Darlo's World

Happy New Year everyone. I know not everyone had a fantastic 2009, so here’s hoping this decade won’t screw us over will treat us well.

Here’s a few of my New Year ‘firsts’.

First Movie: Drop Dead Fred
First Trip: From Carley & Co.’s house to mine.
First Book: Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
First Drink: Cheap Beer
First Meal: (Own brand) Shreddies cereal
First MP3: Gun’s & Roses by Paradise Lunch (the theme tune to the anime, Baccano)
First Website Looked At: Facebook
First Phone Call: With Viv
First Game: PKR (Online Poker)
First Song Sung: …

Music! Go!

Well the last couple of weeks of the semester have been a hellish fight for survival, but I’m thankful that I can say … “I made it”. That is at least until the exam period in January, then I’ll be completely buggered.

So lets start out with the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). This is an exam taken all over the world at the same time (give or take several hours for time-zone differences) to assess your level of Japanese (not spoken). Here in the UK it’s held at the School of Oriental and African Studies down in London, so for some of us a trip down was needed. Me and a friend went down a day early to do some filming for LSTV (I won’t say exactly what for, but it’s a news story on textbook prices), so I spent the night at YHA London Central. It was definately one of the more comfortable hostels I’ve kipped at, bar the snorer in the bed above me giving me dreams about zombies in an “I am the only one left” kind of fashion.

When applying to take the exam, of which only 1000 people can sit a year, I thought I’d have time to study and revise properly for it. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case and I arrived in London horribly unprepared. We headed to a couple of Japanese book shops and bought a past-exam paper and a grammar book recommended by one of my teachers. My intention was to spend the night going through the past paper and cramming as much grammar and vocab into my tiny fragile mind as I could … but again this wasn’t the case.

Sitting in the lounge next to the big ass telly with books spread across my lap, the guy sitting nearby watching the rugby has a look at one of my books. “Do you speak Japanese?” he asks. I look up and bam, instantly my interest in studying goes as my interest in Japanese oral practice increases. By chance I was at the same hostel as a guy who lives very close to where I was living in Osaka! After a few hours of fun conversation he went to bed so once again I cracked on studying … until a new group appears, curious about the text I’m reading. To be fair I did get a fair bit of studying done, but not enough to leave me with confidence for the next days exam.

I woke up in the morning and wanted a full English breakfast. I checked out of the hostel and ventured in search of a Wetherspoons. After a few hours of gormlessly wandering around London (with help from a relative on the phone with the internet), I eventually found the Shakespeares Head in Holborn. Though the service here was fine, the when the breakfast came out I had to look in the direction of the kitchen to make sure the building wasn’t on fire. The vast majority of what was on the plate was burned and almost uneatable, even the black pudding (I’ve never seen a burnt black pudding before). I will say however the sausage was fantastic, too bad I left the rest of it on the plate.

I met up with a friend and we went to face the exam. I left the exam with the feeling that I did as well as I thought I would.

Some of us who came down from Leeds then went to a bar for a post-exam drink, but as they were pretty costly I just had the one. Since a few of us were getting on the same coach back, a suggestion was put forward that we carry on drinking in Victoria so we wouldn’t miss the coach when the time came. For me, I’d spent the entirity of the two days walking around London rather than taking the tube (when did tube prices shoot up so much!?), so I said I’d walk it. After being mocked a bit, I gave my bags to the others and proceeded on foot towards Victoria.

I really should have learned from past experiences that my natural navigatory skills get tempered somewhat when the sun goes down, but more than that I get in trouble whenever I stop for a bog-break. It seems I normally have a tendency to flush away my thoughts about the ‘hear and now’, and normally start off going in the wrong direction. Once I hit the river I knew I was pretty buggered and started running the correct way.

