Pepsi Azuki and the Fanta Brigade

No replacement for Pepsi Ice Cucumber!!!

Japan loves its seasons and so do Japanese beverage companies. Autumn has arrived and Pepsi unleashed its new creation a couple of days ago: Pepsi Azuki. It’s name is derived from the Azuki bean. I had high expectations when Tatsu sent me a picture of it to my phone, because 2 years ago during my trip through Japan I enjoyed Pepsi Ice Cucumber (2007 Summer Release) a lot. Azuki’s taste is.. well.. alright. It’s fun to drink because of the unusual taste, but I doubt I’ll be drinking it too often.

Recently I’ve been trying to discover all the different flavours of Fanta. So far I have come across: Orange, Grape (my favourite!), Melon, Cassis, Cider, Peach and one that I forgot the name of, but is supposed to taste like.. Japan. Well, it tasted disgusting, sort of like washing up liquid. But all the other flavours are great and I wish they had them in Europe as well. Selection/variety of soft drinks in England and Germany are pathetic compared to Japan. I’m not sure if I mentioned drink vending machines yet, but they are on every corner in Japan and sell drinks slightly more expensive than supermarkets do, but cheaper than some konbinis do! (147 yen vs 130/110 yen vs 100 yen)

Farewell Formalities, Hello Daily Life

Thursday, two days ago, I finished all the formalities necessary to be legal in Japan and registered in TUFS. I registered for my language classes (Integrated Intermediate Japanese, Kanji) and ISEP classes (Speech and Communication I, Japanese Religions). On Wednesday, I finally got to pick up my alien registration card. My bills for water, electricity, health insurance and mobile phone all come in the mail. Here in Japan, you take those bills to your konbini of choice and hand over the money to them.

Now that all these formalities are done with, I finally have time to study without interruptions. This comes just at the right time, too, because preparation, homework and revision for Japanese language class turns out to be time consuming and quite intense. The textbook we work with is called ‘Tobira 5 – Pre-Advanced Japanese’ and so far features text about stress society and economical campaigns for poor areas in Japan and third world countries. This means goodbye to the Japan Times’ ‘Intermediate Japanese’ in which Jerry and Mr. Kumimoto talk about how many fish they caught that weekend and how nice the weather was.

We are expected to prepare for every lesson or we will slow the class down, and after every lesson we have to review what happened in class and make sure we know all the kanji and grammar for.. ever. Every new article/text we read brings with it a set of vocabulary that is supposed to cover ‘new words’, but basically covers about 25% of the new words, so 75% I have to look up myself and learn on my own. Additionally, we have the Tobira kanji book that accompanies our text book with 25 new kanji and their popular compounds each week, but as already mentioned, that only covers about 25% of the to me unknown kanji appearing in the text. However, grammar points are easy so far, meaning my study focus here in Japan will most likely be vocabulary/kanji, which is why I chose to have extra kanji class despite it not counting towards my credits.

The last two modules are ISEP classes, which basically seem to be pretty easy. In Speech and Communication I we have to do roughly 3 3-5 minute speeches in Japanese a semester. I weaseled my way out of the first one, because during the first lesson I was asked to do the model English speech for Japanese students in class. Japanese Religions seems easy, too, although we ‘wasted’ our first lesson introducing ourselves and watching a video about ancient Japanese art.

The Bike

I vaguely remember researching cheap bikes in Japan a month or two ago. Scratch whatever I wrote then. I found a local bike shop with many used bikes for sale, but the shop keeper is ill and hasn’t been in for over 3 weeks now. Two days ago on Saturday Kat, Tom, Tatsu and me went to Choufu. While Tatsu and Kat were figuring out places to withdraw money from foreign bank accounts, Tom and I went to the bike shop and found the bikes of our dreams. The price was I think 10,900 yen for the bike and 1,500 yen for police registration (in case it gets lost). It was a rather impulsive buy, but ended up being only 1,000 yen over what I intended to spend. Tom got it in silver, I got it in wine red and Kat, rushing to buy one after she had found out we did, got hers in purple. Observe my new bike (and its owner) in all its glory:

Strahlemann hinterm Rad

My plan at the moment is reselling it when next semester begins and new arrivals are in need of a bike. By then I will have registered to rent a bike from TUFS for my remaining stay for about 1,000 yen.

