robots.

we met a chatty obaachan (=grandma) at the sento this evening. when she found out that we understand a little japanese, she just wouldn't stop blabbering. i was too tired and didn't understand most of it but occasional nodding and a "sô desu ka" here and there seemed to satisfy her. she even gave me and ana an o-mamori (amulet)!

ana and me visited the heian shrine this morning. we took the wrong bus and lost our way a few times before we found it and it wasn't really that interesting, also the people there were rather unfriendly. at noon, we ate lunch at an italian restaurant at the main station - real european food for the first time in 6 weeks! after lunch we met with julian and went to Nagoya which takes only half an hour from Kyoto with the hikari shinkansen. we didn't visit anything special there except the spaceship aqua of the oasis 21 complex, just walked around and did some shopping and found a robot museum where we spent about an hour in the museum shop playing with all the fancy robots and toys and i bought myself a robot tshirt and a nohohon zoku.



kyoto

countdown...

i'm feeling sick and exhausted again. it's really annoying: the days here start off sunny and rather cool but in the afternoon it's raining cats and dogs so i always get soaked on my way home. an umbrella isn't really that helpful so i got myself a raincoat but still got a sore throat.

as ana was a bit sulky today, julian and i took her to that kimono shop after classes where we had bought those cheap yukata, kimono and obi lately and when she got that beautiful white/red kimono with golden embroidery for only 1000¥, she was all happy again.
so today i visited the saty mall, uniqlo and the edobashi (where the lawson plus & the us mart, where we always sang karaoke, are) for a last time. still can't believe we're leaving on saturday. on my way home, i also shouted "sayonara!" to miss kyanya and as i rode past her house quickly because of the rain and i heard her meowing back at me.

i've already started packing as i don't wanna waste my time with that tomorrow and enjoy my last few hours with my host family instead. tomorrow's gonna be busy: first we'll have our presentations in front of the class, after classes we'll go buy the ingredients for the german dishes we have to cook for the sayonara party in the evening. on saturday morning we're leaving for Kyôto then. they said that there's internet at the temple, we'll see.

ps: i still gotta finish monday's entry, sorry about that.

university life

kimono.

i'm so exhausted. because of the binge yesterday everybody skipped classes today so it was only me (dead tired) and anastasia. it was really stressful and i was royally pissed off at the others for just staying in bed and letting us do all the work.

it's raining again and i got soaked on my way home. i took a hot shower when i arrived but i'm feeling a cold coming up. just watched some drama with my family again while eating matcha cookies.
julian's host mother gave mine a hint today that there's a sale at some second hand shop in the city where you can get yukata at a low price. she took me there and i got 4 yukata, 3 beautiful obi and even 2 kimono (each only 1000¥!) for a total of 5,500¥! one yukata and one obi even was for free. me lucky. me happy gaijin.

on our way home i gave my mum a call and when i put her on speaker, she talked to my host mum which was really cute: "konnichi wa, okâsan!" "konnichi wa, okâsan!" (...) i can't believe i'm already leaving on saturday. it feels like yesterday when i arrived here, putting my clothes in the drawers of my room and feeling rather uncomfortable around my host family. but in the meanwhile i grew fond of them and this house and everything and i'm really sad about leaving this place.

today we also had our last trip where we went to an elementary school which was real fun - japanese kids are just so cute! when we arrived, they were all super excited and cheered and waved at us. first, they were rather shy but soon they started touching our blonde hair and "different" clothes and permanently asked questions and asked for autographs on their exercise books, we felt like damn celebrities! it was exhausting but fun.

i was in a 4th grade class with haichi (a chinese student). we came around lunch time so we ate lunch together with the kids. the way they act with their teachers and their politeness is intriguing, so different from european kids. they all have their tasks, for example a group of pupils handed out the food to everyone, two stood in front of the class before and after lunch and asked everybody to put their hands together and say "itadakimasu" and "gochisôsama deshita" and they all cleaned up their classroom together afterwards. also, the teacher's more acting like a father than a teacher.

after lunch, they had half an hour of free time and we all went to the schoolyard and played basketball together. after that, they had to clean up their classrooms. when the lesson started, haichi and me stood in front of the class and were the sensei (=teachers) and tried to answer their questions. i didn't felt nervous because they were so curious in a nice way. before we had to leave, we all played games together and had to give more autographs or draw pictures for them. one girl wrote me a little farewell letter, how cute is that?

university life

do not hit with a bat.

today anastasia, julian and me wanted to go to the university's convini between two lessons when it started raining so hard that by the time we got back to our classrooms, we were soaked! my hair and clothes dried rather quickly but my shoes didn't and it was quite uncomfortable to walk around in wet shoes all day long. after university we rode on our bikes cross-town forever till we found a damn atm machine which would accept our cards. in the meanwhile, it started raining again and we got soaked again.

