I can’t stand my 90′s Japanese phone anymore so I’ve ordered an iPhone. Also, we went to Yokohama last week so there’s some video from there as well as a bunch of new pictures on flickr.
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On my previous two trips to Japan I have always found something to be amazed and surprised by, but until last weekend I hadn’t found anything new to be amazed and surprised by yet. However, Asakusa Hanabi (fireworks festival) was truly surprising and amazing. I have never, ever seen so many people gather for this kind of festival. I’m pretty sure there were literally millions of people on the streets, everywhere, watching this thing. The fireworks went on for one and a half hours non-stop.
The fireworks were spectacular, but what really amazed and surprised me was the amount of people that had spent the whole day sitting on a tarp, eating grilled food and drinking beer, just having an awesome time waiting for the fireworks. I give you a video of said fireworks, but it cannot begin to capture the spirit of the festival and what it felt to be among those (at least) hundreds of thousands of people celebrating on the streets. I don’t know if they were celebrating anything in particular, I don’t think so. I just think Hanabi festivals exist because they are fun.
Sorry about the in focus/out of focus problem. My camera and I don’t really agree on where to focus.
Anyhow, this video is basically just for myself. I want to look back at this 11 months from now and see how much better I’ve gotten.
I also went to Hanabi today. I will show you what is in the next post, maybe tomorrow. I have some video too! Here is a preview:
I have now been here one month! And yesterday was the first day of our two and a half week long summer holiday! The school “planned” a trip to Disneyland for the first day of the holiday. Or in other words, they gave us a student discount. Of course we had to go along to celebrate the holiday and the fact that we’ve been here a month. The time has gone really, really fast! There are more pictures from Disneyland on my flickr, for some reason there aren’t a lot of pictures though, I really don’t know why.
On our way into "It's a tiny world"
The rain made it colder which was nice!
But the summer holiday isn’t all about fun and games (although there will be games)! I have a couple of goals that I have set for myself during the holiday.
- Know lesson 1-9 from the coursebook flawlessly
- Read though all the material on textfugu.com, an online Japanese “coursebook”.
- Learn the 50 first kanji from the material we got from school.
On the topic of games I have started playing Starcraft 2 a little bit. It’s actually very fun and I had a long discussion with myself wether or not it was morally justifiable to play games when I should be studying Japanese, but I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t always be studying Japanese so to sort of just live a normal life and feel that I am just like anyone else here I bought the game!
It’s a pretty cool real-time strategy game, and when I get a little better I’m going to start to play multiplayer online, which is what is fun about it, playing against other real humans.
Starcraft 2
That’s the short update. I’m living life, everything is going good. I’m having fun and I’m learning lots. If you have any suggestions for what to do during summer vacation I’m very open for them!
I’m planning on making a video soon with me speaking Japanese, mostly just to be able to look back at where I was now when I’m going home in 11 months. Keep an eye out for that. Until then; またね。
Yesterday Marcus, a classmate, hade made some onigiris (rice-balls with stuff in it) at home and it looked pretty good so I tried to make some myself!
I fried up some chicken with some pepper and some extra salt to counter the rice (according to Marcus instructions), then I put some cellophane wrap in a cup and put the rice in there, made a sort of cup out of the rice and then put the chicken in the middle.
I pulled up the plastic wrap and pressed everything into a ball and then put it in the fridge.
Today during one of the breaks in school I ate it, and it tasted really good, so I’m going to make more! After about 3 hours in school I usually get really hungry so this is a really cheap way (it cost maybe like 30 yen to make one of these balls and you actually get pretty full from one or two) to not be hungry for the last lesson!
