I nearly lost count of the weeks, possibly because the fourth week was really short for me in the university. I arrived back to Kitami on Monday, but since Tomomi was getting really sick, I already went back to Obihiro on the first bus on Thursday morning. Since I didn't have school on Tuesday anyway, I ended up not doing much at all during that week. On Tuesday though, there was the International C hour, a meeting between some enthusiastic Kitami residents and exchange students from various countries. In the meeting, there were mostly old people from Kitami, at least compared to us - in their 50s, at least.
Basically, all we did there was a game where you had to interview as many people as possible, asking some basic questions like their home country, favorite food, favorite place in Japan and so forth. In the end of the meeting, I even forgot my paper there so all those new names ended up not being all that useful. Oh well.
I also went running with Oeda again during that short-spun week. Although we can't communicate that well, he's a really nice guy, one of the few level-headed ones, it seems. Most Japanese people that Ville and Petri know are somehow twisted, like, otaku, ero-otaku, chronic masturbators or something like that. This guy is really helpful and doesn't try too hard to be funny or forthcoming, unlike some Japanese, but instead acts just casually around me and other Finns when he meets them, so it's great to have him around. As a plus, I can learn some Japanese from him as well.
I went to Obihiro on the first bus on Thursday and obviously missed my classes for that day. No harm done though, since the somewhat strict English teacher, Mr. Bozek, didn't seem to mind about it and the other teacher didn't even ask about my abscence.
Week 5
By the time I left Obihiro again, Tomomi's sickness had gotten better so that she could go to work on Monday. That was a real relief for her since she wanted to go and for a good reason too - no work equals no money in Japan. Newly arrived employees don't get paid for being sick and in her company, the time it took to get a permanent employee status in that sense was something like one year. Shoop-da-whoop.
Well, when I got back to Kitami, I wanted to really go to another Japanese class on Monday since they had moved the classes around. However, that wasn't an option, since I didn't even know where the class was being held. I just went back to the dorm and relaxed. After a while, I asked Oeda to go running and he was all for it, so we went to jog around Kitami for a little bit. I remembered a friend in Finland, Jimi, talking about "interval exercises", so we did some of that - sprinting for all we could and then slowing down to normal jogging speed again. Oeda couldn't keep up the pace that well but he did the best he could.
On Tuesday, every new-arrived exchange student had to partake in a medical exam. It was really nothing more than a blood test, which I really don't enjoy, but it had to be done. Hopefully nothing bad comes up from them, but I really doubt it.
We went jogging again with Oeda on Tuesday, but we also cooked some Ramen. On the day before, we'd been talking about ramen restaurants and he said we could cook some ourselves, too. So we went shopping for some foodstuff and cooked it pretty soon afterwards. It was definitely much better than the typical cup noodle ramen that can be bought from almost anywhere - the noodles themselves were from a different planet, much softer and more tasty. Our choice of soup was made solely by the price tag, so the soup didn't cater to my tastes, but all the fresh vegetables and the fresh meat, too, were really something else after only eating instant noodles since... always.
On Wednesday, I had Artificial intelligence class in the morning, so after that, I thought I should spend my time usefully. I studied kanji for about 6 hours and some Japanese too. I can't say I would actually remember all the kanji I've studied so far by heart, but I can memorize most of their meanings for sure as well as recognize the rest of them and draw them in the dictionary. By this time I have studied only 76 kanji though, so I'm still far away from being able to read most things. Yet, it's a whole new world in this country when all of a sudden you're actually able to read those lunatic markings of a crazy language.
Finally, on Thursday, the last of our introduction procedures was to be finished. We went to the city hall for the alien cards which were due to be finished on that day and got them too very quickly. I went together with Mika and we were supposed to get the phones right away too, but that proved to be more difficult.
First, we went to eat at the school diner to wait for Kenji, a tutor of Petri, who was supposed to have all the Finns talk some Japanese during that day, a casual conversation. However, everyone else had disappeared, so we were by ourselves. Kenji came there anyway with a bunch of friends - Hachi, Tera and Keisuke, who introduced themselves in English. We did our best to do the same in Japanese and talked for a while about nothing, until someone thought it was best to ask about our girlfriends. After that, the conversation was almost only around me, since everyone thought it was incredible I had a girlfriend in Japan. I was a bit bothered about it since I really want to choose myself who to talk to and in this situation, we had just a meeting with some guys who seemed to be very interested in me. But I guess it was good though, at least for the sake of the conversation.
After lunch, me and Mika went to the city to find a cell phone. We went to "au" store since everyone had recommended them to us. They have student discounts for 50%, so it seemed like a good idea. After cycling there, we found ourselves in a tiny, empty shop along the main street with four girls behind the counter, shouting "Welcome!" in Japanese to us. After what seemed like half an hour, we decided not to buy the cellphones just yet since the deal they offered us was a 8400 yen payment at first and then the typical 2000 yen / month tax for the account itself. The two thousand deal was what we were looking for, but we were not going to pay the 8400 for some half-assed cells.
We went to another shop, DoCoMo, in which they offered much cheaper phones (0 yen, in fact) but a much higher monthly fee, 3500 yen. All this took something like a hour and a half, after which we were both pretty pissed off about the whole deal and thought it best to just go back another day with a Japanese guide. To feel like we'd have accomplished at least something, we went to Mr. Donuts to consume some of the most unhealthy, yet the tastiest donuts of all.
While drinking our coffee and thinking about getting back, it started to pour rain with no warning. We thought it was better to skip class than go to cycle back in the rain, so we went in Tokyu, an expensive department store, to buy rye flour. I wanted to make Karelian pies at some point, so it seemed like a good idea to get some. We bought them straight from the bakery which used some rye in their own breads, but the price was somewhat steep for just rye, so to speak. For one kilo, I was charged 1500 yen. That's over 9e for just some flour! What the christ... Well, I will make some excellent pies with that flour for myself, the other Finns and some Japanese as well if they want to have any.
