Gouzen Kousen!!

My hand's all better now, thanks, though there's a nasty red mark there. Made today a little tricky, my right hand was at about 60% efficiency.

Didn't stop me finding THIS:


Yes! 20 yen cheaper than previous records! And now I know where it is!

Anyway, a little bit to catch up on, so here we go.

Church on Sunday was on Matthew 19, or was it 20? The parable of the workers in the field. You know, 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last'. This sermon was a bit easier to follow, but then again I was told by a new friend in the church that my Japanese had really improved in the last 3 weeks. That was awful nice of her! There was supposedly a meal of udon at 1, but translation difficulties got in the way and so we couldn't find where. There will be other week,s and week after next is softball (repeating the call-out to anyone who can play!!) so events list is still full.

Monday was a KILLER. I mean, wow! Never had such a nasty headache in my life! Following on from last week's '~n desu' lessons, and that's not my strong point, so I was really trying hard to get it all in. I think I'm there now, and just in time, as tomorrow we move on to our next topic: verbs of giving and receiving. This, at least, should be a bit easier.

Then we had Japanese Culture, and a lesson on the history of Doshisha and its founder: Joe Neesima. And I'm sorry, but...

...duuuuuuuuuuuull.

Heard it ALL before, in the opening orientation meeting no less, and I honestly don't think Mr. Neesima and I would get on at ALL. I REALLY didn't care.

Sorry, Doshisha, but the spirit of education is lost on me.

THEN there was the mountain of homework.

Uuuuuurgh.

But I don't care, because today was easy as pie. No homework save yesterday's essay ('What does your position in your family say about how you interact with others?') and some done-before Kanji, and tomorrow's looking up. Got a sweet new bag, too.

Makes up for not getting to do karaoke because SOMEONE didn't check his phone.

I'm not bitter.

Oh, I'm watching (not that you may care) Umineko no Naku Koro ni at the moment, the new series by Higurashi's team. Another horror mystery thing, with a creepy kid and a distorted view of character deaths. Looking good so far. Oh, I'm also trying to watch all 12 Pokemon movies before New Year's Day. 1, 2, 3, 10 are down, the others are soon to come.

And that's it.

Thanks for reading!

Pikachu Day 2009

Up good and early today, yet despite my doing this every day for the last week and resenting it each time today it was a far easier task. Because today I was getting a Pikachu with Last Resort.

Met up with Mark down at the Karasuma Oike platform, where we took the Tozai further than I'd ever been before: the terminus at Uzumasa Tenjingawa. From there we crossed the street to the Uzumasa Ranzan Station, a much smaller affair than I had imagined. It took me a little while to figure out that we were on the right side, and that we paid as we got off as if we were on a bus. The train itself was a quirky little thing, a cross between a small train and a tram, but it travelled at a fair speed and we were at our destination in no time. It did not take long to figure out that 90% of the people on the train were heading in the same direction.

From the station near the film studio where the event was being held, we followed some Nintendo-brand clothing-clad guides (but who didn't give us gaijin a map because obviously we didn't possess the Japanese required the follow the big black arrows...) as well as a growing stream of people to set 1, and the start of the queue. Getting to the end of the queue took us another 5 minutes.


I have never seen so many DSs in one place. This is us at the far end of the queue. From here it took 2 hours to reach the front, so I felt sorry for Dan and Greg who turned up later and had to start their queuing much further back.

Well, not that sorry. I was too busy negotiating the terms of exchange of Pokemon with a 10 year old girl called Nihiro to really care.

The Wireless Union Room was packed to the infra-red rafters with Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver players, it was difficult to move without some random fellow called Kyousuke or Theo or something asking for a trade. I got 2 new Trainer Cards today, people I'll never see again but will hear the exploits of in the game's TVs.

Trading with Nihiro got me an Aerodactyl (lv 25), Macargo (lv 52, stronger than anything else I have at the moment), Omanyte (lv 20), Anorith (lv 20), Cranidos (lv 20) and Cricketune (lv 25), traded for Bellsprout, Machop, Paras (she was well excited about that), Spinarak, Drowzee and Wooper. A good deal, I thought. You have to bear in mind that she was on Pearl, so the original 150 were out of reach for her until today. She showed me her fossil collection, she had quite the obsessive streak.

