I acknowledging it?

Autumn

This is my university campus as it was at the beginning of November. I just wanted to share this because the leaves are turning and it looks stunning at the moment - apparently Japan is famous for its autumn scenery.

Even though the sky is still blue, it recently got very cold very quickly, and everyone is now wearing coats and scarves. They don't heat the classrooms until December, either, so we sit shivering.

At least I finally worked out how to turn the heating up in my room...

まつり(matsuri)

This weekend was the university festival. In England, and apparently in America, we have nothing that remotely resembles a Japanese school or university festival. For a school one, every class in the school decides on a stall or a performance, but at the university there are all sorts of groups, so it's huge.

We arrived quite late, at 4pm, and it was already getting dark so unfortunately I have no photos, but I will try and describe it. There was a small stage outside the Education Faculty building, on which the 'Miss Education Faculty' contest was being held, with an audience of maybe 200. Walking for 5 minutes across the campus, there was a large area of stalls, mostly food - yakisoba, ramen, fried chicken (kara-age), beer - and then the main stage.

When we got there, the main stage was occupied by a very good a-capella singing group, doing covers of famous Japanese pop songs, who made way for a similar group singing Western stuff. Then came a fashion show, which I guessed was put on by the fashion department. After that, though, was the highlight - the university's 10 or so hip-hop dance troupes, each performing for a few minutes. Hip-hop dance is huge in Japan, and some of the troupes had 40 or more people in them. There were a couple of all-female ones, a couple of all-male ones, some with equal male and female, and one with a single girl, who was brilliant to watch and completely held her own with all the guys. All of them were fantastic.

Finally, when they were all finished, there was a huge fireworks display to round everything off. I really wish English universities had events like this - the atmosphere was brilliant.

Yesterday

One of the reasons I love my life here is that I never know where I'm going to end up.

Yesterday morning, I discovered that there was a new series of Never Mind the Buzzcocks just started. I was meeting my Japanese conversation partner for lunch, so I couldn't watch it straight away, but I was going to be back in a couple of hours so I thought I'd watch it then.

Halfway through lunch, I got a call from one of the girls: "We're going to Saijo Town in a couple of minutes, so when you finish lunch, call us and we'll tell you where we are."

Luckily the halls are on the way to Saijo by bike, so I got to outside the halls and phoned. "Oh, we only just left, we're at the bus stop." I cycled to the bus stop at 1pm.

Some very confusing bus timetables and some lunch later, we arrived at Saijo at 3. I decided to go with them on the bus, since we had still been at the halls and I could just put my bike back there.

At 4, one of us got a call from another student. Did we want to come to someone's house for dinner? Meet at 7:30. We decided to go straight there, since we hadn't finished shopping yet and it would take at least an hour to get back.

In the end, it was more than dinner - we left his house at 2am. The others decided to go to karaoke, but by that time I was completely out of energy and dragged myself back to the halls. Then I remembered Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Oh, whatever, it can wait until tomorrow. Which is today.

Super Mario

These two photos are too good not to share.

Evening in a large, multi-storey entertainment store in Saijo City:

And five minutes later...

What were they looking at?

I'm going to be really mean and leave that to the imagination.

Pink

I wanted to share this photograph with all those who have never been to a Japanese department store.

In every one, there is a corner, or in some cases practically a whole floor, which looks like this. Pink, fluffy, cute and generally vomit-inducing. This is Japan at its very Japanese-est. After a while you get used to it. Even I, a staunch advocate of banning the colour pink since I can remember, have succumbed to the Japanese obsession with it, and have added bright pink laces to my new purple shoes.

Oh, yeah, that's another thing. Japanese people, both men and women, love shoes. Girls wear all kinds of heels and flats, even just to normal university lectures, and men seem to love very brightly coloured trainers or expensive looking boots with skinny jeans tucked inside. I should have taken a photo of the store I bought mine from - it was like a shoe palace. I think after this year, English fashion is going to be such a disappointment.

Bikes

This is the place where you leave your bike when going somewhere from Higashi-Hiroshima Train Station. It may not look particularly significant, but if you think that there's 3 rooms of this and most of them are just day trippers, you realise why. Everyone in Japan rides bikes.

As soon as we got there they encouraged us to buy a bike, because it is the main mode of transport. Bikes here don't have gears, but it's completely normal to have a basket on the front, which is useful for transporting stuff while not looking like an old lady, which you would with a basket in England.

I'm just about to hop on my bike for the 10-minute cycle to Saijo Town and the massive department store there (as well as the Muji I noticed last time).