Apr 27, 2007
Apr 16, 2007
Third week - About classes
After getting back to the dorm, I was internetless just for something like 20 minutes, after which I went to visit Mika and Samuli to their apartment. Mika was sleeping as I rang the doorbell and Samuli wasn't about. The guys had spent some good time on their weekend, at least judging from the pictures and videos that Mika showed me from his computer. They'd been to a few bars, one of which was a drink-all-you-can, "nomihoodai" equipped with karaoke, a couple of guitars and a drum set. The bar visitors were allowed to play the instruments themselves, but although Mika was able to play the guitar, he didn't get drunk enough to actually get up on the stage and play some music. Instead, one of the two daughters of the bar owner sang while the bar owner played the guitar himself, grouped with a bunch of other people on the drums and the bass. Judging from the pictures, the evening rocked - especially after Mika had thrown up in another bar as they moved on through their epic journey of being drunk in various places.
After Samuli came back, we strolled together to the first Japanese class. First, there was an introduction given by a different lecturer, who basically told us in Japanese that we have three choices regarding the courses and should choose the one appropriate for our own level. Me, Mika, Samuli and Matias went to the basic class among with a Thai woman called "Waraporn" and a Chinese guy "Tanriwa" or something - I really couldn't be sure about his name. In fact, there was another Chinese guy, who wanted to be called Tom, because to an uneducated ear, his name sounded very much like "Tan" as well.
In the Japanese class, there was a Japanese woman in her forties teaching us about "konnichiwa" and "sumimasen" and other very basic words in Japanese. Most of the stuff we went through in the course of one hour and a half was really basic, but the homework didn't seem so easy. There were many words I'd never heard of before, three big pages of them. What made it seem especially bad is that I didn't have a dictionary. In the introduction, we had been given books called "Minna no Nihongo", which contained some of the words, but it seemed difficult to find them from between the lines. I thought that to really study Japanese, I would have to buy a dictionary anyway. Without it, studying kanji would be really tiresome.
After the class was over, we went back to the dorm, talking about the class and how it seemed too easy at least for now. We wanted more lessons than just 1.5 hours per week, but after asking about it, it wasn't possible all that easily. I knew that in some other Japanese universities taking exchange students, there are much more lessons in a week, so we would have to spend huge amounts of time on self-study due to the lack of education.
Back in the dorm, I tried to login to the internet, and like magic, it worked. Petri had spent some time getting it to work by using another person's cable and after a while, we decided to change the cable and move the WLAN router to my apartment, because it was closer to the person actually sharing the internet connection.
In the evening, Ville asked if anyone wanted to go to a ramen place just down the street to eat some noodles. He'd never been to it before and granted, I hadn't ever eaten real restaurant ramen either, so I was in. Matias was coming as well, so we all took bicycles and went down the street to check out the ramen place. When we got there though, it was closed. There was no menu or anything, just a text saying "ramen" in Japanese, no opening and closing hours either. So we thought it was best to find another restaurant, since we were all hungry and on the go.
After cycling for what seemed like a few kilometers, we reached a large supermarket called "Tobu". It was just about to close, so we could grab something for really good prices - usually, when the markets close, they have all the bentos for half price, so that's what me and Matias bought. At the same time, I got the idea that to live cheaply in Japan, all one has to do is to benefit from the half-price sales around closing hours. Doing that, there would be little need for cooking and one would still be able to taste all the mysterious and sometimes highly dangerous delicacies of Japanese origin.
After getting out of the supermarket, we still wanted to go to a restaurant. So cycling back, we strolled to an expensive-looking place, not really knowing what to expect from it. It was a nikuyaki restaurant where you fry the various types of meat above a charcoal pot. The restaurant personnel were really friendly for us, or at least we got their attention. How? By being white. They said "gaijin, gaijin" and started to serve us with even more vigor than your typical Japanese waitresses, which is already saying a lot. The food seemed to be actually quite cheap here, so we took a couple of sets of beef slices and fried them to our taste. The heat of the red-glowing coal really warmed up our hands, frozen in the cold evening air and the food tasted really good. After we'd finished, the waitress who had first greeted us came to us, offering a plate of seashells. I'd never eaten them fresh before, so it was an experience by itself, but the actual gesture of giving them was really friendly. When we got out to pay our bills, she wanted to offer us a bag of onions too, but Ville declined the offer. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I would've at least liked to have them.
With Matias, I went to buy an electronic dictionary on Wednesday. I didn't know much about them, other than what Johan, a Swedish guy studying at APU whom I had visited last year, had told me about it. He recommended the Casio EX-Word series, so I was inclined to buy one of those as well. When we finally reached the store by bicycle and got to look at the different models, it became clear that buying a model without a stylus, a kind of digital pen to write text to the screen with, was a bad idea. So I took the cheapest EX-Word model with a stylus, priced around 28000 yen. I hope this was my last expensive electronic purchase, because I cannot afford much more. I calculated that I have about 1300 yen per day to spend, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. So I have to severely cut on my expenses in order to cope with daily life or I'll be broke before summer.
On Friday, I was going to Obihiro again. This time, I packed a bit more stuff with me, so I wouldn't have to bring my clothes back and forth between Obihiro and Kitami. I skipped a voluntary seminar on the afternoon because I was just too tight on time and went cycling to the bus terminal on downtown Kitami. When I stopped in the last traffic lights, I was next to a group of schoolgirls. They glanced at me and said something about "kakkoii" and "ryuugakusei", which mean "cool" and "exchange student". I didn't understand much else about it, but I could imagine they talked about me. That imagination was confirmed later to be true, though.
