send-off

on the day of my departure, i was just coming out after checking my luggage in, and i see 20+ of my class mates running up to me with a huge poster they made. it was the best ever, i love those guys. they came to the airport on a bus after school (which must have taken 3-4 hours) to see me off. needless to say, i was quite moved.

this is my host dad and his emergency service workmates. and 2 of their girlfriends i think?

boohoo

so, this chapter of paul's super-ultra-fantastic-mega-lucky-wish life will soon come to an end. exactly 3 days, in fact. it has truly been a thrice in a life time experience, and i now know for sure where i'd like to spend a large portion of my life.

home is where the heart is, and i am looking forward to heading back on friday.

.

something weird and extremely frustrating is happening to me. i no longer possess the ability to have a clear and flowing conversation in english. every now and then i have to stop mid-sentence to a) remember the word that fits into what i'm trying to say b) try to think of the english version of the japanese word i'm thinking of (which of course doesn't exist in english) or c) eat another helping of ramen.
sometimes i give up altogether and end the conversation half way through. the things i sacrifice for learning japanese...

bakabakabaka

this is what makes us stupid gaijin:
1. we are tall and clumsy
2. we are loud and obnoxious
3. we walk around our houses in shoes
4. we come to japan for the sole purpose of taking 5 different kinds of bbq sauce to mcdonalds and order tons of mc chicken burgers and test each sauce on them

i promise this will be the last post about snow

because it's all melting away :(

snow is great.

master photography courtesy of chris the american

YES, IT'S SNOW!!!

i'm not norwegian, so don't blame me for being excited shitless about snow. pictures tell the story better than words:

this is us being surprised

ramen

if you've never eaten ramen before, then please - drop everything you are holding, stop what you are doing, and go out now to search for a bowl of this superb noodle soup. but of course, if you aren't living in japan (or china maybe), you most likely won't be able to find a decent one. believe me when i say this is the best food in the world!

originating in china, this dish was only introduced to japan in the early 1900s. since then, it has become extremely popular, being so quick and simple to make, and quite cheap. nowadays, every locality in japan boasts its own unique type of ramen. nothing on this planet can beat the combination of the perfectly boiled noodles, salty broth, pickled bamboo, spring onion, and the mouthwatering lashings of pork slices...

because ramen is the best food in the world, there has been a museum in yokohama established in its name. actually - it's more of a theme park than a museum, but they call it a museum so, whatever. some friends and i just had to go to investigate.


the place is amazing - this pic is from inside, where there is a huge recreation of tokyo from the year 1958. looks just like a movie scene! the photo isn't that great, but i'll get a better one soon. the best thing about this place is that all throughout, there are branches of the best of the best ramen shops from all regions of japan. which means the best ramen in japan can be eaten less than an hours train ride away from my house!!! of course, the best of the best is always changing, people get sick of things. getting a place in the ramen museum is like getting a place reserved in heaven - in terms of ramen. but it's not easy, if one of these places isn't getting enough business, then it's out with them and in with a new, more popular shop.

so fierce is the ramen competition, that rivals send out spies to get jobs as dish washers in their opponent's shops. these agents, so dilligent in their quest for ramen fame, quietly incapacitate their superiors one by one, and carry out stealthy robbery operations to steal the secret recipes from the ultra state-of-the-art walk-in vault at the back of every seedy, run-down ramen shop. actually no, that was a lie, but they do fiercely keep their ramen recipes secret.

ramen will be one of the things i miss most when i leave japan. but i feel a bit guilty about that, because really, it's not japanese.

queer folk

i wonder if you feel sorry for me, because these are the kinds of friends i seem to make. on the left, we have nikolai. words such as weird, eccentric, and bizarre fail miserably to describe this guy. maybe something like incomparably and totally incomprehensibly abnormal would come close. i mean, how often do you meet a 190cm tall 17 year old norwegian who likes to wear an alien mask with a beanie on top when meeting friends? who also doesn't understand why everyone doesn't buy a mask and walk around with it on? not very often, i'd imagine. being around such a guy always proves for interesting times. he likes adventures - he once ran home from school in the height of summer (HOT), because he felt like it. i'm shit at estimating, but i guess it would be about a 5k run? anyway, there was a mountain or something in the way of his house, so he scaled it and at the top, encountered a naked sunbathing man.

and on the left, we have warren. he's not exactly weird (no one is compared to nikolai), but i was a bit surprised when i first saw him today, dressed in a blindingly white suit, with a white vest, white jumper, white shirt, and white pants.
in fact, these are really really great guys, and i love to hang out with them and stuff. (just in case they read this)

walking around with these guys in japan is like running around a bull ring dressed purely in red. holding red flags. but hey, i wouldn't have it any other way - any attention is good attention, right?


