miss kyanya.

i FINALLY met a cat today on my way home! she was very talkative but hobbes wasn't with me and i couldn't really understand her accent. we had a lovely time anyway. maybe i'll visit her tomorrow again. her name is kyanya by the way.

after a week of rain and cloudy weather it's getting hotter and hotter again. i was all sweaty when i came home. they're expecting a taifun tomorrow though. i'm really excited. september's apparently taifun time here in japan!

anastasia and me spent the afternoon at the saty mall, killing zombies and drumming at the gamecenter, doing purikura and eating donuts. i really love those cute mister donut animals. i'm already a member of the so-called misdo club but i'll have to eat a lot of donuts to earn enough points to get a present. i also found a cheap handy curling iron today, i wanted one for so long! me happy. i really like the hairstyles of the girls here in japan. so curly and perfect. how do they do that?! *_*

yesterday we went to the suzuka museum of traditional crafts and learned about suzuka zumi (ink) and ise katagami (paper patterns). we also did small easy stencils ourselves which was fun, you can see mine on the picture to the left. i was so tired that at first i didn't wanted to go but it was worth the visit. those paper patterns were amazing and some of the artwork quite inspireing.

university life, tsu

back in the u.s.s.r.

someone has stolen the umbrella i bought last friday at the university's convini. it was only 400yen but i'm still pissed off. i also stumbled over my own feet today, fell on the stairs and hit my toe. it hurts like hell and even bleeded. kinda like charlotte in lost in translation, now where's my bill murray bringing me an owl?!

this week's teacher is a lot more bearable than last week's! also, the lessons are quite demanding, i really need to sit down and read about all this 丁寧語 teineigo (polite language), 尊敬語 sonkeigo (respectful language) and 謙譲語 kenjōgo (humble language) stuff over again.

after classes we bought chûhai and snacks at saty, went to the us-mart karaoke bar and spent the afternoon singing radiohead, the beatles and captain jack.

university life

red pandas.

i ate a cherry blossom today, it was inside some fancy sweets and tasted awful, quite shoppai (salty) in fact!

after class, we all went to an archeological excavation. i usually like archeology but this afternoon was really boring. also, it rained and we all got muddy. before i went home i went to uniqlo with anastasia and bought another bunch of clothes (i.e. a skirt for apporox. €3!). my life at the host family is getting better, this evening we went out after dinner and did hana-bi in the back yard. also, my host brother gave me one of his pandas because they think i love animals so much. apropos, i saw a beautiful white cat at university today. i squealed and tried to catch it but alas, it was pretty shy and ran away. i really really need to cuddle some cat soon!!

i can't find my damn cutter.

university life, tsu, food
(fyi, this camera icon means that the following albums at my picasa webalbums has been updated. i will use this in future, mkay?)

ちょっと眠い~

i like curling up like a cat.
(even without tomcats around, darling)
i'm quite tired and took over 300 pictures again, that's crazy. "camping" was great, the location was beautiful and we had lots of fun - what a pity it's already over! we stayed up until the crack of dawn and drank chûhai (and/or "ureshii wine", bahaha!), we did karaoke, we cooked curry rice and german food (the kartoffelsalat was more like a kartoffelbrei but obviously they liked it anyway) and this morning we went fishing which was a bit boring plus i got a damn sunburn again but standing in the river bare-footed was quite refreshing! speaking of which, today's lunch was cold soba and tempura, oishiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

we also had classes, of course, but they were ok because our tandem partners are great fun people ("superman ist super, das ist doch selbstverständlich!"). i hope that we'll meet them again sometime during the next few weeks (our tandem week is over now, the next three weeks we'll only have language courses at university with a bunch of chinese people).

my japanese is getting better, especially thanks to the last few days. nevertheless, most of the time i have to ask my okâsan to repeat her sentences and then i still have to guess most of it. i'm such a loser. after dinner i watched some japanese "drama" show with the family, the kids danced and sang along to the opening theme which was quite cute. i didn't really get the story but it was hilarious because the acting was so bad! i love japanese tv.

i'm getting quite fond of those flavored pipes, called paipo. i never smoked (although many people thought so for whatever reasons or said it would suit me) but i really enjoy the peppermint ones. the picture on the left is me holding a can of chûhai in one hand and a peppermint paipo in the other (that bloke behind me is julian btw). yeah well gotta go to bed.

Tsu: Camping (Aug 22-24th)

techno-toilet.

finally, another weather-icon! it rained today for a few minutes but unfortunately, the weather's still as hot and sticky as the days before. the only thing this change of weather gave me is a severe headache.

yesterday in the afternoon we arrived in tsu. after the orientation with o.-sensei there was a little party with the tandem partners which basically means we were thrown together into a room with music, crackers and a couple of bottles of tea for one and a half hour to get to know each other. anastasia and me were talking to the two boys in our group about squirrels (リス risu) and sunburn (日焼け hiyake, my shoulders still burn like hell btw). after that little party we met our host families.

i'm still a bit unsure about mine. they were extremely distant the first few hours which gave me a really bad feeling. they kinda ignored me, especially the kids. now i know, japanese people are shy and stuff but my other family in ogaki (in 2003) was so different. so when we came home yesterday they just showed me my room and disappeared. it wasn't until my okâsan (host mum) showed up about one or two hours later and told me that we were going to a restaurant with julian and his family in the evening (his family lives only a few yards away) which cheered me up not only because i wouldn't be alone but also because she actually TALKED to me!

the food at the restaurant was delicious! it was sort of an all-you-can-eat open buffet and at some point of the evening, the chef pounded mochi for everybody. some kids and julian and me were also allowed to pound the wet rice a few times which was fun. also, during the evening things started to loosen up and i started to feel better around my host family.

although i've got an air conditioner in my room, i could barely sleep so i was feeling really exhausted this morning and got sick on the bus on our way to the ise shrine (伊勢神宮 ise-jingû). in ise, our group and the tandem partners went to some place where we learned about japanese food and then we even cooked our own lunch: miso-soup, pickles, fish and rice (w e had to make onigiri!). it took forever, especially roasting the fish, but it was worth the wait because it was quite delicious. afterwards, everybody washed the dishes and/or cleaned the whole place together before we had the afternoon off to walk around the area around the shrine(s) with our tandem partners.

it was very hot but the gardens and shrines were beautiful, also the restaurants and shops. i finally got to eat macha (green tea) icecream, my favourite!! (and i usually don't like icecream at all!) they selled lots of delicious and weird stuff, for example cooled salted cucumber (which is a great idea for hot summer days!) or sweet potato icecream, ugh!? anastasia and me even tried some black(!) icecream with 黒ごま kurogoma, black sesame!

back at home we had japanese food for dinner: a large cube of tofu with soy sauce (i never ate tofu before but it was good), rice, fish, edamame (which i LOVE), yellow tomatoes (they're really good), pickles and some soup. tomorrow okâsan wants to make ramen for dinner because i never ate that. (...) we came along better today. they even gave me a pretty pink yukata and showed me how to wear it (but i'll forget how to bind the obi by tomorrow anyway it's too complicated).

i wish my japanese was better because everytime i try to make more than one proper sentence i fail or completely forget the grammar or don't remember the easiest words. it's also annoying that the japanese aren't really correcting us as long as they basically understand the meaning of our babble...that doesn't really help me, y'know.

i took over 300 pictures the last two days and i'm just too tired to go through them and upload them now. but i'll publish them soon, i promise!