In the bus, there were also a lot of schoolgirls in the bus. I couldn't get to the back seat, being already taken by three girls, but the seat next to it was free, so I went there. After the bus started moving, I could easily hear the schoolgirls talk in English: "Where are you from?", "What is your name?", "How old are you?" They were just practicing the lines and I paid no mind to it, but couldn't really help smiling. After a while, they had mustered enough courage to start talking and promptly asked "Excuse me" loudly enough so that I was supposed to hear it. After that, me and the three 15-year olds talked about Japan and Finland until each of them left off at a different stop. They had more courage to talk than many of the university students, which I thought to be great. I tried to encourage them to keep it up, too, and keep talking English in the future as well.
One of the girls left off at the last stop of the first bus, Rikubetsu. She was kind enough to show me the only restaurant of the whole village, a soba noodle place. I'll have to visit it in the future if I go on such a bus that has a longer exchange time than 10 minutes.
After Samuli came back, we strolled together to the first Japanese class. First, there was an introduction given by a different lecturer, who basically told us in Japanese that we have three choices regarding the courses and should choose the one appropriate for our own level. Me, Mika, Samuli and Matias went to the basic class among with a Thai woman called "Waraporn" and a Chinese guy "Tanriwa" or something - I really couldn't be sure about his name. In fact, there was another Chinese guy, who wanted to be called Tom, because to an uneducated ear, his name sounded very much like "Tan" as well.
In the Japanese class, there was a Japanese woman in her forties teaching us about "konnichiwa" and "sumimasen" and other very basic words in Japanese. Most of the stuff we went through in the course of one hour and a half was really basic, but the homework didn't seem so easy. There were many words I'd never heard of before, three big pages of them. What made it seem especially bad is that I didn't have a dictionary. In the introduction, we had been given books called "Minna no Nihongo", which contained some of the words, but it seemed difficult to find them from between the lines. I thought that to really study Japanese, I would have to buy a dictionary anyway. Without it, studying kanji would be really tiresome.
After the class was over, we went back to the dorm, talking about the class and how it seemed too easy at least for now. We wanted more lessons than just 1.5 hours per week, but after asking about it, it wasn't possible all that easily. I knew that in some other Japanese universities taking exchange students, there are much more lessons in a week, so we would have to spend huge amounts of time on self-study due to the lack of education.
Back in the dorm, I tried to login to the internet, and like magic, it worked. Petri had spent some time getting it to work by using another person's cable and after a while, we decided to change the cable and move the WLAN router to my apartment, because it was closer to the person actually sharing the internet connection.
In the evening, Ville asked if anyone wanted to go to a ramen place just down the street to eat some noodles. He'd never been to it before and granted, I hadn't ever eaten real restaurant ramen either, so I was in. Matias was coming as well, so we all took bicycles and went down the street to check out the ramen place. When we got there though, it was closed. There was no menu or anything, just a text saying "ramen" in Japanese, no opening and closing hours either. So we thought it was best to find another restaurant, since we were all hungry and on the go.
After cycling for what seemed like a few kilometers, we reached a large supermarket called "Tobu". It was just about to close, so we could grab something for really good prices - usually, when the markets close, they have all the bentos for half price, so that's what me and Matias bought. At the same time, I got the idea that to live cheaply in Japan, all one has to do is to benefit from the half-price sales around closing hours. Doing that, there would be little need for cooking and one would still be able to taste all the mysterious and sometimes highly dangerous delicacies of Japanese origin.
After getting out of the supermarket, we still wanted to go to a restaurant. So cycling back, we strolled to an expensive-looking place, not really knowing what to expect from it. It was a nikuyaki restaurant where you fry the various types of meat above a charcoal pot. The restaurant personnel were really friendly for us, or at least we got their attention. How? By being white. They said "gaijin, gaijin" and started to serve us with even more vigor than your typical Japanese waitresses, which is already saying a lot. The food seemed to be actually quite cheap here, so we took a couple of sets of beef slices and fried them to our taste. The heat of the red-glowing coal really warmed up our hands, frozen in the cold evening air and the food tasted really good. After we'd finished, the waitress who had first greeted us came to us, offering a plate of seashells. I'd never eaten them fresh before, so it was an experience by itself, but the actual gesture of giving them was really friendly. When we got out to pay our bills, she wanted to offer us a bag of onions too, but Ville declined the offer. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I would've at least liked to have them.
With Matias, I went to buy an electronic dictionary on Wednesday. I didn't know much about them, other than what Johan, a Swedish guy studying at APU whom I had visited last year, had told me about it. He recommended the Casio EX-Word series, so I was inclined to buy one of those as well. When we finally reached the store by bicycle and got to look at the different models, it became clear that buying a model without a stylus, a kind of digital pen to write text to the screen with, was a bad idea. So I took the cheapest EX-Word model with a stylus, priced around 28000 yen. I hope this was my last expensive electronic purchase, because I cannot afford much more. I calculated that I have about 1300 yen per day to spend, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. So I have to severely cut on my expenses in order to cope with daily life or I'll be broke before summer.
On Friday, I was going to Obihiro again. This time, I packed a bit more stuff with me, so I wouldn't have to bring my clothes back and forth between Obihiro and Kitami. I skipped a voluntary seminar on the afternoon because I was just too tight on time and went cycling to the bus terminal on downtown Kitami. When I stopped in the last traffic lights, I was next to a group of schoolgirls. They glanced at me and said something about "kakkoii" and "ryuugakusei", which mean "cool" and "exchange student". I didn't understand much else about it, but I could imagine they talked about me. That imagination was confirmed later to be true, though.