we went bowling too, and of course, the mask had to come out. i managed to capture the beast in action.

osechi ryouri

this is お節料理, the traditional japanese new year food eaten every year on january 1. it consists of octopus, one prawn, roast beef slices, herring roe, egg rolls, sweet potato, black beans, and some other chewy stuff. best washed down with awamori - sake from okinawa!

boy's day out

harajuku has to be one of the best parts of tokyo if you are looking for cheap second hand clothes, cheap food, cool hair or gothic lolitas.

it was chris' birthday today, he's an american exchange student with a british accent. he wanted to go to kappa sushi, so we were all nice guys and took him to harajuku (apparently that's the only place that has kappa sushi).
it's great there - quality food and every plate for 100 yen, just over a dollar.

the bargains just came rushing in as we walked the famous takeshita street and around the general area. harajuku is quite popular for its second hand clothes shops. in contrast to australia, the ones here actually sell decent clothes (and very pricey in some places), not safari suits and calico skirts. i managed to scrounge around and find a lacoste jumper for 300 yen (!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

someone got the urge to walk to shinjuku, so we did. on the way, phillip (a german goth) had to make a call to his mum from a public phone. someone had left a suspect video tape on the bench in there, and nikolai smartly picked it up. i'm going over his house to watch it in a few days, we are sort of hoping it will be that video from the ring, so we die within seven days of watching it.

from left: nikolai(norway), me, phillip(germany), erick(mexico), chris(usa)

merry xmas, happy new year, ake ome, blah bla bla, salamat datang?, jaojfieajoihafe

hi

the recent zero degree winter weather has frozen my motivation to write any posts...

i experienced my first japanese christmas the other day. the two big religions here are buddhism and shinto, and christmas being a christian celebration, the japanese version of it is a tad warped (as you might expect). it is a hugely commercial event, which is the same in australia i suppose, but what everyone does here is spend a romantic christmas eve with their lover (or family in the case of those without, i guess). and christmas day for a lot of people is business as usual, with the salarymen and office ladies heading to work, students going to school to attend clubs etc. etc. even most of the people in this family spent the holiday in the office.

i am currently on winter holiday. havent got many plans apart from going out with friends, birthdays etc. etc. i return home in exactly 3 months from january the 10th. then i have to WORK. WORK!! such a foreign word to me.. but believe it or not, i'll find a job .... then it's off to griffith in 2007. it feels nice to have a plan.

here's a list of bands that you must check out:
the dillinger escape plan
dir en grey
postal service
nightmare
kings of leon
white stripes
mad capsule markets
pageninetynine
shai hulud
converge
the departure
incubus
between the buried and me

the shounandai chapter

exactly 3 months since my last post.. a lot of awesome stuff may have happened since then, but i may have forgotten most of it.

i finally moved to a new family (about 2 months ago), this one lives in shounandai - about an hour away from school. it's actually quite good now, i don't have to clean the toilet every day, and this is actually a family - not a roof providing shelter for 4 bodies. here's an exciting picture of my room and the view


oh here's something interesting: there's a busy road that i have to cross to get home every day, and the closest crossing is about 100m from the bus stop. so i do the law-breaking citizen thing and just cross at the bus stop when a chance presents itself. one day i came home at about 7 or 8 and the street was so packed that most of the cars were stopped, so i ran across.

an interesting fact for the japan-o-phile: the scooter owners in japan always drive in the 30cm gap between the traffic and the curb. incidentally, i was running in front of a large, idle delivery truck, unable to see or hear the small bike zooming along beside it. and when it hit me, i was launched 10 meters through the air, slamming into the road. maybe not that far, but it sounds better that way.

luckily i'm still an invincible teenager, because i didn't break any bones. that, coupled with the fact that i drink 3 glasses of milk every day! i'm glad to say that i still haven't learnt my lesson, and i cross at the same place every day.

nikolai has been moved to tokyo, because his organisation is unbelievably queer and thinks he's the devil's offspring. he was going to be sent back to norway, but through various means, he managed to get sent to tokyo instead. never, NEVER do an exchange to japan with AFS.

i still see him every now and then. he went to cairns a few weeks ago for the school trip (for 3 days). kind of funny when you think about it, a norwegian guy going to cairns with hundreds of japanese students and teaching aussie kids about sushi and samurai and sumo. we went to shinjuku once (which is sort of like the king's cross of tokyo, i suppose), and he finally fulfilled his life-long dream of walking around tokyo in boxer shorts.