Pikachu was obtainable in the queue, a cute little Lv 30 fellow with Last Resort, Thunderbolt, Quick Attack and Slam (I think, haven't tried it out yet). He's coming with me to Victory Road.

Here's the front of the queue.


By the time we got in at just about 12, there was still no sign of Polly. Still, she had said to go in and not wait for her, and by this time we were very eager to see what was going on. Just inside we got a little exhibit on the history of Nintendo, with cased Famicoms, Super Famicoms, N64s, Wiis, Gameboys all the colours of the rainbow, and walls of the cases of the classic games that made Nintendo famous.






Good, nostalgic stuff. The exhibition was indeed small, and soon it reached into the main event. On the immediate right was the Pikachu corner, of sorts, which had a woman handing out cardboard Pikachu hats on one stall and a download corner for the PokeWalker's Yellow Forest course. Didn't take long to grab a copy of the course (and a hat) and move on.



The rest of the corners were taken up by game demonstrations for Pokemon Scramble on WiiWare (like an action-based RPG thing with super-deformed legendary Pokemon), Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics, and one corner for both Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, each sporting a Nintendo staff member with a placard happily telling us that we should be expected to wait more than an hour for any game. Thoughts of gaming were put on hold, however, as we were taken in by the stage on the far side on the hall with the Pokemon Sunday logo on a screen, as well as a short podium with 4 DSs on it. We were told during our chat with an anonymous staff member (y'know, the kind in RPGs that only repeat one thing over and over) that at 1 (it was now 12.30) Pokemon Sunday would put on a show and ask some of the kids in the audience to have a four-way battle using pre-set Pokemon. Sounded like fun, and we didn't really want to be in a queue when that started up, so we took our places near the crowd waiting for 1 o'clock.


Oh, Pokemon Sunday is a weekly 30-minute program that has seasons on during big Pokemon events such as the release of HGSS. We found out today, much to our amusement, that it airs on Thursday afternoons.

The show started promptly at 1, with a highly enthusiastic Nintendo representative greeting the crowd as a part of Pokemon Sunday, and then we watched an actually slightly creepy trailer for the show. By that I mean that there was a really creepy Pikachu-dressed person in it. Creepy.

Anyway, 2 of the show's mascots turned up soon after; Lucario and Sableye. This was one of the things I truly wanted to have on camera, but we were told by the signs everywhere that we weren't allowed for some reason. Didn't stop everyone else in the whole entire crowd, though! And so it didn't stop us either.



The cameraman's backside, however, did stop us. Like how it looks like I've put together the guy in the middle of the 2 pictures? So not intentional.

The photo on the right shows Team Lucario going up to start the game. A father and son team, and the one I hoped would win. Let's see, their Pokemon were Chikorita, Slowpoke, Phanpy, Farfetch'd... umm, and 2 others.

Team Sableye was a pair of brothers who picked the same Pokemon as their favourite, and who had obviously done this before because they won with a decent degree of style. Not very enthusiastic about it, though, a trait I've noticed about most Japanese kids of a certain age. Anyway, they had Hoot-hoot, Teddyursa... and some others. I honestly can't remember.

Just to point out, I would have been more than happy to go up and participate, but it is a kid's game. And the prospect of fighting a towering gaijin like myself may have been too much for many kids, especially if Mark and I teamed up.

I'm going to put up a couple of videos of the match, but they're not great. First the camera on this thing isn't that good, and also it's on sideways...



Sorry. But I think you can get a good idea of how it worked. You may not be able to see, however, that it was awesome to watch. The sound quality was perfect, and the tension was actually pretty impressively high. I could watch Pokemon battles like Dad watches football, I think.

With the stage show over, we decided we were far too hungry and tired to stand in line to play the games, so headed out to grab some food in the cafeteria next door. More kitsune udon for me, thanks. I could, and may well, live off that stuff. Whilst eating, Polly showed up. Turns out she overslept. Huh.

