Ok this one goes out to Mr Suji D, I hear you wanted more blogs.......Ask, and it shall be delivered.

The string of public holidays has come and gone (with me having very little to show for it) and it happened to coincide with the hottest day i've encountered so far here, damn sun. Well today was the normal mix of mind numbing boredom and horrible painful fear.

The fear came first with my placement interviews.....had to get to uni really early for no reason when the damn thing only took half the time it was scheduled to. The actual interview was even worse. My japanese totally abandoned me. However I have resigned myself that i will probably get placed into the bottom class, which is ok because I will learn something regardless.....seeing as there is freaking 12 hours of japanese a week (that is more than my entire week was last semester) on top of that i have to do 2 more subjects in english which I havent decided yet. There is some sort of Australia-Japan subject which I suppose I should take.

Ok breaking the fourth wall somewhat, just heard a scream from the hallway went to investigate, turns out there was a huge spider in my neighbours room.....like huntsman size. Caused a big commotion through my entire corridor, hopefully mr morita doesnt get mad at us for making noise.....kurimata, our house buddy killed it with a magazine though.

So anyway after the stupid interview, Tori, Zenen, Amy and I went on a trip to Mos Burger......really nice burgers, too small though and too expensive. The walk was nice though, even though I did almost get sunburned again.

rest of the day was booooooring......almost fell asleep in the computer guidance session, and i was sweating profusely on the library tour coz the damn place is so hot. Tried to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Other than that my days have been more or less spent here at the house. My room has become a pigsty again so soon after i cleaned it. Tomorrow I am going to the ward office again, only this time i am biking it there.....I am so scared, I have never actually gone on a public road yet :S....I really hope I dont die.

Anyway ja mata ne

Jono

Ok so guess what, my specially shipped adapter arrived yesterday so I write to you now from my room instead of the computer room downstairs.

So anyway yesterday was a really long day, it all started when Julia and Magnus wanted to go to Ikea because they are Swedish and they were craving their national food. So they asked one of the buddies, Junko, if she wanted to show them how to get there because Junko is obsessed with Sweden lol. Then it turned into a big trip to Osaka for everyone lol.

So I got up begrudgingly at 9 oclock to go and get ready. Today was "Respect for the aged day" so Mr and Mrs Morita's grandchildren were over visiting them.....they are super cute. Something about Japanese old people and children is just so cute i dont know. So anyway we bused and trained our way to Osaka and then went and had lunch. I couldn't go to Osaka without eating takoyaki which are octopus balls, very nice. We ate at one of the most famous takoyaki places apparently.

After that the Swedes wanted to go to Ikea so I stayed with Jocelyn, Joelle, Gavin, Yeji and Jeong Joo to check out the city a bit. Man it was so crowded, it was rediculous. Jocelyn went to go have her hair cut so I looked around the shops by myself a bit. When she was done we went to all these shops and to starbucks to have a drink lol. Oh and we also took some sticker photos sigh

After a few hours we met up with the rest of the gang and headed home. So yea i realise now it doesnt seem like I did very much haha, but year we didnt get back until about 10 and it was a good day overall.

Photos are on facebook if you havent seen already

Ok just a quick one again,

Party last night was good. Mr and Mrs Morita, my landlords, went out and bought us some awesome food. They made us okonomiaki, which is kinda like an omelette thing which was really good. They also bought lots of alcohol but because I am only 19 mr morita kept coming up to me and asking what was in my cup lol.

It was mostly just talking to everyone which was good, got to know some people a bit better. everyone is really nice so I am happy living here. Still it hasnt even been a week, so much more to go and I still miss home ;D

So yea I was going to take some photos at the party but i forgot to charge my camera lol, but hopefully once i add people on facebook I will steal some for you guys to see everyone. Imanaged to take some of my newly tidied room....so once my adaptor that has been specially sent from australia, arrives I will upload them so you can see where I live.

today seems to be the quiet day, I woke up at 12 for some reason, I hope that doesnt carry on to when I have to go to class next week. Yesterday I went for a huge walk, about 3 hours all together because I Ｇｏｔ a little bit lost to haha, but yea Igot a nasty sunburn on the back of my neck. I really need to buy some sunscreen today, as well as some groceries I think.