i am having the time of my life at school. i didn't think school here would be this much fun. in fact, i haven't been doing much except going to school... maybe i should take more photos there and post them up here. anyway, here's a photo of some mates being hardcore punks

japan is weird

unless you've been living under a rock for decades, you might know that they do things differently in japan. today i was in asakusa with my host family and a finnish exchange student doing the temple and shrine thing. there was a woman riding her bike with her baby sitting in a chair on the back, and she hit the curb on the wrong angle and fell over. naturally, she was wild with worry about the baby and a lot of people came over to help. but the thing that caught my interest was when we moved on and later on came back down the same street. 3 policemen had arrived on the scene, and they had traced an outline of the bike, like a homicide crime scene (?). they also had a measuring tape and were measuring the distance from the perfect outline of the bike and the nearest pole (?).

there are tons of small police 'boxes' around the streets of japan. usually theres 4 or 5 cops in them. the average cop here serves his country more often than not by directing tourists to the nearest temple, collecting bikes parked in the wrong places, and even bringing back trolleys from the shopping center parking lots.

oh, and another thing - on a variety tv program the other night a chef had a live octopus and proceeded to cut all the tentacles off and chop them up. the tentacles were still moving when all the hosts of the program dipped them in sauce and ate them. it wasn't a challenge for money or anything, in fact it was a treat for the hosts and they loved it.

engrish camp

ok, so at the beginning of august piee sent me a letter of invitation to one of 2 english camps. one of them was free, and the other was about $150. presented with such a mind-numbingly difficult choice, it took hours of intense thought before i finally decided on choosing the free one. the camps were open to all exchange students in the area, so nikolai tagged along aswell, alongside about 7 others.

the point of the camp was to give about 50 japanese high school students the chance to speak and learn as much english as possible in 3 days. also to be able to converse with foreigners, and promote international understanding and good friendship blahblah etcetc.

nothing overly exciting or strange happened on the camp, apart from 1 thing. on the third and final day, we were separated into groups, about 1 foreigner in each of them. our task was to create a very short film with a language theme. there was a malaysian girl in my group too, so we did an english-malaysian hero story. the acting capacity of every single person on the camp was exceptionally low. this really pissed nikolai off, because he's the biggest movie buff i know and wants to be a director.

anyway, our fantastic story was centered around Ice-Cream Man. a brave and bold hero who, when your ice cream is going to be stolen (don't ask), comes to the rescue. one one condition - you have to shout 'help me' in malaysian (shuay duay) otherwise he won't appear. how's that for a box office hit?

the characters in this story were as follows:

• ice cream man (played by yuya, a 15 year old japanese boy)
• the malaysian narrator (played by sora the malaysian girl)
• 3 ice cream bandits (played by 3 japanese girls)
• 3 ice cream damsels in distress (played by 1 japanese girl, 1 japanese boy, and me)

yes, since hiro (the other guy) and i were playing female roles, we had to have proper costumes. wan na (a malaysian exchange student) kindly lent me one of her skirts and tops, and they actually fit. sort of. hiro was soft and wore his shorts and a girl's jacket. then our make up was done by one of the japanese girls. really, we looked amazingly attractive. no, i won't show you the photos.

hello

hey, sorry i haven't posted in a while, but i was busy clipping my toenails and flossing. you know what it's like.

anyway, for the last few weeks i've been trying to organise a family change (for reasons that won't be mentioned here), and finally i'm moving. right now i'm in chiba, staying with the family of one of the PIEE staff for a few days. then i'll be moving off to my new home in shounandai when i'm done here!

i think i've forgotten what else i've been doing recently, so i'll post again when/if i remember. right now sleep sounds good

scary

i experienced my first earthquake about 10 minutes ago. and it wasn't just a tremor, it lasted for about 45 seconds, quite alarming. there's something really surreall and scary about looking out the window and seeing the world outside moving and the brick walls of the apartment wobbling and shaking.

really effed up

i was in tokyo once with nikolai, looking for a yukata (men's kimono - it looks super cool), and saw a woman who looked like she was in her late 30's wearing a shirt with 'I'M REALLY FUCKED UP' emblazoned on the front. i felt too embarrassed on her behalf to take a photo

gaijin outfit

the summer holiday has officially started, and i spent the first day of it at school. but just for swimming practice. the pool feels amazingly nice in this stupidly hot weather.

nikolai's nice host mother rang the school and told them that he would come and help the teacher paint one of the classrooms during the summer holiday, without telling nikolai. he wasn't too happy about this, so out of pity, i went and helped him. apart from the classroom that felt like a sauna, it wasn't so bad. but the paint job that we did was unbelievably shitty. we dripped paint all over the floor, and painted 'over the lines' into the all the wrong spots. but the teacher seemed to think we did a superb job. that was cool. she also shouted us lunch at the fast food shop in front of school. it's called First Kitchen, but in japan they shorten it to Fa Kin. i imagine any english-speaking gaijin bloke would be surprised when a cute japanese schoolgirl says in broken english - 'let's go fucking!'

