it’s been 2 weeks!

Well, as of today, I have been in the land of the rising sun for the whole of 2 weeks! Kieran was right – it’s without a doubt the longest fortnight of your life, your first 2 weeks here. An insane amount of happenings have happeninged!
Hmm, so let me start with the general picture. I’m loving it here LOTS! There are things I miss a little about home – mainly foods and the concept of personal space. (Having a room-mate can seem a bit obtrusive at first, but I’m getting used to it.) School is fairly easy as of yet. Actually, excuse the understatement. School is RIDICULOUSLY easy! We’re doing aaaall the basics – hiragana, katakana, ‘watashi wa arison desu’, all that stuff that I swear I’d covered by the time I was 10. Hopefully I’ll be moved into the senpai class eventually – it’s all very patronizing right now.
Life in the dorm is GREAT fun!! It’s like a really long sleepover. The girls are all wonderful and the only problem is the facilities. Mr Incompetent can’t figure out how to set up an internet connection, so we have to just grab a few minutes of internet time in the school computer lab before and after school each day. (The boys have wireless all through their dorm.) Washing is a b*tch, it’s 100Y to use the washer, and another 100Y to use the dryer (the boys dont have to pay at their dorm) and because the dryer is 100% ineffective, we have to hang our wet clothes over our beds and desks (while the boys have their own balconies.) The girl’s dorm is also a convenient 10 minute walk from the school. (Whereas the boys’ is right next door.)
Noticed my tone yet? We’re all uberly envious of the boys. But at least we get toast 3 times a week, plus proper showers… :P
Hmm. Well, me being the skanky slut I am, I’ve already bagged a boyfriend! (Those of you who know me well should be lolling right now because, the truth of the matter is, I’ve never had a proper boyfriend before!) But Simon’s awesome and I love him lots. Japan is a very romantic place, I have decided. And my first-kiss story is quite a tale to tell – 10000 miles from home under a sakura tree? Sure beats the usual sleepover tale f sloppy firsts in movie theatres or spin-the-bottle! :) (Yes, I am ridiculously innocent for a 15-year-old. Deal with it, reader dearest.)
For those of you who haven’t noticed, I’m in love with brackets. (Just f.y.i.)
So, to give you an idea of life in Japanland, I’ll write about my monday. In detail. Woo! And I shall entitle it ‘A Day In The Life Of Alison, A Daiichi Ryugakusi In Japan’ Doozo!

A Day In The Life Of Alison, A Daiichi Ryugakusi In Japan
Today, a Monday, the 20th day of the month of April, 2009, began with a resounding beep. This beeping noise happens to be eminating from my alarm clock. I knock it over and go back to sleep until 7:30, when our happy wake-up song plays over the speakers. At this point I slouch out of bed and into my EGGS uniform (our Daiichi ones still haven’t been prepared yet) and make my way with roomie Kana down the 4 flights of stairs to the dining room. There’s a selection for breakfast but depressingly, even though it’s a bread day, there’s no toast! Rather, a sweet pizza bread type thing for each of us. Pizza for breakfast is hardly unusual over here so us foreign students just eat up, grateful that it’s not beans and soup like every other day. Plus I grab a couple of cartons of sweet milk coffee and savour them, my only caffiene supply! Guhh.
We wait around at the dining tables afterwards for Tenkou – morning roll call – and eventually Beppin san comes in and ticks off all our names. Beppin is our lovely old housemistress type person who’s a head shorter than me (I didn’t even think that was possible!) and has an intruging growth on her face. Don’t get me wrong! We love bep, she’s the shizzle.
After Tenkou we clamber back up the numerous flights of stairs, knock about in front of the bathroom mirrors for a while – having decided to all do our hair in pigtails today, because all the girls at school wear their hair like that. Super cuteness.
Clicking myself out of the dorm on the electronic roster, and changing shoes at the shoe-patio, I head off for schoolness early to use the computers for a bit. As usual I get stared at like it’s nobody’s business during the 10 minute walk to school. As usual, in the computer lab before school, the japanese prodigy students and kieran are being taught Shakespeare by E.J. (Elton John, a really tall teacher with crazy dreadlocks. He’s great.) I manage to facebook a couple of people about my weekend, but then it’s time for class so I wander down the corridor to our homeroom.
Mallen comes in late and in his usual rush – he passes around some sheets of complex kanji and tells us to translate them. Then he pulls me into another class for one of his little ‘chats’ in which he goes on and on in various different tangents and then sends me back to class. We bitch about him and do our work, until he comes back, gives a garbled speech about why the girls can’t have internet in our dorm, and then we go off to our next class.
Japanese! For 2 periods. We read patronizing activities, do a hiragana test, and watch some hilariously crappy old educational videos. During the 10-15 minute breaks between each period we hang out in the corridors with the senpai and japanese kids. They find our pigtails extremely cute.
It is finally lunchtime! I walk to the lunch room with Kieran and Simon, who make fun of me for various reasons but mainly my height, or lack thereof. The lunch room is packed and we queue up for chicken rice as opposed to ramen. I sit opposite Simon and end up buying us a Calpis (with his money :P)
Some rowdy Japanese boys come up and ask for a photo and I crack up laughing but comply, feeling like something between a celebrity and a total retard.
After lunch we have our first class with Mr Rhios (I don’t know if I’m spelling it right but whatever) who tells us his life story and briefly asks us ours. He’s an awesome guy and we end up just asking him all the stuff Mallen couldn’t give us a decent answer about, such as why we’re not allowed cell phones.
Then – school is over! Yatta! So much for full days starting this week, it’s another half-day today. So we go to the computer room and email/fb for a precious hour-ish, before me and Simon decide to head out. It’s spitting, but we don’t really care, just head off in an unknown direction to see what we can find. Because we’re not allowed PDAs anywhere near the school or dorm we can only hold hands once we’re a few streets away, haha. We explore, talk & kiss, and all is good, and then we find a Mister Donut under a railway line and drop in for a pon-de-ring. We end up staying for like half an hour because it’s pissing with rain outside. When we leave we run across the road and muster up just enough change for a little umbrella from a cornerstore.
Back at the dorm, after a goodnight kiss, I hang out with the aussies in the lounge, waiting for dinner and eating our various junk foods to pass the time. Dinner turns out to be something very fishy and seaweedy, so we give it a miss and go back upstairs to chuck together our own meals. This consists of calbee chips, toast and microwaved pasta.
I then shower and muck around in my room until lights out time :)