Anyway I may go do that now

Laters
Jono

Wow so its saturday morning and I got to sleep in which was nice because last night I was so drained of energy, I actually went to bed at 10.....isnt that weird, even in Sydney time thats before midnight. I could hardly believe it. However my bed isnt the most comfortable to sleep in and that might explain why i am tired a lot. Today my shoulders and back are sore from sleeping. I suppose i will have to just get used to it eh.

Yesterday was the second useless day of orientation. Placement test did not go very well. Listening wasnt very good at all, I expected them to read the questions out twice, but they only did it once so I missed out on a lot of stuff i think. The writing section wasnt too bad, it was split up into three sections that ascended in difficulty. I managed to do the first part fine which was very encouraging at the time, the second section was a bit hit and miss and the third part was terrible.

Other than the placement tests, the rest of the day was pretty useless. There was a welcome (ie free) lunch held in some room. There was some nice food there and I just ate as much as I could so i wouldnt have to buy any food later. We also had a doctor come from the medical centre to talk to us about measles, TB, HIV and swine flu.....OooOoOoOooh. And then they gave us free facemasks, handwash, tissues and wetwipes.....so score i guess lol.

THEN the lady from the coop came and was talking, we had to fill out this rediculous for just to sign up for the coop. So confusing. The one thing I have learned about Japan is it is all about the beaurocratic red tape rediculousness. So many forms for everything. Campus tour was next, which didnt help me at all because I will still not be able to find my way around I dont think.

Tonight should be good though. Our landlords are throwing us a welcome party now that everyone has arrived so we only have to put in 1000yen each and they go out and buy the food and drinks.

Anyway noone else is up and its already 10:30 which is suprising. A lot of them went out drinking last night in Kyoto so I guess they are still recovering.

I shall catch y`all later

Jono

a journey of 1000 miles.....

Today was first day of orientation, let me tell you....so freaking stupid and took all day too, what a load of crap.

again woke up at 7:30 scared that my phone was going to be the wrong time for some reason so went out and it turns out it was the right time after all, who knew right? well noone else was up so i went and had a shower, check emails and then went to the kitchen. Some of the guys were already up and cooking eggs and whatever, i have still yet to attempt cooking in the communal kitchen yet....i bought some spaghetti yesterday that i will have to use one time, especially since the bananas that i bought yesterday have gone brown overnight and i had to chuck them out. Other than that I have custard cakes and cookies in my fridge to ease hunger pangs when they occur.

By about 8:30 we were all congregating in the genkan and split into bike people and bus people.....iright now i am still a bus person, even though it costs almost 6 dollars a day and its not that far away......problem with bike though, especially for someone so noob like me, is that although kyoto is mostly pretty flat, there happen to be 2 hills between my dorm and the uni....sob

so anyway we all met at the uni and went and got some introductory crap lots more papers to file away.....then they spoke for ages about general stuff and by then it was lunch time so we went off the cafeteria. which is super nice btw, lots of nice stuff. after lunch was our entrance ceremony which was just 2 super suck up nerds who volunteered to read speaches in japanese....they sounded like total wankers talking about 'trying our best' and 'striving to achieve common goals'....vomit

then we had people from the police station come ttalk to us.......these four old ladies (who were super cute) were talking about how to hold your bag to avoid it getting snatched.....kinda stupid like we dont know that already. then the police's judo trainer was teaching us self defense moves.......he said the best way to get people to help you isnt to yell HELP but to yell FIRE.

then there was the earthquake simulator which was majorly disappointing....it was just some truck that shook a bit, i didnt even go on it....me and some of the other I-House peeps decided to ditch it and go home.

So here I am, I have one more day of orientation tomorrow, which includes my placement tests :S......but then after that is weekend and then 3 public holidays in a row and they dont hold orientation, so i will be off until next thursday for 2 more days of orientation, classes start the monday after.

So i suppose without my bloody laptop working i will be bored as blah......my dad said he would send an adaptor for me seeing as im having no luck here....oh well

later days

Jono

Practice makes perfect

Hey all again from the land of the rising sun, I have to be a bit quick in writing this one because I think some people want　me to go out to dinner with them, so i will keep it short.

