.:Kat's Thoughts and Ramblings:.

hellow.

Ok recent happenings in short:

Monday 5th:

Tom Tatsu Ruben and I went shopping for more essentials, and as usual ended up in an Izakaya at the end of our trip. An Izakaya (居酒屋）is like japans version of a pub…but its nothing like a pub. Its much better. You get drinks brought to your table/ booth, really nice food, and a great atmosphere. This particular one we went to was all food for 270円…which is 2 pounds. Now, I know for a fact, if there was a place advertising that in England I wouldn’t dare go in and eat because I would probably die if i ate the stuff that is not even food. For two pounds, the food cant be any good, right?
WRONG.
In Japan you can get amazing food for 2 pounds!  like this..

and so many more dishes like it! I was loving it. It turned out aswell, that Tatsu’s Mum’s friend was there in a separate booth with all her friends drinking and eating. So tatsu dragged us all in to meet them. I was so suprised, as there were about 7 women in their 50s ABSOLUTEY WASTED. I’m not even joking. It was hilarious. So we were chatting to them all, and they bought us beer which was lovely of them (although I do wonder if they’d have done it if they weren’t horrendously plastered..) but it was a really good night even if one of the ladies was playing footsie with tom under the table :S..

Here are the ladies

Tuesday 6th:

We went to buy electrical appliances from a massive electrics store (like currys or comet lol). I had been in dire need of a hairdryer since I’d arrived since I couldn’t use mine from england because of the voltage difference here (yes, even with an adapter!) so i got one of those bad boys, and Tom, Ruben and I clubbed together to get a rice cooker so we could start making meals on the cheap! We then went to a big supermarket and bought things to cook with that evening to try out the rice cooker and Tom’s new cooking pot…
BUT. When we got home, we realised that we couldn’t read the instructions for the rice cooker at all. It was all in full-on Japanese (way above our level!) and the buttons were all japanese on the rice cooker too! Bugger! So we were attempting to wing it but getting nowhere and lost it with the bloody thing- resulting in us calling Tom’s girlfriend over Skype. She helped us and then after that we could actually make a really nice meal (which we ate off a table that we stole from downstairs)We had miso soup, gyoza (pork and ginger dumplings), and fried beef. lovely.

Wednesday 7th:

We had our placement test that sorts us into classes according to our Japanese ability of Wednesday. When walking to the conbini the night before, we thought ‘god, its well quiet round here tonight?’.
Yep! Its because everyone was studying for the next days placement test! We didn’t study at all, but actually it was fine. It was multiple choice, and basically it started off easy and got harder and harder as it went along. I have ended up in Intermediate Japanese which I am pretty pleased about! Its about where I should be so…yeh!

IN OTHER NEWS:

Tom bought a plant, and it died after 2 days. He was devastated, and heres the moment he found out:

Also there was a massive typhoon last night which resulted loads of peoples classes being cancelled and also my shoes being ruined. nice one. I have never seen such wind and rain in my life- and yet today was beautiful.

Tomorrow my lecturer from my home university is coming to my university in Japan to do a guest lecture, but we have also been invited to a very important Japanese professor’s office for a meeting with him which I am shitting it about because my spoken Japanese is crap!!! I will write up how it goes…

Until next time,

K x