Graduation

Today we had our final test, which was just a gauge of how far we have come - it doesn't affect our grade.

I don't know how well I did on that, but I got an 87/100 on the Kanji final and an 87/100 on the grammar final. I think our professor told us that we needed an 85% on the tests to score an A, assuming that we turned in all the homework and had good attendance, etc... so I will probably get an A for Japanese 2010 and Japanese 2020 at the U of U.

The highest test score was a 94/100 on both tests, but I don't think this is going to be curved at all... I think I got the 2nd highest score though. ;)

The test we took today was a past-year JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). It's an official government sponsored langugage certification test that is administered once a year every December.

The version of the test we took doesn't actually officially count, so if we pass the test it doesn't really buy us anything.

The tests are ranked from 1 to 4 with 1 being the most difficult and 4 being the easiest. When we first came they gave everybody the JLPT 3 to see where we were in our studies, but that particular test is a little bit too advanced so everybody pretty much bombed it.

This time around they gave most people the JLPT 4 instead, since it will give a much better representation of people's understanding. I retook the 3 again, since I plan on taking it in December. I wanted to get an idea of how I have improved (if at all) so I can gauge how much to study before December.

One of the students took the JLPT 2. He's a half Japanese half American who speaks Japanese very well, but has some deficiencies in Kanji reading/writing. He actually passed the JLPT 3 last time, so he took the JLPT 2 to get a better idea of his comprehension.

We had our farewell party and graduation today as well. The graduation ceremony. It was a bit of a stressful situation. They made us get up in front of everyone and say something in Japanese, so I said... nihon no toki wa tanoshkatta desu (my time in Japan was interesting) watashi no atama ga ippai desu (My head is full.) and watashi wa nihongo o benkyo shisugita. (I studied Japanese to the point that it was a bad thing.)

People laughed. ;)

The graduation ceremony was extremely swanky. They took us into this crazy conference room with red velvet chairs that were bolted into the floor but slide back and forth. The room was arranged in a circle with long desks and microphones. We were presented with a certification stating that we completed the intensive language course at Shitennoji University. The certificate is completely in Japanese.

I presented the two photographs that I got from Dave (a coworker at Cymphonix). It was a bit of an ordeal this week because I had to go find a place to get frames from, but the photograph frames here are all in metric (of course) and they're all crazy sizes (seriously, who needs a frame that is 302x477mm?) I had to special order one of the frames, but the other one we were able to do by putting a small border around the picture.

I presented one of the photos to Shitennoji University, and one to the YMCA which is where our teacher's actually came from. Both the YMCA and Shitennoji University were extremely accomodating, and I'm very glad that I had two photographs (Thanks Dave!)

I presented the photos on behalf of all of the students at the Unviersity of Utah. I neglected to bring my camera, but they had someone from the University taking pictures, so I will ask to get copies of those.

It's been a lot of fun, but I am definitely ready to come home.

I did Karaoke last night. It was a lot of fun. Japanese Karaoke is way better than in America because they have dedicated Karaoke places that rent out rooms to you, so you can go with a bunch of friends or whatever and not have to feel weird because there are strangers. I sang Rock Lobster, Hey Jude, Basket Case (By Greenday), and Eat It (By Weird Al).

I have a lot of packing and cleaning to do. See you all when I get home.

- Terry

Final

We had our final today.

I think I aced it, but I'll find out tomorrow.

I still have to write a 5-7 page paper on my experience in Japan, but we're done otherwise.

I meant to blog about Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara while I was here, but I just didn't have time so I'll post pictures and make some more blog entries when I get home.

Tonight I'm going to Karaoke. ;)

Quick update.

Sorry I haven't posted for a while… I've been really sick for the past week and a half or so and have been dealing with some other issues as well. I caught a cold from one of the other program participants and my symptoms have been mutating. If I don't get better by tomorrow I will probably hit the school clinic and see if they can prescribe some non-life threatening antibiotics.