Last night was pretty good, it was a girls birthday so they were having a party and it was a good way to introduce myself. I discovered that there are a lot of australians here but there is also a lot of people from sweden. Theyre all nice, as is everyone, but i think the australians and the swedes are going to have to have a battle for I-House II supreme domination.

Anyway today I woke up extra early out of fear of not waking up at all....had a shower, checked emails/facebook/blog etc then met up at the entrance to go catch our bus.......again made more of a douche of myself when i put the money in the wrong slot on the bus. But the bus drivers are so polite i think i left without paying accidentally several times but they didnt say anything.

I had my first look at my uni today too....its quite nice. Kinda confusing, i think i may get lost at first. I had to register for all this different stuff which was a lot of paperwork and then we had to catch a train to the ward office to hand it all in.

The group i was with were rather cool....some swedes, some americans. some koreans, and an aussie called freddie who actually goes to mac in his 4th year of business/accounting......he is really good at jap too, makes me feel quite inferior but i suppose he did do it as continuers in high school so theres a leg up on me.

anyway we got to the office and were waiting for aaaaaaages, turns out we have to go AGAIN, but theyre not open on weekends or public holidays and orientation starts tomorrow so i have no idea when i am going to find the time to go!!! blarg

yea after we got home we all decided to go ｏｕｔ and do some shopping for things we forgot. I bought some groceries and an internet cable.....but i couldnt find a freaking adaptor so i cant use my laptop.....bloody good use it was bringing that then wasnt it!......we also went to mcdonalds briefly and sat to chat and have a drink....i learned that swedes like theyre coffee very very strong.

anyway i have to go now......i may post more in the comment section if i have time later.

hope you are all having a good time. Send me an email if you get bored, i enjoy hearing from you. Otherwise post a comment below

wuv
Jono

Arrivals

Hey all,
I arrived at my dorm about an hour ago and I am already really homesick.....I hope that passes soon because I don`t want it to be like this for 5 months!

So now I shall recount how I got to here.....Went through Sydney airport security like a total douche, left my tickets and all my money at the security guy....not a good start. Then i guess I looked suspicious so　I got felt up by a guy looking for explosives. At this point I had a bit of a niggling sniffle.

So i get on the plane to KL and theres an empty seat between me and this nice malaysian man, so i got to stretch out a bit.....HOWEVER, my freaking seat did not recline so I was stuck in the most uncomfortable position trying to sleep all the while having a cold that had run rampant. Landing at KL was a nightmare too, my ears COULDNT cope with the pressure and now it seems I am deaf on my right side. KL airport is super boring.....I tried to use the free internet terminals but they wouldn:t work (thanks a lot samsung)

I also had to hide my ＤＥＴＥＲＩＯＲＡＴＩＮＧ health ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ all i saw was Ｓｉｇｎｓ saying IF YOU FEELUNWELL CONSULT US IMMEDIATELY.....so I thought Iwould be quarantined or something.....same happened when i got to japan, except there they had thermal cameras and some lady checked my temperature......i just lied and said i felt fine

flight to japan was.....ok.....tried to sleep as much as i could because it was an overnight one....managed to get a bit in......the taxi trip to ｍｙ dorm took aaaaages, almost 2 hours i think. But yea Iwas quite surprised by the quality of the dorms.....nice and clean, lots of facilities (i am using the free internet downstairs atm because i need to buy a cord for my room)......the couple that run the house are really nice, theres a huge pile of stuff old tenants left behind and they just said help yourself to anything you want haha.....however there are a whole lot of rules to remember, makes me a bit nervous

what also makes me nervous is that i have to be up at 830 tomorrow morning to go get my alien card....i have been so reliant on someone else waking me up, i am a little scared if I will be able to do it......

anyway, I am quite tired, so i may go and have a bit of a sleep......I will have to ｔｒｙ and get this cord for my room internet asap so I can blog more frequently (not to mention msn)

Miss you all heaps already
Jono

Konnichiwa

Hey all,
This is just an introduction to my new blog for while I am in Japan. I will try to update it hopefully as much as possible, so if you are interested in how I am going check out here.

I will have my first official post up once I have arrived and I have my internet connected.

Love, Jono