新しい授業 (New classes)

I have got one new lesson to my weekly timetable at Fukuoka University. Since I have studied German for many years and I know that one German teacher here, I asked if I could join some class of his to practice my forgotten German. After that I have joined a German conversation class a couple of times and I have come to realize how disappeared my German skills actually are. I can understand pretty well what I hear but talking is so difficult because I get only Japanese words and phrases to my mind. Luckily the level at the class is not high so I am still more of a help than a burden for the Japanese students.

Last Saturday I had TA for half a day. There were some international students coming all the way from Beppu (Eastern Kyushu) who were leading the groups of Japanese students so this time we TA's were just assisting them. Somehow I was told to be the partner for the only Vietnamese leader and even my friend was wondering out loud how I always end up to meet Vietnamese people. It was a fun TA session when we played games and made a presentation in a tv-program style.

After the TA I went to Hakata with my Taiwanese friend to meet my Finnish friend who came to Japan together with my family but who stayed here for a longer time. Finding an available hostel was a little bit tricky but we got lucky to find a brand new hostel with super nice staff. While waiting for my Finnish friend to get to know the hostel and its rules, me and my other friend were talking with an Australian guy who also had signed for the same hostel. In the end he ended up to join us for karaoke nearby our dormitory where one can also eat free ice cream as much as one likes. That is so best place! Since my friend had decided to travel around in Kyushu, I took his big luggage to the dorm so that it is easier for him to travel. It surely made his life easier because bot of the wheels broke down the day before and one needed to carry it or drag it with lots of power.

On Monday after TA I took the same bag to bring it back to my friend. I felt a little bit exhausted already when I got out of the dormitory yard and thought that it will be a long way to the subway station. Luckily there were two Japanese guys who passed me and surprisingly they asked if they would carry the bag. As a result, I got help and company all the way to the station. Just how nice Japanese can sometimes be! I spent the evening with two of my Finnish friends (one had joined us from the Northern Japan where he lives at the moment) and we visited Fukuoka Tower. It was third time for me there but the view is so beautiful every single time. This time they had a different kind of decorations both outside and inside. Inside there were also some trees for people to hang wishes on their branches.

I don't normally have classes to Tuesdays but an acquaintance of mine had asked a professor of education if I could join his lecture. So I tried to quietly just sit in the corner of a classroom with closer to 100 Japanese students and be unnoticeable but the professor started the lesson by mentioning about me to everyone. Besides they continued on a topic about Finnish education and the professor sometimes asked my opinion or if something really is true. More than once I had to admit to him that I didn't understand the question or what they had talked about. All my Japanese lessons and my Vietnamese lessons are in Japanese but I surely came to realize that following pretty well on those classes doesn't mean I could follow any class in Japanese. Many times I had no idea what the professor was talking about or what was written in his powerpoint but it was somewhat an interesting experience to see a Japanese educational course lecture.

The rest of the day went quickly when I helped my Finnish friends to find souvenirs, played fun games at a gaming hall in Hakata and went to a conveyor belt sushi bar Sushiro to have a dinner with other two friends of mine. It never stops amazing me how one can eat so many sushis and desserts with 10-15 euros and be super full afterwards!

At Hakata station we also saw a structure that they are building for the Yamagasa festival in mid-July. Some older Japanese man just decided to tell us about it the same things over and over again. He must be an enthuastic fan of Yamagasa matsuri. This huge 17-meter-tall wooden structure will be carried by running men at 5 a.m. during the festival. Cannot wait to see it!

Working as a teacher assistant in Fukudai (=Fukoka University) can be tough sometimes when you need to push shy and unwilling Japanese to speak in English but sometimes I surely enjoy earning money this way. I had two TA lessons on Wednesday and there were some memorable moments in both of them. On the first lesson there were only a few Japanese students so we worked 1 to 1 and made funny stories together. My partner spoke and wrote pretty good English so we had nice conversations also outside the stories. On the second lesson we a game "What comes to your mind when speaking of...?" The teacher gave us themes and we had to shout our answers and find all the people who are shouting the same answer. We started with really easy ones, such as "the favorite color" but at some point the teacher took themes from the TAs' home countries. "What comes to your mind when speaking about Finland?" Over half of the class gathered together with the answer "Santa Clause" while "Moomins" got surprisingly few students together. Other answers were "snow", "cold", "winter" and as a surprise one TA said "Simo Häyhä". With my bad knowledge of history, even I had to check who he is talking about...

梅雨の時雨が降らない？ (Rainy season without rain?)

The yearly rainy season started officially last week Tuesday. There was a little rain on a couple of days but that is all for now. I have been thinking "what kind of rain season it is when it is not even raining?" but I heard this summer has been unusual. And they say it starts to rain more next week. But anyway, I think I should be grateful when the temperature stays on a bearable zone before it will rise up when the rainy season ends.

The only rainy day for now had a heavy shower though...

