Visitors, classes, Takarazuka and shopping

20 June 2012


Took me a while to get this one up XD

Let's start at the beginning. On May 16 two teachers of my school in the Netherlands came to visit Shinshu University. There were in Japan for 2 weeks so they could visit all the other universities with which we have an exchange program. We were up for Wednesday. They came to sit in class in the morning, and in the afternoon they had a talk with us to see how everything was going here. That took about an hour and then they had to leave for a meeting. Later that afternoon they visited our apartments and made photos and videos of it to show to the people back home. I was so glad I cleaned up my room XD

In the evening all the Dutch students and the two teachers were invited for dinner at Sato-sensei's place. We were all asked to bring food, so Janneke made curry rice and Manon spaghetti. Sato-sensei's home is very spacious, not at all what I'm used to (usually houses, especially apartments, are very small in big cities). I guess that's an upside of living in a for Japan small city ^_^ He also own a talking stove that warns you when the gas is too high and stuff. I want one XD it was a very fun evening and went home around 1 at night.

In the meanwhile we had exams twice already. For the first exams I got a 69.5/100 for grammar and a 85.5/100 for oral. We recently had the second round of exams so I don't know the marks yet.

We also bought ticket for the Romeo and Juliet show from Takarazuka's Tsukigumi (Moon Troupe) on the 19th of July. We leave for Osaka on Wednesday morning. The show is on Thursday in the Takarazuka Main Theater around 3 PM and will probably run until 6 PM. We have very good seats, all S rank, first row on the balcony. On Friday we are going to travel to Kyoto to meet up with a classmate who is currently studying at the Kyoto University of Foreign Language. On Sunday we return to Osaka to take the bus back to Matsumoto. Looking forward to it already ^_^

One of the classes I'm taking is called Japanese Martial Arts and Traditional Culture I (武道・伝統文化実習I) and we do all kinds of cool stuff there. Last time I played an instrument called a "koto", which is a snare instrument. You play it with the thumb, index finger and middle finger of your right hand, and with you left hand you make the tone different. We only used our thumb 'cause else it would become too difficult. I had a lot of fun, but remembering all the notes was quite a challenge for me so I messed up often. Sato-sensei filmed a part of it which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtXGkmEvtcQ&fb_source=message (the girl in black is me XD)

We also practiced kendo for one lesson. For those of you that don't know kendo, it's a swordsmanship sport. We practiced using a wooden sword called a bokuto, and after a while we got to hit a real person (he wore protection, don't worry) XD

A few weeks ago Manon's tutor Ayumi showed us a really cool secondhand shop where they sold all kinds of stuff. The shop was divided in two buildings; one for clothes and one for games and mangas etc. I bought a couple of earrings, a shirt and 2 very beautiful yukata. I also bought Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards, the manga serie Loveless, Romeo and Juliet, and the volumes of DN Angel I still didn't have. The manga were a 100 yen a piece (100 yen is roughly 1 euro). I also managed to find the album Crescent by Gackt for 300 yen :D

This shop is definitely my favorite, together with the Book-off where they also sell secondhand books, CD's, DVDs  games and magazines.

That's it again, またね！

~Marlies / マーリス

Birthday and Golden Week

05 May 2012

It's been a while since the last time I wrote something, so I figured, let's put up another one ;)

Exactly one week ago I had my 22nd birthday, and it happened to coincide with a school-planned bus tour and a party hosted by the ryuugakusei ouen family after that. We went to visit a museum about the history of the most important buildings in Matsumoto. After that we went to place where they make miso, the most important ingredient of the Japanese miso soup. We could also taste miso soup ourselves, but it's one of the few Japanese foods I don't like, so I opted out XD

Even before I went to Japan I figured it would be a memorable 22nd birthday, and it was. Only not for the reasons I thought. Because around 12 o'clock that night we were brought to the hospital by Sato-sensei, because Manon had a very bad migraine and needed stronger medicine than she had with her. Luckily the hospital could provide her with painkillers that worked and we went home again. Let's just hope that will be the last time I see a Japanese hospital from the inside...

