Team Gakuin does Awajishima!

Hi everyone! (If anyone is actually reading this!) This is Sam.

We're all good here in Kobe, been busy learning lots and drinking our weight in Van Houten chocolate milk (well, the others have, I've sold my soul to cold coffee).
Last weekend saw an overnight trip to Awaji Island with some other foreign students. We even crossed Akashi Bridge (fun fact: it's the bridge with the longest central span in the world) on the way. We left the uni around 9.30am, and arrived at the National Awaji Youth Friendship Center (http://awaji.niye.go.jp/) around 11am.
As it was torrentially raining the sports we had planned for the day had to take place inside. So after a buffet lunch, we (still full!) changed into our sports gear and met up with our respective teams.
The first game was mass skipping, pretty funny. We managed to get seven people jumping in unison. Then we did basketball, which was pretty intense. Kester outdid himself playing pretty much every game, and Elen showed her infamous competitive side (which won her three baskets).
In the evening we played the Japanese equivalent of duck, duck, goose and bingo, when Kester won but gave his ticket to me hee hee. We ended up winning a takoyaki grill (fried ocotpus balls-better than it sounds) which is awesome as I flipping love me some takoyaki. We're gonna have an octopus party in a few weeks, although the tako-haters are intending to experiment with banana and chocolate flavoured balls!

On the sunday we were woken up at 6am, but sirens. I honestly thought I was in a prison, weirdest and most unpleasant experience in Japan so far, 6am was just not fun. We joined everyone else outside for the famous Japanese Radio exercises, which look a bit like this:

Then, I had to read the flag raising speech which was rather embarassing, but I had the lovely Erika helping me. We then trudged off (sleepily) to breakfast.
After breakfast we were shown a demonstration of how to row in a boat the japanese called 'cutter's. After that we took to the water, wherein I was eaten alive by mosquitos. The rowing was fun but pretty hard work, and we all paid for it Monday morning in aches and pains! In the end our boat won the title of best rowers waheeeey, and we got some uni tshirts.

After a well deserved lunch each team had to design a piece of sand art on the beach. Mine and Kester's team chose to our national flags, so we had the Japanese rising sun, the Chinese stars and the old Union Jack. Elen and Hil's teams did a series of sculptures based on japanese themes (I'm making this sound so posh) such as a geisha and Mt Fuji-which were verrrry pretty, and they rightly won.

We were all pretty knackered on the bus home, and have spent the last week in a state of tiredness, trying to catch up on our work, when we'd really just like to catch up on some sleep.

But the fun goes on! Tomorrow we are having our first joint host family outing to an Autumn festival in Kobe, which should be nice, and we can do some family bonding :) There is also a trip with our Law class planned next week, to Kawasaki World and some other official buildings in Kobe...
With so many events and socials planned each week, time is flying by, I can't believe it's November already. Soon we'll be meeting up with everyone else in Tokyo at Christmas, and the first semester will be nearly over... :(
Time flies when you're having fun.
Til next time, Sam x

English? Indian? Pigs?

Sorry it’s taken so long for us to update! We’ve been up to quite a lot since we last bloged but I can’t be bothered to recap all of it so I’ll just pick out some exceptionally memorable events from the last week or so J

We had our official welcome party hosted by Kobe Gakuin last week which included a banquet of delicious food but it was rather embarrassing as we were hungry and tried our best to guzzle all the delicious food while still attempting to meet and converse with lots of our lovely fellow students. We also had to each formally introduce ourselves in front of staff, students, our host families and the university president which was a tad nerve wracking but I think we managed to keep it short and sweet. After a few hours of chatting (and eating of course) we’d managed to make a bunch of new friends and in the not too distant future we intend to get our karaoke on together J

On Saturday morning we went to the Akashi chat club welcome party which yet again consisted of chatting in with mostly OAPs and eating a delicious 6 course meal…very yummy indeed. Brief explanation may be necessary at this point; Akashi chat club is an English speaking chat club for Japanese Anglophones who every year invite the Leeds students studying at Kobe Gakuin to come to their monthly meetings and pay them for their “trouble”. Absolutely no skin of our nose whatsoever, so it’s most definitely a win-win situation! Everyone was incredibly friendly and eager to know all about us so it was very relaxing and welcoming. I think Akashi chat club meetings have already become a regular thing to look forward to.

After the Akashi meet we had planned to go to “Nada no Kenka Matsuri” with Kanazawa Sensei, basically a festival where massive palanquins smash together in order to please the gods… awesome idea all around.  However, because it rained viciously and persistently all Friday the festival was postponed until Sunday. But sadly we already had plans so we couldn’t go. Instead, Kester went to celebrate his anniversary with Sophie in Osaka, while Hilary, Sam and I met up with Sam’s Japanese host dad and went to an izakaya for some food and drinks. 

The izakaya itself was brilliant because it had hundreds of various frog merchandise including cuddly toys, tooth pick holders and plates. If you’re mad about frogs it’s most definitely the place to be. 

We ended up eating course after course of freshly made traditional Japanese food, including a meal of pig’s ears. Despite our initial hesitation we ate those ears right up as we had no intention of being ungrateful gaijin. And personally I prefer pig’s ears to Sashimi… but that’s just cause I can’t stomach raw fish.

 Also, we got conversing with the other customers in the Izakaya, one of which (an old man) told us “we had beautiful faces but bodies which resembled pigs”… lol. It was the weirdest and most amusing situation we’d experienced so far in Japan. Yet, rather refreshing as this old geezer clearly wasn’t abiding by the standard Japanese over politeness and fake compliments which are abundant in general conversation. Also he was clearly rather lacking in racial awareness as he said I looked Indian and went on to inquire where my bindi was. 

Then he added he thought Sam was Russian or Scandinavian and finally guessed that Hilary was Egyptian… completely wrong all around. The only reply I could squeak out between our hysterical laughter was “My mum’s Welsh…”. In the end he bought us some Okonomiyaki, despite our protest “But you said we need to diet from now on?” 

(Left hand side) "Throwing out the random racial insinuations" guy ¬¬

We’ve got quite a lot of fun stuff going on in the next few weeks so hopefully we’ll have another (hopefully) interesting update again soon!

First weekend in Kobe!

Hi everyone, it's saturday morning here and after a pretty easy first week, a blog post is due.

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).

Paul took us to this Shinto shrine (the first one I've ever seen in REAL LIFE), which was really lovely although there was a bit of confusion over how to prepare for worship. You wash your hands with the water in the well (see above) and pour away the dirty water. Elen managed to pour the dirty water back into the well, and is now probably cursed by Shinto kami...

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!

We then stopped for a bite to eat, which resulted in me getting a glass of full fat milk (bleeeurgh), rather than milk tea. Oh language barrier strikes again! But, we had a good chat with Eiko and Yupi, who are both so nice :) After Yupi came back to Akashi to help us get Elen's Kanji book (thanks again!), Elen and I dragged our tired bodies (and Elen's sore feet- really, how do japanese girls manage to walk around all day in high heels? Massive respect for them) and watched some doramas.
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

Team Gakuin safely arrive in Japan ^^

Konnichwa minna san! Kono blog de irasshaimase ^^
This is the very first video on our joint blog. Over the course of our year abroad at Kobe Gakuin University, keep your eyes peeled for more videos, written blogging, and pictures. We hope to create a fun blog that let's all our family and friends see the many sides of Japan along with us.
Enjoy, and put us in your bookmarks!