The stuff I got from the U of U travel clinic is a little scary… Go look it up on wikipedia. It's called Ciprofloxacin. Yikes. Sneak Preview: They give it to anthrax inhalation victims, and it doesn't work on upper respiratory infections. Whoops.

My particular "rare" symptom was bleeding profusely from my gums after brushing my teeth. Yay.

I'll post a blog about Kyoto (it was cool) and Den Den town later. I come home in about a week. It's been a really good trip. My Japanese is *much* improved. I've lost some weight here, but I don't know exactly how much.

Since I've been sick, some of the Japanese students brought me some sort of energy drink and some medication (yay!). We'll find out if it works.

Tokyo

I still haven't had time to get my pictures ready to upload because I have been spending a lot of time in the afternoons working on my homework and I tend to go to bed at 9PM so I can wake up at 6AM (That is, I go to bed at 6AM Utah time so I can wake up at 3PM Utah time... not really that different than my normal sleeping schedule. ;)

So last weekend in Tokyo we went to the Square Enix store... it was a lot smaller than I expected, but they did have a lot of merch. They have a gigantic Sephiroth in the floor which is pretty sweet. I got pictures and video.

We also went to Akihabara, which would have been much better if my brain hadn't been fried from the train trips up there. Many of the shops were already closed when we got there, but it was pretty freakin' cool. We went to Super Potato which is this gigantic retro game store and we walked around a bit.

After that we hung out with my friend from junior high named Bryce. He has oddly been in Japan for a while... we haven't seen each other since I lived in the dorms at the U. His girlfriend Akiko is really cool... they're awesome together. I told Bryce they should make some babies.

We had dinner together at some place called Sazeria or some such... it was an Italian/Japanese restaurant. They had good food, free refills (apparently not common in Japan) and melon flavored soda. After that we got ice cream at a conbini (Convenience Store) and I bought a calling card and left Julie a voicemail. Then we sat in the park chilling for a little while and talking.

After that we went back to the Hilton. At one point I had thought I lost my camera because my backpack had been open but nobody told me and I couldn't find it, but then I finally found it.

On Sunday we went to Harijuku and saw all of the oddly dressed people, and then saw a shrine whose name I cannot remember, walked through a flea market, and then went to the Meiji shrine. The Meiji shrine was cool. There were a ton more of the Harijuku-jin over on the Meiji bridge.

We got maybe a quarter of the way in or less before a big group of Japanese students came up to us and said they wanted to speak English with us for a school project. It was fun. We talked all the way through the shrine and they showed us how to purify ourselves and explained all of the lore surrounding the shrine. We got to see a couple of wedding processions.

On the shinkansen ride back from Tokyo we ran into a couple of other people from the program and we all went back to Habikino together from Shin-Osaka station. The busses weren't running anymore, so we had to walk to the dorms and it was late and we were all tired. We got in at about 12AM.

The next morning I realized that I had slightly injured my right foot. It's possibly slightly sprained, but it is ok. I just need to take it easy for a few days and I am wearing my boots to give my ankle support.

That's it for now.

They gave us a welcoming party today and it was pretty cool, but short. Tomorrow there is an excursion to Shitennoji Temple which should be fun. There will be tea drinking and Japanese sweet eating.

At some point I will hook up with my friend John who lives near Kyoto.

More later.

- Terry

First Day On Campus

Today was our first day on campus. They finally decided that we didn't have swine flu. We won't tell them that I had a sore throat the first 3 days I was here... hehehe

Today we finally got access to computers. The rest our stay will be conducted on campus, thank god.

There is an AM PM conbini (convenience store) built into the building our classes are held in. Odd.

Oh, I dropped down to level 2 because 3 was way too hard. 8 hours of homework plus 16 kanji per day? No thanks.

The 2nd level class is too easy, for sure, but it is going way fast so it is probably paced right for my learning ability. I think that I will focus on JLPT 3 stuff since they will be giving us the same test at the end, so that will give me a pretty good marker for what I need to learn by December.