No Explanation Needed

Aaah, Engrish.

Karaoke

Yesterday night was my first experience of that great Japanese tradition, karaoke.

For the record, karaoke is not pronounced as "carry-oakey" in Japanese. It's exactly as it looks: ka-ra-o-keh.

Anyway, this is the only karaoke bar in our little town. It has about 20 rooms, all different sizes, to accommodate different sized groups - ours was a fairly large group, maybe 15, so they put us in one of the biggest rooms. Every room has a table surrounded by squashy benches and a massive television at the front with a space in front of it. Most people don't like to make fools of themselves when they're sober, so they have two options: either you pay 1000 yen (about £7/$10), get one free soft drink and buy your own alcohol to take in, or you pay more for all-you-can-drink alcohol from the bar. The karaoke place happens to be right next door to a huge supermarket, so we chose the first option.

Even though I was one of only two people not drinking, it was actually fun. We got given three microphones, but generally the songs people picked were ones everyone knows so we all ended up singing everything. The song choice is absolutely huge - as well as every Japanese pop song ever written, there was also a massive selection of English and American bands. We did Queen, The Killers, System of a Down, Spice Girls...

Karaoke isn't cheap, but worth it every once in a while. At least if you don't drink, you remember everything.

Lessons

Since this is a blog about studying in Japan, I suppose I should mention studying. I started lessons two days ago, on Monday, and I’ve had all but two of the courses I’m taking. So here’s an overview:

Language Level 3

We did a placement test so they could put us in the classes that were at the right level. Unfortunately, the “right level” is a class where you’ve already learnt everything they teach. I’m not sure whether it makes sense to the Japanese teachers, but none of us students understand it. Anyway, I was put in Level 3 (out of 5), but I think I must have been at the top end of level 3 because the teacher heard me speak and said “This class may be a little simple for you.” It’s not just simple for me. It’s simple for all the people who were put in level 3.

Language Level 4

The upside is, as well as the level you’re placed in, you’re allowed to take the classes for the level above. This class was much more what I’m used to in Sheffield, where the teachers speak and you only understand half of what they’re saying – but it was actually very refreshing to be challenged like that. The work is perhaps the same or of a little lower level than what we were given in Sheffield, but in fact it’s just right for me, because it means I won’t find it so hard I give up hope.

“What is Peace?”

This was quite a bizarre lesson, actually. It’s taught in English, but the lecturer is Japanese, and it’s designed for Japanese students who want the challenge of being taught in English. Unfortunately, the lecturer’s English isn’t completely fluent either. All the foreign students have to take this course, though, because it’s Hiroshima and one of the university’s aims is to teach about peace. We sat through an hour of a weird mix of simple and complicated English; he used some words which I didn’t even understand, let alone the Germans sitting next to me, the Russian in the next row, and the hundred or so Japanese students. I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy this course, although if I sit next to the right people, it could be quite entertaining.

Tomorrow I have the first lesson of a course about linguistics, which compares English and Japanese, and on Friday there is one called “An Introduction to the Theory of Inter-Cultural Communication”, which sounds dull, but might turn out to be interesting. I will update you on that.

Fooooooooooood

Those of you that know me will know that I was very apprehensive about coming to Japan. I don’t like fish, I thought, how will I cope?

Very well, as it turns out. Japanese food is unbelievably good. Here are a few examples of what I’ve eaten so far:

Okonomiyaki

This is a Japanese specialty dish which actually has variations depending on which city you’re in. Every Japanese person I spoke to before I came said “you must have okonomiyaki!” because apparently, Hiroshima okonomiyaki is especially good. Incidentally, the name “okonomi yaki” literally means “fried stuff you like”: お好む (okonomu) is “to like” and 焼き(yaki) means fried. What they do, basically, is make an omelette, shove a load of fried veg and meat and whatever else on top, then turn it over so the omelette makes a kind of lid. Then they smother it with the most amazing sauce you’ll ever taste. It’s incredible.

Ramen

This is incredibly cheap to eat out (300 yen, about £2), and is nice enough that I’d eat it if it cost three times that much. It’s basically noodle soup. But it’s the most amazing, salty, flavoursome soup I’ve ever had, and the noodles are perfectly cooked. It gets a bit messy, with the whole slurping thing (in Japan, it’s actually polite to slurp your noodles up noisily), but if you wear something you don’t mind getting oil splashes on, you’re fine. Plus, if you don’t want to eat out, you can get the instant variety from some vending machines and all convenience stores, which is surprisingly nice.