In the bus, there were also a lot of schoolgirls in the bus. I couldn't get to the back seat, being already taken by three girls, but the seat next to it was free, so I went there. After the bus started moving, I could easily hear the schoolgirls talk in English: "Where are you from?", "What is your name?", "How old are you?" They were just practicing the lines and I paid no mind to it, but couldn't really help smiling. After a while, they had mustered enough courage to start talking and promptly asked "Excuse me" loudly enough so that I was supposed to hear it. After that, me and the three 15-year olds talked about Japan and Finland until each of them left off at a different stop. They had more courage to talk than many of the university students, which I thought to be great. I tried to encourage them to keep it up, too, and keep talking English in the future as well.
One of the girls left off at the last stop of the first bus, Rikubetsu. She was kind enough to show me the only restaurant of the whole village, a soba noodle place. I'll have to visit it in the future if I go on such a bus that has a longer exchange time than 10 minutes.
Second week - About Obihiro and the Japanese people
On the second weekend, I went to visit Tomomi in Obihiro. It's about 150-200km south of Kitami, but while one might think the trip takes only 2 hours, it really takes four. I had to take two local buses to get there and all through the trip, they go really slow. It's not like the roads are in a good condition, either, but it still takes a long, long time. Luckily, there's usually not too many passengers on the buses, so I can relax and sleep on the back seat. I consider it my private bus and my private back seat as well, since there's really not any other frequent users that I've noticed so far.
While sleeping in the bus, I sometimes wake up to look around the scenery. On the second trip, I was scared fgoor some time that I had take n a wrong bus since the scenery was exactly the same as before. Really, the quiet suburban areas between Kitami and Obihiro are all exactly the same, broken only by some vast fields and farms scattered between them. I only recovered from my shock after the bus arrived to a familiar bus station, followed by miles and miles of fields. They say that the area around Kitami is famous for producing two things - onion and mint. So I guess that in summer, it's either of those two that will be growing on those fields.
As for the weekend itself, it was not all that exciting to tell about. Tomomi had to go to work for every day except Sunday so I simply waited for her to get back by working on a website project and taking a few long walks around the city. On the first trip, I strolled around the suburban area which is where Tomomi lived too. After crossing the supermarkets, there were just houses with bonsai gardens, schools, vending machines and an occasional restaurant. I walked for about 10km around this area and really got my fill of the Japanese housing. The only thing that kept me going was that I had to get back to the apartment as well. I lost my way a few times, but the huge dome of a pachinko parlor guided me back to the main road and from there, back to our apartment.
The reason I went walking was that I saw really beautiful mountains out of the apartment window in the morning. I wanted to get closer to them, but having no map of the area, I didn't know how far they even were. After walking for about five kilometers and seeing how the mountains were not getting any closer, I gave up and turned back. Later, I found out that they were actually 35km away from the city, being a part of a much larger mountain range far away from anything.
On one evening, Tomomi mailed me that she would get back home from work in half an hour. Then, I started to make pancakes to surprise her. I like making them since I'm not a very good cook and that's one of the few recipes I can easily memorize - just some flour, milk and an egg with a pinch of sugar and some oil or butter for cooking. While it all sounds really easy, it is not in Japan, at least not for me. Everything went well until I reached for the sugar. Tomomi had bought salt before and I had put it next to the sugar pack. Since I cannot read Japanese text or at least understand it, I just took the first package without looking at it at all. After all, sugar and salt do look the same, but one might argue that their taste differs somewhat. Did I taste the white grain? No. I just poured it in the dough and started making the pancakes afterwards. I only noticed after eating some of the first pancakes that they were very, very salty. After that, I realized my mistake but continued making the pancakes anyway, since I think throwing away any food is a bad thing. Thinking about the issue now, I should've just poured the dough away, because neither of us could eat all that many of the pancakes. Tomomi said the pancakes were not too salty, but I think it was just out of the standard politeness to which Japanese people are accustomed to.
The same kind of politeness and not being able to understand the language is also something really noticeable in my daily life. Everyone is really friendly and although I say "wakarimasen" (I don't understand), they somehow do what I wanted to, anyway. But at the same time, everyone keeps staring at me constantly, especially in Obihiro. I think there are probably foreign, Caucasian students as well in that city, but only few and far apart. In Kitami, there are only six. We're definitely outgunned, but in the staring content, we usually win, because when staring back, they usually turn their eyes away. Some do not, though. It was another Finnish exchange student, Petri, who said that we are like black people in that sense. In Finland, many people stare at blacks who are equally few and far apart in our home country, so in Japan, I imagine we feel the same way.
Whereas old people stare, teenagers and young adults sometimes say "Hello!" in English. In a country where almost no one can speak English properly, this is probably an act of great courage. Sometimes, in the bus, people peek at me through the seats. The best I can do is to peek back, but that's about the limit of my communication skills in English. I'm lucky that at least my girlfriend speaks decent English, but on the other hand, we couldn't have a relationship otherwise at all.
Back in the dorm, there was no internet access due to some renovation work in the apartment through which we go the Internet access from. There is internet access on the campus in the International Lounge, but that is only open until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., so we actually had to figure something else to do than just internet for all the time. Studying is one thing, of course, but I'll see if I can pull myself together for such an endeavor. After all, I didn't come here to study. I think most of the previous exchange students from TUT had noticed it as well - to really study, one might have to think of another college.
While sleeping in the bus, I sometimes wake up to look around the scenery. On the second trip, I was scared fgoor some time that I had take n a wrong bus since the scenery was exactly the same as before. Really, the quiet suburban areas between Kitami and Obihiro are all exactly the same, broken only by some vast fields and farms scattered between them. I only recovered from my shock after the bus arrived to a familiar bus station, followed by miles and miles of fields. They say that the area around Kitami is famous for producing two things - onion and mint. So I guess that in summer, it's either of those two that will be growing on those fields.
