Week 3 update

Oooooh! Hello! Apologies for the long absence, but have been: 1. just doing boring day to day stuff, so not doing anything worth really talking about, 2. wasn’t sure if any one was really reading it, but due to several…1 is all a really need! (to give the ol’ ego a boost!) …passing comments about persons actually liking reading the crap I write I’m going to try and write more…. However, I’d like to point out that this is no substitute for actually talking (well communicating via email or instant messaging mechanisms) to me…

Anyhoo…what have I been up to…lets see…errr…japanese lessons everyday, some days are worse than others…I feel generally like an idiot because none of what we have learnt is settling in my brain yet…I think by cranium as some kind of teflon-like coating which is non-stick for languages…stupid brain…we’ve so far gone through the hiragana characters and now powering through katana…anyway, I’m slow and my Japanese skills are not much more advanced than a pea trying to invent a way to get itself into space…yes, I know peas can’t think…that’s the whole point.

Other than that I have dropped half of the lecture courses that I started in the first week. Mainly because someone kindly pointed out that lectures also happen in the spring term too (D’oh) and as I only have to do 5 lecture courses over the 3 years I’m here I can just stick to the geotechnical ones…more importantly however, is that my supervisor is going to be giving some of the geotech lectures next term…and I’m advised (by the other students) to attend…I am inclined to agree. So, three lecture courses this term and at least 2 the next…I’ve dropped all the mathsey ones, so it’s all good.

Unfortunately one of the lectures (the most interesting course I’ve attended so far) ‘Natural Disasters and Urban Disaster Prevention’…the one which the first lecture I attended was in Japanese + some English interpretation for the annoying English only comprehension girl…happens to start at 830am…which would appear to be a little harsh…but hey…I guess then my afternoon is completely free…On the bright side, I spoke to one of the Japanese students who took the lecture too and she said that his English explanation was very comprehensive despite my concern that it seemed to take a significantly shorter time to explain in English than Japanese. Apparently the other Japanese students are quite glad I’m there. Which I thought it was odd, as I thought I would be impeding the lecture…but they like the ability to practice their English comprehension…and there’s one guy who has been kind enough to sit next to me (his English is pretty good!) and try and explain what’s going on, as well as consciously writing his notes in English just for my benefit. How nice is that?! I have to admit though I’ve not actually been looking at what he’s been writing as I’ve been busy choosing which of my many colour pens to use next…and its actually quite handy that when the lecturer is busy explaining stuff in Japanese, I have time to finish writing down all the stuff from the English explanation. So it’s all good…

Socialising wise… there was an international student welcome party on Monday night (23rd Oct) which was actually quite nice…there was some amazing buffet put on for us. There was also some public humiliation, in the form of making all the new students introduce themselves on stage in Japanese…I giggled all the way through mine so that I was completely inaudible…unfortunately I find my attempts at speaking Japanese incredibly hilarious, just because I’m sooo crap at it…which just makes me laugh…which in turn makes any attempt at speaking even worse…anyway it was so bad several people asked me what I had been trying to say! Oooops! Oh well nevermind… there was also some building house of cards game (which our team lost spectacularly at) and muchos muchos free drink (this is a Japanese speciality).

Went to Roppongi on Wednesday, to some mega Halloween party at some huge club…know for hosting stuff aimed at foreigners (the western kind).

The weird thing about Roppongi is that it doesn’t feel like Japan…what it really feels like is more Leicester Square like. Infact you’d be hard pressed to find one actual Japanese person for every 10 westerners. It’s actually rather weird…that and the place is crawling with dodgy old white men loitering around the streets. Nice.

Shockingly enough, I actually turned up to a Halloween party underdressed…I felt like there is a little void in a part of my life here without all my little dressing up things…no fairy-wings…magic wand…flower-hat…*sob* ahhh the stupid stuff…how I miss it…there were some amazing costumes. One dude came dressed as a chandelier diffucult to convey the effect of this costume…but the head dress was basically a fully-lit multi-coloured light fitting attached to this mans head…to be honest he wasn’t wearing much some beaded type tunic over his glitter painted body and a silver thong… and yeah that was about it… someone else came dressed as a zombie school girl…very dawn of the dead…(in)complete with missing forearm. There were also some power rangers…more peoples costumes which seemed to centre around a thong…I’d like to point out that these were all men. And yes I was disturbed by this theme…but not as disturbed as someone elses costume where he came dressed in a nude top with some fake chest hair glued on and red lines drawing on muscles and a pair of boxer shorts with a very large fake willy protruding from one leg (of said boxer shorts) it was hilarious… in fact he was very popular for photos with ladies…

But yeah very interesting night… and Japanese stylie… free drinks all night. Which was definitely an interesting experience.

OoOoOooooh! On Thursday we were in restaurant and we caught a glimpse of an amazing news story…some man had gone bonkers and hacked to death three policemen with a knife, just slashing them all in the neck… NICE! Anyway as well as a report from a journalist running excitedly around the crime scene (I have no idea where it was…and nor did the Japanese students I was with) someone at the tv station had gone through the effort to do a VR reconstruction of the whole thing…it was hilariously lame…it looked like a cheap computer game and made a mockery of the whole thing…anyway that was fun.

Anyway tomorrow I’m going to try and meet some people that have lived here longer than I have so they can show me the best places to go shopping…girly day out…should be a laugh…

Think that’s all really for the moment…enjoy.