Studying for the JLPT while the rain is pouring down

Today we have a day off thanks to "Golden Week", but after this we have to go back to school again because Golden Week this year really isn't a week at all, it's 3 days in total (5 if you count the weekend). The next two days we have off are 5/5 and 6/5, and hopefully on those days it won't be raining all the time.

I have been studying pretty much the whole day, but it has been fun, I've been using the JLPT books I bought yesterday + memrise.com and wanikani.com. Almost didn't even feel like studying.

In July I will be taking the JLPT N3 and before I bought these books I felt really lost and scared that I wasn't going to make it but now that has changed. There might be a possibility of me making it after all. If I can, just like today, get my shit together and study instead of browsing away on the internet.

The school I go to doesn't require you to take the JLPT until you are almost about to graduate, but they still give you the opportunity. I didn't want to do it but my teacher said that I should, so now I am.

I know around half the kanji for the test but what worries me the most is that I wont understand the words and grammar used and therefore get the answers wrong...

68 (?) days left.

This post was super boring so here are some complementary photos:

Seen a lot of these posters which are possibly Takarazuka. Really want to see a play by them sometime.

For kodomo no hi, the carps (?) are already out! Very nice.

Someone had turtles out in the street right in front of their car. o.0

There are not only cat socks for your tables, they come for bottles too! (And is that next to it a penguin?)

Found a store full of cute stuff!

Yesterday me and a few others headed out to a part of Nanba which name I don't recall (could've possibly been Shinsaibashi) to buy a birthday present for a person. In the same store as that present was found these pics were taken:
(Yea, I like cats)

 Grumpy cat?

 Cat ass, anyone?

 And when you thought you'd seen it all - ghost numbers! Kinda like em tho.

I actually found this in a H and M shop, so maybe you can find it in Sweden as well:

Buying a phone in Japan - The good, the bad and the evil

Hello people! Yesterday we had plans to go to karaoke, but since we finally got our bank accounts those plans changed - it was time to get a cellphone!
After school a few senpais came and gathered all the students who wanted to go get a cellphone. We then went to Soft Bank, and some others to Docomo, to get phones.

There were already a few people from school there and after us came even more, so the small store was cramped, warm and full of chatter.
Most people wanted an i-phone because in Japan they are apparently the cheapest option if you want a new smartphone with internet, etc. The people that got i-phones have to pay around 5000-8000 (?) yen a month from what I heard. To me that was too much though, since I like cheap before style (plus I don't really care for apple).

So I waited for a long time and felt like a total meiwaku just to get the store to squeeze out their cheapest option for me. Finally, after I "refused" the 1800 per month non smartphone, they came out with something that caught my eye. A smartphone you pay only 800 per month for (plus tax ofc, they don't really tell you thath though) - call is free to other Soft Bank cells from 1 am to 9 pm. Internet only when connected to wifi.
At first I felt like "Heck yeah this is the one!" but then they showed me the phone... pink DISNEY phone... Hmmm, pink is NOT my favourite color but I can do with it, right? But DISNEY?! I hate Disney!

I asked if there weren't any other phones that also were 800 a month, but no then it went up to 3000 yen/month again. Soooo.. I now have a pink Disney phone! (Will upload pictures as soon as I've completed my kanji practise at wanikani, cuz I'm in deep kanji-shit right now!).

Felt kinda bummed out over the phone because it's childish, but now I've totaly changed the look of it on the inside and I also ordered a cellphone case to hide the pink. Starting to like the phone now! You can just barely notice the Disney. :)

Okay, here is my phone:

Piiink case, but it's mostly the mouse that I dislike. Ordered a case yesterday to cover it all up, it was a bit expensive but I'm looking forward to getting it.

The front looks alright but I need to find some good stickers to put over the mouse button and the "DisneyMobile" logo. After that and the case I will have almost totaly de-disneyfied this phone! I downloaded a new theme, changed all the bg's, ringtones, deleted disney apps etc etc. Soon I will have an awesome phone with no reminder of disney except for the mousehead that closes the screen..

Osaka castle park - very nice!

Finally I got the chance to go see Osaka castle because someone at school new how to get there. Turns out it was really easy, you just keep walking straight forward until you see the castle on your right, cross the road and then follow the crowd.