As for the weekend itself, it was not all that exciting to tell about. Tomomi had to go to work for every day except Sunday so I simply waited for her to get back by working on a website project and taking a few long walks around the city. On the first trip, I strolled around the suburban area which is where Tomomi lived too. After crossing the supermarkets, there were just houses with bonsai gardens, schools, vending machines and an occasional restaurant. I walked for about 10km around this area and really got my fill of the Japanese housing. The only thing that kept me going was that I had to get back to the apartment as well. I lost my way a few times, but the huge dome of a pachinko parlor guided me back to the main road and from there, back to our apartment.
The reason I went walking was that I saw really beautiful mountains out of the apartment window in the morning. I wanted to get closer to them, but having no map of the area, I didn't know how far they even were. After walking for about five kilometers and seeing how the mountains were not getting any closer, I gave up and turned back. Later, I found out that they were actually 35km away from the city, being a part of a much larger mountain range far away from anything.
On one evening, Tomomi mailed me that she would get back home from work in half an hour. Then, I started to make pancakes to surprise her. I like making them since I'm not a very good cook and that's one of the few recipes I can easily memorize - just some flour, milk and an egg with a pinch of sugar and some oil or butter for cooking. While it all sounds really easy, it is not in Japan, at least not for me. Everything went well until I reached for the sugar. Tomomi had bought salt before and I had put it next to the sugar pack. Since I cannot read Japanese text or at least understand it, I just took the first package without looking at it at all. After all, sugar and salt do look the same, but one might argue that their taste differs somewhat. Did I taste the white grain? No. I just poured it in the dough and started making the pancakes afterwards. I only noticed after eating some of the first pancakes that they were very, very salty. After that, I realized my mistake but continued making the pancakes anyway, since I think throwing away any food is a bad thing. Thinking about the issue now, I should've just poured the dough away, because neither of us could eat all that many of the pancakes. Tomomi said the pancakes were not too salty, but I think it was just out of the standard politeness to which Japanese people are accustomed to.
The same kind of politeness and not being able to understand the language is also something really noticeable in my daily life. Everyone is really friendly and although I say "wakarimasen" (I don't understand), they somehow do what I wanted to, anyway. But at the same time, everyone keeps staring at me constantly, especially in Obihiro. I think there are probably foreign, Caucasian students as well in that city, but only few and far apart. In Kitami, there are only six. We're definitely outgunned, but in the staring content, we usually win, because when staring back, they usually turn their eyes away. Some do not, though. It was another Finnish exchange student, Petri, who said that we are like black people in that sense. In Finland, many people stare at blacks who are equally few and far apart in our home country, so in Japan, I imagine we feel the same way.
Whereas old people stare, teenagers and young adults sometimes say "Hello!" in English. In a country where almost no one can speak English properly, this is probably an act of great courage. Sometimes, in the bus, people peek at me through the seats. The best I can do is to peek back, but that's about the limit of my communication skills in English. I'm lucky that at least my girlfriend speaks decent English, but on the other hand, we couldn't have a relationship otherwise at all.
Back in the dorm, there was no internet access due to some renovation work in the apartment through which we go the Internet access from. There is internet access on the campus in the International Lounge, but that is only open until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., so we actually had to figure something else to do than just internet for all the time. Studying is one thing, of course, but I'll see if I can pull myself together for such an endeavor. After all, I didn't come here to study. I think most of the previous exchange students from TUT had noticed it as well - to really study, one might have to think of another college.
First week - flu :-(
While I was in still in Kitami with Tomomi, she called a number that the airline manager had handed to me. She asked for the model of my camera from the other end and indeed, they did have it! They said to ship it to Tomomi's address because I wasn't aware of my own address at the time and that it'd take one week. I felt very relieved after hearing it, because the camera was not even mine, but my parents'.
The first week was definitely the most straining one, but hopefully not the most exciting one. This is why - after Tomomi left for her work training to Sapporo, I got sick. I met the other Finnish guys, first Ville and then later in the same evening Petri. We went to buy a rice cooker since I needed one in my nearly empty apartment and to get that, we had to walk a few kilometers. In the shop, I managed to drop the glass cover of a saucepan which broke in pieces, but we didn't have to pay for it. I felt bad for it, but the shop personnel just went to get a new cover for the pan and that's what I got instead.
On the next day, I guess I was already getting a bit sore throat when waking up and felt really cold in the morning. But regardless of that, I wanted to get to know the Finns better and go around Kitami, so in the evening, we took the bus to an electronic shop far away across the city. I bought some plug converters from there, after which we started to walk back. I was really hungry, so we went to a nice-looking restaurant, Victoria Steakhouse. After finishing the dinner, we continued walking and kept on going for a long, long time, only stopping by at a shopping center and then getting back on the road.
Next morning, I felt like shit, really cold and my nostrils either dripping or completely stuck. I couldn't do anything at all, so I just stayed at the dorm and arranged my stuff together for living in Kitami for year. There was a bunch of basic stuff to be done like getting trashbags, buying some basic ingredients for cooking and of course setting up my computer, which took almost a full day by itself. A word to the wise - Macs Don't Just Work. Fuck 'em. I will never buy an Apple brand computer again. I have two external hard drives filled with music I cannot even listen to, because plugging them in slows the computer down so badly that using it becomes unbearable. That's just one of the many problems I've had with this MacBook. However, most of the internet is full of whining about computers which is fueled by more nerd rage than I could ever cope with, so if you're interested in reading about how other computer companies except mine suck, head for Google.