Katsukare- (katsu curry)

Japanese curry, usually served with a huge amount of sticky rice. You get a chicken breast, in breadcrumbs, sliced into maybe five pieces, which is placed on top, in the middle of the rice and the curry. Even in the university cafeterias this curry is worth eating, it’s that nice. Worth eating with a spoon instead of chopsticks, though, as the rice gets less sticky when covered in curry. The Wagamama version is surprisingly authentic, actually, but still can’t compare to the real thing.

Japanese Italian food

It’s not all good. There’s an Italian restaurant quite near where we live, and I went with a couple of the girls yesterday, having been told it was quite good. It was strange. It was pasta and pizza, but it was absolutely nothing like any Italian food you get in England. The pasta was in an Italian-style sauce, but they had over-flavoured it (as I’ve been told, the Japanese like their strong flavours) so it actually tasted strangely Japanese, and the pizzas had very strange ingredients on them. Everything on the menu was based on something Italian, but had gone slightly wrong somewhere, and ended up as a kind of Italian-Japanese hybrid. It was expensive, too.

I have only been here for a week, but I do wonder whether I’ll ever tire of Japanese food.

Why I don't think Japan will ever cease to surprise me

What the heck are those?

Those are three coin-operated massage chairs in Tokyo Narita Airport’s departure lounge.

This country is mad.

Things I learnt during the flight from London Heathrow to Hiroshima

1. Japanese vending machines take notes
This was particularly useful to me, as I only had notes and there was nothing small to buy in the airport departure lounge to give me change. It’s different to how English machines take notes, though. They tend to gobble them out of your hand before you’d even let go, as if it was trying to hurry things up in case you changed your mind. Japanese machines kindly lift the note out of your hand and, with a smooth, whirring sound, you see it disappear. It makes me more willing to part with them. It was useful, though, especially in view of the fact that…

2. Japanese Starbucks has a rubbish cold menu
There was not one of the drinks I actually like to get from Starbucks. I thought the Chocolate Cream Frappanino (copyright?) was the best seller, but apparently they thought the Japanese consumer would have no taste buds.

3. I definitely can’t sleep on planes
Eleven hours, and I didn’t drop off once. Even more unfortunately, I was in a window seat, with a Japanese couple blocking my path to the corridor who slept almost the whole way. I took a rare chance (the woman getting up) to get out for the toilet once and spent the rest of the flight incredibly thirsty, because I couldn’t get out for another drink either.

4. Never eat green sludge, no matter how hungry you may be
I’m still not sure what it was. Something to do with apples, I think, but the description was all in French. I was starving, having, as aforementioned, not been able to get any snacks or drinks, and gobbled it down even though it was quite disgusting. This did not help me when they started the descent down, the only part of a flight that gives me travel sickness. It was like the time I went on the Eurostar, ate something like two packets of sweets, and spent the journey in complete misery.

5. You shouldn’t pretend you’re fluent when you’re really not
Especially not at airports, where if you miss something it could be crucial. I said one simple sentence, “I think it’s 23 kilos” (kore wa nijuusan kilo da to omoimasu), and missed the rest of the conversation because she spoke Japanese back at me. Just because I can know numbers, it does not mean I understand the phrase “Flammable or sharp objects”.

Knowing An Unusual Language Is Apparently Very Interesting To Strangers

Something I've noticed lately is that understanding Japanese makes strangers want to talk to you. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not.

The first time it happened was in a charity shop, which, bizarrely, had two Shakespeare plays in Japanese in the book section. Naturally, I couldn't resist having a look, so I picked one up and tried reading the first page. I could hardly understand a word of it, but halfway into the first speech I heard a man behind me say "Oh wow! I just realised, that's Othello in... in..."

"Japanese, yeah," I said quickly, sensing an all-too-common inability to differentiate between East Asian languages.

"Japanese, wow. Are you fluent?"

"Ha ha. Not nearly. Two years into a degree in it."

"Amazing. Have you ever been?"

"... no, but I'm going soon for a year."

"A year! Goodness! Well, good luck with that! Japan. Wow."

Now I thought it was a little unusual for a complete stranger to suddenly be so interested in my life. But no, it happened again on a train a couple of weeks later. I was sitting at one of the 4-seater tables, and a man was sitting opposite. I got out a Japanese manga (cartoon) magazine I'd bought earlier and started to read it.

