Today was a sleepy Sunday, after a long night out with people leaving soon. It seems like I get to see my fellow exchange students less and less these days. We're all hanging out with our host families or friends outside of the dorm instead. The party was basically started by Tara, who is returning to Australia after a short Tokyo trip this week.

Not much else... blog more soon.

Ah, exams are finally over.

Now I can study what I want, go where I want, and to a certain extent do what I want until school starts... but then my "schedule" is becoming full very quickly and now looking at the next few months, I realize that I'm going to have my hands full with something just about every day.

Actually, its quite normal to have such a full schedule here; especially kids who have been in school for so long. I suspect it's the same for me when I am at home in school, but I never considered the dilemma of the exchange student in learning a language with people who actually live and work here until now. You have to fit with their rhythm of work and play, and thats not always easy. My best friends here are the ones who make time for me, actually.

I have gotten alot from this semester, but I still feel like I should have done something else... Everyone says that my language has improved, but now I face the fall of this year: where do I go from Japan? It began as a goal and not a stepping stone. If everything goes as I would like it and I move as well as begin to teach English, my language should improve drastically.

I suppose I'll just do my best to get through school, as well as try for Journalism interships (and hopefully write for a blog or two) in order to keep up with a degree.

Tonight is a farewell party for one of my fellow exchange students in Osaka. I'm going to try to look reasonably good for this, so I should leave now and get ready...

I'll blog again tomorrow. Bye everyone!

It's been a very long January. It hasn't been long since the January trip, but looking back, so much has changed- my Japanese, my plans for Japan, and even what I'm going to be doing with myself when I get back to the States...

A good starting point would be one related to the purpose of my stay here. My Japanese has drastically improved in the past month I've been here- When I watch interviews on the news and children's shows the only thing that holds me back from completely understanding is vocabulary, really. I've completed and understand basic grammar with few exceptions. It's a pretty strange feeling, actually. Japanese just felt like an impassable wall for the first three months I was here- I could talk to people, but it was a struggle. Now I don't have to break into English in order to hold a conversation. It's also affecting my English conversational grammar little by little. All of my friends speak with a Kansai accent and I've started picking it up as the rate at which I learn the language starts to speed up. I've also been trying to take the time to review when I can, but I don't want to shun a social life either- they're both important to this sort of thing.

Next, I'm more than likely going to be moving next month to a dorm closer to school. If I walk, the commute will be about the same... but I won't be as restricted as if I live in my current dorm and take the special train I need to get into town- i.e., people can actually come up to my room without paying 600 yen or so. Don't get me wrong, I love the people in this dorm- but the place is a little inconvenient. I feel a bit cheated that I was sent here without my university doing a little more research and without really knowing what it was. I've had fun here but I feel like my experience of Japan was a little affected by the way this dorm was set up. The new dorm is a 20 minute walk up the side of a mountain, basically, from the nearest train station. It's also full of Japanese people- so I'll be forced to speak Japanese when I go home from school/ whatever part time work I can manage to find.

In order to facilitate this move, I've decided to buy a moped. I've got to go through license training and then actually test for the license, and then actually buy the thing. Fuel will probably be around 1000 yen a month (or so I've heard) which is nothing. Doing all of these things will make the summer much more convenient and much more enjoyable, and definitely help my Japanese.

I've made alot more close friends in the past month. I'm quite sure I've made some lifelong friends here and it took me quite a while to sort that out, but I guess that's part of a new situation and all. Unfortunately alot of them are leaving this semester, but moving out of the dorm I won't be around that much longer either. As one of my Japanese friends said, "Sometimes something is really fun but you can't just focus on it, you've got to leave it as is and remember it that way." That's pretty Japanese for a few reasons, but in the end I just think its very reflective of the Japanese mindset.

The last few things I want to find before too long are: a meditation or a temple I can practice at, and an internship in something dealing with media. I feel like even if I was teaching English I'd be making good contacts over here.

My first semester is almost over... but I have seven months left. It feels like its been forever since I got here, and yet like nothing has happened at all.

Over break I plan on traveling to Fukuoka in Kyushuu to visit my friend and more than likely future roommate Nate, who is studying international relations and japanese there. It should be awesome and I'm looking forward to Beppu and tons of onsen.

Mata ne!

Heading Off to Tokyo In... an hour and 30 minutes.

As the title of this post says, I'm going to Tokyo for 5 days (or six nights or something like that), from tomorrow when I arrive in Shinjuku station (the 26th) until when I arrive the morning of New Year's Day in Kobe. From there, I'll head to Kyoto with my host family. It's been a trip I've been planning with my Brit friend Joe for quite awhile, so I'm really looking forward to it, I've heard so much about Tokyo and I want to map the city out for when Katie may visit in the summer. We'll hit up all the big districts: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Rippongi, Akihabara... and on the last day visit Yokohama and meet my good friend Wakiko and try to hit up Chinatown and Mirai Park. The days are going to cycle out as going into town and partying down at night before heading back home to spend time with Kohei's family (Kohei is Joe's friend whom he met in Sheffield and who is letting us surf couch) in a more traditional setting. This is going to be the fastest, wildest week so far, and I am totally ready for it. Just have to make it through the night bus first...

Anyway, Kohei's got internet so I'll be able to infrequently check for things online, and you can always email me at rbrooks99@softbank.ne.jp if you'd like to get a somewhat delayed and short email response (no, really, I'm more than happy to receive messages) back, but for the most part it sounds like we're going to be go go go go for this period of time. There will be lots of pictures and lots of stories to tell when I get back. I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and I hope everyone celebrates New Years with the people they love, I'll probably be around on Skype New Years day when it finally makes it all the way back to America.

東京しましょう！

Hitting the... well, the 1/4 of the way mark.