Anyways - after a few days, I had gotten much better and within a week, I was almost completely cured. I just had a dripping nose, but that was all. I think I've built up a good resistance against all kinds of sicknesses by just eating all kinds of food and by trying to keep healthy habits in terms of exercise and whatnot, so the sickness was no such a big deal. I don't know how I got it though - Ville got the flu same day I did and after that, Petri caught it as well from us. I attributed it to just stress, jetlag and sleeping in mold-stinking sheets and bedding. I changed the futons in the International office and washed the sheets, after which I was alright. I think Samuli, a late-arriving Finn, was the one to get the old futon, though.
The first week was definitely the most straining one, but hopefully not the most exciting one. This is why - after Tomomi left for her work training to Sapporo, I got sick. I met the other Finnish guys, first Ville and then later in the same evening Petri. We went to buy a rice cooker since I needed one in my nearly empty apartment and to get that, we had to walk a few kilometers. In the shop, I managed to drop the glass cover of a saucepan which broke in pieces, but we didn't have to pay for it. I felt bad for it, but the shop personnel just went to get a new cover for the pan and that's what I got instead.
On the next day, I guess I was already getting a bit sore throat when waking up and felt really cold in the morning. But regardless of that, I wanted to get to know the Finns better and go around Kitami, so in the evening, we took the bus to an electronic shop far away across the city. I bought some plug converters from there, after which we started to walk back. I was really hungry, so we went to a nice-looking restaurant, Victoria Steakhouse. After finishing the dinner, we continued walking and kept on going for a long, long time, only stopping by at a shopping center and then getting back on the road.
Next morning, I felt like shit, really cold and my nostrils either dripping or completely stuck. I couldn't do anything at all, so I just stayed at the dorm and arranged my stuff together for living in Kitami for year. There was a bunch of basic stuff to be done like getting trashbags, buying some basic ingredients for cooking and of course setting up my computer, which took almost a full day by itself. A word to the wise - Macs Don't Just Work. Fuck 'em. I will never buy an Apple brand computer again. I have two external hard drives filled with music I cannot even listen to, because plugging them in slows the computer down so badly that using it becomes unbearable. That's just one of the many problems I've had with this MacBook. However, most of the internet is full of whining about computers which is fueled by more nerd rage than I could ever cope with, so if you're interested in reading about how other computer companies except mine suck, head for Google.
Anyways - after a few days, I had gotten much better and within a week, I was almost completely cured. I just had a dripping nose, but that was all. I think I've built up a good resistance against all kinds of sicknesses by just eating all kinds of food and by trying to keep healthy habits in terms of exercise and whatnot, so the sickness was no such a big deal. I don't know how I got it though - Ville got the flu same day I did and after that, Petri caught it as well from us. I attributed it to just stress, jetlag and sleeping in mold-stinking sheets and bedding. I changed the futons in the International office and washed the sheets, after which I was alright. I think Samuli, a late-arriving Finn, was the one to get the old futon, though.
Apr 12, 2007
Going to Japan
After being granted the exchange student papers from TUT, I got the cheapest tickets to Tokyo I could find. Because I was only going to receive the visa pretty late in March and the school was going to start around the first week of April as well, I chose to fly at 25th of March. The flight was already almost fully booked so I was lucky to even get on that one. Then, I got the connection flight ticket from Tokyo Haneda to Memanbetsu as well. The cheapest ticket I could find was a ANA flight with a "Tabiwari" fare, around 100e for the direct connection which would take about 1.5 hours. The ticket service was actually ticketless - through ordering it from the internet, I received no email, no paperwork or anything else regarding the ticket, except for a 3-digit reservation code. However, this was really useful, since I couldn't actually lose any important papers, due to the fact I didn't even have them.
I packed all of my stuff in a backpack, the same one I used for traveling Southeast Asia. There were a few reasons for this - most importantly, the weight limits at Finnair dictated that anything over 20kg had to be paid extra for, so since all the stuff in a suitcase was around 28kg, I lost a few important kilos by just changing to a lighter form of packaging.
On the airport, there were a few hassles right when I arrived - the flight from Helsinki to Narita, Tokyo was late, so my connection flight plan was ruined right on the spot. I had to start arranging it immediately and through Finnair customer service, I eventually could call ANA to make a new reservation, while still keeping the old ticket in case that the plane could catch up at little anyway. However, when finally leaving, it became imminent that were even more late than supposed to, so I would have to cancel my old ticket as soon as possible upon landing. On the plane, doing it was impossible.
I met a Japanese woman called Sari on the airport who had come to Finland to meet her friend and listen to some heavy metal music - "Suomimetalli", as she called it. She spoke a few odd words of Finnish and was living in Tokyo. We talked for some time before boarding the plane, after which we went our separate ways.
On the seat next to me was sitting a Japanese boy called Kenji. In reality, he was 28, but he really looked much younger than that. It's true, almost everyone looks much younger than they really are in Asian countries and I'd noticed it before as well. We talked with Kenji for a long time, until the lights went out and we started to try and sleep a little bit. I couldn't sleep almost at all though, so I just rolled around in my not-so-spacious seat for a few hours more until we started to get closer to Japan. In the nighttime, it was really beautiful to look out of the window and see all the stars clearly, but it was even more beautiful when the morning broke and I could see the ocean through the clouds, as well as parts of China and Russia while crossing to above Hokkaido.
That scenery is familiar to anyone who's ever been on an airplane, but I haven't been to one so many times to get bored of the views.
After landing, I asked Kenji to help me find a telephone so I could call ANA to cancel my flight. By the time we arrived to immigration, there was only one hour of time until my plane was leaving which wasn't nearly enough time. Even by a fastest taxi, it would've been too slow, so me and Kenji found a payphone and were waiting for a few Japanese girls to stop making their call when Sari arrived from an escalator was well. It was a very pleasant surprise, especially because she offered me to use her cellphone. Kenji didn't have one at all and the girls on the payphone didn't stop using it for a good while, so it was a great relief to make the call immediately. But she was a really nice person otherwise too - very friendly and talkative, so it was nice to spend some time with her before parting ways.
