11th post: Culture shock SHOCK!

I've left it a while to post because I've been feeling sick and sad and grumpy and it's no fun to read people whinging on the internet.  We actually had to do this seminar on culture shock before we left and I was all like "culture shock... ptt!  I've been to Japan tonnes of times and it's way better than here!", but I now know that holidaying somewhere is way different to trying to live somewhere and having to do stuff every day.

Classes have been hard.  Thursday morning was Japanese reading class, I did okay in my vocab quiz (not good but okay) but apparently there was this homework sheet we were supposed to hand in that I didn't know about.  My teacher was sweet though, she taught Applied Linguistics at Monash for a bit and knows Elise-sensei!  Small world!  I felt stupid though because there was heaps of stuff I couldn't understand and the other two guys in my class seemed to have no trouble and they just kind of talked to each other and ignored me.  I met up with Liam and we went to karaoke though and that cheered me up!  A bunch of us had to go and meet our academic advisor who is this hilarious guy who looks like George Clooney.  Is is going to arrange for us to have tutors from one of his classes - we have to go to his lecture tomorrow and he'll get his students to introduce themselves and then we have to pick which one we want, lol.  Then we had haiku class, which was awesome!  Our haiku teacher is SO ADORABLE, she grew up in this town where "haiku is the same as breathing" so in a fit of teenage rebellion she decided to never write a haiku until she was 60 and she studied Shakespeare instead.  Now she is 60 so she can take the haiku class.  I love her.

After school Kathryn and I went to our local supermarket to get groceries - omg mirin is so cheap here!  And curry!  Cup noodles are about the same though.  Then we went to this ramen place for dinner where the old guy was so shocked that foreigners came in that he didn't make it all the way through his irasshaimase.  The ramen was cheap and not bad, and we watched the weather report with him on the tv behind the counter, then came home to watch our Arashi shows.

I thought I was all prepared for my Friday class, but I woke up and it was 8.30!  I had to be at school at 9!  If you're later than half an hour it counts as an absence.  I was there at 9.30 on the dot and the teacher said it was "daijoubu" but I don't know if she marked me absent or not.  She was a very pretty and nice sensei but she talked really fast and kept making me read stuff aloud because I was late.  She went through all the rules of essay writing and then gave us graphs about how people don't marry until they're older these days and said we had to write essays about it.  We have a different essay topic every week and we have to finish the essays for homework.  The other two guys completely ignored me so I was feeling very sad and thinking about how awesome my Japanese class in Melbourne is and I missed my dog and I had a very bad headache.  I had to hang around til 12 to pick up my student ID and stuff, so I went to karaoke by myself and that cheered me up a bit.  I met up with Liam outside the student office and we signed up for this free lunch thing on Thursday, then I came home.  Kathryn was feeling really sick too, and I suspect that the old man the night before had poisoned our ramen because he hates foreigners.  Friday night, I don't really remember but I think we went to Gutso.  Oh yeah, I had the chocolate pudding parfait, it was pretty awesome.

Saturday I organised my study stuff and knuckled down to study.  We had to go to the 7-11 to get study snacks though, so we stopped off at the karaoke near the station for a bit.  It is my favourite karaoke, though poorly ventilated.  Then I came home and studied.  I had to log in to this stupid online thing to do online quizzes for Japanese, which were due today, but I couldn't get it to work.  It's this java thing and you have to type the answers into these answer boxes but you can't click or tab to the next box.  I tried Kathryn's laptop instead and then I tried every internet browser ever invented.  I typed out this massive email to my teacher in Japanese about it and then our internet dropped out and I lost the whole email.  This resulted in a massive mental breakdown from me, but my sister and Aiba Masaki cheered me up and things have been mostly okay since. I decided not to worry about the stupid quizzes and studied vocab for the rest of the day and watched TV because it was Aiba Masaki Saturday and Arashi were on TV for the entire day.  With our HD telly, you can really notice how bad their skin is.  Well, except Nino but that's probs because he never leaves the house.  Anyway, it's good that they're flawed.

Yesterday we went to Kichijouji, which was super pretty.  There's this big park by a lake and all people selling their arts and crafts.  Lots of people were looking at cherry blossoms and walking their dogs.  It was nice.  I was supposed to be home before dark because my futon was outside on the balcony to air, and if you don't get it in before dark then YOU DIE!  But we had to stop for karaoke so I didn't make it in time.  My futon seems okay though and I'm not dead.  I made a study schedule, which leaves very little time for faffing off, so there will be no karaoke for me for a while!  I'm actually writing this in time which is not authorised for blogging!

Anyway, today was a lot better.  I got up early and had time to have a coffee and stuff before class.  The other guys were much nicer today and I got most of the questions right, so it wasn't nearly as sad or stressful.  We were practicing ようと思う form in our revision (as we'd all totes forgotten it existed), and my teacher was asking me what I wanted to do while I was here.  I said I wanted to go to Kochi because I love Sakamoto Ryoma.  She loves him too!  So we talked a bit about Ryomaden and Jin... I didn't actually practice grammar much though.  In my break I went and got my student commuter pass - I'd actually gone to get it Friday but I thought it was just like at home, where they apply the concession to your suica and you get charged less, so I hadn't taken any money with me.  But you have to actually buy the pass to go from home to uni and they apply that to your card, so any travel between those stations is free.  It was about $200 but I won't have to pay to go to uni anymore (and if I'm going elsewhere I can just stop at that station so they THINK I'm going to uni mwahahahahaha!), which will save me a fortune - I've been through like 7000 yen at least on my suica already.  Then I went for a coffee and met up with Liam.  He went to Kamakura yesterday and bought me a Sakamoto Ryoma t-shirt as a souvenier!  Awesome!!!  We need to get our form for our free money from La Trobe signed and faxed off, so we took it to the international office who told us we need to get George Clooney guy to sign it, which we can hopefully tomorrow when we go to pick our tutors.  Then I had history (the walking tour subject), which seems like it will be fun.  It is a massive class though, which will be so awkward when we're actually walking around together.

Anyway, things seem to be picking up.  I still miss my dog and my friends and stuff but at least now everything doesn't seem as impossible as it did a few days ago.