Darlo's World

There’s a lot to be said for going home the long way. Yesterday I took a trip to a huge 100 yen shop. To be honest I didn’t intentionally go there, I was looking for a bookshop which was totally over shadowed by it. After having a nose around looking for Christmas gifts to send home (which will probably arrive sometime in 2009, hopefully before I do), I started heading back to the dorm.

I reached a set of shingou (traffic lights) and had to wait. I then realised that I could cross the road (a crossroad) another way, due to the priorities that were given. I took that way and instead of crossing again to get to my originally desired location, proceded to walk down the road.

My area, Kita-Umeda, is without a doubt very big. I could have chosen better words to describe it there, but no I’ll stick with simple (he says reaching into the fridge for a cold can of Clear Asahi beer). The way that I went home had me walk past an array of temples, small shops, random things thrown away (including a large Stitch cushion … had it not been raining I’d have probably taken it with me) and was a genuinely pleasant walk.

Today one of the Konan teachers held a Christmas party at his home so we walked there. It took a while to get there from a combination of slow-ass walkers and the fact that we didn’t really know where we were going, but his house was awesome. Lots of food was eaten ranging from pasta to pizza (it wasn’t all Italian), many songs were sung with the accompanying music from the piano, and many different (and I mean that in all shapes and forms) conversations were had.

When it was time to go I walked with a friend to Hankyu’s Mikage station, and decided to walk to Okamoto (saving 150 yen). After about 30 seconds I started to feel a bit energetic so decided to push myself. I started running. It was a cold day and I’d been into uni that day, so I was wearing many layers and was carrying a back pack, and here I was running through the dark. I’m somewhat surprised I didn’t have the police stop me to be honest.

I reached Okamoto station 13 minutes later dripping with sweat just in time for the train to arrive. If Wikipedia’s measurements are to be believed, Okamoto is 2.2km away from Mikage, thus I was running at an average speed of 10.2 kmph (6.34mph). Which brings me to why I’m now going to bed. Tomorrow’s the Emperor’s Birthday (a national holiday) so I won’t be getting food from the dorm again, but at least I’ll be getting a nice lie-in.

Yeah, I guess it’s been a while eh. Truth is since the trip to Koya-san I found myself horrendously busy, and I’m sorry to say it hasn’t been all fun stuff that’s kept me occupied. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a few moments of enjoyment (which I’ll talk about this morning … if I can remember them), and have finally found a few minutes to have a bowl of cereal and take a little break away from the world of Japaneseness … even though I am still in Japan.

“Cereal?” I hear you ask, yes cereal. At our local 99 yen shop (see XE.com for currency converter) they were selling boxes of Chocolate-Cornflakes. Don’t get me wrong, the boxes are a lot smaller than in the UK. I’ll describe them as what a Kellogg’s Variety size box should be; enough to actually FILL a bowl. I still don’t know if it’s a perk or a burden not getting food on Sundays and holidays (for the record tomorrow is a holiday, but I still have classes). The obvious plus side is that I get to take a break from minimal choice in favour of … well, pretty much anything I want. Also, like this morning, I didn’t have to get up early to make sure I was fed. The main downpart of course is that unless you’re fasting for the day, you’ll have to shell out from your own pocket.

Excuse me for a moment, I’m just going to wash my bowl – another downside I guess.

I’m back, yeah that was quick. I didn’t actually wash the bowl yet, I got in the washroom but someone was in there sorting his hair out. So rather look like a complete and utter pillock, I just grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge … only looking like a partial pillock.

Oh, I want to take a moment to thank Timefortea3 for visiting my blog and leaving a comment on my guestbook. Hope the Fish and Chips were great!

I’ve finally started to upload my mountain of photographs of my trip to Japan. But because of the shere weight of them I didn’t want to destroy my bandwidth in one foul swoop, I started a photo-specific blog on Blogspot – http://darlosworld.blogspot.com. It’s pretty good because it gives you the opportunity to leave comments about them. At the moment it’s just photographs from the London stage of my trip, but I will soon get up to the more recent Japanese ones … eventually.

Karaoke – It’s popular, and it’s fun. Why? Because it gives people who can’t sing (like yours truly) the chance to sing anyway with no fear of mockery between your friends. They may mock you after, but who cares, you had the balls to sing in front of people! So far I’ve been to karaoke three times, at three different brands of karaoke room, with three different groups of people, in three different scenarios, in three different areas (Okamoto, Sannomiya and Umeda) … but have sung the same three songs at each one. With variation on some of the other songs, I noticed that I always end up doing Parklife (Blur) in English, Life is Like a Boat (Rie Fu) in English and Japanese, and Clubhouse Sandwich (Yuumao) in Japanese. Ironically, Clubhouse Sandwich is what’s playing now on WinAmp.

On Friday night we (exchange students) were invited to a party from one of the circles here at University, SPICE. SPICE (from what I can tell) are a group who like to hang out and improve their skills in English, though no one there seems to know how the group got it’s name. The party, which although had a kid’s birthday feel to it was still incredibly fun, was shortly followed by karaoke in Okamoto (see above paragraph). Everyone from SPICE was incredibly friendly and went two or three steps further to make everyone feel welcome, and for this I thank them very much. I’ve still not joined any clubs or circles yet, mainly because I wanted to make sure I had a properly set timetable before having things change and having to leave groups, but now that I’m settled I’m going to start looking around.

On that note there has been a fair bit of interest in Rock Paper Scissors all of a sudden.

One of the things I wanted to wait on hearing about was a part time tutoring job at Konan, which I’m pleased to say I got. I’m working for two hours a week (on a Monday afternoon), starting tomorrow. I have no idea how it’s going to go, but I’ll still give it my all. I was also waiting to hear if I got into one of the PE classes. These were limited to 2 exchange students dependant on the number of Japanese applicants. I decided to go for the Practical Athletic Training as I’d wanted to make use of the gym, but knew without an obligatory push I’d never get around to it (just like in Leeds, but here I didn’t fork out £100 for a wasted unused membership). Ironically I got into this class by default – I was the only one to apply for it >_<.

As I glance around my bedroom (knowing that I really should tidy up before the cockroaches start complaining about the mess … joke) and gander over to the balcony, I can’t really think of anything else that’s happened except for me opening a bank account. So on that note, I’ll say goodbye and go back to practicing kanji … after I go to wash out that bowl.