it was a pretty bad idea to paint walls in my school uniform because, naturally, i got paint all over it. but i'm sure it's in tune with some obscure new japanese fashion, so there's nothing to worry about. nikolai came prepared, his host family bought him a new pair of 3-sizes-too-small shorts and he borrowed an old shirt off his host dad. the shorts he got were exactly the same style that we have dubbed 'the gaijin outfit.' for some stupid reason, 99% of all foreigners we see around kamakura wear these khaki cargo pants. i have seen about 10 foreign tourists on my stay here that weren't wearing these shorts.

nikolai and i like to think we are a new breed of 'supreme gaijin.' we take precedence over these cargo pant-wearing peasants, simply due to the fact that we have superb japanese skills, attend japanese high school and wear cool high school uniforms. not because we have big egos.

oh, the photo is of nikolai in his gaijin outfit trying to make a stupid gaijin tourist face admiring a stupid telephone box in front of a stupid bike.

test

testing new image feature on blogger

nikolai the norwegian

this is nikolai trying to look like a stupid foreigner at a japanese festival. he wanted me to put it here, because he wants to be famous. but bortsett fra han ikke fortjene å bli populær

これから夏だよー↓↓

it's starting to get really humid and hot.. reminding me of cairns, unfortunately. this heat actually spurred me to join the swimming club at school. i'm glad i did, it's a lot of fun.

one thing i'm really looking forward to is our school festival in september. originally, our class was going to be a malaysian restaurant, serving only rotis. this was decision was based solely on the fact that our homeroom teacher had been living in malaysia for a while.. anyway, we scrubbed that idea because apparently it was going to cost too much, and now we are making a movie. the other day there was a vote in class to decide who would be the leading male and female role. not surprisingly, almost everyone voted me for the male role. acting is a new venture for me, so it should prove to be interesting, especially because it's all in japanese.

haven't seen my host mother in about a week.. i'm not really looking forward to when i do see her either

hi

lately, there really hasn't been much happening. but because i'm so thoughtful and kind-hearted, i thought i'd write a post to sate the hunger of the masses of my fans all over the globe.

How to properly use the 'peace' sign in 5 easy steps

There are many variations on the peace sign in japan. But there are some basic guidelines that any budding peace enthusiast should follow before moving on to advanced methods.

1. Position shoulders so that one shoulder is closer to the camera.

2. Rotate head approx. 30 degrees in the direction of the shoulder facing the camera.

3. Adjust facial expression to look as cute as humanly possible.

4. Raise hand to approx. chin-height and approx. 12cm away from face.

5. A common mistake made by beginners is to make the peace sign and raise it next to their head with palm facing the camera. This is wrong. The hand should be rotated 180 degrees so it is parallell to the face. Then the two fingers are split in a scissor motion and held in place until photo is taken. The resulting form of the hand should slightly resemble the playboy bunny logo.

Remember - practice makes perfect!

the update

this is an update

p.s. hi max

the seat

almost every day after school, nikolai and i have been going here and sitting down for hours. it's a seat outside baskin and robbins - the best ice cream place in town. lots of weird-looking people walk past it, so we laugh a lot. i guess it makes us look even weirder than the weird-looking people that walk past it.

sekihan

sekihan is a traditional japanese dish made of red beans and rice. it is usually prepared for special occasions like birthdays or weddings.

today in one of our special, exchange-student-only japanese culture lessons, our teacher was a guy who loves speaking english but is extremely bad at it. in a vain attempt to explain to us what sekihan is in english, he wrote this on the blackboard:

"japanese eats sekihan when he eats his congraturation on his birthday success."

that guy really knows how to make a culture lesson fun. it was the first time i have ever seen the creation of engrish in progress right before my eyes. i think this calls for some sekihan.

aargrgghghhhh

we went to another primary school yesterday. in hiratsuka this time. did the same thing as last time. the only difference was that nikolai and i had to carry everyone on our backs pretty much the whole time. that day was really, really tiring. i think i was more tired after that than i was after sports day. if that's what it's like to have a child , then i have way more respect parents now.

that's a guy, by the way

it's that time of the year (or at least i think it is) - bunkasai time. bunkasai is - from what i have seen - when an school opens it's doors to the public for one weekend per year. the classes are set up as various things, shops, plays, restaurants, bars, exhibitions, after school clubs etc. and people are allowed to walk through at their leisure.