Anyway, with the Pikachu Event over we decided to head to Polly's to see what it was like, then check out the nearby temples. Polly lives in International House II, owned by Ritsumeikan University, and its a nice little hotelly place that apparently lets the bugs in.

And what bugs they were.

We had been enlightened in an earlier conversation about the horrors of bugs in NW Kyoto, and the centipedes especially. Apparently there's a big fuss over centipedes that get into rooms through windows and bite people in their sleep. The pain has been likened to getting stabbed by a cigarette end, but constantly until you get the thing to let go, done by crushing the head and boiling the rest of it. Apparently. Let's hope I never have to put that knowledge to use.

Oh, but we did see one. Here he is.



This is at Nanniji Temple, a big temple about 20 minutes walk from Polly's. A nice place with some truly great architecture. Pagodas and the like. Here, I made this Cloverfield-esque video to show part of what we saw.



From Nanniji it was off on the bus then the train home, where I now learn that Mark just got SoulSilver. A bit late, my friend, but better late than never. Church tomorrow, nothing special there, and then a free day to relax ready for another week of work. Apparently there's meant to be a nomikae at 7 tonight but... it's 7.45 and outside is silent. Huh, another unfulfilled promise.

Anyway, that's me. Thanks for reading.

Long Days and Peaceful Nights

Well, it's been almost a week since my last post. That's a good measure of how busy I've been, I guess. Sorry for the delay, I'll do my best to make this one five times as interesting as the others.

Okay, so term is now well underway. Each day goes like so:

• Japanese language classes start at 9. We've been divided into ability groups, as I mentioned before, yet Level 3 is fairly big so is split again into classes 51 and 52. Rumours are circulating that 52 are the more skilled of Level 3, but as a member of Class 51 I adamantly deny that. I have a pretty good group, I'd say, made up of people at around my skill level which leads me to believe that I have been well-placed here.
  Each weekday we get a different teacher. This keeps things interesting but, well, the communication between teachers could be improved a bit. I mean, they all seem to know which page of the textbook we're on, but we had to explain the daily checkup tests to one of them. I mean, they're all fairly good teachers, but the differences between them are almost too great. That's not to say I don't enjoy myself...
  Anyway, moving on. We're working from 'Wakatta tsukaeru Nihon-go', a green and a yellow book that together should lead us through the semester. Work is pretty easy so far, though the pace is really picking up now that the end of the week has come.

• What follows differs between days:
  Mondays we have Intercultural Communication after lunch. In this we have thirty minutes of lecture on a certain topic to do with the course name, followed by an hour of discussion of that topic in small groups. This can get pretty complicated, especially when four of your six members don't speak English and only fragmented Japanese, and we're doing the topic of 'What does you culture mean to you?'. Homework for each week is a page of essay on the topic we discussed, which comes together to form a journal that becomes our full semester's assessment. Except this week. We got 2. Thanks, Professor...

• Tuesdays and Thursdays there's nothing after Japanese, which leaves me free to go home at the end of lunch! It's a good feeling.

• Wednesdays give us a loooong break of 3 hours between lunch and our last lecture of Japanese Society. Can't really say much about bit at this point, as this week saw us give a lesson-long self-introduction. Not to say it wasn't fun at all, our teacher's almost diabolically easy-going. Word on the street is that its a lesson of field trips and topic tangents. Sounds like a good lesson to me.

• Today is Friday, the last day. Unfortunately, I do have a lecture; Japanese Language Seminar B. This is something of a Japanese Plus course that prepares Levels 3 through 5 for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test - Level 2, a highly recognised certificate that we have been recommeded to get by the Edinburgh staff as well as people like the JET team. Pretty intense stuff, I can tell you, for today we learnt 7 brand new, highly complex (at least to our feeble minds) sentence structures, and over the course of the... course we will learn 100, and then be tested on them. Good, solid, meaty chunks of Japanese.

And now it's the weekend! Yeah!