In the immigration, Kenji and Sari went to Japanese immigration, which had a line of 3 meters or so - the foreign passport immigration line was probably a 100 meters long. Luckily, things really sped up after a while so I could get out of the formalities by some time. In the line, there were also a few other Finnish students from TUT I had noticed before, both on the airplane and on the airport. One of them was going to Sendai and two others to Kitami. I talked with one of them on the line for just a little bit, but since the line was moving and we weren't exactly next to each other, it was somewhat difficult. After getting out of the formalities, we talked with each other for just a little bit - they were staying in Tokyo but I had to hurry for the next flight which was leaving in three hours and a half.
To get the free ticket for the next flight, I needed to get a paper from Finnair proving that my original flight was late. So, I was bounced between terminals 1 and 2 until I found at least someone to talk to and even after that, I was told to go somewhere else. Eventually, JAL ticket counter personnel wrote me a certification of my flight being late. Then I called my girlfriend and went to a limousine bus for Haneda airport. In that bus, I made a major mistake. I forgot my camera, Canon Ixus 800, to the seat of the bus. However, I only noticed it on Haneda when my flight was about to board, so I asked the flight attendants to help me out with it a little. They called for some sort of manager who gave me a phone number to ask the camera from. They couldn't find it all that soon so I went to the flight without my camera, knowing I wouldn't have it back.
On the flight, I saw two other pale-looking guys. When I say pale, I really mean it - p-a-l-e. I didn't know who they were, just that they weren't definitely Japanese. I went to sit far away from them in the airplane, so we didn't talk at all. We were the only Caucasian people in the airplane though, so it was definitely strange to see them there.
I went to sit with two Japanese middle-aged women next to me. One of them was wearing a white mask, worn by people with a flu or other kind of infectious sickness. After the plane took off, I tried to relax, but I saw the women making origami, the very typical crane type. It was not interesting that they were making them, but that they didn't seem to stop at all. They kept going, making one after other for some time. Then I asked if they could understand any English and asked what were they doing. The woman sitting closer to me tried to explain about it, but I really couldn't understand. She just started to teach me how to make the crane origami myself and after a while, I had finished the first one. Then she asked me to help them and make another one, so I did, but I really couldn't understand what was going on. I just kept making origami for them for a while until a flight stewardess came to ask me if I knew what was going on.
The stewardess told me that the women were following a Japanese tradition - when someone close to them dies, they make a thousand origami and put them on the tree, around the grave or something like that. I couldn't catch all the details, but I understood what was going on. Around that time, I could also clearly see that the other woman, who was wearing a mask, didn't wear it for sickness, but because she was crying. I couldn't ask them who had died, I already felt sad enough to realize what their situation was like. I spent the rest of the time on the flight making origami for them and thinking of people I had lost in one way or another.
After one hour and a half, the flight finally landed on Memanbetsu. Tomomi was there waiting for me behind the glass wall, I could see her as soon as I descended down the escalator. She started smiling as she saw me as did I. The last time we'd seen each other was five months ago. It had been a long wait.
I packed all of my stuff in a backpack, the same one I used for traveling Southeast Asia. There were a few reasons for this - most importantly, the weight limits at Finnair dictated that anything over 20kg had to be paid extra for, so since all the stuff in a suitcase was around 28kg, I lost a few important kilos by just changing to a lighter form of packaging.
On the airport, there were a few hassles right when I arrived - the flight from Helsinki to Narita, Tokyo was late, so my connection flight plan was ruined right on the spot. I had to start arranging it immediately and through Finnair customer service, I eventually could call ANA to make a new reservation, while still keeping the old ticket in case that the plane could catch up at little anyway. However, when finally leaving, it became imminent that were even more late than supposed to, so I would have to cancel my old ticket as soon as possible upon landing. On the plane, doing it was impossible.
I met a Japanese woman called Sari on the airport who had come to Finland to meet her friend and listen to some heavy metal music - "Suomimetalli", as she called it. She spoke a few odd words of Finnish and was living in Tokyo. We talked for some time before boarding the plane, after which we went our separate ways.
On the seat next to me was sitting a Japanese boy called Kenji. In reality, he was 28, but he really looked much younger than that. It's true, almost everyone looks much younger than they really are in Asian countries and I'd noticed it before as well. We talked with Kenji for a long time, until the lights went out and we started to try and sleep a little bit. I couldn't sleep almost at all though, so I just rolled around in my not-so-spacious seat for a few hours more until we started to get closer to Japan. In the nighttime, it was really beautiful to look out of the window and see all the stars clearly, but it was even more beautiful when the morning broke and I could see the ocean through the clouds, as well as parts of China and Russia while crossing to above Hokkaido.
That scenery is familiar to anyone who's ever been on an airplane, but I haven't been to one so many times to get bored of the views.
After landing, I asked Kenji to help me find a telephone so I could call ANA to cancel my flight. By the time we arrived to immigration, there was only one hour of time until my plane was leaving which wasn't nearly enough time. Even by a fastest taxi, it would've been too slow, so me and Kenji found a payphone and were waiting for a few Japanese girls to stop making their call when Sari arrived from an escalator was well. It was a very pleasant surprise, especially because she offered me to use her cellphone. Kenji didn't have one at all and the girls on the payphone didn't stop using it for a good while, so it was a great relief to make the call immediately. But she was a really nice person otherwise too - very friendly and talkative, so it was nice to spend some time with her before parting ways.