Arriving at our meeting point, the Wetherspoons at Victoria Train Station, there were two things I wanted: a pee, and a pint, I’ll let you decide which came first. There must have been something generally crappy about Wetherspoons in London on that day. I ordered a pint of the Christmas ale, but the guy at the bar poured it with such speed and vigour that instead of a decent head I got a mass of bubbles. Much in the same way a kid would blow bubbles into a chocolate milkshake. I let the pint settle and asked for it to be topped up so I could get a head on it (by a different server of course). It was better, but still very very crap. Leaving the bar area I did overhear the first guy ask what was wrong with it, but was no longer within earshot to hear her response. After speaking with my waiting friends it seemed that they too received service from the same guy that was “rather lacking”. Normally I can associate Wetherspoons with being a great experience, and have always had high praise for both Cuthbert Brodrick in Leeds and Thomas Botfield in Telford, but I think next time in London I’ll have to venture elsewhere.

This week saw me battling with my old nemeses, “history” and “academic reading”, in order to pull out a 3000 word essay on the US Occupation of Japan. Though I thoroughly believe that my essay itself was a massive load of fudge, I’m pleased to say I did learn a good amount of what happened. That is until the several parties over the weekend to celebrate the end of the semester. Great hangover cure by the way, have a big controlled vomit (that is get yourself prepared, glass of water, mint, position yourself, vomit on your own terms) followed by a bit of kip. Or an even better way to avoid hangovers, cut down on the booze ^_^.

In creative news I’ve done a bit more work for Lotaku in that I have finally finished the design for the WebComics Tarot Project. I’m hoping to spend a bit more time on the comic over the winter break and crack out a couple more pages before classes start again. Likewise I’m very close to completing the Learn With Anna animation, just having a few snags with exporting.

And so to play us out, the literal version of The Safety Dance!

Nothing like starting the day like a disgruntled old man, knarked at something he could never control to begin with. Well that’s a partial lie since I went to bed feeling that way anyway. No I’m not going to bang on about how much harder the Japanese course at Leeds has become, pointing in particular reference to how by skipping an entire book we’ve almost caught up on the final year students (i think we’re one chapter behind them and they’ve had an extra year) because I’ll save that for the Japanese blog itself, since it’s been a while since I wrote anything there.

Think of a time you’ve been asked to give feedback on an experience you’ve had so it can be made better for the next group. What kind of thing did you write/say? Surely whatever words you gave wouldn’t really matter to you because you’ve had your time, and you would receive the benefits of any improvements anyway right? Still though you put down what you think and be on your way. Well I was chatting to a friend of mine who’s studying at Konan this year and it seems some of our words were taken on board for this years new group of exchange students.

With the exception of a couple of students who are doing a shorter exchange program, everyone has a homestay. This is something I said from early on was crucial and hated the idea that (in my year) only student from the IC (Illinois Consortium) were guaranteed the homestay, especially when IC students wanted to change famillies and new ones were ‘discovered’. So I am actually genuinely glad that all the Leeds students now have the chance to live with a Japanese familly as I know this will help there Japanese skills greatly (not to mention it’ll save them a hell of a lot of money).

What really caused me a great deal of pain on the inside to such a degree that I was wretching over my laptop, almost vomiting everywhere was in relation to the scholarships. If you read the blog last year you’ll know I was exploring Japan (a small bit of anyway) on pretty much a shoe string budget, and how I hated when students (mainly the already wealthy ones) would waste their JASSO scholarships on things like hangbags and shoes. The JASSO (Japan Student Services Organization) scholarship is large cash amount (80,000 yen a month, plus an 80,000 yen relocation allowance on arrival) given to students so that they can get the most out of their time in Japan and learn more about Japan’s culture etc. Within the Leeds students we were allocated 1 JASSO scholarship, which I’m happy to say it was given to a student living in a dorm who really did make the most of it.