Anyway, Doshisha life has a bunch of other aspects besides education. Lunch, for example. Lunch is very odd here. You grab a tray and head to one of 4 queues based on what you want to eat. There's a noodle queue, a curry queue, a salady queue and a posher food queue. One and three are my current favourites for the kitsune udon and spicy potato wedges respectively. You grab whatever you want and take it to the till and then pay. It's just the range of food that boggles the mind: whole fish on a plate, bowls of rice as big as your head, a veritable catalogue of parfaits all the colours of the rainbow! It's staggering sometimes. Average lunch for me comes to between 200 and 400 yen, that's £1 to £2, which I think is a pretty good deal.

Now, what else is there.

Oh yeah...

The bureacracy.

Every day we have to go to the tiny, crowded International Office and sign in, something I didn't realise until 3 days in... It's okay, I think I've been forgiven. On top of that, we have a pigeon hole each which is filled every so often with things like forms, forms, or if we're really lucky...

...money. I kid you not. They will refund you part of any taxi receipt you care to hand over, which kind of makes up for the bills they put in there as well. Rent bills, you see, as we do live in University accomodation.

Got a very scary note in mine today 'My. Swan, the bank called with something to say. Please call Mr. Amaza on this number.' Now, I'm not all that good at Japanese, so I hope you can imagine how terrifying it felt to be forced into discussing my finances, the means of my living here, in a language I don't understand.

I'm just thankful I've watched enough anime to understand the sentence constructions used when selling one's soul.

Anyway, turns out all they wanted to say was that the money transfer from home can't go through until Monday, as it's now the weekend and so everybody involved in that sort of thing is having a well-earned nap. Fine by me.

Phew.

So here I am, sitting at my desk, trying to tempt Ho-oh into staying in the Ultra Ball (actually called a Hyper Ball in Japanese, don't you know). Difficult stuff, let me tell you. I learnt from Diamond to not use up Master Balls (still called Master Balls in Japanese) so readily, so it's a long, bitter fight to claiming by giant flaming bird Pokemon. I'm just glad it doesn't have any recoil moves like Kyogre did...

And on that subject, tomorrow is Pikachu Day! Or so it shall be called in my diary from now on. Plan is to head to the Kyoto Cross Media Experience in Uzumasa with Polly and Mark...

2 shakes that time. Cheeky thing.

...where Nintendo will be dishing out the Pikachus to whoever has a DS with a Japanese version of Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold or SoulSilver. 'Pikachu?', I hear you say, 'He was in the original 150! He's no big prize!' Maybe not, but...

Argh! So close!!

...this is a proper Event Pikachu we're talking about! It may as well have come from the hands of Mr. Miyamoto himself! And besides, this one has the super-secret, never-before-given-to-a-Pikachu TM of Last Resort, an ultimate base attack Technique that can only be used once the Pokemon has used each of its other attacks at least once. Sounds pretty cool to me, though I would have prefered a Volt Tackle.

Have to preorder movie tickets for that one.

Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. Currently also paused in the middle of the anime film Sword of the Stranger, which is alright but not as good as I'd heard people say it was. Oh, I made myself yakisoba tonight, and it was nice. I made an okinomiyaki the other day, and that was nice too. Google them, if you're interested.

Well, thanks again for reading. Sorry for the no pictures, there's not really been anything else to photograph. I shall try my utmost to get ace pictures of Pokemon tomorrow. Oooh, it'll be just like Pokemon Snap!

Anyway, thanks very much for reading!

Kakko-sugiru!

These have been a pretty cool couple of days!

So anyway, Saturday was a free day, so when Mark and Polly said they wanted to go into town to pick up some stuff I was glad to come along.

Of course... Polly changed her mind at the last minute... so it was just Mark and I.

But before that...

It was a beautiful, yet scorching day, and as I walked down to the Imadegawa subway station because I fancied a walk (read: because I'm a cheapskate) I figured this'd be as good a time as any to get some photos of the Imperial Gardens and the full campus, so here we go.


This here is the North entrance to the Gardens, the way I usually get in because it's right opposite the entrance to the University. This gate may look pretty impressive, but you see them all the time in Kyoto, sometimes even in front of normal, if slightly old-fashioned, houses.


The roads here are massive, like they were built for Gundams (more on that later). As impressive as the size of the place is, you do end up feeling a bit dwarfed by the size of it in a way that makes me feel like I shouldn't be here. Feels very artificial. Which is what it is, I guess.