In the immigration, Kenji and Sari went to Japanese immigration, which had a line of 3 meters or so - the foreign passport immigration line was probably a 100 meters long. Luckily, things really sped up after a while so I could get out of the formalities by some time. In the line, there were also a few other Finnish students from TUT I had noticed before, both on the airplane and on the airport. One of them was going to Sendai and two others to Kitami. I talked with one of them on the line for just a little bit, but since the line was moving and we weren't exactly next to each other, it was somewhat difficult. After getting out of the formalities, we talked with each other for just a little bit - they were staying in Tokyo but I had to hurry for the next flight which was leaving in three hours and a half.
To get the free ticket for the next flight, I needed to get a paper from Finnair proving that my original flight was late. So, I was bounced between terminals 1 and 2 until I found at least someone to talk to and even after that, I was told to go somewhere else. Eventually, JAL ticket counter personnel wrote me a certification of my flight being late. Then I called my girlfriend and went to a limousine bus for Haneda airport. In that bus, I made a major mistake. I forgot my camera, Canon Ixus 800, to the seat of the bus. However, I only noticed it on Haneda when my flight was about to board, so I asked the flight attendants to help me out with it a little. They called for some sort of manager who gave me a phone number to ask the camera from. They couldn't find it all that soon so I went to the flight without my camera, knowing I wouldn't have it back.
On the flight, I saw two other pale-looking guys. When I say pale, I really mean it - p-a-l-e. I didn't know who they were, just that they weren't definitely Japanese. I went to sit far away from them in the airplane, so we didn't talk at all. We were the only Caucasian people in the airplane though, so it was definitely strange to see them there.
I went to sit with two Japanese middle-aged women next to me. One of them was wearing a white mask, worn by people with a flu or other kind of infectious sickness. After the plane took off, I tried to relax, but I saw the women making origami, the very typical crane type. It was not interesting that they were making them, but that they didn't seem to stop at all. They kept going, making one after other for some time. Then I asked if they could understand any English and asked what were they doing. The woman sitting closer to me tried to explain about it, but I really couldn't understand. She just started to teach me how to make the crane origami myself and after a while, I had finished the first one. Then she asked me to help them and make another one, so I did, but I really couldn't understand what was going on. I just kept making origami for them for a while until a flight stewardess came to ask me if I knew what was going on.
The stewardess told me that the women were following a Japanese tradition - when someone close to them dies, they make a thousand origami and put them on the tree, around the grave or something like that. I couldn't catch all the details, but I understood what was going on. Around that time, I could also clearly see that the other woman, who was wearing a mask, didn't wear it for sickness, but because she was crying. I couldn't ask them who had died, I already felt sad enough to realize what their situation was like. I spent the rest of the time on the flight making origami for them and thinking of people I had lost in one way or another.
After one hour and a half, the flight finally landed on Memanbetsu. Tomomi was there waiting for me behind the glass wall, I could see her as soon as I descended down the escalator. She started smiling as she saw me as did I. The last time we'd seen each other was five months ago. It had been a long wait.
Introduction
My first trip to Japan was a month-long holiday around a few cities. I was equipped with a backpack and a JR pass for cruising the shinkansen between Tokyo, Kyoto and Fukuoka. I visited a few other places as well - Nagasaki, Nara, Beppu and Kawaguchi-ko. I was left with great memories from that trip and really wanted to get back there later, so I thought to apply for the exchange program to Sendai. However, there were too many applicants for Tohoku University of Sendai and I couldn't fit in since I haven't studied for all that long in Tampere University of Technology. Only the applicants with highest average grades were accepted. Needless to say, I was disappointed not to be able to get into Tohoku, so I thought I might just apply again next year.
However, I had met a Japanese girl on an internet chat site and she was coming to visit Finland later in the autumn of 2006. After talking about the exchange, we decided that it would be best for me to apply for Kitami, since it was still available for application, and she would move to Kitami as well. So, after filling out all kinds of forms and papers, I was set to go for Japan and just took loads of courses from TUT to compensate for the fact that I wouldn't probably be able to progress in my studies while in Japan by all that much.
I started to take a Japanese course right when the school started in the autumn 2006, but since my flight for Japan was leaving already on 25th of March 2007, I only had time to finish the first two Japanese courses out of the four possible ones. Needless to say, my language skills were more than lacking by the time I was leaving, I could only barely memorize all かな (hiragana and katakana, the Japanese syllabuses) and be able to read them slowly. But having been to Japan before, the fact that most people couldn't speak any English didn't come to me as a great shock or anything. However, it was not like I had a lot of time to study Japanese because of the sheer number of courses I took, so I assumed that I would grasp the language while actually living in the country.
However, I had met a Japanese girl on an internet chat site and she was coming to visit Finland later in the autumn of 2006. After talking about the exchange, we decided that it would be best for me to apply for Kitami, since it was still available for application, and she would move to Kitami as well. So, after filling out all kinds of forms and papers, I was set to go for Japan and just took loads of courses from TUT to compensate for the fact that I wouldn't probably be able to progress in my studies while in Japan by all that much.
I started to take a Japanese course right when the school started in the autumn 2006, but since my flight for Japan was leaving already on 25th of March 2007, I only had time to finish the first two Japanese courses out of the four possible ones. Needless to say, my language skills were more than lacking by the time I was leaving, I could only barely memorize all かな (hiragana and katakana, the Japanese syllabuses) and be able to read them slowly. But having been to Japan before, the fact that most people couldn't speak any English didn't come to me as a great shock or anything. However, it was not like I had a lot of time to study Japanese because of the sheer number of courses I took, so I assumed that I would grasp the language while actually living in the country.
Apr 6, 2007
First post
This blog is about an exchange program in Kitami, Hokkaido, Japan. I'm an university student from Tampere University of Technology, Finland. The blog will last from April 2007 to April 2008.
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