on sunday, i went with kat (another aussie exchange student) to an all boys' high school's bunkasai close by here. when we arrived it was overflowing with students, there were also quite a lot of girls there, i suppose they were all searching for hot guys. when kat and i first walked in, it reminded me of that scene from the hitchcock movie 'the birds'. i think every single person was looking straight at us. the school was interesting, there was tons of rooms displaying various things: a plantarium(?), a magic show room, a bar, a band playing in the gym, an art exhibition, and lots more that i forgot. there was a goldfish catching room where you get a bowl and a 'net', which is really a plastic circle with tissue paper as the 'net', making it completely impossible to catch a fish. kat tried her hardest, but the paper broke. but the nice blokes running the goldfish room gave her a fish out of pity.

the most interesting thing by far would have been the play. they decided to do a high school love story, and usually love stories need a female and a male part. but it's an all boys school, right? the guys that played the girl parts looked amazingly feminine.. it was so funny too, my stomach was aching from laughing. the 2 main characters even kissed at the end, as an encore. brave. pictured is me with one of the boys from the play.

this weekend there's 2 other bunkasai on that i know of - kat's school at oofuna and shonan high. i also have another pointless meeting with my area rep.

sengoku 1549

went to yokosuka with nikolai today to see a movie - sengoku 1549. it was the premiere of the movie, so we went early because "there was going to be lots of people buying tickets." and nikolai also had to go buy his tickets to the ueto aya concert (the sexiest girl on earth, in his eyes). he's going to frame the flyer of the concert, after she invites him personally backstage after the concert and signs it for him.

so we did all that and went to buy our movie tickets. there was no one there. probably because we were about 5 hours early. i forgot to take my student id, and i didn't want to pay the adult fee. but i said that i forgot to bring it, and the ticket girl said that she would let me pay student fee this time, but next time please bring it. i bet she only let me off because i have bleached hair. oh, they also allocate seats to you in the movies here, like it's a play or something. since we were the first ones, we got to choose. we just said somewhere in the middle would be fine. then we hung around the shopping center for ages. it was pretty good, we found a shop with lots of nightmare before christmas stuff.

the movie itself was pretty average, i think. but the story was fairly simple so it was good japanese practice. i think i got the gist of most of it. the theatre was tiny though, we were running a bit late and were the last people to walk in, so we had to somehow squeeze in. as we were making our way to our seat, a small japanese boy found out, much to his horror, that 2 huge, stupid foreigners were going to sit in front of him. nikolai said he looked really angry as i sat down. i did make an effort to slouch in my chair though..

we went for a stroll through yokosuka afterwards. it's a bit different to kamakura - wider, bigger, less crowded. we walked down this street were there were lots of africans standing around wearing blingbling clothes so they look american. we only found out they are african because one of them shouted out something in... african, i guess.

fact time

the telephone poles here are made out of concrete. i just had to post it here. oh, and, nikolai and i bleached our hair, just to indicate to everyone how stupid we are. and be rebellious.

back to primary school for a day

if you were ever wondering what japanese 9 year olds eat every day at school, just look at the picture. the tray consists of a bowl of red beans/bean paste, a bowl of udon noodles mixed with veges, a small croissant and a small carton of milk (the milk here is really weird - smells like eggs but tastes ok). it was quite tasty. i couldn't believe how much this guys eat though, i was full after one bowl (and i didn't eat breakfast), but after 3+ bowls full, they were still going up for more!

anyway, today was good, it sure as hell beats doing exams all day. met nikorai, poncho (the chilean dude), and isabel (german lass) at the station today and we caught the bus to the primary school. just as stupid foreigners are supposed to do, we managed to take about 5 minutes to figure out how to pay for our bus fare, meanwhile the traffic behind the stopped bus was pulled to an annoyed halt.

we were greeted at the school with open arms, and were immediately put to work, cleaning one of the classrooms (?). after that, we watched some little kids make some pottery for a while. one of them kept coming up to us with a lump of clay and taking bites out of it. i hope he's ok.. then we went to our freshly cleaned classroom and did some basic self-introductions. afterwards, the little people asked us some questions. there is something really, really embarrassing about being in a class full of 9 year olds who can speak the language 10 times better than you (is that exaggerating?).

lunch went for about 20 minutes, and then we came to the highlight of the day - play time. i had 2 groups of kids nagging me to join their game, the soccer game and the tag game. i didn't know what to choose, so after a quick game of jan-ken-pon (paper-scissors-rock - every difficult decision is solved by this age-old game), i was put into the tag game. it was fun. reminded me of primary school in cairns, way back in the old days. then it was time to go, the students gathered outside the front door, and we shook everyone's hand. the goodbye 'ceremony' ended up taking about half an hour. some of the kids were crying too, how cute.