This is... umm... some kind of temple enclosure. I don't actually know, as with a lot of the complexes in here, what lies within the gates, as they are permanently sealed. But yeah, these are the sort of walls you get here in the Gardens.


But this is what you want to see, right? This is the north gate to the Imperial Palace, where the Emporer used to live. It's open to the public, but you have to pay, and you clearly don't get in this way. I've not been in yet, but I hear it's pretty impressive.

Anyway, those are the more interesting photos of the Gardens. Didn't have a great deal of time, and I wanted to split that little time between here and the campus. And I'm glad I did, for as I entered the gate at the south I noticed something was different. People, everywhere, kitted out for some kind of party. Turns out it's graduation day! Tried to get some pictures of the pretty kimonos and jovial atmosphere, but I kinda felt like I was intruding on an event I was underqualified for, so I got a few shots from the distance.



Here's where I'll be spending most of my time. The building on the left in picture 1 is the Shiseikan, where we had our placement test, whereas the square one is the Shingakukan (the divinity school) which I have never been in. Then, on the right, is the Kofukan, where I found out today I have about 80% of my lectures. The girls in front of it were wearing saris. Not kimonos. Saris. Wonder why...



Here's the Meitokan, with its lovely cheap convenience store, copy shop, cafeteria, stationary shop, Doshisha merchandise shop and Starbuck's knockoff. This is also where notices for events are posted. The other photo is of the chapel, which I have never been in. They do services at funny times: Monday at 3, Wednesday at 8 and 1, Thursday at some point as well. Want to go in at some point, but again I feel I need a reason.



Library, front and back. Massive building with those bookshelves that move to save space. The ones you squash people with. Or... not. Impressive collection, and with the Linguistics essay (urgh) on top of whatever work we get in Uni I may end up here a lot.

But that's not what I really want to talk about. What I want to talk about is this:

Teramachi! Cavern of Wonders! This is where Mark and I spent most of our time on Saturday; having lunch at a quaint little noddle restaurant, gazing longingly at the model guns, looking at Japanese CDs that had until now been a painful import away. Going to the Karasuma area is really interesting, there's a shop for near everything. Shops for clothes, food, phones, cameras, CDs, DVDs, instruments, manga, accessories, books, souvenirs...


...Gundams...


...Gundams...


...Gundams!!

Well, admittedly that's not a Gundam I'm holding. That's an RPT-007K-P1 Gespenst MKII, quite possible the coolest robot ever illustrated and then turned into a plastic model. Cost me 4000 yen, that's about £20. Worth it, most definitely worth it. Spent about 8 (non-consecutive) hours putting the little guy together in the end, and he's come out perfectly!




Anyway, that's all of note for Saturday, so let's move on to Sunday.


Church in the morning, this time with Mark coming along too. It was nice to walk through the doors to be greeted by familiar faces, it's starting to feel like a more comfortable place these days. Back away from all-age services this week, returning to the difficult vocabulary of an adult service. Today as James 2:8-13, on adultary and murder. Good stuff. Oh, interestingly, the book of James is 'Jacob's Letter' in Japanese. Curious.

Right after, as I may have mentioned, was a young member's event; a meal of kitsune nyuumen (very thin noodles with some kind of tempura bread stuff, very nice) and chat. Talk was on Britain and British culture, megachurches, the environment and essay topics. I've been given the name of a Japanese language professor in the church who apparently I should talk to on keigo in a religious context, awesome. We alos planned two events: a softball game on the 25th of next month (come if you can, gaijin who don't suck at sports!) and nabe (stew) and prayer on the 22nd November. There's also a Doshisha Christian circle we might go to if only the university would tell us where clubs are held...

Then back home, via the supermarket and (closed ><) post office, where I say the creepiest spider known to man...

...and now here I am writing this and putting the Gespenst in awesome poses. Very tired, so I think food, film and early sleep tonight. Tomorrow's an early start for the first day of class.

Thanks for reading.

P-1 Granprin

So yeah, now I have a phone.

