No more money

Ugh, I just took a look at my online banking accounts and the sight that greeted me was pretty depressing. I have spent quite a large sum in Japan and will be returning shortly to Australia with a much lighter pocket. Sob! It didn’t really help that the Australian dollar to a massive nosedive a couple months back and is much weaker against the yen. Do I regret the amount I spent here? Well I could have been more careful here and there but generally, no. I had a blast travelling, eating, shopping and seeing new places with the freedom money afforded me. Afterall, money is only money and you can always earn more of it. However, experience is priceless! 

So how much altogether do you need for your ten months here? If you want to live like I have been doing, not exactly lavishly but not exactly imporverishly, then you need something around $15,000-$18,000 and this includes travelling outside the country three times!. If you don’t go out much, not travel, always cook your own food and don’t shop, then you are looking around $10,000. But you’ll be living a pretty boring life staying in your room. At least there will be plenty of time to study and improve your Japanese! Lol.

Speaking of improving Japanese, you do learn a lot of new things while you are here but it is up to you on whether you want to capitalise and maximise your learning experience. For example, having lots of Japanese friends and avoid using English among the other English-speaking students. Perhaps even getting a part time job if your level of Japanese is good enough in the beginning. Or even watching heaps of television and listening to the radio. Essentially whatever that floats your boat and helps you learn the language. Personally, I was pretty much a slacker and hung out mainly with the English speakers. I had some Japanese friends but even they could understand English so it wasn’t very hard for me. In this, I have some regrets because I could have improved my Japanese a lot faster if I had stuck to it but I took the easy way ouy. Piker! However, I still had a lot of fun during my time here anyway so it wasn’t a total waste.

I’m glad I came to Gifu University and I value the memories that coming to Japan provided (even though I am now a very POOR COOKIE! Donations are now being accepted…). I thought the learning program here was very well run and most of the teachers are fantastic. Look out for Hashimoto-sensei, Miwa-sensei, Umeno-sensei and Ishi-sensei; they are the bomb especially Hashimoto-sensei! Some of the classes are pretty boring but the grammar classes are excellent and teach a lot of new ones. The pace moves fairly quickly at times but after a while, you’ll get used to it.

Thinking Japanese in Japanese

I find that the best way to learn Japanese is to try and not think in English. Let the Japanese flow through your mind without translating every single word and you’ll find that you’ll grasp the language a lot faster. This thought popped into my head in class today and made me realise the basic concept behind learning a new language. Don’t translate! As soon as I tried translating the words in my head, I stopped paying attention to the teacher. It took too long to mentally compute it and ruined everything but as soon as I stopped translating, I could pick up everything again. 

However that rule only applies for the spoken language. For the written, I find that doing some translation along the way helps a lot. I usually find the word in English and read the sentence in the subject-verb-object form instead of the Japanese s-o-v. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work all the time and then you’re pretty much up the creek unless you can get someone to explain it to you. 

My next tip to future ICSers is to learn as much kanji as possible. The amount you learn in two years at UTS is a pittance and you’ll require a lot more than that to get around and for your studies. You can pick it up here as you go along but the going is much slower. Better to have the preparation done before you come; after all you do have a break of four months before travelling to Japan. I know it sounds hypocritical of me since I didn’t do any studying, but now I wished I had because it would have made my life a lot easier!

Gifu University Festival

I was looking back through my older posts when I realised that I never wrote about one of the most important events of Gifu University – the annual Gidaisai. It was held on the first weekend of November and it was a massive undertaking for everyone. It involved the entire university and for the duration of two days, the campus ground was transformed into a veritable playground complete with food and game stalls, band performances, comedy routines, and interactive activities. There were so many things to eat and drink and much more things to do; some of the food you can expect include yakisoba, senbei, burgers, takoyaki, chocolate bananas and so on. During the festival, you can dress up in a traditional kimono, listen to an electron orchestra, play ball games and listen to (some very bad) bands. It was so much fun and it gave a few bonus days off from class as preparations were finished. Heh heh.