after that, i went with nikorai back to kamakura, and he wanted to buy a samurai sword. so we went to this little hard-to-find shop, and after he found out it would cost 1,000,000 yen (yes, one million), he changed his mind.

so we dyed our hair grey instead. actually, it didn't turn out grey, mine went a lighter brown, and nikorai's went a lighter, lighter brown. so tomorrow i'm going to nikorai's house and we are going to do it again.

marcia!!

marcia!! yuka said you are kawaii!!! hahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahaa

deaf, man, DEAF

i was cleaning my ears last night (for the first time in about seven decades), and i must have pushed some earwax further into my ear or something, because now it's blocked and i can't hear a thing out of my left ear. it's really uncomfortable, i think i'm going to die. any suggestions?

finished school early today, tomorrow is the big exam day for everyone except us exchange students. i will go to a primary school with the other white people and play soccer with little kids, or something.

this week's engrish update

went karaoke'ing with deb, nikorai, yuka and 2 of her uni friends last night. found this sign in an obscure corner of the place. luckily we didn't commit any homicide/manslaughter in that little corner.

rockstar

some guys from 3rd grade (final grade of high school) that were in the same group as me for dance asked me to join their metal/cover band the other day. they want me to sing english songs... i told them i have no experience at all and quite frankly i'd be a shit singer, but they still insisted on me joining! i assume they think that english fluency is an instant ticket to coolness. this week is exams week, so next week we will begin our long, rocky path to stardom in the japanese domain. i expect our cd to hit the top of the charts 4 days after it comes out.

up the maroons!

queensland won the first origin game this year! matt bowen intercepted in overtime and scored. wish i saw it! (thanks cam)

so i'm 18 now. although it doesn't really make any difference over here, the drinking age is 20 or 21, i forget.

didn't really do anything special. i was greeted at school in the morning with a very japanese sounding english happy birthday song. they also went down to the seven eleven around the corner and bought me a bag full of goodies - that was nice. my day would have been perfectly fine if my host mum didn't throw a 'party' for me at her restaurant. i was told to go there at 7 and i arrive to find one of her friends there, a lady that is trying to make me go to church, japanese church, 3-4 times every weekend. i went last weekend. i did not understand a single word that was said at the mass. whatsmore, the hymns, of course, were japanese. apparently there is also some high school church club that i am being pressured to join, which has meetings every saturday and sunday. fab!

anyway, that night at my birthday party, the mum kept dropping hints and asking me loaded questions, for example:

church friend: hey paul, if you have time, you should come to church one million times this weekend!

mum: oh, paul will have time, he can go. can't you paul? can't you paul? (angry face)

paul: um, yeah, i suppose so (cowering in fear)

i get the feeling that if i don't go, mumsy thinks she will lose a customer. this is a downside of my super-ultra-rockstar-genius status here. in addition, i am 'treated' to dinner with customers (lonely old guys with too much money), so i was taken out for a birthday dinner the night before with some dude.

to top the night off, 2 old guys at the shop gave mumsy like a hundred bucks worth in yen and said give this to paul, it's his birthday. but she took it and i still haven't recieved it. i really could use that money right now, i've got like ten bucks left.

ok, i've had my whinge now. here's a picture of the view from one of my classes. if i took the pic earlier in the morning, you would be able to see mt. fuji.

101組最高！！

that's a photo of my lovely back with homeroom 101's lovely class t-shirt. it has a list of everyone's name in the class if you were wondering what the senseless scribble is. it also features a picture of our homeroom teacher that looks amazingly like him.

all this was organised by a girl in our class. she is one of those girls that is sure to become school captain or some such one day. always excruciatingly happy and sometimes overly nice. but, without her in the class i guess we would have never got this, so i should be thankful. we also recieved a blank cap which everyone signed. a great idea - but on sports day during our lunch break, the sprinklers were turned on and all of our bags, caps etc. were drenched. the names on the hats were washed off.

one of the other exchange students - a norwegian guy named nikolai - also got a class t. on his, everyone's name is printed in english letters. his name is spelt 'nikorai'. ha.　