It really surprised me that even the 0 yen phones like mine come with TV as standard, but this is Japan. Also, the worst camera you can get is 3.2 megapixels, which is better than any Western camera I've ever had.

But you know what that means: the wait is over! It's photo time!

Unfortunately, without a specific goal in mind the best I could do for today was 'Things that took my interest on the way home from the phone shop'.


This is the view to the north and south (respectively) of the bridge that connects Shimogamo with the rest of Kyoto, seperated by the Kamogawa river. The river is a great landmark for people like myself who live just off its banks, as in a worst-case scenario I can just walk upstream as far as is needed. It's a great walk, usually populated by many doing the same thing as well as having some superb views, but it can get really far too long. It's very odd having such a natural overgrowth in the middle of the city, but the neighbours don't seem to think so, often congregating in large numbers on the banks on Sunday afternoons.


This isn't really anything special. This is the view from a bench a few metres into the south gate of Doshisha's Imadegawa campus. That's the way I'll be getting to class pretty much every day from Monday on. There's an ace-smelling curry house just to the right of the gate, but Japanese curries have a tendancy to be anti-Pete so I've not tried it yet. There's also one of hundreds upon thousands of bikes that litter the streets of Kyoto, but that one has no special significance.



Now here's a sight I love to see. This is the 'almost home' part of the trip, with the Shugakukan just a little to the right at the end of the road. That's a stream running alongside to the right, and one of the many neighbourhood event boards in this area that demand that we Beware of Children that 'Fly Out' at Unexpected Moments.


And here we are, the Shugakukan. That door rattles loads when you open it, the glass panes are in a bit loose. A rule to be remembered: you have to take your shoes off inside. Under pain of death. And that's the stream now that it's a bit bigger. I saw a stork there a few times. Fantastic birds, them.


And that's my room. It will never get any cleaner than that. Beds are futons on wood, curtains are paper sheets set in frames of wood. Yes, though the laptop is abnormally small that is a very big can of Coke, the size of a can of lager in fact. This is one of the things I am really glad I came to Japan for: 500ml of Coke for 120 yen (about 70p). Is that disbelief I sense? Disbelieve not, reader, for that really is a gargantuan can of Coke on my desk. Here, look:

Like the Tower of Isengard, so it is. "Refreshing and Uplifting" doesn't begin to cover it.

So yeah, those are the first pictures. Tune in next time to see Gundams and cafes with names above their rank.

Thanks for reading. Or looking, I guess.

Bureaucracy Day

A couple of very important things on the menu today, the first day back from the holidays.

First and foremost was the acquisition of the Alien Registration Receipt, an elusive A5 piece of paper with which I could do the rest of the day's activities. Pretty simple, actually, especially as the form was one I had taken away last time and completed, so all I had to do was show the completed form to the receptionist and she pointed me in the right direction. 700 yen for 2 receipts, just in case. Easy peasy.

The bank account was next, and was anything but. Again, getting the ball rolling was pretty easy, as I had all 4 bits of paper needed, and just needed to hand them over and ask for an account. The form here was pretty easy too, with the exception of the phone number column. Still don't have a phone, you see, and the dorm's phone number elluded me. Never again, not after the hassle it caused... Luckily there was another form handed in earlier with the dorm number on it, so I was able to copy that. Added to my missing of one kanji off 'Higashikishimoto-cho' and my saying my birthday was in Nothing 88 rather than Showa 81 as it should have been (... I think) I got the impression that the teller thought I was pretty useless. Especially as my request followed a veritable mob of Chinese exchange students who all at least put up the impression that they knew what was being asked of them with perfect clarity. But you want to know the best bit?

I now have to wait ANOTHER

WHOLE

WEEK

before I'm allowed to buy a phone!!

Ridiculous!!

This is because Cash Cards take a week to process, you see, and one is needed (or so I hear) to buy a phone. This also means that I'm going to have to keep these stupid Traveller's Cheques hidden around for a bit longer, or their cash alternatives. Either way, a bit risky for my liking, bit I guess it will have to do, because a week from now puts me past my rent payment deadline, so cash is the only way to go.

...

