A picture

Hm well I decided to add this picture as well.

It is the university at where I will spend the next 10 months of my life.

My time here

Many days have passed since I found myself sitting on a train running towards Nagoya-shi. Without any ideas of what lie ahead of me.

I have been living in I-House now for about a week. I have bought most of the things I need and have finally got to settle before school starts. I have been on many orientations regarding the school and the place I am going to live. And it is soon time for me to pay my first room-rent.

Thinking back on the days that has passed I have experienced a lot. I have been sightseeing Nagoya with John Fredrik and Yuki, I have biked around the district I live in, in search for supermarkets and electric stores. I have been downtown visiting clubs and bars. I have walked back to my dorm countless times from the subway station and even managed to accommodate to the Japanese life, if just a little.

My life here seems finally to be starting. Even though memories of home still swirls around in my head, I don't feel homesick.

I maybe tell some time of what I have experienced in these days prior to school start. But for now I'll leave it be. I am hungry and I intend to make me some food. 

Tomorrow I start school.

-Filip 

The first day

Right now I am in Japan.

I am sitting at a library with a japanese friend of me. The library is in I-House. A dorm in which I am going to live for, the next ten months.

I will start this blog by telling how I got here in the first place.

The primary idea, and still continued, was to study Japanese language in Japan for a year.

To visit Japan was something I had wanted to do for many years. I decided that I was going to do it after high school.

After a heavy load of paperwork and searching I was accepted into a school in Nagoya, Japan. Or more correctly Nagakute, Aichi, Japan.

John decided also to go to Japan but unfortunately he was not accepted into the same school as me.

Our original travelling date was the 25th of July. We had to change the date later because of my visa application taking some time to process. This however meant a better opportunity to save up money for the trip.

Our travelling date was in the end the 20th of August. On the 19th of August we went to Oslo to spend the night there as our departure was from Gardermoen airport OSL. We spent the evening out on town with two other friends and slept over at my grandmothers apartment. That night I had a hard time sleeping.

The next morning we were picked up by my mother at 10 am. She drove us to the airport where we took our goodbyes and I and John left for our flight. 

We landed in Helsinki to change flights after about two hours from our departure in Oslo which was 1 pm. Our flight for Nagoya was due 5 pm, local time. After some beers and a tax-free we boarded a large plane.

We spent 10 hours on that plane watching movies and trying to sleep. 

Upon arriving at the airport our first problem came. While I neatly went through the passport control, John did not. We had both written the name and phone number of the Japanese friend we were going to meet on the passport control ticket, Yuki. Since we did not have any place to stay for the first night the control officer said that we should write the name of our friend instead. 

Now wether this worked for me or not, I don’t know, or rather I don’t think so. Because I came through registered at Aichi Shukutoku University, as did John in the end. The control officers had called Yuki and after a long time of waiting in anxiety, I had taken the time to fetch our luggage and find

 John’s return ticket, John was let through the passport control, registered as a student at Aichi Shukutoku. If this does affect his travel on later point in history I don’t know, but now it seemed just fine.

The next thing was meeting with Yuki. He was standing at the arrival section waiting for us. I was walking just behind John and as I came in to the arrival section John had gone. Not for long though, I saw him standing beside a guy I barely knew the face of. It was Yuki. The weird thing was that it felt so normal. We had had almost no travelling nerves during our whole flight. And now that we had arrived it all felt kind of like we had just travelled a short distance to meet a casual friend.

We met with Yuki and started our travel around the large airport. And by large I actually mean it. If you have visited normal airports they usually have some hotel and a taxfree and some stores in the terminal. But this one-terminal airport actually has a whole shopping town, and even an Onsen.

John and I went right for the Onsen. We parked our luggage at a nice luggage deposit. And went to the Onsen to take a long awaited bath.

Now if there is one thing one must try out when visiting Japan then it is an Onsen. I later plan on visiting one with real spring water but until then I’ll stay with this memory. There is nothing like a bath in an Onsen. The water is very hot. There are several different pools of water to choose from and some showers to shower off dirt before entering and clean yourself after bathing. These showers also hold shampoo and soap. It’s hard to explain why Onsen are so nice, I think it is the feeling of cleanliness and freedom when entering the bath.

Anyway after the Onsen, John, me and Yuki went to have something to eat. John was of course really hyped up on eating Ramen, so we found a Ramen-ya, a Ramen shop, and ate a pretty good Ramen. Even though later I have tasted much better ones.

While eating Yuki, who was very sorry for not being able to have us over to sleep at his place, had found a hotel in Nagoya which had 4000￥ for one night per person. Roughly 200NOK or 40$. Me and John accepted the offer. And so after eating we left the airport with approximately 50 kilos of luggage and one hour of travel. We took some trains and subways. And at last we arrived at the place where we were supposed to sleep for the night. The hotel was a neat little one with tenants only speaking Japanese. Luckily with had Yuki there to do the translation. We settled down in small room with a double bed. I quickly understood why the room was so cheap on short notice. It reeked o

f tobacco. A horrible smell with which it was impossible to get rid of.

After taking a short rest at the hotel. We took a walk to find an electric store selling cable output converters. As I later found out from B to C and C to A. That is how I operate this mac now. If it is safe, I don’t know.

After a short walk we ended up in a newly built but still old Shinto shrine. These are called “Jingu”. And so this was Atsuta Jingu. We wandered around the shrine for a while taking in it’s beautiful nature and sights. John most certainly has many pictures of this as he had a professional camera with him solely for that purpose.

The shrine is more like a small green-spot, very tranquil and comfortable to walk around. 

After having visited the shrine we slowly went on towards the large electronics store. There were many high streets and by-streets to walk before we got close to it and after some 30 minutes of walking, or at least what seemed like it thanks to the incredible heat the air posed, we could see Yuki’s university where he was going to study later this year for a third year bachelor grade. Nagoya Gakuin Daigaku. And just behind his University lie the electronics store. The store which by anything 

I have seen earlier of electronic shops was huge.

And again no one spoke english. I was looking for an Iphone to support me through my stay in Japan and John was looking for the converter. We found the converter. And a pharmacy that sold Calorie Mate. Regarding my Iphone I had to wait until I had a bank account, a Japanese one.

After having visited the electric store we were all hungry and wanted to go to eat. We went to a convenience store and bought us some snacks. we were now almost in the center of Nagoya. But we decided to go to a mall to get some real food and more for the morning after. 

We went to Jusco if I remember correctly. It is a large shopping center with all kinds of stores. We went up and down and ended up at a supermarket. We bought some light food for the next morning. And afterwards we walked back to the hotel, which showed up to be only half an hour away by foot. At the hotel we parted with Yuki and went in to get some sleep. After this day we were completely burned-out.

This is only a preface to the blog I am writing and it will not be truly complete before long after this travel is over. I am also going to experience with different styles of writing to see which best suits me. There might be some time until my second submission. But I will try my best. Ganbaru.

The day after tomorrow I will start school. Tomorrow I will try to start on my next submission but it depends. I must also admit that I am a bit lazy and I am in the middle of reading

 the whole Naruto manga which may take at least 6 more hours. Please stay with me. I'll also add some pictures although not many. Check Johns blog for our pictures. I'll add a link once it comes around.

- Filip