This festival is preceded by the Gifu University Float Parade held the day before the start of the festival. It isn’t really such a major affair because not many clubs join in building the floats. Last year only five clubs entered, one of them being the Ryuugakusei Love Club. We made a giant red Sarubobo (some sort of monkey) but unfortunately, we didn’t win best in parade. That went to the veterinarian science students…again! I think that makes it three years running for them. Anyway,  the parade takes place near Gifu Station and it makes it way around an entire block. It takes about one and a half hours to complete the route and by the end of it, everyone is very tired of carrying the heavy float. And hoarse from shouting chants the entire time! By the way, the float gets destroyed at the end of Gidaisai. Everyone who helped make it gets to participate in the fun of completely trashing it to bits. Allows you vent out some angry frustration for not winning first prize. Our monkey only won the third prize of 10,000 yen which was used to buy booze for the party held later that night. Yes, we students really know what to spend our money on!

I definitely recommend trying on the kimono at the school festival though; it only costs 500 yen to rent for the day and is a very Japanese experience. However the only people walking around the festival were silly international students like me. I felt a bit awkward at first because everyone was staring and thinking what these weird students were doing but I thought I might never get another opportunity to wear a kimono before I went home. I’ve worn a yukata before but it is slightly different and didn’t have as many layers. Besides, the kimonos were so pretty and you get to mix and match your belt. I thought everyone was looking good in them! Too bad the guys only got a choice of black or blue male kimonos. They couldn’t be as pretty as the girls!

Snowboarding is so much harder!

Last Friday, Ikue took Peter and I to Takasu Snow Park for a day of snowboarding. We had the day off from university because the teachers were preparing the university for the national uni entrance exams that was going to be held on that weekend. The poor high schoolers who want to enter any university had to sit for two days of grueling and intense papers in order to JUST QUALIFY to sit for another later official Gifu University entrance exam that is held in March. Ha ha ha, that totally sucks lemons and makes me glad that I only had to sit for only the HSC.

Anyway, I had a good time for the second part of that day. I say that because it really sucked falling down a lot while I was learning how to board. I only started to get the hang of carving later in the afternoon and just as I was getting good, it was closing time. It was such a total rush though once you can get down the mountain without falling too many times. It felt so cool! I think I might be addicted to winter sports which is slightly unfortunate as I live in Sydney. Bit hard to ski or snowboard when the closest snow is half a day away at Perisher!

I can see why the SED doesn’t allow snowboarding during their yearly ski trip. First of all, it is a little bit more expensive and it is so much harder to get the hang off. I fell down three times as much as I did skiing and I guess the SED saw the potential for a lot more injuries if they allowed the option of snowboarding. I’ve done snowboarding once before but even that didn’t really prepare me for doing it again; but with skiing, you learn fairly quickly. By the end of the day, I was so tired and my knees had taken quite a beating from falling down on them soo much. I also took a few hard knocks when I belly-flopped the snow – not fun at all I tell you! But I came away with a sense of accomplishment because I managed to learn a new skill though I’m far from being able to brag about it. Darn, lol!

Snowflakes keep falling on my head

It snowed bucket loads for the better part of yesterday. I woke up and was very surprised to see a completely white scenery when I opened my curtains. Of course I’ve seen snow before, and I did just come back from the university ski trip, but it was still pretty cool to see big plump flakes falling down and blanketing the area. The snowdrifts also became quite deep and naturally my shoes got soaked since someone wasn’t smart enough to water-proof them…

Walking to university was an interesting experience with me losing the battle of trying to keep snow from touching my clothes, and even with the massive umbrella that I was carrying. Luckily the temperature was so cold that the snow wasn’t melting quickly and so you could just shake yourself off without getting too damp. Eventually as the day worn on, snowmen kept on popping up like daisies here and there, which I promptly stabbed with my umbrella. LOL! Nothing like bullying a few helpless snowmen to warm the cold blood up! I also got a few snowballs on my back but I gave just as good as I got (or tried to considering my aim is generally pretty crap!). One of the cool things about snow is that it brings out the inner child; that and the fact that we don’t really get much snow in Sydney. I’m sure if I had grown up around the white stuff, it wouldn’t really faze me that much. Maybe.

However it started to warm up in the late afternoon and also the school administrators threw salt on the ground to make it safer. Today has also been a warm day and thus all the lovely fluffy snow has become snice (snow + ice). Not a very fun combination as you just end up getting wet and miserable and the roads become slick and slippery. I almost fell down today if not for my superior balancing skills! It still is a pretty sight though; the snow is coating rooftops and treetops, the rice fields are blankets of white, everything looks clean and fresh, and the air is crisp and freaking cold.