Japanese Class begins

I just came back from my first intermediate Japanese language class (401 group b). First thing I found out after entering the room is that about half the people in my class speak German because they’re from Switzerland or Germany, some others studying German on the side. Our class is a mix between Europeans and Asians, so pronounciation of Japanese varies greatly but all in all I think we understand each other well enough. What’s interesting is the difference of speech level compared to length of language study. Some people have studied Japanese for maybe 5 years but are at the same level as some that have studied it for 1 year only. Having studied Japanese for 2 years I don’t feel as bad anymore about not being able to do small talk at all.

With how class is structured and the topics we will cover, I think I will learn quite a lot right from the start. Another realization is that I need to brush up on grammatical topics such as passive form and.. that other one. See, can’t even remember the name of it or how to use it; though I guess at least I know it exists. Whatever it is.

What

Out my window

My academic advisor being a badass musician at a party.

Goofball being drunk and trying to ruin Tom's song.

Shibuya? Harajuku? ..uhm forgot.

Shibuya!

£2, no wonder I'm getting fat.

Some guy sitting in MOS Burger with a mask on as if it was normal.

Some good sushi that, £1 a piece.

Schnipp, Schnapp, Haare ab

We went out to explore Choufu (調布) for the first time yesterday. It’s a part of Tokyo very close to us that we usually change trains at going in to Tokyo Centre, so technically we’ve been there many times, but.. you know. It’s a surprisingly lively town with a big department store right next to the station, several restaurants and various other shops. What’s obvious is the amount of Pachinko halls, that harbour machines comparable to slot machines, so you can imagine what sort of crowd hangs around in there. Rumour has it Yakuza pretty much control pachinko parlours in Japan.. oooo.

We walked around a bit and came across a barber. Now I have been trying to find a decent priced one for ages, but the only price range I have come across so far was 4,200-6,800 yen for a simple cut, which translates at the moment into roughly $47/€32/£30. But this barber offered a cut for 3,500 so I decided to get my hair cut while Kat and Tom ventured out to do more exploring.

The cheapest item on the menu was cut and shampoo. Everywhere else I have had my hair cut so far washed my hair before cutting, but in Japan it seems to be the other way around. Throughout the whole process of cutting and washing my hair, she used about 5 towels for different stages, heated my face twice and gave little massages in between, whilest being incredibly careful cutting my hair or touching my head. I felt a bit creeped out at first, but it worked out to feel nice in the end.

Finally getting hair cut.

My Room

Here are a few photographs of my room. They are a bit dark but that’s the way I usually have my room.

Where my laptop lives

Where humans enter my room.

Where countless loose papers will get lost.

Where food lives and is sacrificed.

Where I go out to yell at people or hang out.

Not much has changed since I took these. I’m planning to get me some posters and shiz to make it a bit more friendly. That is all, bye.

Noise, Shopping, Women

As already mentioned, my pace of living here in Japan is quite fast these first few days, which is why I have neglected to write about a lot of things. A few I’d like to mentioned follow here:

My dormitory is situated right next to the sports area. This means, every morning (except Sunday) at around 8 o’clock I am woken up by screams, shouts, etc. of sports club practicing mainly on the big field: football, American football, rugby, lacrosse, hockey.. Frisbee. This could work out as an advantage for getting up in time for classes, but at the moment it robs me of sleep. They even practice in abnormal weather and seem to yell even more then.

