Keeping Busy!

Been a very busy week for me, and haven't had time to update, but I've been doing lots. Last weekend me and the other inbounds went rafting as Niseko, which was great fun and a good bonding opportunity. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, but there were some pretty good rapids. Thankfully, after my grand canyon trip, they didn't intimidate me much, and I think everyone had a great time. We also got a chance to look around Otaru city, which was really pretty and had some pretty cool merchandise. That same weekend, my host mother took me to a summer festival, which was a lot of fun, and I got to try a few Japanese snacks (and got free cotton candy just for being a gaijin, apparently, perks of being an exchange student!), saw a traditional Shinto shrine and got to watch several troupes doing various styles of Japanese dance.

Some of the festival's colourful dance costumes

This week Rotary also threw me a welcome/early birthday party (I'm seventeen in a couple weeks) during which we had dinner, I gave a presentation on myself and where I come from, and several rotarians gave speeches I couldn't understand much of. While I can keep a decent conversation with my friends from school, formal Japanese is much more of a struggle for me. Many Japanese words have multiple forms for different degrees of politeness, so understanding polite, business Japanese is a bit of a struggle. However, it would seem I have gotten very good at talking about food in my host language, so it's become my go-to conversation topic. 

My early birthday cake, reading Melissa Amelia Lye Happy Birthday. According to my host father, Japan has the best cakes in the world.

Yesterday my host mom took me to Shiroi Koibito park, which contains a lovely rose garden, a few gift shops, some antique displays, and a chocolate factory. The whole place gave off a Willy Wonka vibe, complete with animatronic musical numbers and bubbles. It was a cool place to visit, and I got to try sweet potato soft serve ice cream, which surprisingly tasted much like vanilla. I also got to decorate a Hokkaido shaped cookie.

The official cookie of this blog

School is continuing normally, and I'm still enjoying my classes, especially with my Japanese gradually improving. Reading and writing are still pretty big challenges, especially with kanji, but I have a pretty solid grasp of hiragana and katakana. I'm making friends and having a wonderful time. 

Time Flies

So today marks exactly one month since I left Canada for Japan, and I'm still having a wonderful time. Today on the walk from school to the train, I managed to have a successful conversation completely in Japanese, and fully understood everything everyone was saying. My grammar is still a mess, I keep forgetting my particles, but still pretty happy communication is becoming easier. Of course, I've had conversations before, but this was the first time nothing flew over my head and I didn't have to slip back into english or get anything translated. Fun fact, a few times since I've been here I've attempted to say something in Japanese, but used Spanish instead. I don't even speak Spanish save for a few basic phrases.

Anyway, things is Japan are continuing as usual. Everything is starting to feel a little more normal, but I often look around, realize where I am, and want to dance I'm so excited. I think I'm settling in fairly well, the heat should finally start dying down soon, and I no longer get lost at school all the time (to my credit, the layout of that place is crazy). At school I've joined the calligraphy club at school, which meets twice a week and is great for helping me to learn kanji, the ideograms taken from Chinese that the Japanese use for many things. Calligraphy is an art form that doesn't really have a western equivalent, so learning it has been interesting, though fairly difficult.

An example of my (not very well done) calligraphy, that word is 'tomodachi' meaning friendship, and that's probably the 40th draft. The small writing on the side is my name is katakana.

My friend Sari's mother, a native Japanese Speaker, told my parents that Japanese was a gentle language, and when I do calligraphy, I feel I finally understand what she means. It makes me feel closer to both the language and the culture, and I really enjoy it. One of my school friends, Yui, has been practicing calligraphy since she began elementary school, and writes beautifully, though even still she goes through piles of paper before getting a satisfying result.

I'm also continuing to get along with my host family, though I haven't been able to spend much time with my younger host sister Anri, due to her being very busy with sports and school. It's currently exam season in Japan, so most students are currently very intent on studying. However, I have still been bonding with the family, we eat dinner together almost every day, and last weekend my host parents took me to the zoo. Most of the animals were just relaxing in the shade because of the heat, but there was a baby orangutang who showed off for us, and we also got to watch the big cats eating lunch.

Me and my host parents, Naomi and Tatsuo hanging out with a family of plastic polar bears.

All in all, it's been a great first month, and I can't wait to see what's coming. 

Note: When I wrote this it had been a month, apparently I forgot to post it until now, sorry!

Orientation

Team 2510! Much smaller than my sponsor district's group. 

Saturday was orientation day for the District 2510 inbound exchange students, as well as a welcome home to the Japanese students who spent their years abroad in Europe and America, who did presentations for us on their years abroad. It was fun meeting them all for the first time, and as you can see, Canada isn't the only country that gets a bright red blazer, Japan shares our fabulous sense of style. USA went for dark blue, and Australia dark green. And I really need to work on getting some more pins for that thing, it's looking rather bare, isn't it?

There's only five inbounds in my entire district, which is quite different from my sponsor district, where I believe we had around twenty. Not that that's a bad thing, a smaller group can be fun, too, and by coincidence, we're all English speaking. In the new year Thomas, the only male inbound, will be heading back to Australia (they time the exchange year differently in Australia and New Zealand, I'm not sure why) and we'll be getting a new addition to our group. I also learned that rotary has arranged for each of us to have a private Japanese tutor, so that should help my language skills. The other inbounds and the rotex all seem like really cool people, so I look forward to getting to spend more time with them.

The Inbounds: (from left to right) Isobel (America), me (Canada), Thomas (Australia), Alicia (America) and Hannah (America)

Also, school is continuing to be pretty great. This morning I introduced myself and gave a short speech in Japanese, which I'm pretty sure went fairly well. Last Friday Hokusei had its sports festival, which was a lot of fun even though my class didn't win anything, but we got some pretty cool Pokemon themed t-shirts out of the deal, plus everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.