speech contest!, Q&A

hello everyone , today a short update ,

yesterday I had a speech contest, I am not easily nervous but I was REALLY nervous.
I have only two months experience with the Japanese language and there were people participating who have been in japan for more than 5 years , so yhea i did not have  high expectations ,
but I did my best and I had a lot of fun.
my speech was about the differences between the Netherlands and Japan, a lot of people helped me with the speech(Japanese pronunciation is sometimes so hard -__-'') thank you guys !!

because i get a lot of questions about my exchange year and my Japanese live I will answer them now.

1)Q:you are here for two months , how do you feel ? , are you still so excited as you were in the beginning?
 
A:(wow two months, the time is going to fast T__T) yes I still enjoy my Japanese live,
of course I am still excited a lot of things are still new for me ,but of course the 'being new in all this ' feeling is gone I guess, But it is in a good way , I feel more comfortable with the language and other stuff (like trains....)

2)Q: Is your live like a Japanese anime ( I get this question ALOT)
  A: .. ehh I don't think so? , wel to be honest if you watch anime , some things in anime never          happen in real live, ( I am not talking about the magic stuff-__-'')
 like i've never seen people eating on a roof of the school ( sorry if I break your imagination about Japan...)

3)Q: do you've been already homesick?
   A: to be honest not really of course sometimes i feel lonely ( last less than 5 sec)
but no I am not  home sick or have been homesick.

4)Q: can you descripe a daily day in your Japanese live ?
   A: I normaly wake up around 6:15am (after 2 alarm clocks.... )
        around 7:00am  I will go with my host dad to the train station
        ( he is going with the same train but steps out a few stations earlier)
        I will arrive around 8.00 at my school, i the classes are to hard for me (like politics)
        i will study in  the library , on monday and friday i have club until 18.00
       otherwise i will be home at 16.00

well that was it for today , I hope you enjoyed this short update bye!
p.s iknow reading this page is really weird i have no idea why it is like that or how to fix , so sorry >.<

                                                           speech contest souvenirs :p

Hiroshima trip ! (lots of pictures )

Hello everyone !
yesterday I came back from my schooltrip to Hiroshima.

note:
schooltrips in Japan are very different than dutch schooltrips , the students make teams and with your team you plan your trip by yourself , like EVERYTHING by yourself (exempt diner and sleeping )
even transport you plan by yourself.

day 1
I had to wake up 5 am to take the train to Tokyo station to meet my team, after that we took the shinkansen(yhea that famous train with the speed of 270 km/h) to Hiroshima
it took around 5 hours so we played card games ( i learned some new one xD)
after the shinkansen we took another train and then a ferry to miyajima island
it is famous for the itsukushi schrine which  lies in the water in high tide but in low tide you can walk around the schrine
also we went to the koyodani park which has a lot of deers and lot of beautiful nature
after that we went shopping and i bought some momiji which is a famous local snack
you can describe it like an small maple leave shaped cake filled with mashed sweet beans ,chocolate or cheese cream.
we planned to go bag to the hotel around 16.00 but we took the wrong train , but we found out in the last station so we traveled for another hour our sensei (teacher) was not very happy with it but they where happy we were safe.
also we were late for dinner so we ate in another room (private room yeey :p )
the dinner was quiet big so i couldn't  eat al haha

day 2

today i went to a submarine museum which had ofcours ALOT of boats.

their was also a huge exhibition about the war in the Pacific sea.

after that we took the bus to a navy academy were you can get a tour for  free , 

the navy academy was really big and had a beautiful view over the sea.

the tour self was really interesting , although i couldn't understand everything the parts which i did understood where fascinating ,the guide told us how live was at the academy in old times which was amezing to hear about.

as lunch I eat okonomiyaki , a famous Japanese dish it is hard to describe but it is really tasty 

it is like a pancake à la Japanese style i guess..

day 3

this was my last day in Hiroshima 

i went to the atomic bomb peace memorial.

I saw this memorial in my history book ,

but when i saw it in real live I release how bad the atomic bomb was .

also we went to the Hiroshima peace memorial museum

which gives you a good view how atomic bombs can have an impact on people nowadays.

I have respect for  those people who experienced the atomic bomb

this was my last day in Hiroshima I want to thank my team , classmates ,friends for this amazing experience I had lots of fun <3

hallo there..

well hallo there,

 sorry for not posting that often

i've been here more than 1 month , and I still really enjoy ,

every day is a gift for me.

tomorrow i have a day off because the typhoon will come (don't worry I am save at home xP)

a lot of things happend these days,

it is usual to celebrate the succes of bunkasai with your classmates so i went with my classmates to karaoke ,

that was really fun and again a new experience

in Japan karaoke is very popular you hire a karaoke room for various time which is not very expensive.

then you have a huge range of different songs where you can choose from (even german and french songs xP)

 the time flies by pretty easily while doing karaoke and it is a lot of fun

after singing karaoke  i went to a yakiniku restaurant with my class ,obviously yakiniku is like a bbq but than inside xD it is delicious and a lot of fun xD.

with the girls i took purikura , which is popular among young people , it is the Japanese style of fotoshopping i guess

also I have a special schedule ,that means I am not attending to some subjects , 

for example history is very difficult for me to understand (unfortunately it use to be my favorite subject), instead of those subjects i will study in the library ,also i have on monday and tuesday special Japanese classes and on thursday as wel , which is pretty nice,

but my Japanese is still pretty bad, sometimes it is very hard to talk Japanese instead of english but i will manage it ^_^ ,also i keep a Japanese diary , i am not writing every day in the diary but more than 3 days in the week is ok by me ^^ , i think a diary is pretty useful , you can see your improvement and also read back what you  what you did in japan.

But of course the question is , can i ' think' already in Japanese ? not fluently, I am thinking now in 3 different languages  (english , dutch, Japanese) which is sometimes pretty disturbing for me.

also a big thing what got me buzzy was finding a club,

 i've been watching kyudo , which is a sport so it is serious business , it looks fun but first you have to learn the basics which can take 4 month which is a shame because I am here for only 11 months

also day practice 6 day per week , a friend of me invited me to join the volleybal club, which is also VERRY tough  , the team is very nice but the training individual was very tiring.

the 3rd club was the right one , it is a cultural club ,better know as the animation club.

the moral of the club? drawing, gaming, and talking about anime which is pretty amusing and very fun .

and for those for would like to know , yup i shopped in the centre of Chiba city ,

i heard a lot of complaints about clothes prices but they actually look like the dutch prices 

prices are the same as dutch clothes prices(which is pretty expensive) so their was no big shock fortunately haha.

i bought a few things which you may find on my blog later,

what keeps me buzzy these days?

on Thursday I will go on a 3 day school trip to Hiroshima ,I will go by Shinkansen i really look forward to the trip ^^.

also  i might going to try okonomiyaki which is traditional Japanese food which can be as best describe like a pancake with pork and vegetables and sometimes seafood , every area in Japanese has a different okonomiyaki so is the  Hiroshima style okonomyaki with ramen noodles 

p.s if you are friends with me on facebook (which the most of you are) you might have seen the most of them, i also added photos which a made 2 weeks ago when i went cycling with my host family around town

purikura<3

karaoke :-)