Darlo's World

Today is one of Japan’s many national holidays, 建国記念の日 (kenkokunen no hi, National Foundation Day). On this day, Japanese celebrate the founding of the nation and the imperial line by its legendary first emperor, Jimmu, who established his capital in Yamato (thank you Wikipedia). To be honest with the exception of not having to make the commute to University in Kobe (and of course not receiving any food for the day), it didn’t seem to have the same kind of holiday atmosphere as others have done. This could be just me due to the fact that it was around 8 o’clock this morning that I finally went to bed, emerging sometime in the afternoon.

Why was I up so early? Well after re-watching the Sexy Vampire animation by James ‘Gosha’ Franzen, I felt inspired to crack on with the next page of the Lotaku webcomic. Didn’t get it finished mind you, but felt I made a decent enough dent in it.

Regardless of not having to go, I still went to Kobe this afternoon, to the same train station I get off for University. According to a couple of friends, a second hand book, game and CD shop is closing down soon and had put a lot of things on sale. Now this particular shop already had a huge 105 section (despite being second hand this is still a gigantic saving on what you’d pay for one manga in the UK), and it can be very difficult to find a specific title that you’re after. I ended up just buying 2 books but was tempted by some of the games and DVDs (DVDs in Japan by the way are incredibily expensive, and we thought anime was expensive in the UK!).

After a quick stop at McDonalds to grab a couple of hamburgers, I was soon on the train back home. It’s been well documented (I’m presuming, being too lazy to check of course), that the world is in fact small. Well anyway, on the train from Juso I was approached by a polite woman asking about my coat (in English). Like most day’s I was wearing my old PGL Staff fleece top; it’s nice, warm and has many 便利 (benri, convenient) pockets. It turns out that she herself had done some work at PGL at the Boreatton Park site. Where’s that you might be thinking? Well it’s only in my home county of Shropshire of course, herself coming from Birmingham. She’d moved to Osaka in January after working in Hiroshima, a place where we’re all due to take a class trip.

There were a few other mini-coincidences that we compared but here’s the clincher. When she moved to Osaka in January, she became a resident of Kamishinjyou! Just a month after I say goodbye, another midlander moves in (not into the mens dorm of course). It makes me wonder, does Kamishinjyou have a curse where it much always have a resident from central England?

So to play us out, let’s have that Sexy Vampire if you please…

Well …

Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to December. Yes, it’s a slightly late welcome I’ll admit that, but the truth is when you move home things generally get a little sidetracked … especially when it’s not in your native country. We (myself and some other exchange students) bid our farewells to Kamishinjyou on Saturday, leaving behind the place we first called home in Japan. This of course is not counting the hotel we stayed at for the first few days.

Everyone’s reasons for changing dorms varied. For me it was mainly because of the location of the other dorm that the university’s exchange students reside in. As some of you know I’m a fan of city life much more than town-esqueness. Kamishinjyou was fun to a degree but when you have to walk 10 minutes to get to the train station when sit for another 20 or so to get to the fun area of Umeda (admitadly Juso isn’t bad but … meh) and to top it all off you have to pay 150 yen to do so then I’d rather just stay in home and faff about, which in fact is how I ended up spending a lot of my weekends.

The move itself went really well. I’d made a few visits to the new dorm at Kita-Umeda beforehand so I could deliver some things and make the last day of moving much easier. This in turn saved me the embarrassment of having too much stuff to fit into the taxi on moving day, though I was still bringing a fair amount of stuff.

As a way of thanking our former dormitory manager I gave him a box of Earl Grey tea (though I really didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t know any British people who actually drink the stuff) and some flowers. My fellow movees also offered gifts. We had some staff members from the University come down to help out with the move, they also brought a gift of thanks. Though it was a simple handing over of the keys, it still seemed to be somewhats ceremonial … ish.

For the record, although my room was untidy for over 99% of my time at Kamishinjyou, I left it spotless ^_^.

As for my new room? Well … it was clean when I first came with my first load of things, then it became … um … personalised. It’s not that it’s intentionally untidy, I’m just still in the process of unpacking.

So what of my new area? I love it here. With Umeda a 15 minute walk away (compared to the 10 minute walk from Kamishinjyou dorm just to the station), I don’t feel as isolated here. Also the moment you step out of this dorm you’re right in a busy city atmosphere, and I love this kind of buzz. It’s exciting. I went into one shopping centre about 4 minutes walk away, and it was looooooong. Apparently it’s the longest in Japan, but I’ve not checked wikipedia yet to confirm that.

Unfortunately all of the above along with my usual load of work and attempts at preparing for the end of semester exams has left me with not much time to keep you guys in the loop.

The showing of the TV show that I was on went well. I wasn’t featured as much in it as a lot of people here thought and made it out to be, but you do see me screaming in the Room of Living Dolls. Scary as it is I do love that place. But yeah now that it’s been shown I could tell you what we did … but I’ll wait until it reaches YouTube first.

In creative news I’ve finally started to edit episode 2 of Gyamball, but because of the fact that next week’s pretty busy, it probably won’t be until New Year that it gets to be online.

Finally, remember my pointless 7 hour walk to blow off some steam? Well, I’m planning on going one better. One? Hmm … maybe 8 or 9 better actually. I’ve come to the realisation that I’m not going to be able to do the majority of my ‘When in Japan‘ list, so I might as well go all out and have a hell of a lot of fun doing just one thing.

On my list was a visit to the village of Shirakawa in Gufu prefecture. My reasoning was it was the village that Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni’s village (Hinamizawa) was based on. An odd reason as it may seem, but for me it’s worth walking the 190 miles to go there.

… *pauses for a moment so reader can get up off the floor* …

Yes, since I had no plans for Christmas and no familly to spend it with, I wanted to do something exciting. Why not get the train you say? Well, I’m planning to get the train on the way back, but I noticed on the walk from Okamoto to Juso that you can see so much more if you make the effort to travel manually. Yes it’s going to take much (MUCH) longer than the train, which normally takes 4-5 hours, and I’m estimating it will take around 10 days for me to get there. On route I’m planning on sleeping at hostels, so don’t worry I won’t be sleeping in bus stops and what-not. Also if things do get too tough, then the train awaits.

I realise in the end it’s going to cost me more going this way than getting the train, due to hotel fees and such, but since I’ve come to terms with the fact that I probably won’t be going to Tokyo and other things from The List during my time here I think it’s well justified.

And on that note, I’m off for a drink … of good ol’ cheap water.