So this past weekend we went to Tokyo. Chris and Kim and Debbie are here.

Me and Jack Daniels (Josh) and Jose Cuervo (Christian) left the dorms at about 6:40AM on Saturday morning. We had to get over to Osaka station and walk to Chris' hotel (Osaka Hilton).

First we had to get to Fujidera station, so we hopped a bus over... we have been doing that all week so that wasn't an issue. Next, we had to go from Fujidera to Tennoji station. Keep in mind that none of us had ever been farther than Tennoji station on our own.

I had already asked someone if the Kansai bus passes would work on the train, and we were told they would, so I showed Jack and Jose how to get a Kansai pass. Then we proceeded to attempt to figure out which train to get on. I spoke some Nihonglish (Or Janglish, if you prefer) to the gate guard and he told us which platform to wait on, but we missed the train, so I had to ask someone on the platform (in Japanese) if we could catch the next train to Tennoji. They said we could (I think).

So we got on the train, and made it to Tennoji. Next we had to make it to Osaka. The Osaka JR loop goes to Osaka, but I didn't know anything about it before we got there, so I went to the JR ticket office to ask them how to get there. Fortunately the guy spoke some english. Jack and Jose sat outside waiting for me. I was able to buy 3 1-way tickets to Osaka station.

We wandered around the station looking four our platform, and found it. 8 or so stops later and we were at Osaka. I had already told Chris we were going to be running a little late (We had wanted to meet up at about 8:15). We got to Osaka station at about 8:15, but we had to get to the Osaka Hilton, which according to Google Maps was a few blocks away so we wandered down the street and got ourselves lost looking for it.

It turns out that the Osaka Hilton is literally across the street from Osaka station. We had to get a crudely drawn map from a construction worker that didn't speak any English to realize that it was back the way we came.

So we finally met up with Chris, Debbie, and Kim. The lot of us got our JR passes and reserved seats on the train to Tokyo. About 20 minutes before we were supposed to leave, we decided to go find our gate, only to discover in our horror that we actually had to transfer to Shin-Osaka (New Osaka) station to catch the train. I asked the way to Shin Osaka in frantic Japanese and one of the train ushers showed us the way. Once we got to the platform it was totally not apparent which train to take, so I talked to an old man in Japanese trying to ask him which train to take.

The problem with the Japanese train system is that the stops listed on the train are generally the last stop on the line, and if you aren't familiar with the line it is hard to tell which direction you need to go. Since we were in such a hurry I was frantically trying to sort it all out but my Japanese understanding is really limited even though I can form somewhat coherent questions.

We jumped on a train and I was watching the old man for any hint that we had made a mistake, but he didn't show any signs, so we shrugged and rode the train hoping that Shin-Osaka wasn't far.

We got lucky. The next stop or two (I wasn't paying enough attention) was our stop and the Shinkansen was already there. We managed to board right before it left.

It was a crazy trip to Tokyo and my brain shut down on me that night. I seriously could not think straight. Too much Japanese.

I'll write more about the Tokyo trip and post pictures later. Updates should be more frequent now that I have Internet access.

Peace!

First Day of Class

We had our first day of class.

I got put in the 3rd year group... WTF?

I am honestly not sure how that happened... hehe

It seems too hard, but I will give it one more day and see if I might be able to make it work...

We have several different teachers this week... I believe they were provided by the YMCA or something like that (WTF?) because of the off-site H1N1 arrangement.

So they split us up into groups today and I got stuck in the hard one with 3 other people. The student to teacher ratio is awesome, but we will see if I can keep it up.

My teacher was sick (how stupid is that? let's infect the gaijin so we can have a freak out fest once somebody in our group starts showing symptoms of being sick).

Yesterday we said hi to this old man and he ran across the road and asked us where we were from. We told him Utah and he asked if we were from Salt Lake City excitedly. When we said yes he pulled out a picture in an abnormally fast fashion that was already to be shown in a plastic lanyard of some random Americans and said 'That is my garden!' haha.

