Thursday, October 27, 2005

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

7 Comments:

Blogger MB said...

At long last a post! Well done...

6:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Paul is funnay. Holla, Polo.

9:03 PM  
Blogger Paul said...

I think more shots of punks and guys in boxers will add that certain "edge" your blog needs. Keep up the good work

12:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You said "never, NEVER do an exchange to japan with AFS." Anyreason why? I was planning to go with them =(

4:08 PM  
Blogger pauly said...

because AFS fucks you around with a whole lot of bureaucracy and weird rules. my friend almost got sent home because he didn't like his host family (who just so happened to be huge contributors to AFS). there were tons of other complications, too. he only managed to stay in japan through his sheer willpower - he went and found a high school in tokyo who would accept him.

i don't know - you might have a great experience with AFS, but personally, i would never choose them.

4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whoa, You replied so fast. Thank you so much for the information! Which program did you go with?

7:51 AM  
Blogger pauly said...

I went with an Australian exchange company called Student Exchange Australia, but their partner in Japan was PIEE and that's who I made all contact with. They are a pretty good bunch I guess, had a few problems, but I think everyone does.

4:57 PM  

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