#4 散歩 - Scattered Steps

Today Otou-san didn't go to work; he's always got 土日(Satur- and Sunday) off, so he uses the time to go on a walk with Shiro. And since I didn't have anything spectacularly important to do I decided to join him.
Although the sakura don't bloom yet, it's a little bit tricky: First off, it's cold. It's always cold when they're about to bloom, and that's not just an unfair prank of nature, but a necessity, because actually the cold air kind of stimulates the blossoms. Seconds, they obviously don't start blooming all at once, so if you wait till even the very last flower has opened, you're either late or just an idiot. Nevertheless, many people already started doing お花見, which literally means "flower viewing", but is more like picnicking and eating a lot of yummy stuff. That's also where the famous saying 「花より団子」, "dangos over flowers", comes from (dango is a kind of sweet Japanese dumpling). It means that people care more about the food than the actual flowers they're supposed to be viewing. Not far from my house there's the river Sanagawa (佐奈川), which offers an incredibly beautiful view together with the sakura (it's on the photos way below). There are even light bulbs wired on the trees so you can see them on a walk in the evening or night.

In the background you can see that store called "Saty"; it has like everything and is 3 floors tall. That's also where I bought my copy of D'espairsRays "REDEEMER" today.

That's the "sakura tunnel" I've talked about:There were also stalls up already, which sold the usual stuff you can find at Japanese festivals, like takoyaki, ringoame and so on.

This inscription here reads as "Usuzumi no Sakura" (薄墨の桜). "Usuzumi" is a kind of thin ink used in calligraphy, but here it refers to the pale color of the sakura blossoms when seen through a thick mist.

At around the same place stands a statue of a woman (or goddess) holding a pigeon in her hand. Those who know a bit history of Toyokawa are probably familiar with the background of it, but for those who ain't: At this place (which is now a mere baseball field) was once a very big ammunition factory used in World War II, which was raided by American bombers on August 7th 1945 (one day after Hiroshima's destruction) killing about 2500 people, many high- and middle school students among them. The statue erected here is a symbol of peace I was told (hence the pigeon).

#3 Culture Shock

I already stopped counting the times people told me how I'm always gonna be stared at before I came to Japan. Wrong. It's the exact opposite: People treat me like anybody else, but I'm the one staring at everyone.
This is just one of many misconceptions I had that proved to be wrong the last few days, just like I thought I'd be totally confused by left-hand traffic. Culture shock? Not even in sight. Someone just told me it will still follow; well, I'll wait til school starts, not longer than that.
2 days ago (I think) I met Ren-kun, a friend of my brother Ryousuke, together with him and another YFU exchange student from Switzerland, and we went for lunch at some kind of fast food ramen bar. Although I thought the girl, finally meeting someone who speaks her mother tongue, would talk to me all the time, she didn't say a word unless I asked her something. Weird people do exist, hu. After eating ramen we didn't do much more except for going to the CD section of the department store and ordering D'espairsRays new album for me.
Yesterday I went to Mito High (the school I'll be attending to) together with my mother for a bit orientation. Except for me and the 2 other AFS exchange students that'll also attend there were a lot of Junior High students. Anyway, about the AFS guys: a boy from America who speaks a bit Japanese and a girl from Chile who doesn't at all. My schoolway will be by bike and'll take about 30 minutes (looking forward to wind and rain >.>), and I have to be at school at 8:15 on the first day to introduce myself to teachers and students (usually it's 8:30). Oh yeah, a lot of things are taboo here, like make-up, magaizines, chewing gum and sniffing glue. Yes, you read that right. These guys have some weird experiences with drugs..
Hell, I have absolutely NO idea what club I should join. Kendô is out of question because I fail at Seiza, and Kyûdô seems to hard. Yet, there is no Shodô club.. I'm so screwed. Maybe I should join the Badmington club after all. Meh, I still got 2 weeks to think about that (school starts 04.07.). After that we went to the.. eh.. citizen something office, dunno what it's called in english, and requested my Alien Registration. For some reason the man behind the counter was totally wtf when I wrote out my host family's address using Kanji (it's really not that hard). Well, now I'll have to wait till 16th of April, and then I can stop carrying around a copy of my passport.
Today me and Ryousuke went to the local post office, where I was finally able to cash my traveler checks, hell, the other bank required me to have my Alien Registration done before I could do so; why would you need THAT for TRAVELER checks? I'm not gonna wait half a month to get money. Again, the guy at the counter was wth when I wrote our address, but happily everything went fine, and now I even have a 5k en banknote (omg I still can't believe a picture of a woman actually made it there, I'm not an anti-fem, but this is the Japanese Society, c'mon). Fortunately even my cash card works there *rakki*.
Soon the sakura will also start blooming around my area, and this is definitely gonna be awesome. They have something called a "sakura-tunnel" here, which is a simple road between sakura trees that continues about 1km. The sakura forecast (similar to a weather forecast) said they'll bloom in about 2 days I think.
Sooo.. what else is there to tell about.. hm, maybe I'll just put some random pics in here and end it with that. Go-chisou-sama deshita.