Hope that was interesting or enlightening in some way! It took bloody ages to type out, so I’m off now. :)
Mata ne!
<3

LONG post!!

[8/4]
Dear everyone back home,
I miss you all so so so much. Fukuoka’s great and all, but it’s just not home.
Today we had an assembly and it’s nothing like the chattering laid-back arts and cultural assemblies at eggs – or even like the sports assemblies. Or powhiris. It’s like, a zillion times more formal. Everyone’s dead silent and sitting straight and when we have to stand and bow it’s all totally synchronized and silent. Also we have to do the whole assembly twice! The first time is like a rehearsal, then we have to wait for the principal. And boy does she take her time. Us ryugakusei were looking around wondering what was going on when we realised everyone had their head down. It looked like they were all praying or something, and no one was making a sound. So we politely conformed and bowed our heads and 15 minutes later the principal FINALLY comes on stage, and it turns out everyone’s looking down because it’s RUDE to watch the principal as she enters and sits down! Hen ne! (no, not as in ‘chicken’ – ‘hen’ means strange. Oh and on that trail of thought there’s like a playschool by the guest house and all the mini school buses have baby chickens painted on them! We call them ‘chickenbasu!’)
So yeah.
Mallen sensei (the teacher in charge of us overseas students) has picked me out as the ‘leader’, I guess, and it’s freaking terrible because he’s making me do all these speeches and stuff in assemblies!! Why me? Simon and Stefan OWN my nihongo skills.
We had to do a few basic Japanese tests today and I did pretty bad – 96% on hiragana / katakana, 51% on basic vocab and 49% on grammar. Gaaahh! And all the grammar boys got like perfect scores and are being put into Japanese classes ;A; So. They’re just amaaazing.