we spent the rest of the afternoon mostly at the saty mall, i bought the cheapest socks so i wouldn't have to walk around in those damn wet shoes. anastasia and me played "the house of the dead III" at the game center which was so much fun! killing zombies with shotguns, hell yeah! also, i bought some clothes at uniqlo again because they're so cheap and comfy. my host family must think i'm a spoilt rich brat who is addicted to shopping because i buy so many things here but i usually don't like shopping that much, the japanese just have so much awesome stuff and most of it is even quite cheap. there're also many expensive things here as japan isn't the cheapest country to live in but so far we always found the cheaper stores in Osaka and Tsu. guess, Kyoto and Tokyo will be a tad more expensive...?!

my life at the host family is really getting more comfortable. the last few days we played games in the evenings, i've started talking more to my okâsan and the kids stopped ignoring me and sometimes even talk to me now or try to explain things to me. they also always give me little presents, mostly sweets or cuddly toys or roboter pandas. this evening i showed them pictures of my family and friends and when our otôsan (father) came home late, we all hid and scared him when he entered the house which was funny.

boy, i'd really like to eat some haribo gummibärchen right now.

university life, tsu

雷 - kaminari.

yeah, weather icon!! i woke up to thunder and the rain against my window at 5am this morning. i really like storms and as i know that they usually calm down in the morning, i told my worried host mother that it's ok if i'll go by bike but as it was still raining during breakfast she intended on going by car. when julian's host mother fetched me up to drive us to the university, the rain stopped (of course) and i felt quite helpless without a bike the whole day long. especially when we went shopping after university and had to walk the whole way over to the "saty" mall because unfortunately, the rain in the morning didn't bring any coolness but more humidity. well, i'm at least happy that the average temperature here is now around 30°C and not 40°C like our first two weeks here in japan.

i really need to stop buying tiny whacky stuff and food all the time! i bought socks&tights today, treated myself with dark chocolate and pink grapefruit juice because it was suppai and bought an epilator by braun (since mine isn't working in japan) at the reduced priced of approx. €20 which is quite cheap for such a thing. smooth skin again! aah, the little pleasures in a girl's life!

this evening i did 留守番 rusuban (house-sitting) with my host brother. when we had dinner earlier (btw we had sukiyaki, a yummy nabe dish), the kids told me that they wanna play (board) games with me later so when okâsan and my host sister returned from her ballet class, we had a fun game night. i always lost but i'm happy to see that they're losing their shyness little by little. also yesterday i was sitting in my room doing homework when they both appeared at my doorstep, grinning like cheshire cats. they gave me a bowl of matcha icecream and ran away giggling cheerfully. so cute. the one thing that always makes them happy is the fact that i'm a sucker for green tea like themselves.

i'm resigning to the fact that they often still ignore me because they're too busy watching tv or something. speaking of which, japanese tv is crazy. &who would have thought that a tv show about a couple of men dressed up as women standing in front of a table with miscellaneous items who have to guess if an item is worth 100¥ or more could be that entertaining!?

chûhai & burgers.

the day started off awkwardly with my host family. our relationsship is getting better but i still don't feel really comfortable around them, especially the kids can be very repellent. like this morning, when i loudly chanted "ohayô gozaimassssu" ("good morning") but they just ignored me. things like that often upset me.

since language classes started today, we first had a reception in the morning and had to introduce ourselves in front of everybody. unfortunately, they obviously only told the chinese students about it so most of them had prepared some fancy self-introduction and we german students just mumbled "yoroshiku onegaishimasu" and sat back on our chairs. we then had this placement test and i really screwed up, especially the listening comprehension, and ended up in the loser's class. well see, it isn't as bad as it sounds.

after the test there was a delicious buffet und we were put together in groups each with a german and a chinese student plus a japanese student as their adviser. my adviser is a very lively girl called naoko. she is the first japanese person here i could really get along well with. of course i really liked our tandem partners but naoko is always happy, always chattering and thus encouraging me to speak as much as possible in japanese as well. i didn't feel awkward around her when i talked in japanese like i do feel around everyone else...

after the buffet, we already had our first lesson. unfortunately, our teacher has such a shrill voice and annoying intonation, that i actually got a headache. then, just when i was sulking and distracted for a second, she asked me to stand in front of the class and let me introduce myself in japanese. i was completely caught off guard and could barely utter a word. that really sucked.

after university i was so frustrated i went shopping at uniqlo and saty, then bought some chûhai and a grilled chicken burger from mcdo, sat down at the river on my way home and just sat there till i had to go home.