A lady had her kids tell me Konnichi wa yesterday. It was cute.

Today some little kids said 'konnichi wa' and 'nice to meet you' and 'goodbye'.

So far so good... let's hope it keeps up.

- Terry

Proficiency Test = Epic Fail

So the proficiency test was an epic failure. It was actually the JLPT 3 from 2003... O.o

The problem was that there was a LOT of stuff on there that we had not learned yet, so it was basically not possible to do well. The final section was much better, since it was mostly easy vocabulary with grammar points and I felt like I managed that one at my level but the others were total busts.

We also had a verbal interview with a teacher to get a feel for where we are at. It was short and seemed ok.

I am near Fujidera station right now at an internet cafe. It is about $4.00 for the first hour and $0.60 every additional 10 minutes so I am trying to make this fast. In case you cannot tell, I have no idea where the apostrophe key is on these keyboards so I am not using contractions... it feels funny. (That is what she said... haha) ;)

They provide unlimited drinks here at the internet cafe (Coffee, coke, etc...) I want Ryan to know that I am drinking Calpis right now and I also had Pocari Sweat at the airport. ;)

So far I have eaten Okonomiyaki (A kind of Japanese omelet, pretty good) and Takoyaki which I was not extremely fond of because it tasted really fishy. I saw a Baskin Robbins and it made me think of Julie. I got a picture of it on my iPhone.

I had some grape sherbet, but it was from a different ice cream vendor since foreign chains like Baskin Robbins are expensive. :)

They literally have us wearing facemasks around the city and have asked us not to go on campus until after Sunday when they can make sure we are not carrying H1N1.

Our dorm rooms are interesting... they screwed up on our placement... it was supposed to be Japanese style bedding (real futons) but they made a mistake when we originally signed up and said room 102 was the futon room when 101 was actually the futon room, so we ended up getting the room with the beds.

It is alright, though. We have a funky Japanese shower and toilet. The shower is separate from the bath, and it feels like you are taking a shower on the floor of your bathroom. The toilet has a heater, butt squirter and drier, and when you flush it you can flush big or small... and water comes out the top so you can wash your hands and that water goes back into the tank to fill it up. Kinda strange.

We also ended up with a crazy cellar like area where we could hide bodies if we wanted and there is a trap door underneath the kitchen table that is hiding a sort of cooler.

They took us shopping at a Japanese grocery store last night to get food for a few days. We had yakisoba for breakfast since it is the only thing I can cook that is remotely Japanese and it is one of the only things I can actually recognize in the store. The fruits are really freaking expensive but the vegetables are pretty cheap. Lots of stuff is reasonably priced here as long as you pay attention to what is happening. I am definitely going to lose weight here... no doubt about it. There is too much walking and not enough fat in the food. ;)

It has definitely been a challenge communicating, but it is fun too.

The buses here have change dispensers which I think is pretty cool. I saw a squatter toilet and it scared me. I hope I never have to use one.

I had some serious homesickness last night after we got our stuff unpacked in the dorms, but I am stuck here for 5 weeks, so I will make the best of it. ;)

Thanks for all the comments and support. I hope you are all doing well!

Tomorrow we get our grade placement and start classes.

Finally in Japan

We landed in Korea at about 5:20AM and spent 5 hours toodling around.

I spent my time wandering around and fixing my laptop which blew up on
me randomly before leaving Salt Lake. I also called Julie a few times
on Skype. Incheon had free wifi which is always nice.

And now we are in Osaka waiting in the international lobby for
everyone else to arrive. I'm pretty tired but I need to stay up until
about 9PM so I can adjust my body to Japan's time zone.

On the flight from LAX to Korea they fed us steak for dinner and an
omelet for breakfast. The steak was awesome. In fact the food was
really good all around.

From Korea to Japan we got a scary looking bento box that was
actually quite good. The only thing I didn't eat was the sauce in the
fish-shaped tube and the tofu.