Speaking of Traveller's Cheques, my next port of call was the post office to ask about trading them in. I'd had a pleasant experience with them before when I was retrieving the GPS, and had high hopes. After a shambolic start where I got all my vocab mixed up asking the reception which desk to speak to, I had another, mercifully short form to fill in, before I handed in my cheques to be cashed.

While the cash was being counted, I was approached by a clerk from a couple of desks over, who asked me for help. It turns out a young Arabian man with no Japanese but fluent English needed help arranging matters concerning a late payment of rent, and the clerk wanted me to translate. I tell you, I felt very proud of myself, though looking back I was a bit useless. I was able to let the man know that the post office didn't know whether you could pay a late rent along with a current one or not, and that he'd have to ask his landlord if that was okay, but when it came to the matter of how to fill in the automatic transfer system form to amend this I was a bit lost. There were diagrams with arrows, that's how bad it was.

Anyway, after much apologising from both myself and the post office, I strolled back here to read up on bill payments in Japan and phone plan services from Softbank, and now I'm really tired.

Oh, I cooked fish today. Like, a proper slab of fish, not a whole fish. That might be forever beyond me. But it tasted good, if you're wondering. Good enough to balance out the burning of my hand on the rice cooker moments before, anyway. Tomorrow I might be getting a phone. But that's a long, painful might littered with conditions like a bureaucratic No Man's Land.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

We are the World

Embarrassing Moment #4

Whilst at Kyomizu-dera in Gion, Mark, Connor, Polly and I came to the best view of all of Kyoto I think you could see (Mark disagrees, but I wasn't in the mood for climbing the mountain proper), and I felt the need to say something cool and anime-ish to show my awe.

"Bokutachi no Kyoto da yo." (This is our Kyoto) I said in a superbly gruff and heroic voice, only to have the young Japanese couple just in front of me turn around and snigger. I tried to stumble out something of an apology or explanation, but the words wouldn't come and I had to watch dumbly as they chuckled off, no doubt off to inform the rest of the nation.

I mean, thinking back, I wasn't even that embarrassed about saying something cool in Japanese in front of Japanese people. But what really gets me, as I was reminded later, was that bokura would have been a better choice of first person plural than bokutachi, but those are both a bit weak compared to the much more appropriate oretachi, which is far more manly.

Uuuurgh.

Still, could have been worse. Could have used atashi, which is used solely by girls.

-----

So yeah, busy times. Sorry I haven't been on for a bit, but I've been stuck in bureaucracy and sightseeing so internet time has been a bit lacking of late. But I have lots to talk about, fear not!

Okay, let's see. Three events worth mentioning come to mind. Firstly was Sunday, my second Sunday at Doshisha Church, and this time I made a much better impression. Turned up with a full 5 minutes to spare, greeted friends and remembered names appropriately, found my seat and got started. This service was an all-age service, which suited me fine, as Japanese kids are cute as anything on God's Earth, and the language was tuned down so even I could understand, which was great! Service was on Exodus 45 1-8, about Joseph and his spectral coat, and though it didn't hit any spiritual chords per say, it was still a cool service. At the end, those over 70 were given cookies and a postcard that the kids had made. I was also asked to stand, as a new member of such, and bow so everyone could see me, which was nice. Apparently next week is some sort of student thing after the service, and it's also the first week Mark can make it along, so it should be a good one.

Okay, next is last night, and the Cosmopolitan welcome party. Cosmopolitan, I learnt not long ago, is a Doshisha society for Japanese students hoping to befriend foreign students in order to make firm friendships and learn about other cultures, and eventually, in the words of President Kazuhiko, lead to world peace. It's all very Babylon 5, if you ask me. We met at 3 in the before-unexplored Shinmachi campus about 5 minutes from our Imadegawa campus, and chatted with a few of the other foreign students. Yesterday was the day I learnt of a third visiting program alongside our Nichibun and Bekka: the AKP or America-Kyoto Program, which draws students from America to Kyoto, strangely enough, where they stay in Japanese homes for the duration of the year. Some nice people on that program, let me tell you.