18

i almost forgot - it's my 18th in 4 days. buy me stuff. here's my wishlist

prac

just a quick snap i took with my phone of the black team practicing their dance at school the day before sports day. click on it to see a bigger size. we did 4 different dances to 4 different songs. the dances really look amazing when everyone in the lines synchronizes their actions perfectly.

undoukai

yesterday was the big day! our month-long dance training session finally came to an end, and what a finale it was. it was the best day i've had since i arrived in japan.

an australian sports day has got nothing on a typical japanese sports day. every single person participates and really tries their hardest. i am in the blue house (as all you geniuses may have discerned from the picture), and although we didnt do the best in the track and field events, we won the dance - which is the main event of the day. and so we should have after all the practice we put in. oh, we also won the tug of war hands down.

i saw the video of the dances today. it really is amazing. i'll try to get a copy of it soon. a dance on sports day is one of those 'japan-only' things - you would be laughed out of the room if you suggested something like that in australia. and even if you did somehow manage to introduce it, maybe 6 or 7 people would actually be keen to do it.

anyway, the weather was perfect, the spectators many, and i got to spend the day with the fantastic people of aogumi (blue house). we are like a family, i have made new friends from other classes and grades that i wouldn't even know if there was no dance.

we finished the day off with a 'cola party'. i'm not sure if they have these in other countries, but usually it is done with beer. everyone is given a bottle of coke and the basic procedure is to shake said bottle for about 5 minutes, and when the word is said, raise bottle in the air and open cap. the result of this is huge streams of coke flying through the air, and sticky bodies and clothes. after all the coke is finished, there is a lot of shouting for water and then the colour house leaders throw some previously filled buckets of water over the crowd. odd, but immensely fun.

dance practice is something i'm going to miss. i was really getting into the habit of the 4 am starts and going to fujisawa with my mates every night after school. but it is true that all good things must come to an end. i only wish i was here long enough to go to next year's sports day.

stay tuned for more photos, gotta get them developed.

-_-

our colour house leaders decided that after-school practice wasn't enough, so they added early morning practice. so for the past week i've been getting up at 4am every day and getting home at 10 ! im going to bed, cant stay up to write any more

dancing king

after a month of practicing our dances almost every day, i think it's safe to say that i am incredibly skilled at them. but it's not over yet - our sports day isn't until the 19th.

this week was golden week, one of japan's many public holiday celebration thingys. it's actually 3 days holiday, not a full week. on the first day i went with my host father and another exchange student (german) to an ice skating show in shin-yokohama. was quite good. the other 2 days i spent at school practicing dance. my life really has been turned upside down - i actually look forward to going to school on a public holiday.

in golden week people usually go on day trips or tours and such to popular tourist locations. kamakura happens to be one of those locations. and the small, slow train that i catch to school just so happens to be one of the highlights of kamakura. so on wednesday morning at 10am, i am the only person on the platform, expecting a nice, easy ride to school. a few minutes later the train arrives, and i see every carriage full to the brim, and in some, faces mashed up against the glass (yes, really). i had to board, because already i was late. it was practically impossible, i got about half way in when the station master came up and pushed me, with all his might, into the oversized can of sardines.

homo

art class just isn't art class without the A6 homo drawing book.

wow, a spare moment

this is the first time i have had more than 5 minutes to spare in the last week. today (sunday) i went to school (yes, school) for 4 hours of dance prac. we then moved to the usual fujisawa concrete park for an extra 5 hours of practice. it's quite a contrast from what i was doing back in oz (pretty much nothing). i'm loving this 'busy' lifestyle - i wonder if i'll get sick of it.

the picture is some random one i took at dance practice. that place is right in front of some city hall type of building so it's quite busy. sometimes we get spectators lined up on that walkway up top. it gets a bit embarrassing sometimes (especially while doing one of our dances in particular which involves some MA rated moves). NB: uncle paul - click on the picture to see more

i have seen my parents briefly about 4 times in the last week, and yuka slightly more than that. how bizarre, i've spent more time with my friends in a few days than i have with my family in a month or so. mum is the manager of a newly opened restaurant/bar sort of place. it's strange, the food they serve there isn't what you eat as a meal, it's more like small, special snacks that you eat with your beer/sake/alco of choice. i might go on a recon mish there when i have some TIME. and i think the father works at a construction company, i'm not fully sure. in any case, they both get home really late, when i'm asleep. and leave in the morning really early, when i'm asleep.

the dog keeps urinating in my room. i think it's trying to tell me that i'm treading on its turf. or maybe it just happens to be in my room every time it needs to piss.

oh, and i got a phone - the email address for it is paulska@t.vodafone.ne.jp if you are excruciatingly bored and want to drop me a message.

tireddd

har har, i forgot to take the camera today. i'll take some pix another day.

in other news, i'm glad i got put into the first grade of high school. at first, i was a bit pissed off that i was surrounded by 15 year olds. but after just a few days i've made some really cool friends. also, because everyone was new, it wasn't hard to make friends. i've discovered that a japanese 15 year old is approximately 50,329 times more mature than an australian 15 year old. so close is my new circle of friends, that we already have a punching bag (the guy that everyone makes fun of). we call him denchi pakku (battery pack), because he keeps a small photo of his girlfriend on the cover of his mobile phone battery and won't show anyone. he really hates that nickname, which makes it approximately 10,320 times funnier.

i'm really enjoying school so far. dance is also a highlight. can't wait to do the real thing on sports day next month.