[9/4]
So continuing on from yesterday. Um, yesterday was pretty cool. First day of school, so we met all the other Ryugakusei in the morning. They’re all so nice! It’s really great.
Soon after meeting everyone we had our first assembly – as I went on about before. We all (us Ryugakusei) had to go up on stage and were introduced one by one, and I had to read out a speech in Japanese. Luckily I got lovely Nozomi to translate the kanji the night before!! The speech pretty much went along the lines of, ‘We are idiots who cannot speak any Japanese at all so please welcome us into your hearts.’ xDD
So yeah, that was boring.
Then we went back to class and while everyone was cleaning, I had to go to the hall again to rehearse for the NEXT assembly – for all the new students – in which I had to ‘represent the ryugakusei’ and promise on behalf of all of us to ‘cultivate our lives by fostering our individuality’. (It was in english, obviously!!) There was a lot of fluff about where to clip the mike, when to turn them on & off, and sooo much stuff about how to walk to the stage, how to turn, what degree to turn, who to face 1 by 1, what angles to bow to different people, how to hold your hands when bowing & not bowing, how to act when handing our envelopes to the vice principal… gaaaah! It was uber complicated!
So after this tedious rehearsal I go back to class and there’s a lot more fluff, textbooks and interviews and being measured for our uniforms – I’m a size M. :(
After an excruciatingly long school day we went back to the dorm before us white chicks (me and the three aussie girls in the dorm) went out with Kieran who showed us around – the local McDonalds, 100Y shop, Lawsons and train station. We bought some drinks and snacks from Lawsons to keep in the lounge.)
Arriving back at the dorm we all met our new roommates, and soon afterwars went to Joyful, a western-style restaurant just around the block from the dorm. Having already had dinner, me and Noz just had enormous delicious ice cream sundaes while everyone else ordered bizarre takes on western food and drank bright green drinks that look like washing detergent.
Today, Thursday, we had the official welcome ceremony for all the new kids. I had to borrow a Daiichi uniform for my bit, as we don’t get our uniforms until the end of the month. Class was boooring, and then we were measured for shoes in the carpark. Then in the afternoon, Mallen took us all out to get ‘registered’ which took like a zillion hours even though half of us didn’t even need to.
We were supposed to go out with the boys tonight but our curfew was really early, so we stayed in the dorm and had karaage for dinner. After curfew, we had ‘orientation’ until late, with grumpy-miss-whatsherface telling us all the rules again and again and making poor Nozi translate even though sha actually speaks perfecy english.
That was yesterday. Now, today. Friday. Eventfulness yay!
This morning we had toast. Yaaay! Toast! We get it 3 times a week – unlike the boys, who only get it on mondays – and it’s literally as thick as like 3 pieces of kiwi bread!! And we get butter and jam in little plastic squeezy packets. Yay.
The aussies borrowed my laptop adaptor so they could plug their laptops into the school connections, so we got to school quite early and internetted for a while. For most of the morning Mallen made us translate an article about the Japanese economy that was like 90% ridiculously complex kanji and none of us took any of it in. After a break – in which we tried grape jelly juice (it’s jelly, but it’s juice!!) and discussed the shortness of japanese skirts – we got our three pairs of new uniform school shoes delivered and tried them all on. Then we had our welcome party!
We hung out and ate seaweed pizza and karaage and kit kats and calpis, then played intense games of fruits basket and musical chairs, plus lots of self-introductions. This all went on from 12 till 4. :S
Afterwards, us girls made the most of the internet for a while before going home (carrying all the new shoes, plus some bags of rubbish that Mallen dumped on us.)
At 7ish (after having fun with make up :D) we set off and met up with the boys and Keiko in the park and went to a restaurant by the school and directly under the train line called Bikuri. Twas good! The tables were low and on a raised tatami floor and the boys were amazed at how long I could sit Japanese-style for – lol! Problem was that we only had enough seats for half of us – SO many people came – and most of them were waiting outside fuming through the windows at us as we were eating! The food was good. Like a stir fry of cabbage and meat (I think it was pork?) in this really good sauce, and it came sizzling on the platter. I don’t know what it was called though. Oh! Plus rice, obviously, with some yellow… stuff. Oishikatta! (It was yum!)
Then all of us who had finished made way for the others and headed back to the park. Unfortunately for papageorge, we HAD paid – he ran from the restaurant and arrived, panting, to ask why we hand’t paid and we were all like ‘Uhh… we HAVE paid’ and he was like >.<; *pant pant*
So then back at the park in the dark (Ooh! Rhyme!) we were being TOTALLY mature and playing on the swings and slides and stuff. And when everyone else got back we played soccer until curfew.
Conflict!!
This Japanese kid asked me out. But I like someone else! (3rd day! Wow aren’t I snappy?) So what I’m asking is – how do you ever turn someone down?? I’m not good in that department! This kid’s really ‘cute’ – as in he’s actually younger than me, for starters. So it’s sort of not going to happen but because he’s so CUTE I don’t want to hurt his feelings! :(
Ehh. That’s it for now but I’ll keep updating! This trip blog stuff is fun :) Love you!

yay!

from 07/04/09
I’m writing this from my dingy little room in the guest house! Yes, I’m here and I’m alive, and it’s all very interesting and wow. I’m missing home loads already – that can’t be good! I seriously didn’t think I’d get homesick but I miss my friends soooo much. (Love you guys! Hope you found my blog ok :D)
Today I arrived in Fukuoka and the teacher dude took me to the hostel by taxi. (And grumbled a lot about how incompetent the driver was…) I settled down, cleaned out my room a little bit (by a little bit I mean a LOT. It was kind of gross.) and fell asleep. I was sooo tired! I swear I’d only had 5 hours sleep in the space of like 40 hours. So I was totally knocked out until the afternoon when I heard the Aussie girls arriving. We went out and explored, did purikura (you know those japanese photobooth things?) and browsed through a small shopping centre, and it was fun, and I’m totally shattered as I write this.
Ciao! I gotta go to rolecall and then I’m going to sleeeeeep. I’ll write a more descriptive thingy when my brain is functioning properly.
<3