I thought that we would see only a castle the grounds of the castle reached so far it took a long time to get there even when you had entered the area. It was all very beautiful, I forgot about the big city and started to think about the fact that "this is how Japan used to look".
The area was very peaceful, and if it wasn't for the fact that I got hungry, I would've probably spent the whole day there mostly just sitting and watching the place.
But since the food sold up there was really expensive + barely any food at all, I left earlier than I wanted. I'm going to go back though! There are still things I want to see (like the big souvenir shop, lol). Next time though, I'll bring my own food and beveridge. ANDDD sunscreen, because now my face is all red and it's probably gonna sting tomorrow!

Up in the castle park the people picking weeds from the ground work in traditional Japanese clothes which is very nice to see. There were also a lot of other people wearing yukatas, and we even saw a person in a kendo outfit, complete with sword.

Next month (?) there's going to be a family festival at Osaka castle, and I really hope we can go.

I would recommend anyone to go to this place, it was really something to see. I didn't enter the castle this time though but next time I come I think I will. You can take the elevator up to the top of the castle and look down onto the grounds. Seems nice. There were also street performers infront of the castle that were quite good.

 First view you see from where we came from. Water surrounding the castle grounds.

 This sign informs about the festival, incase you want to go too. :)

 Wide bridge leading up to the castle grounds.

 Temple (?). To the left there is a board full of wishes on paper/wood (?). Don't remember what they are called.

 The castle itself! Supah cool!

 There was a pond with the nice big fishes that I kind of connect to Japan but which name I cannot recall.

 There was also a turtle in the pond! It walked around on the bottom and came up to breathe every now and then.

 Nice view.

 What are these things called? I can't remember right now -.-

Lucky! Exiting the castle grounds we had the chance to pet a cute cat. It was a stray though, which is sad. 2 other cats were also lurking around. The person we tought owned this cat looked strangely alike my former Japanese teacher...

Just had to show this one too. This is on the castle grounds and people have written love letters. One is for Taka-chan, and one for Kei-chan. xD

Even more random pictures!

 The things in the picture above look like socks for kids but they are actually "socks" for your table! If you click on the pic to make it larger you can probably see what I mean. I almost bought a pair for my one of my parents, but since I didn't know if they'd even use such a useless (but not completely useless) thing, I let it be.

 

 When I was walking to the library today I passed this school "Total Manipulative Therapy Academy". I believe that's Japan-glish at it's best. Aint no foreigner going to wanna go to that school, though.

 Oh, did you know there is a Pokémon manga?! I didn't! >_< Why have I never known of this. Ash/Satoshi looks very different from the cartoon, but still! (Found this manga at the school library).

 Today I saw street art for the first time in Japan. I wonder who did this, in this quiet, remote area of Uehonmachi...

And like I said, I went to the library in Tennouji "Tennouji Toshokan". It's very close to where I reside. Before asking where the Harry Potter books were I looked around a little and found this book. If I read the title correcly it means something like: "Let's make a guy friend" or "Making a guy/boy friend" Boyfriend in this case being just a friend. ..............WTF? This book is probably full of shit that nobody should read. My honest opinion.

On another note, today was good. I borrowed the first Harry Potter book and today I didn't study because I have 2 more days left to do so. Sadly though, it looks like I have to try the JLPT N3 in July, and that's a scary thought. がんばれ。。。

"There's so much anime in Japan, on TV they are probably showing anime all the time!"

Titles says what I tought. Of course the TV couldn't be showing anime all the time but, you know, often. Since there is so much anime in Japan, it has to be this way. When we went to Spain it kind of was, atleast in the morning they showed a whole lot of anime.

In Sweden they very rarely show anime on TV, they once showed some Naruto on ZTV, and some Death Note on another channel but there's never anything consistant. Turning on the TV in Sweden you would be very suprised to see anime showing. Very.

That's why I thought "finally I can watch some anime on TV when I get to Japan!"... but that doesn't seem to be the case.
The school has TV's and more than 5 channels but there has never been any anime on! Well, today I did see something that looked anime-like, but it contained Ironman, Captain America and Thor (among others). Like The Avengers, only a cartoon with kids in it. It might as well have been an american cartoon brought to Japan.

So yea, we don't get anime, it must be hiding in channels that we don't have here at the school. Or, maybe they don't really show that much anime on TV? Will I ever know?! Probably..

For now though I can just be sad that I still can't watch anime on TV, and keep watching those boring talk shows that are always on.

(Oh, and by the way: Japan has a lot of commercials! In Sweden we can watch a show for a long time and then get a looong time for commercials. In Japan, you watch a show for a real short time and then get a very short time for commercials. Don't really know which one I prefer but I find it quite annoying with the very frequent commercials, even if they are short.)