It's 12:30 right now and the rest if the gang should be here sometime
between now and 4:30. So far about half of the students have arrived.

Here are a few pictures. Enjoy.

Preboarding

I'm at the airport now. Julie and I spent time together outside
security waiting for Carry to show up.

The United Airlines lady said I better make up for it big time for
saying Julie was "Just helping me with my luggage.". ;).

Oddly, Christian was going through security at the same time as us.
We all got patted down by the same TSA agent. W00t.

Ok we have another 50 minutes to boarding. I'm feeling a little under
the weather. Let's hope it doesn't manifest into anything remotely
resembling a cold.

Next stop: L.A.

11th Hour

Ok so I'm pretty much packed... I have a few errands to run tomorrow and then it's off to the airport.

Tonight the power went out in my apartment. Just my apartment and the two apartments above me. It's not like I had laundry or anything else important to do with electricity tonight... *sigh*.

Julie and I had been at the store getting some tape so I could secure a gift for my nihon no sensei. We were gone less than 20 minutes only to come home to a powerless apartment. WTF? My neighbors still had power, and it wasn't my breaker.

So I called the maintenance guy and he said he'd come check out the outside breaker.

While Julie and I waited for him to arrive we ate Baskin Robbin's with my car's hatchback up. :) It was good times.

It turns out that the outside breaker for half of the building popped... twice actually. Once after the maintenance guy left, but luckily (or maybe not so luckily?) the breakers are all exposed and don't require any sort of super powers to flip, so I just did it myself the second time.

We finally got some laundry done and I have my suitcase and 3/4 of my backpack ready to go. :)

More from Japan if my luck holds out.

- Terry

48 Hour Update

48 hours to go and I still have way too much stuff to accomplish before my trip.

I spent a good 40 minutes on the phone with Delta. My leg from L.A. to Salt Lake on July 4th was cancelled and there weren't any other flights on any other airlines that could get me home, so I have to spend the night in L.A. Hopefully I can readjust my sleep schedule and manage to catch my flight home on the 5th.

Also, Let's hope that North Korea doesn't decide to blow me up while I'm on my layover in Seoul this weekend: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/28/north.korea.alert/index.html

Hopefully things get smoother from here on out. :)

Trip Peparation

In 4 days I leave for my first international trip (because we don't count Canada aka Northern Montana). I'm heading to Japan where I'll be immersed in an intensive language course at Shitennoji University in Osaka.

We were notified today that we can expect "up to two hours or more while deplaning due to an onboard health screening" for H1N1 (Swine Flu). Ugh... And as if that wasn't enough, we're being "quarantined" (for lack of a better term) away from the school campus for the first week where we'll be taught in some off-campus building, although we'll still be living in the dorms. They say it's "for your protection". Right. The professor in charge says "After the first week I suppose we'll move to the main campus for instruction." and I sincerely hope that he's just being Japanese (they like to be vague) and that he's not really insinuating that we'll actually be off-campus the entire trip.

It's bad enough that they waited until now to tell us, but they've been extremely disorganized from day 1. I'm not impressed. ;)

At any rate, for those that care about the trip specifics:

I'll be leaving the U.S. on May 30th (Arriving in Japan on June 1st). The instruction is 5 weeks long, and will provide me with the next 2 classes (2nd year) of Japanese credit at the University of Utah (Japanese 2010/2020).

We'll be in class from 9:00AM to 12:30PM Monday through Friday. The rest of our time is "our own", but I have a feeling that I'll be studying a *lot* more than I do in the states.

To say that I'll be drinking from a firehose is an understatement. In Japanese 1010/1020 for Fall/Spring semesters I spent about 45 hours per semester in Japanese class. That's 90 hours total across 28 weeks. In Japan I'll do about 87.5 hours in 5 weeks. Yikes... and in case you hadn't heard, the Japanese tend to be a lot more serious about their studies. *gulp*

Wish me luck.