Those who didn’t get JASSO were given a smaller scholarship of just 8,000 yen a month to try and live on (as I mentioned us living in a dorm still had to buy food a lot of the time. During the conversation with my mate it seems that “pretty much everyone out of the 45 ryuugakusei got jasso because they apparently had loads left over this year”. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy that all the Leeds students got it this year, and it’s nice to see that our comments about our financial worries (especially when the exchange rate died) were responded to, but it was the “left over” part that really made me feel well and trully shafted.

I’m off to do some housework. I don’t really feel much like studying this weekend. Though funnily enough I had an idea for a shirt design: “Things aren’t fair, so get over it!” ^_^

When I moved up to Leeds there was an incident involving my TV, the TV that I’d owned and used regularly since buying it with paper round money when I was about 14 or so (more info on that incident can be seen here). So I have been up until now without a TV to watch DVDs and play games on. So that we don’t have to fork out a serious wad of money for a TV Licence, I don’t plan on using it to watch live broadcasts on. To be fair most news and good stuff ends up on the internet anyway.

Nosing around shops the only teles that seem to be available these days are LCDs or Plasmas, or as I call them “Flimsy Little Things That Break Easily And Don’t Even Look That Good Boxes” (or FLTTBEADELTGBs for short). I wanted to replace my TV with a big old style that wouldn’t fall over in a light breeze and didn’t cost more than my yearly food budget (Asda 8p noodles for the win). After looking around second hand websites and such, my thoughts returned to a little community that people I know used back home, the community of Freecyclers.

The aim of Freecycle is …

… to keep items out of landfill by providing an internet listings service to help people give unwanted items to someone else for free. Keeping stuff out of landfill helps build a sustainable future, is good for the environment and builds local and world communities.

… and to be fair it’s a great idea. What you do is when you have something you don’t want that you’d just end up throwing away, you offer it to your local freecyclers to come and take it off your hands. It’s a great way of clearing your old stuff quickly and efficiently, and also you might find something on there you’ve been after and could get for free.

… like a TV.

So getting my new (advertised as ‘a big old 80’s style TV’) home, I decided to test it out, so what better way to test it than to keep on studying (aka watching a Japanese DVD). The study material of choice? The Animal Crossing Movie.

On a completely different note, I now have a webcam. Don’t worry this won’t become a video blog (despite my excessive use of YouTube videos as it is), I just thought I’d share that.

Yesterday I took the last of my things from Telford and made my last trip to Leeds, never to return … well ‘never’ is a bit of a strong word, let’s just say I won’t be back for a bit. Already I can feel my ears adjust to a quieter environment, which is weird when you consider I’m smack bang (20 minutes walk) from a city center. At the moment most of my mates from Leeds are either in Japan (those lucky sons of bi … urm) or at home, so it’s quite lonesome. This emphasised somewhat by the fact I’m in a 5 bed house alone, but with no queue for the shower it does have it’s advantages.

I’ve already hit my old pizza place and made use of the great (well, not bad) Leeds free city bus, but this time around I want to actually take a real bus at some point. Actually that’s not so much want, but need to. I haven’t brought a car with me this time because of what happened to the last one. I know it’s wrong to blame an entire city for what happened to it, but since I’m living pretty close to where I was before I didn’t fancy risking it either way.

On the subject of unfortunate things, my beloved television that I bought with my paper round money when I was 14 (I’m 25 now) and has travelled with me on many adventures (not to Japan though), has finally died. At some point between leaving Telford and arriving in my new room in Leeds, it suffered damage to the power button and won’t turn on. It’s also making strange ‘ticking’ noises when I try to power up. It’s gutting I know, but I know I will have to move on (and get a new TV).

So what happens now for this Anglo-Carribbean student of Japanese in Yorkshire? Tomorrow I’m off to the Parkinson Building to work on my Japanese, and also write up my final report of my year of studying at Konan University. Why not tonight I hear you (Simon) ask? Because I’m gonna pop t’ pub.

So I’ll leave you with something weird; the cast from Spongebob dubbing three classic films (Godfather, Singing in the Rain & Casablanca).