So this week instead of having ten hours of lessons we only ended up having four. Why? Well, Japan is pretty big on national holidays (hooray!) so Monday was Respect the Aged day and Friday was Autumn Equinox. Slap bang in the middle of that, Typhoon Roke paid Hyogo a visit on Wednesday which meant we got yet another day off!
It was a very nice week, having more time to settle in and get to know our neighbourhood. We only had one lesson with japanese students (Japanese culture studies) which was fun as we spent the hour and half doing self introductions and getting to know everyone through our awkward japanese!
Our weekly schedule looks like this:
Monday: free
Tuesday: Japanese studies
Wednesday: Translation, International relations discussion, Law and Politics (the scary one- all three are solely in japanese btw)
Thursday: Japanese language
Friday: Japanese language
The schedule is pretty nice, but I'm sure we'll be adding a few more hours for kanji learning and revision (the never ending work).
Last weekend we met up with our Konan friends Paul and Chaz, and Calyx came over from Kyoto. We spent the day sharing our first snippets of life in Japan, eating nice food and walking around Sannomiya. (Next time we totally need to do pikkura, guys).
Yesterday Sophie came to Kobe to see Kester, and Elen and I went to Kobe in search of Kanji books whilst Hilary went to Kyoto. The Kanji book search ended up being completely fruitless and it turns out Kobe city itself is more of a huge residential area (with the added joy of Harbourland on the port front) rather than a commercial shopping area. So after walking around for a couple of hours like lost puppies, going into second hand bookshops which would probably never ever stock the book we needed we decided to rearrange our meeting with the lovely Japanese ladies Eiko and Yupi, and meet in Sannomiya instead.
What ensued was another few hours of trailing from bookshop to bookshop, all of which only had one copy of the book we needed. In the end, we found some (although only managed to get two copies in separate places, Kanji in Context, I hate you) all with the help of Eiko and Yupi <3 arigatou, ne!
We then did some pikkura, which if you don't know what it is, is basically a photobooth which gives you massive drugged up eyes and shiny faces, to which you add writing, icons, hearts, flowers, rainbows, you name it. The results are below!
That's all from my end! Hopefully the others will blog about their adventures soon :) I just spent fifteen minutes deciphering the kanji on my washing machine, going to try and use it now, wish me luck!
Keep your eyes peeled for another blog when we have more lessons/face more challenges/make more food related mistakes.
Sam x
