The breaking point

I think I have reached my breaking point. This past week, I have not understood anything in Japanese that has been spoken to me be it from teacher or friend. It is as if my brain, like a poor overworked Japanese salaryman, has had enough and has gone on an extended holiday. Unfortunately I’m not sure when it will be back. Sigh!

The first three weeks was fairly good in terms of language because my brain was sponging up Japanese left and right. Now it feels like that sponge has reached its saturation point. If you are not sure what I’m talking about, try this: take a sponge and pour water on it. The sponge will absorb the water. But keep on pouring more water and you will start to see water coming out of it. There is no more space for the water to go as you have already gone past the saturation point. This is how my brain feels like right now.

Everything in class goes in one ear but immediately dances out the other. Knowledge sticks to my brain like it sticks to a hairy backside (that’s not sticky, right?). I’m so toast. Either consciously or subconsciously,  my mind does not want to process Japanese anymore and I’m not sure how long it will take for me to get out of this ditch.

I’ve had enough of this. If it was possible, I don’t want to have anything to do with Japan and Japanese for at least a week. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to speak it and I don’t want to be in it. But if only wishes were like the beautiful simplicity of 1+1=2 and not 1+1=11…or a window.

Climbing up Mt. Kinka

I climbed Mt. Kinka today with members of the Ryuugaku Love Club. There are three ways to get to the top; cable car rope-way, the easy way and the HARD way. Being the intrepid adventurers we were, some of us of course chose to go the hard way. Let me tell you, they don’t call it hard for nothing!

By the time we reached the top 45 minutes later, I was breathing like a horse after the races and was really sweaty. At some parts, it was almost a 60 degree climb upwards! It burned my quads and I know I’m going to feel it tomorrow. To make matters worse, I had biked there (took 30 mins) and that meant I had to bike back on jelly legs. Not exactly the safest way to navigate Gifu’s busy streets.

By the way, the easy way was a lovely, winding meander up the mountain. It took probably 15 minutes more to reach the top but climbers get to stay peachy-fresh.

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down. *Groan! After some lunch and pictures, we had to make our way down again. I wanted to take the cable car on the pretense of looking at the view but no one wanted to go with me! So down we went and by mistake, we took the medium hard way down. Argh, burn quads burn!

Just so you know, the Ryuugaku Love Club is formed by students interested in meeting foreigners. Most of the time, you find that you will automatically join this club through mutual friends but if you can’t do that, just rock up to their weekly lunches and introduce yourself. Just look out for the group of people sitting down that have real blondes in their group!

Work it out

For those coming to Gifu University and are avid gym buffs, you will be slightly disappointed with the facilities here. The gym has only basic weights, a few weight machines and some exercise bikes and it is a lot smaller compared to the UTS gym. I would definitely recommend knowing a lot of free weight techniques because their machines are limited to chest press, leg press, leg curls and lat pulls. But hey, it is free and beggars can’t be choosers.

Besides that, it is a pretty complicated process just to even use the gym. First of all it is only open from 2.30-4.00PM everyday and you’ll have to sign in at the administrative office to get a key to the gym. When you are done, you’ll have to return the key and then write up a report of what you’ve actually done be it weight training or cardio and etc. It seems you will have to do this every time you’ve used the gym. Pretty tedious, I know!

Another annoying thing is that the university pool is only open to use between the months of August and September. All the other times, I think it is only the swimming club that can use it. But on the other hand, the weather is still pretty cold and the pool is outdoors so perhaps not many people are very interested in freezing their bits off.

Their are heaps of tennis courts around the campus so if you love playing tennis, you’ve come to the right place. There is also space for horse riding and archery, a track field and a baseball park. However most of the time you’ll need to join the club to gain access to these facilities.

Please do not disturb

No post today guys. I’m still recovering from Nagoya as I haven’t much sleep these past two days. Come back tomorrow!

Zzzzzzz…

Ah, Nagoya, Nagoya!

For you Nagoya, we all got nicely dressed for a night out. For you Nagoya, we all drank and got drunk. For you Nagoya, Kylie and I tried to swing on the pole dancing pole and I pulled a muscle. And for you Nagoya, one of us got so smashed that for the rest of the night he was curled on the corner of your streets, puking his guts out.

Only for you, and the seductive lure of a pretty damn fun night!

This was our first time clubbing in Nagoya and I doubt it would be our last, sans the whole ‘friend-puking- because-he-had-way-too-much’ episode. I was only mildly buzzed for the first half hour because I skulled some lolly water in five minutes but after that I kept to water for the rest of the night. Why drink when it was so much more fun to see your friends around you get wasted and do funny things?

The club we went to was called Steps and it was a pretty small bar in comparison to some of the Sydney bars that I’ve been in. It would have probably only fit 40 people max but the bartenders were cool and the music was good. Most of the drinks cost around 500 yen and these were the ones we drank and drank…and got drunk. Some handled it really well after an average of six standard drinks and there were those who did not.

These are just a few examples of the drunken behaviour of that night:

1. Getting on the table/under the table/sprawled over the table.

2. Body surfing people sitting at the table.

3. “Accidentally” falling down and taking a poor girl with him as cushioning to break his fall.

4. Swearing in a very Australian accent.

5. Forgetting how to say 12 in Japanese. It really isn’t that hard.

6. Head lolling, body swaying, spittle flying everywhere and generally the movements of an uncooperative body.

This of course, preceded the throwing up and comatose-like condition of said friend. This left the rest of us trying to wake him up, force some water down his throat, and trying to get his legs to un-jelly itself so that we may walk to a more comfortable location. It didn’t work. In the end, we stuffed him in a taxi (I really felt bad for the driver) and took him to a friend’s apartment nearby. Do you know how hard it is to move 80kg of dead weight that was unconscious, gone from this world and puking in plastic bags? Hard. Very, very hard.

We couldn’t get home to Gifu because trains naturally stop at midnight. It would have been too expensive to catch a taxi home and anyway there were quite a few of us. After enough clubbing, we were meant to go to karaoke and wait out for the earliest 5.30AM train but that didn’t happen because of the above reason. Thank goodness we had that friend’s apartment so we all crashed there for a few hours.

Regardless of that unfortunate blip in our night that got us kicked out of the club, I still had a lot of fun! I know it sounds weird (after all, we did have a comatose guy to look after) but I really enjoyed myself that night. We had a good group of people and I had a great time talking to them and the dancing was great. I got the DJ to play my favourite club song, Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’, and I got to see some hilarious behaviour. This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve pulled an all-nighter.

We finally stumbled home at around 7.30AM, had a shower and went to bed.

Oh and the comatose guy? He didn’t want to wake up so I slapped his face and hauled him awake. Tough love. What we didn’t tell him was the permanent marker scribblings on his face that we drew on while he was sleeping – he only realised when we reached Gifu an hour later and after countless of people had seen him. We split ourselves laughing but hey, payback is a bi***! HA HA HA!