Well, ひさしぶり、everyone. It's been a long time since my last entry... but I think that is going to change soon, for a few reasons:

1. My Japanese is most definitely improving. I'm guessing that about, oh, halfway through spring break I should be able to understand most of the basic things people say in speech in Japanese. I'm going to be frank here, I'm definitely not where I expected to be at this time. I'm learning quite fast by the standards of everyone who has studied abroad before- I think now it's just a matter of really keeping up with it and exposing myself to the language as much as humanly possible.

2. I'm not really struggling anymore as far as Japanese goes. I'm getting a system down. I was surprised, given how much everyone seems to whine about it, at how easily keigo came to me when we started going over the basics this week. It's really not that hard and actually helped me connect Japanese vocabulary a little better so that I had an easier time learning it.

3. I haven't really been homesick so much as had weird emotional waves since I got here. I'm really doing everything I'm suppose to- learning the language, making friends, exploring the country within the confines of the time limit I've been set, but when you have this much freedom for the first time in your life you can't help but get the feeling you're doing something WRONG. It was really hard to shake that feeling at first but now I really think that coming here was definitely useful for myself as a person.

AND to blatantly rip off a blog of a friend of mine's, if there is ever a day where I both want to write in my blog but nothing of any real importance happens (though thinking back, those days have been rare) I'm just going to write about whatever pops into my head. It's all going to be relevant.

Right, so... look forward to that. I need to fill this with content. And I will. There is so much here in this place...

A few little updates: My host family has contacted me again, and this time, to their surprise I could actually communicate mildly complex thought! The downside is, they weren't contacting me because someone in their family died. I am sure that they will explain how to apologize/ show sympathy or apologize/ grieve or apologize/ discuss the finer points of, death in japanese as it is spoken in japanese society.

Right, its off to Izumiya for the weekly buying of food and also edible things which have awesome packaging and don't actually taste very good at all (this is a common thing here) but certainly entertain me.

Finding your place in so busy and so inclusive a country as Japan is hard sometimes. People group; not just in train stations or at restaurants, but people feel the need to group in Japan. This is not to say you can't get on by yourself as a foreigner; it's just not what is done. As a foreigner, you have one of two options if you are learning or have, to some degree, learned japanese: First, you can stay with your fellow gaijin in gaijin places that are catered to your tastes to make you feel comfortable (I've certainly done this many times and there is a good chance that I will do something like that again tonight. They just aren't real western places, just like chinese or japanese restaurants back home are not the same, and neither are karaoke places back home (though I hear Shokitini is pretty awesome). Recently a friend and I discovered a sports bar here with hamburgers that tasted like and resembled a hamburger from an American bar and grill, just much smaller. It actually had condiments out on the table, which was awesome. I think I appreciate these places a whole lot; I love Japan, I want to experience it in as many ways as possible, but I think that living in a foreign country for this long, you want things from home more than you want things from the country you are living in. It seems like it should be a waste of time but I don't think it is.

In a few other bits of news, I can't seem to get in touch with my host family via email... I wanted to see them a few times more before Christmas, but it seems that they are behaving in what seems is a typical temp-host family fashion; you meet them once, they decide they don't like you very much, and never contact you again. I　suppose this is okay, because the only time I have time to catch up with classes/ socialize is the weekend, realistically.

In bad and then good news, the hostel I wanted to book for Tokyo to stay in is full up, but my friend Joe's friend may be able to accommodate us. We shall see how it turns out.

I'll be posting more tomorrow; I'm going to try to catch up and clean up tomorrow, and hopefully make some bean and cheese burritos on top of that.

Peace and love.

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. Things have been picking up very, very quickly... in fact, I don't have nearly as much free time as I initially wanted- either I need more downtime than most people or my classes really are just too much for me at the moment. I think I am getting used to the pace of these "intensive" classes. They amount to a chapter out of the book a day, which is around thirty to forty new words, their kanjis, and four to six pieces of grammar. It's fantastic for my Japanese, but destroys any and all free time since I am also trying to maintain an active social life while I am here.

I took another big trip to Osaka yesterday after a Friday night of Izakaya. I visited a few of the famous consumer districts of the city, bought the things that I wanted, and got out. This took around five hours, of course. Later on I ended up in a weird part of the city called "American Town" which was appropriate since I was with a bunch of Americans, but there wasn't really anything American about it. However, there was the first time I was openly accepted and received by Japanese youth on the street, which was pretty gratifying. At this point my Japanese is functional, and only that, so of course I couldn't exchange much with them. It's always a struggle, but I think I'm on my way here.

Anyway, I went home after the group I was roving around with decided it was club time, and barely made the last train back to Kobe after barely making the subway train from the south end of the city (Nanba) to get to that train. It was a pretty uncomfortable train, but it beats staying out all night. It's weird, how this party rhythm works here. In my college town, the bars close at 2:00... after this point, you wind down the night somewhere else and go home. Here, that doesn't exist. You either start drinking at 8:00 and continue until 5 in the morning, or you do the smart thing and take the last train INTO the city to go to these places. Like I said, I am trying to maintain a social life here as well as an academic one, and a happy medium hasn't really presented itself (living in Kobe, it may never do so, since I have to commute to Osaka) and right now that leads to not getting enough sleep, which hurts my schoolwork, and so on....

On the bright side, I found a Subway and what looks to be a fairly non-Japanized Mexican restaurant within easy walking distance of the main Nanba station in Osaka. Subways are all over Osaka, apparently, and of course the sandwiches arent quite the same and you can't get free refills BUT it actually tastes like a real sandwich and doesnt cost an arm and a leg. It was pretty awesome.

I would upload pictures from the past little while but when I tried to do that this morning my computer froze up. I've got a bit too much to do tonight to try to solve the problem, so I will see what I can do tomorrow night...

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing fine.