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.