Events kicked off with a superbly well-made video about the sort of things Cosmopolitan did last year (it's first year, I believe), followed by a Photo Rally. Never done one before, but it was really cool! We were given a set of 12 photos of the Cosmopolitan members in funny poses around the campuses and nearby temples, and were asked to head out with a camera and take identical pictures with our own team members. With the progidy-level leadership of fourth-year Sora-sempai, we got all our photos done in record time, and even won the competition. We all got some funny prize; mine was a plastic Hallowe'en hockey mask, which now hangs above my door. A moment of pride, that. Afterwards there was more chat, then off on the subway to Karasuma to have a dinner of 'okinomiyaki', a kind of rice omelette thing, which is really very nice. Then down to the riverside with convenience store-bought alcohol to drink, which is not only allowed in this crazy county but also done by hundreds of young people every night. Didn't stay for long, as the last train was at 11.30, but we were around enough to play Duck Duck Goose in the sand.

Now, today.

Today was Connor's trip from Kansai Gakuin (...right?) to Kyoto to see the sights, and that job fell to the aforementioned Mark, Polly and I. His... unfortunate choice of arrival time meant I had less sleep than I perhaps would have liked, but I couldn't be bitter because Connor had even less sleep than I and still managed to survive the day. And it was a full day indeed! First stop was Teramachi, my favourite spot, for a late breakfast of udon and ramen at a cool noodle bar, and then a bit of exploring.

And then...

I got to experience a Japanese arcade.

That's a life ambition fulfilled, that. I mean, it's not like they weren't around until today, but I've never had the courage to play alone. Feels awfully sad, you know? Also, I felt that if I got into the habit of spending a couple hundred yen on machines every so often the cost would soon rack up, as would a very uncool addiction. But that didn't matter! Because that arcade only charges 50 yen a game (about 30p).

And even if it didn't, when you're blowing each other up in Gundams you really don't care about how much it's costing you!

The game, incidentally, was an aforementioned Gundam Seed Destiny Rengou vs Zaft II Plus, current top of the Pete Japanese PS2 wishlist. I enjoyed playing as Lunamaria's Zaku Warrior, a ZAFT Dom and the big boss guy's Gundam from the first series, and I didn't like that stupid, fat, squiddy one that has, like, no range in melee combat.

Then we had silly, girly photos taken in a silly, girly photo booth. Expect pictures as soon as Connor can find a decent scanner; they are not to be missed!

Oh, and then there was the hobby shop, which I had originally believed to be just a plastic model museum. Another gem I had in my cowardice not yet explored. And what a gem! Gundam models in boxes stacked to the ceiling, all priced so much better than in the UK! Take this example. A box of two Gundam Seed Destiny Zaku Warriors (one Athrun Zala custom, one Deaka Elfman custom) costs about £50 anywhere I care to look online. This shop had them for 2,500 yen, which comes to about £13!! Thirteen!! I think I'll be taking another trip down to Karasuma on Saturday when I've turned the traveller's cheques into proper money! Oh, after I pay my first 2 months' rent. Oh, and bought a mobile phone...

Then to Gion, the traditional south-west of Kyoto, and the big temple district. I managed to get in line and do the whole prayer routine thing, and there are pictures to prove it. It was also a time to learn that Maplus on the PSP is great, but only when the poor thing has enough batteries to sustain a trip the length of ours. We also checked out the Ryo...something Kannon, a "giant Shinto chappy" made of stone; two pagodas, one a fair bit more impressive than the other; and the tourist shopping area, with some sweeeeet imitation swords and, strangely, Sgt. Frog keychains. Bit of an odd combination, I thought.

Darkness decended, and we headed for dinner. Though finding a good place for dinner was harder than it sounded, as a lot of Japanese eateries look a little shady when you have to go down a dark alley to get to it, or through what looks like someone's house. After much debate and much walking we descended upon 'Tarow', a very friendly Italian place on... some street off the main street. Very nice place, that.

And so here I am, just convercing via email with Aki-sempai about help with mobile phone purchase. Tomorrow is going to be a fun day, with the collection of an Alien Receipt thing and then a bank account and hopefully, the last I'll see of those silly traveller's cheques. Exciting stuff...

Anyway, thanks, as always, for reading.