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. 

New Classes, New Friends, and a New Rotary Club

My second week at school is almost over, and I'm still having tons of fun. I've decided I need to start carrying a camera everywhere to capture all the unique and interesting sights I've seen here (examples, a huge, animatronic teddy bear at the mall, and about thirty bicycles right next to a sign reading 'no bicycles' in english) so from here on out, you can start expecting more photographic evidence of my adventures abroad.

And adventures they have been! My schedule's been reorganized a bit, so I have several classes with the grade four students (because my school is both a high school and a junior high, the first year of junior high is called grade one, so grade four at Hokusei would be grade ten at Canadian schools, and grade one at most Japanese high schools) who have all been happy to have me, and have welcomed me into their classes with open arms. It's fun seeing how each class has it's own unique flavour. Because the same students are almost always together, the classes seem to have a stronger sense of community than the classes at my high schools in Canada did. With each new class comes new friends, and new experiences, one class spent about twenty minutes quizzing me on my thoughts on various boy bands.

Overall, everyone's been awesome, and I have a really great schedule. Since I don't have to worry about credits, I'm pretty much taking a bunch of fun classes, and missing out on the classes I don't like so much (math, I'm looking at you). I have history, a couple english classes, a class on Japanese culture, music class, a few P.E. classes, a Bible class, a couple home ec. classes, and of course, Japanese. Yup, no math for me! I'm getting more comfortable with the layout of the school and working on my Japanese, so school seems to go a little more smoothly every day.

Today, however, I had to leave class early to go to my first rotary meeting, which, like many of my experiences in Japan, made me both excited and nervous. Excited to meet all the new people, and nervous because I'd be giving a presentation completely in Japanese. Because of the venue for the lunch meeting, I was unable to use the powerpoint presentation I'd prepared in Canada, so it was just me talking in front of the whole club. I think my Japanese was a little sloppier than usual because I was so nervous, but my fear was unfounded as everyone was very kind to me.

The rotary meeting of my host club had a somewhat different feel to my sponsor club in Canmore. The club is made up of mostly men (I believe there were three women present, including me) and was in a slightly older age bracket. However, they were very kind and made me feel very welcome. The meeting was held in a very nice hotel, and the traditional Japanese lunch was delicious. After lunch I was brought upstairs for a meeting with a few key members of the club, who explained the rules about months reports and my allowance, which was a little intimidating at first, but also very informative, and was a pleasant experience overall.

In other news, my host sister Ai returned from a week spent in Nagoya yesterday, and brought back some of the city's traditional snacks. Yum. I love the food here.

First Earthquake

Seeing as I've spent most of my life in Alberta, an area that, to my knowledge, simply doesn't have earthquakes, my first minor quake here in Japan was a bit of a surprise. There isn't much of a story to tell, but it certainly got my heart pounding. I was simply laying in bed, trying to get some sleep, when I felt the shaking start. It took a moment or two for me to realize exactly what was going on, and my thought process was alternating between 'oh my gosh this is scary' and 'wow, cool, an earthquake'. Anyway, the shaking lasted for what felt like a minute or two (though it felt like I was still shaking a little afterwards, I guess I'm not used to the sensation) before dying away. It was a pretty minor tremor, did zero damage, and probably felt very commonplace to the locals, but it still seemed like another adventure to me.

School & Summer Heat

I've been reading the Sapporo & Hokkaido section of my Japan travel guide, and they really like to emphasize how cold this area supposedly is. The island repeatedly described as a 'frozen hinterland' and 'bitterly cold' while summers are apparently mild and good for 'escaping the heat' in the rest of Japan. I feel very confident that whomever wrote that has never been here in August. The past few days have been crazy hot! But thankfully, the heat is my only complaint, and according to my guidance councillor, it only gets this hot for a few days each year. 

Anyway, I'll stop boring you with my silly complaints about the weather (I guess I'm just too used to Canada) and get onto what this post is really about: school in Japan. My first day of classes was yesterday, and I admit I had absolutely no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn't what I got. People had told me that foreigners tended to be popular, but I definitely did not expect my class to scream the first time I walked into homeroom. Though after the initial excitement died down, everyone was incredibly welcoming and friendly, as well as very patient with me and the language barrier. I introduced myself in front of the class in Japanese and in English, and each member of my home room introduced herself to me as well. They seem like a great group, and the class seems to have a high energy, fun vibe to it. 

It's also been interesting seeing how much of my classes I've been able to understand. I have a pretty good grasp on numbers, so I was able to manage in math. Except for doing the actual math, apparently I have no idea how to do trigonometry without a calculator. One of my history classes and my bible class were also easier because I was already familiar with the material (the interwar period and Noah's arc, respectively) and I have one English class that seems to be conducted mostly in my mother tongue. Japanese History, what I think was Literature, and another English class that revolves mostly around grammar were more difficult, though I could catch a word here and there. We also had an assembly today, very little of which I was able to understand, but there was some singing and lots of excitement. 

So far, school in Japan is both fun and challenging, and seems simultaneously similar and wildly different from my old school in Canada. I'm finding the uniform thing pretty easy to get used to (no pictures yet, sorry, but I look just as goofy as you'd imagine in a sailor style uniform), and the religious aspect and lack of boy is also fairly easy to adjust to. The obvious language barrier is the biggest challenge, but I hope to keep working on my Japanese until I can overcome it. In the mean time, however, I'm still managing to make friends and enjoy the experience. 

First Week In Japan

So today marks one week that I've been here, and man, it's been a great experience so far. Though I've only been here for seven days (I guess it's closer to six, I arrived kind of late monday night and it's only midmorning as I write this) I've been lucky enough to see so much and try some great food. My Japanese is still pretty rudimentary, but I'm learning new words every day, and getting better at communicating with my host family.

Earlier this week, my host family took me on my first trip within Japan. We drove up to northern Hokkaido to meet my extended host family, if that's the right term for it. I got to meet my host father's parents as well as his brother and cousins, who had a two month old daughter. Everyone was very kind to me, and it was a great experience. We also saw a traditional Japanese temple and the ocean, where there was a small aquarium of sorts housing several seals. A presentation on the animals was given (in Japanese, so I didn't understand much, but I was able to learn how the seals were related to one another) and then we were allowed to pet them. I even got a kiss!

We stayed for one night at a hotel that had it's own onsen, or, in english, hot spring, though onsen are quite different from the hot springs back home. You wash before entering, and every one is naked (male and female baths are usually kept separate). I was a little uncomfortable at first, but a situation is only awkward if you let it be, so I think I'll get used to it pretty quickly. On day two of our trip, we began driving back to Sapporo and stopped at a few gardens along the way. One of the gardens, Kaze no Garden (Garden of Wind) was also famous for having a drama television by the same name use it as the setting. The gardens were all very nice, and a welcome brake from long drives.

From left to right: My host father Tatsuo, me, my host sister Ai, my host father's mother, my host mother Naomi, my host sister Anri and my host brother Tarou at Kaze no Garden

Since returning home, I've most been relaxing and working on my language skills before school starts, with a few outings to go shopping, go to a sports club, and eat at a few japanese restaurants. Today I'm going to see my school in session for the first time, meet the Principal and some of my teachers, as well as get my uniform. All in all, having a great time in Japan!