Usually with these magazines I get a few interested looks from the people opposite. Sometimes you can tell they're dying to ask what language it is and why I can understand it, but until this moment no-one had spoken up. Then, suddenly,

"Is that Japanese? Or Chinese?"

"Japanese."

I put my headphones pointedly back in my ears, but he didn't get the hint.

"Do you speak it?"

I told the story as quickly as possible and put my headphones back in. No, he wasn't finished. He didn't stop asking me about it until there was nothing more to know.

Sometimes I enjoy telling people about what I do. I don't mind telling people what language it is and why I can speak it, but I don't want to make a habit of telling my life story to complete strangers.

I suppose it's going to be worse when I'm there.

Visa

After a few weeks of waiting, I finally went to apply for my visa yesterday with a friend. The Japanese embassy is located in an unbelievably posh part of London, just across the road from the Ritz, and we felt completely out of place with our hoodies and jeans, especially when walking past hotel doormen in BOWLER HATS, sweeping the street after us as if to wipe off the stench of poverty. Do British people even wear bowler hats any more? Did that tradition not stop in the 50s?

There was a protest against whaling going on outside the embassy, and some intimidating policemen standing around. You know when you walk through a group of policemen, and even though you're completely innocent, you can't help feeling guilty of something? We tried not to look suspicious, but I find trying not to look suspicious makes you look more suspicious than people who are actually suspicious.

We had to show our passports and documents to the doormen before we even went in the building - that's how strict the security is in those places. It was incredibly shiny and posh inside, too, all glass and people in suits. I felt like I should've dressed for an interview. In the end, though, the documents were given in and not given back (my passport was my only ID, so I can't go into any pubs this weekend) and we were told to come back on Monday with £39 in cash.

I'm not looking forward to running that gauntlet again.

The Perils of Total Immersion

When you study a language, you have to choose how much you will throw yourself into the language, culture, history etc. of your chosen country. My usual technique is just about in the middle, I think; I have a general knowledge of all things Japanese and I enjoy the occasional foray into their music and television.

Over the past few weeks, though, I have found myself slipping into a state of what can be called Total Immersion. In order to improve my language skills and cultural knowledge before being thrown screaming into the airport, I have been listening to Japanese music, watching Japanese television, reading Japanese books and magazines, and I even found a live stream to Japanese radio. My ability has definitely improved, or at least my confidence, but total immersion has its drawbacks.

Having watched so many dramas in which people bow down to apologise, it now seems strange if they don't. I find myself thanking people with "arigatou", saying "sou.." when thinking about things, and being surprised when I'm not greeted in shops with cries of "irasshaimase!" (welcome!) I even had a dream half in Japanese the other night. This wouldn't be so bad if I were living in a house with other Japanese speakers, but unfortunately "tadaima!" (I'm home!) draws nothing but blank stares from my mother.

I suppose it's only good practise for the real thing. When I'm there, I'll probably notice a million things that English people do and Japanese don't.

The Application Process

So I thought I should write something about what I've done so far, to apply for the place at Hiroshima University.

We had to start the process all the way back in January, when we were told which university we were going to and got the application forms. We were allowed to choose whether to go inside or outside Tokyo, and I chose out, because Tokyo famously costs twice as much to live in as anywhere else. I filled in ten or so forms, one of which was a ridiculously detailed medical form, including amusing questions such as "Does the patient show signs of unusual mental behaviour?" and assessments of hearing and speech. "Any problems with hearing or speech?" asked the doctor, almost jokingly.

I also had to have an eye test. I've never had an eye test before, but as it turns out, they're great fun, because my eyesight has always been excellent and I can quite easily read the little letters at the bottom. I was tempted to start reading them in a Scottish accent and confuse her.

The application process was incredibly dull, but there is of course more to come. I still have to obtain a visa, buy plane tickets, get travel insurance and probably some other things I've forgotten. Looking forward to all that, then.

And So It Begins

As of this morning, it's official - I'm off to Japan in September.
This is the compulsory third year of my degree in Japanese Studies, studying at a Japanese university (in my case, Hiroshima) for a whole year. And I'm going alone, thanks to some strict rules and an unfortunate incident involving the current exchange student.

My exam results weren't the best. Ironically, I've been getting much better marks in every non-language module, which is worrying for my prospects in a language degree, but I needed a pass and I got a pass so I shouldn't be complaining.

About this blog, though: I will try my best to keep it going throughout the year, writing about my experiences, the people, the place, and probably the temperature. And lots of photos. I'm better at photos than I am at writing.

But before I go, there is the matter of all the preparation - so I'll write about that too.

Enjoy...