Stop the noise

I have been stocking up on goods for my room such as shampoo, listerine, bin, kettle, cleaning things, etc. I also got me some cheap speakers because my laptop speakers are plain terrible. My wallet and I would like to thank Tatsu for driving us around Fuchu to shop in cheaper places than I could have possibly ever reached. We even got a rice cooker and made a delicious meal together in Tom’s room: Miso soup, gyoza, beef, rice, soy sauce.

rice cooker n shiz

too hungry, forgot before picture

After shopping with Tatsu, we went to an izakaya (居酒屋) that lured us in with a 10% off voucher. We had wonderful food (each dish 270円) and a few drinks. The most interesting part of the evening was, that in a booth further away from us in the same restaurent there were 7 Japanese women having drinks. At least one of them knew Tatsu, so they invited us over for drinks, and we accepted. We had fun times trying to introduce ourselves in Japanese and having little conversations. It was good practice for us, and for them we were the entertainment for that evening. I think at least one of them was hitting on Tom. We parted promising each other we’d all go hiking together one day, but I doubted they’d remember the next morning.

Women and us, Kat taking the pic (thanks Kat)

Speaking of restaurants, I also failed to mention that the day we went to buy our keitais, Koichi took us to a maid cafe. Basically, everything in there is cutesie, the servants are all dressed in a maid costume (revealing more than usual) and the prices are horrendous. Furthermore, you’ll hear cheesy cute music in the background and the maids talk to you in the same fashion. It was an interesting experience, but I doubt I’ll ever go again. Slightly creepy.

Formalities

From what I’ve heard from Manchester uni classmates, I am not the only one filling in form after form after form. It feels as though TUFS just dumps a mountain of paper work on us and then waits to see if we do anything with it. Though they have dead line summaries, each one of them misses out little things that are mentioned in others. Sorting out all deadlines therefore occupied quite a lot of my time. The good part about it, though, is that most of it is in English. The bad part is that the Japanese only forms all deal with money. I will definitely need help by my tutor on these matters.

Yesterday was the entrance ceremony and orientation for foreign students at TUFS. I expected it to be an all day, tiring event but it turned out to be a half-day tiring event. The lack of oxygen in that room was the main problem, though. Anyway, we were informed of several interest groups at university, several different apartments we’ll be dealing with and, of course, many new forms and registrations to fill out.

Today, we had a language placement test first thing in the morning. The exam was multiple choice and split into 1 hour of grammar, and 30 minutes of kanji. I had a good feeling working my way through the first few sections, but then slowly started failing until I came to a complete halt, thus not being able to answer a single question in sections 7,8 and 10. (9 was a simple mini-essay-ish task) I’m guessing the test was designed to not waste the amateurs’ time trying to get at least some right. Results were published at 3pm the same day, so I now know that I belong into level 4 of 8, meaning intermediate Japanese proficiency. Whether I should be happy about this result or not will be revealed once classes start. For now, I’ll worry about filling out a couple of class registration forms.

Shibuya

Yesterday Kat and I met up with Tatsu to go check out Shibuya and then meet friends for dinner. Shibuya is basically Consumer City with loads and loads of shops, department stores, restaurants, etc. Whenever you see a movie depicting modern Japan, it’s likely that they will show footage of the huge and busy crossing at Shibuya with all it’s lights, advertisements and thousands of people.

We went into a department store to look for some cute.. erm.. dongles to hang from Kat’s keitai, but were unsuccessful. It was interesting to see though how, while fashion here varies, girls all for a rather ‘crowded’ look. It’s hard to explain. Also, a lot of girls in Shibuya wear so much make up they look like surreal clowns.

Anyway, we had dinner at a nice restaurant high up in 7th floor. The food wasn’t mind blowing, but still quite good. After that the six of us went for ‘purikura’, which is basically a photobooth where Japanese take cute or funny pictures and get to edit and print them after. It’s interesting to see the result because pictures are taken with very high exposure, making faces really bright and eyes seem huge. If I can find the time, I’ll upload some.