花火。

this morning my host sister's friend and her mother visited us and we baked several pastries together with eggs or sausages or cheese&ham or chocolate. they were really tasty. in the afternoon we first picked up my host brother from ballett class (he was the only boy in a room full of tiny young japanese girls in tutus which was quite cute) and then went to a big shopping mall. they had a disney store there and i spent a lot of money on stickers and pens and stuff. we also went to the mall's game center and my host family won a few dozens(!) of tiny cuddly toys (but also a huge micky mouse). afterwards we ate dinner, i had udon with tempura and green tea donuts filled with azuki beans. i really love the food here! (except pulpy meat)

i also found hobbes a new friend, the cat "jiji" from kiki's delivery service which i still haven't seen. yes, our family really is getting bigger and bigger! hobbes was happy to finally have found a feline fellow. there aren't many cats here in japan, let alone tigers. they have beautiful cranes and scary huge insects here instead. a few people have tiny dogs but we both really miss the alley cats!

on our way home we saw a little display of fireworks. my host parents stopped their car and waited and said they wanted to see the fireworks. because the few effects we had seen so far weren't that spectacular and because i was tired and had to wake up at 4am the next day i was quite annoyed but about half an hour later the real display of fireworks began and it was so beautiful and huge and almost scary! i tried to take pictures and videos but they just can't capture how great it was! if you ever go to japan, be sure to watch a hana-bi at least once!

jetlag.

i'm fucking tired. last night we explored the neighbourhood of our hostel before we went to bed. it's definitively not one of the most beautiful areas of osaka (bums and lots of pachinko parlours) but if you walk a while you reach the tennoji ward which is quite nice.

today we went to namba to look for a japanese lush store. after about 2-3 hours of wandering around quite aimlessly we finally found it in the huge namba parks shopping mall. i had to pull myself together as to not to buy any more soap as half of my bag is already filled with them. (but boy i couldn't do without my therapy massage bar! i was feeling so depressed this morning and the neroli really cheered me up! ...and NO they don't pay me for writing this!)

afterwards we ate lunch and the first thing when you enter a restaurant here in japan is that you'll get a cup of ice cold water or, even better, iced green tea! yummy! i ate a delicious noodle-shrimp-salad dish (i actually choose it because i liked the photo on the menu) which turned out to be a cold dish which was of course perfect because of the heat - 36C today! later i got myself a honey milk latte and some sort of cake with macha filling at a coffeeshop - yummyyyyy!

unfortunately, i still can't post pictures. we found an electric store (denki ya) today and bought ac adapters but they don't work for the plug of my notebook. maybe we can find a denki ya at the tennoji ward later. and maybeeee i should buy me an energy drink or something.... *headdesk*

the pink dress.

the weather's awful here in germany, don't mind the smiling frog on the left. by the way i guess you've already figured out that those little animations at the beginning of each posting are displaying the weather at our current location. we're still working on the design and widgets of our travelblog. yesterday we've added a shoutbox, feel free to leave random comments there. still searching for a nice pownce widget though as they're not available for blogger yet. please let me know if you've found one!

idil is no big help at the moment as she is jumping around happily all evening because she finally found this pink dress she was looking for for weeks and even bought it at a reduced price today. oh well. i also have to look after my buddy mico (idil's brother's cat). he is so sad because his big brother left for turkey yesterday for three weeks so he is eating cookies and chocolate all the time like some depressed girl. he even started licking the furniture again. that cat is crazy...

/hobbes

plazes.

a few days ago i watched lost in translation again. as you can tell from my website designs, i really like that movie. ;) japan-guide.com has a list of the locations where the movie was shot and i'd really like to visit the park hyatt hotel for example. hobbes says i'm a dork.

some other places i'd like to visit in japan this summer are:

• tokyo: senso-ji, harajuku, shibuya, roppongi hills, ueno park, national art center, takaraza revue, ghibli museum, park hyatt tokyo
  
• osaka: osaka castle, kaiyukan aquarium
  
• kyoto: gion district, kiyomizu-dera
  
• nara: nara park, todai-ji

if you have more suggestions, let me know. (...) japan-guide.com is a neat website with lots of information on japan and tips for traveling/living there. for example did you know that there are large lavender fields on hokkaido? weird. too bad i probably won't leave honshû though.

i'm still a bit unsure about that plug and voltage stuff in japan as it differs from the european standards. i've ordered some travel plug adapter and i just cross my fingers and hope my notebook won't blow up or something. also, i don't wanna drag it around for nothing. especially not after i've checked the weather forecasts for japan earlier today: average 30°C! apparently i'm going to melt there.

there are still so many things to do! today i bought myself a new sketchbook and ordered my new cell phone. i just hope it'll arrive in time and that it'll work in japan. i also need to think of a name for it...