Now for something else. As some of you might know it was Golden Week in Japan the last week. Because there are a few holidays close to eachother most Japanese have a free week and use it to take a short vacation. Because we still had to go to school on Tuesday and Wednesday we couldn't do that, but we made a last minute decision to go to a Takarazuka show in Tokyo.

There are 4 different seat ranks in  the theater; SS, S, A and B, SS being the best and B the "worst". Because Manon and I didn't want to pay as much we decided to go for the A seat while Janneke and Jolene bought an S seat ticket. We also rented opera glasses for 500 yen so we still got to see quite a bit of detail ^_^
The show we went to was Tsukigumi's "Don Carlos/Shining Rythm!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_Zw9BvbZw).

Of course, when one's in Tokyo one also does some shopping. When we arrived in Shinjuku by bus from Matsumoto, we took the subway to Harajuku, now as the fasion district of Tokyo. There's a street there called Takeshita-dori, and they sell Gothic Lolita, punk etc. One of my favorite shops there has to be Closet Child, which sell second-hand clothing, assesories and cds. I bought a shirt there from which I think is h.Naoto, a famous Japanese punk designer. I also bought a pair of shoes at the Bodyline store <3

Later that evening we went to Akihabara to check out some cd stores, and I bought one of the cds I've been wanting for a while (Toxic from the GazettE, in case anyone is wondering ^_^).

The day after was the musical which started at 11 and ended at 2. Of course we couldn't resist to buy some merchendise at the Quatre Rêves and Takarazuka An where they sell second-hand Takarazuka merch. At 9 in the evening our bus left for Matsumoto again where we arrived a little after midnight. It was a really awesome 2 day vacation ^_^

Until next time, またね！

~Marlies / マーリス

Japan

31 March 2012

Two days ago I finally arrived in Japan. After a flight of roughly 11 hour me and my friend arrived at Narita airport. I tried sleeping on the plane, and I succeeded in sleeping for two whole hours XD so I ended up watching a few movies and an episode of NCIS.

When we arrived at Narita airport we went to pick up our luggage, and mine appeared very quickly, unlike the one from my friend. Then we had to figure out how to get to our hostel in Tokyo. So I asked a kind lady at the ticket counter, and told her we need to take the Keisei line to Aoto station, and she gave us the correct tickets ^_^ It was the first time I spoke Japanese outside of school so I was really happy that she understood me~

So after an hour we finally arrived at Aoto and then came another problem. We needed to get to Honjo-Azumabashi, but we couldn't find it anywhere on the train map. So after standing there for a couple of minutes looking clueless, a helpfull Japanese station employee came over to us and asked us what we needed. He told us we had to get a ticket for 350 yen and the we had to go to platform one. Luckily for us the train just arrived when we got to platform one, so we didn't have to wait. It was a fairly short train ride (5 minutes I think) and then came the biggest challenge: there weren't any escalators.... So we had to drag our heavy luggage up 5 stairs... But we managed to do that and arrived at the Asakusa Smile hostel in one piece ;) we didn't really do a lot except a trip to the conbini/100 yen lawson for next day's breakfast, and meeting another friend who is also staying at the same hostel.

On the second day we decided to go to Uneo park and Akihabara. Although we didn't plan on it we also went to Ueno zoo, where we spent most of the day. I made a lot of photos there but since my laptop is refusing to connect to the wifi at the hostel I can't post any (this is being typed on my ipod XD). But hopefully once I arrive in Matsumoto I will be able to post them ^_^ after Ueno zoo we went to Akihabara in search for a Denshi Jisho, an electronic dictionary. Finally I found one from Casio in a spiffy red-ish color for 27.800 yen. Because the shop I bought it from has a point system I got 10% of the buyig price in points, and I bought a nice pouch for it (and I still have 1300 points left). On the way back to the metro station I got handed various flyers from maid cafes, and that was pretty fun. I even got one that has cute guys on it instead of girls :3 But now I now why Akihabara is also called the geek district. There are a lot of anime shops and related stuff there, mostly aimed at guys XD

When we got back to our hostel we ate s

ome cup noodles as dinner and pretty much relaxed all night because our feet hurt from all the walking we did.

Today, on the third day, we are going to do some shopping at the Takarazuka shop and in Shinjuku ^_^

またね！

~Marlies / マーリス