(saw Fuji-san on the Shinkansen to Nagoya)
(view out of my rooms window, that's where the train passes)
(Mi-chan on the water boiler thing I talked about; she likes that place cuz it warms her butt lol)
(Suwa Public Park, quite near to my home)

#2 First few days

Heyo, what's up. It's been a few days since my last post, and I'm already with my host family for 2 days. Well, all I can say is... they're AWESOME. Really nice people, totally (in my opinion) easy-going compared to what I was taught about Japanese families, and they even went through all the trouble of clearing a room for me. Right now I am sitting in said room listening to a bit J-Pop and drinking tea, so let me try to summarize what happened meanwhile:
The Arrival Orientation ended more or less unspectaculary, except for the farewell party and Japanese fashion show our senpais held. When my shinkansen arrived in Nagoya the next day, I got nervous for the very first time in Japan, and after meeting my hostfam we went to a traditional restaurant together. Later at my new home, I was greeted by our dog Shiro, and our cat Mi-chan, and shown around the rooms. The next day, my mother and brother went to department store together to get my uniform ready. Somehow they managed to find one in my size (don't ask me how, lol; pics will follow). In the evening we had a kind of "welcome party" together at another restaurant together with my grandmother. Sukiyaki is the best after all ^.^ And today we're going to buy my a bike.
That's about it.. hm, there're so many things I already like here, for e.g. the "instant water boiler" (dunno what its actual name is), allowing me to drink as much tea as I want whenever I like to, or the train passing our house every 20min or so. Many people, including my host parents, probably think of this rather as an annoyance, but I really like it, I have no idea why.. gives me a nostalgic feeling. What else.. oh yeah!! The bathroom. I already knew this before, but now I'm 100% sure: every household needs a washiki (Japanese style) bathroom; they're just simply the best, both in hygiene and comfortableness.
Only thing that's troubling me right now is that I can't change in my traveler checks unless I have my 外国人登録 (gaikokujintouroku, alien registration) done, and that is due to Wednesday. Whatever.. todays gonna be a sunny day (yesterday it rained all the time), so I'm already looking forward to it. It's time for lunch soon, so I'll stop here (and eventually upload some pics later), so see ya!

#1 Arrival

Well, this is like my first entry in this blog I guess.. where should I start? Hmm... Oh yeah, I'm alive! And happily I didn't had to pay any extra fees for overweight luggage. So I took the flight from Düsseldorf to Frankfurt (delayed by 40min) and, having met all the familiar faces from the previous VBT(preparation session), I departed towards Tôkyô. Seats were pretty cramped and all, making it absolutely impossible to sleep in a comfortable way. Me and two girls played NDS all the time, always passing around the 2 ones we had. I did try to sleep a bit 5 hours or so before landing, but failed. So, no sleep at all for me.

Landing went pretty smooth, as did the passport control. The moment I saw my bag had made it here safe as well I thought I'd thank God so fucking much would I be a christian. Then, meeting our YFU representatives, we waited at some row of seats, and, guess what, saw a japanese vending machine for the very first time in our life. And I'm not talking about any vending machine here, but a real GIE-DOU-HAHN-BAY-KEY, famous for selling almost every thing consumers demand, ranging from warm lunches to worn high school panties.

Nevertheless Narita was a hell of an airport, talking about actual temperature. I'll never forget the moment I stepped out and got caught be an almost summer-like breeze of chilling Japanese air. By the way, the weather here in Tôkyô is absolutely AWESOME. Almost like summer in Germany (don't even wanna imagine a real summer here). So we got onto that tourist bus and went to the Orisen (国立オリンピック記念青少年総合センター - National Olympics Memorial Youth Center), moving through the real city of Tôkyô.

(bus lunch)

So many unforgettable views, all the buildings and skyscrapers.. well I'll upp some pics later. Although people asked me this a lot, I wasn't the least bit excited.. no, I don't mean excited in an eager way, but in a nervous. No idea why, everything around me seemed new, but not too unfamiliar. Can't really explain it.Orisen is a really big facility actually, didn't expect that.


There're a lot of opportunities to practice all kinds of sports, and of course they have their own &sleeping rooms and canteen. My and my Austrian room mate Thomas just ate supper there. Although my inner self denies it, I'm super jet-lagged. With almost 50kg of luggage. A bit tiredness, thirstiness and imagined earthquakes (actually a girl had them too). But only soft ones. Actually, I wonder how I could write so much without collapsing. They told us tomorrow's gonna be some kind of Kumon test to find out our Japanese skill level. Maybe I wrote too much after all, who's gonna read all that crap anyway? Gotta break off here, the tiredness is catching up... see ya later. PS.: I think I've found the same vending machine AkitaTom used on his Orientation, gonna upp some pics of that too.

(AkitaTom Vlog #4)