Homesickness

Something I have come to realise is that homesickness manifests itself in more than one way. For one girl it is a never ending stream of colds and depression. For another it is lack-lustre and not wanting to do anything at all. Other cry their eyes out and walk around like zombies all day. For [...]

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A Mixed Bag

Good things that have happened recently: Went to a free food tasting event for the Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture of Japan, where I was presented with an array of about 30 different types of Japans finest exportable goods. It was slightly scary when they interviewed me and took about a thousand photos, and [...]

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My expensive big toe

I went to a clinic today to check out my toe and after a few X-rays, it turns out that it is in fact fractured. Had a very amusing time trying to communicate with the doctor and nurses using a lot of sign language and very very broken Japanese! I was trying to explain how [...]

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My Birthday, Obama and a broken toe?

My birthday, which I was expecting to be lonely dull and boring, turned out to be one of the best ever. No less than 5 people made me cakes (thank you to Rumi, Cynthia and Joy, Diana and a random Japanese girl I don’t really know) and although I hadn’t really planned anything, we sat [...]

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A stranger in a familiar land

The strange thing about living in Japan is that you can simultaneously feel very at home but also like a fish out of water. I know the language (enough to get by comfortably!), how to get around Nagoya, all the do’s and dont’s of Japanese culture. I know a fair bit of Japanese history. I [...]

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Halloween already?

This week we’ve been getting into the full swing of Halloween preparations, which I find slightly strange since it is only mid-October but mainly because Halloween has absolutely no relation to Japan in any way shape or form. What one observes here is a bastardised cutsie replica of American Halloween, which we all know is [...]

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A Lazy Sunday in Sakae and Gastronomic Failures

This is how sundays should be: Wake up late. Go for ice cream at a place where they mash up fruit or chocolate with your favourite ice cream whilst singing you a song and clinking their metal spatulas. Enjoy a bit of window shopping. A quick visit to the pet shop where you can cuddle [...]

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Speaking Japanese to Junior High School Students

Today I was volunteered into doing a presentation about my seminar class to 200 junior high school students. They came from one of the local school and it was a chance for them to see what university is like and what goes on. Essentially, seminar classes are very different to lecture classes not only in [...]

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I just got back from the 病院 (hospital). No, obviously I mean the 美容院 (beauty parlour)！

One of my favorite things about studying Japanese is the subtlety of this language. A lot is left unsaid, words ommitted or abbreviated, and so one has to rely on context to understand the overall meaning. There is also a lot of variety that we dont have in English, such the different first person pronouns [...]

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