Weird laws in Japan

Lunch time is over soon, but since this post is so small, I have time.

Found out about 2 laws in Japan that I think are kind of strange:

It's forbidden two smoke a cigarette while you're walking. (Why not just ban them all together?)
I've still seen people walking and smoking, biking and smoking, motorcycling and smoking..

It's forbidden to listen to music while you ride a bike.
Might make sense in a big town with a lot of people and limited space you need to be alert. But this law is for Japan as a whole even if you're all alone out in a big open space ... why?

School start

Today school started. Got up at 8 and at 9 I was seated in the classroom where class E will be residing from now on. I am in the same class with a few other people that I already know, so that's nice. There are also a lot of new faces, people that don't live in the school dorms but in their own apartments.

We got to meat 2 teachers today and will have 8 different in total. Both of todays teachers were very nice and classes were fun. A bit repetetive though, but I suppose you can't avoid that when you never know how much the others in your class knows. Teachers have to go by the books too so..

Suddenly, even though we didn't get that much homework today, I feel that I have much less time! That's why I am hurrying to write this post, then I'll finish Wanikani and start to try and memorize the on/kun-yomi for the kanji we're to learn by tomorrow. Gah, so much I wont have time for that I put on my list to do every day, lol.

Anyway, it feels fun to finally have started school, and the 6 hours passed by really quickly.

Found Nanbas nerd quarters!

Today I met my cousin for the first time in Japan and we met in Nanba to have a walk around there. My cousin knew the place pretty well so we were able to visit loads of places without getting lost.

After lunch we started searching for stores with manga/games/figurines, mostly because the nerdy me really wanted to :)! And we must've walked right into Nanbas OTAKU part because soon every store was full of what I mentioned above.

First store we went to they had manga, but most of all, they had cosplay and A LOT of VERY otaku-like things like half naked girl/boy body pillows and a corner where you could play some sort of geeky cardgame (though I like geeky cardgames so..). Took a lot of videos in these stores, so you can see what I mean later!

In another store I found figurines of YU-GI-OH characters even! They had Yami Marik, Yami Yuugi and Kaiba, if they would've had Yami Bakura it would've been hard to stop myself from buying it.. (Yes, I love YGO)! In another store I also found Link figurines, one small and one big and I really want the big one because it looks amazing, but but, very expensive >.<

I did buy some things though, most of which are just super boring so I wont mention them, but one being a book full of different poses for manga characters. Since I suck at coming up with poses I feel this book was a catch, and maybe in half a year I can actually read it too!

We got really lucky (at least I feel that way) because we came just in time for a performance of some sort of traditional Japanese dance. I was able to shoot a video of it so if you wanna see what I mean and maybe tell me what it's called, check it out on youtube in the future.

After walking/standing for 5.5 hours though, we we're both tired and decided to call it a day. Walking home it was a total of 6 hours and my feet kept hurting for about 2 more.
It was so much fun though, I would do it again any day. Next time though, I want to find the cat caf'e!

 These games are from a shop that I think sold only "vintage games" and consoles. Really wanna try the Pokémon game there..

 Yeah... they have those horse masks here too -.-

 Below, famous sign in Nanba, you just gotta take a pic of that, everyone does!

 Just cuz, whut?

 Below is the book I bought

 YGO things, don't have a pic of the figurines tho, they are on video instead!

 Link figures! The first one is the small one, the one below is the big one.

Random pictures time!

Pics I took and forgot about

This is my plane food from Finnair. Since I flew during the sakura time in Japan they had a special sakura theme on the trip with sakura spagetti. The cake may also have been sakura, but it might also just have been pink..

I actually only tasted a small amount of the spagetti and it didn't taste any different from normal spagetti. I saved it but time passed and I didn't dare eating it anymore (don't wanna get sick).

This is a snake venom face mask I saw at Bic Camera. Super scary if you ask me xD how far can you go for beauty?! Would any of you dare to try this, because if you do, I'll buy it for ya!

This is the sunset view from the roof of our dorm house where we've eaten lunch sometimes. You can't really see the sunset because the pic is taken with my 2 megapixel cellphone camera.

Talked to a friend yesterday and what they wanted for a souvenir. Answer: Totoro. And there are many cute Totoro themed food related things at Dokihote, I just didn't know which one to get!!

 

The international house right next to our school had a small table full of different origami that you could take for free, so I got this for mum :)! (Try making that if you can o.o)