D A N C E

today i overcame the barrier of my aching body (rugby training & PE marathons) and laziness to get up at 8 and get ready to buy a phone!!1~ but alas, after 4 hours of waiting for yuka to get up, i had to leave to go to dance practice. that is, the sports day dance that the whole school participates in. i'm in the blue house, and of course our dance is the best. it's amazing - there is dance practice every day after school and every weekend, saturday and sunday. i should have taken the camera, we practice in a sort of concrete park in the middle of fujisawa, which is quite a big, bustling place. tomorrow i'll take some photos.

anyway, after 6 hours of dance practice (almost dead), i was walking back to the station to go home. i stopped at a payphone on the way, i wanted to call yuka and see if she could make it out to fujisawa. as i was standing there, about 20 screaming girls from my class come and crowd around the phone booth, waving and shouting at me. yuka didn't answer, i thought she must be watching tv or something. the girls kindly offered (forced) to escort me to the station so i wouldn't get lost. so i arrive at wadazuka station (the station closest to home) and i walk down the stairs of the platform to discover my stumbling, slightly intoxicated host father. nice timing! and we walked home together, him telling me hilarious jokes/stories in japanese which i had no clue about.

when we got home (about 7pm), the house was quiet and dark. yuka was still sleeping. a few minutes ago, the mailman came with a parcel and asked me to sign. so i had to get yuka up to sign for it. then she went back to bed! ahaha. she mustn't have slept at all last night.

tomorrow i have an action packed day of dance, phone shopping, and rugby. omg, i just remembered i have to meet with my area representative aswell. noooo. look forward to my photos~

summersonic

http://www.summersonic.com

Oasis, Nine Inch Nails, Slipknot, Weezer, Interpol and alexisonfire are among the acts confirmed for Japan's Summer Sonic festival, to be held Aug. 13-14 in Tokyo and Osaka.

i HAVE to go to this.

matsuri

today - the beginning of the kamakura cherry blossom festival. the main street of town was packed as the parade made its way to hachimangu temple at the end of the street.

o-sha-re?

my school uniform.. no - it's not velvet, and no - it's not shiny like that in real life.

croissant

team croissant is a mixed futsal team composed of 8 members - yuka, zeki, tsuna, akiyama, coochi, ayaka, anego, and miku. yesterday we won 1 game out of 4! ganbare croissant! !

!

i have arrived! ! it's so surreal.. i still can't really believe i'm actually here. the temperature was something like 6 degrees when i arrived in tokyo, it hit me like a brick in the face. my week-long orientation there was a mixed bag of goodies. we got read the rules of the program about 20 times.. however, i had an awesome time with the other exchange students. it's funny how much entertainment you can get just from comparing accents. there are about 20 other students on the same program as me from all around the world (thai, canadian, american, kiwi, i forget what else).

anyway, on saturday my host sister yuka picked me up from tokyo station. she's cool, the next day she took me to watch her futsal team play, and ended up making me play too. i think i made the team lose. i haven't seen much of the parents yet. the mother manages a restaurant and is usually not home until around 1 am, and the father also seems to be working a lot. i think he is an architect.

the trip so far has been excellent. i hope this is really just a taste of things to come. tonight yuka and her friends are taking me to yokohama for a sort of welcome party shindig thingy. should be fun. i thought i'd never say it, but as much as i despise cairns, i think i am missing it. just a tiny bit.

contact!!11!1~

hello,���琿�摯諱�令矼迴����阨�蓖齡�皷齡纈����造發Δ垢案�本に来る日がやってきますね。早く会いたいです。
私はユカです。これから、よろしくお願いします♪

received my first (short) email from the host family the other day. 1 sentence long! unfortunately the first half of it is unreadable.. something to do with the encoding of the japanese chars. anyway i think translates to - hi, i am yuka. we want to meet you asap. on the day you arrive, we are going to do somethingsomethingsomething. wish i could find out what that part is so i could reply without looking like an ass !~

not homeless

yeah, so i finally got a host family and a school. the school is HUGE, and it's right on the waterfront. there's one thing i'm especially looking forward to - it has a rugby club. my host family lives in yuigahama, kamakura.. apparently it's famous for its beach(es). the family consists of my host father kazuhide (59), host mother namiko (unknown age), and host sister yuka (20). they left me a little reminder at the bottom of their profile - "Please make sure to keep your room clean." awesome.