Since my Tuesdays are free (no lessons), I have sometimes joined a Japanese language plaza at the university. Each day of the week there is a language plaza for different languages like German, Chinese and Korean. This semester they also started a Japanese plaza for foreigners to practice their Japanese. Last week I joined them for a while and one nice game we played was a drawing game where the next player needs to figure out the word for the picture and come up with a word that starts with the same syllabus than the previous ended. (For example in the picture below: sa-i-ko-ro -> rō-ru-kē-ki -> ki -> ki-no-ko...)

Last Saturday was full of program for me. In the morning I was able to join the volunteer Japanese class with my friend after a long break. They had a theme day and everyone was doing ikebana. It was my second time I get to arrange flowers like that and like on the first time, we were able to receive our flowers at the end and bring them home.

My flowers after the teachers fixed them a bit.

My flowers at home, arranged by my friend.

After the Japanese class, we decided to eat the lunch outside and my friend noticed an okonomiyaki restaurant nearby. That was more than fine for me because going to eat okonomiyaki was still on my list to do in Japan. The place was quite small and we got nice seats right next to the chef's working area in the empty restaurant. I ordered negi-yaki (okonomiyaki made with spring onion) and that is really what I got. I had never seen that much of spring onion in one dish. At least 70% of my dish must have been negi.

When my friend returned back to the dormitory with our ikebana flowers, I went to meet another friend of mine who had concert tickets for us to listen to the philharmnic orchestra of Kyushu University. That was maybe my sixth time in a classical music concert in Japan. I have never been to concerts this often in my life. Afterwards we also went to a Starbucks (which is a rare place for me since I don't drink coffee) to chat for a while. My day got a nice ending too because I decided to make most of my one-day ticket for the subways and headed to dance after a longer pause. It is so nice to go to dance now that I can also talk with people. I was remembering my first party here on my first week in Fukuoka when I could not have proper conversations in Japanese. There are still many occasions I don't understand something but now I can ask what they mean and get them to explain it with other words.

On Monday we had double training for our dance circle. We have our first show (and my only show) coming on the becoming Friday so the whole circle had rehearsals at school in the evening. In addition to that, the locking group had its third night training, this time starting at 1:30. I was lucky to be able to borrow a bicycle from my friend so I was not dependent on the subways and trains this time. It really saved time when I could leeave after the last trains and return before the first trains of the morning. Besides, it was a really nice feeling to cycle on the quite and empty streets. The distance was closer to 7 km, I had never been on those areas before and my friend's bike was too low for me but still I didn't feel uncomfortable at all.

Coming back home when the sun starts to shine..

One more important thing that has happened to me, is that I finally know when I am returning back to Finland. It was rather hard to buy the ticket, when I couldn't find simple information from the air company's website, when the support help didn't know the correct answers to my questions, when I needed to contact also my bank etc etc. But finally after all the troubles I have an e-ticket in my mail box. Yay, I am really going home again!

Some delicious fruits I got from my friend.
I had not eaten these kind of fruits before.

中間試験 (Mid-term exams)

Half of the second semester at Fukuoka University is now behind because we had the mid-term exams this week. I am pretty satisfied with how I made in those (at least now that I still don't know the results) because the exams are always a proof for myself that I have learned something on the lessons. Though of course there is always something that makes me realize that I could have studied even more... Anyway, now it is time to learn something new again. We also had school today because three Saturday school days compensate the long free during the Golden Week. (Yeah, comparing to Finland... Finland never makes Saturdays school days if there is a public holiday in the middle of week.)

On the kanji lesson we played a game where you need to find two matching
radicals to create one kanji. The ready ones are on the left side.

Last Monday was long when we had the second over-night dance training. Luckily I didn't need to go anywhere on Tuesday unlike last week, "Only" studying for the exams. I also started doing TA (English teacher assistant) again. Like last semester, we TA's try to help the Japanese students to use English before they will go a short exchange program for a couple of weeks abroad. Pretty cool job to go around in the class room showing a photo on your phone and tell the story behind it and listen to the others' stories.

One thing I cannot understand in Japan is that why they are having the long vacation in the spring time. Is it really fun to study in the summer when the weather is nice and actually many times also too hot? The outside temperature rises up to 23-28 degrees these days and the air starts to get more and more moist. But knowing that this is only the beginning of the summer, makes me a bit anxious... My room temperature is already now 30 degrees. I can open the balcony door when the evening gets cooler but I have to close it again for the night because the bugs outside are so noisy that they make it harder to fall asleep.

Summer view over the campus.

Today I went to a second-hand store to find clothes for our becoming locking dance performance. I got surprised for the prices and needed to check if I came to the right place. I am used to find clothes with mostly 3-10 euros on the second-hand stores in Finland but this one had remarkably higher prices. Most of the clothes I checked were priced between 1300-3500 yens (10-30 euros) so they had almost a normal store prices attached to them. Luckily I found a proper shirt with only 500 yens.

There are some tough things here but I try my best to make best out of the last weeks I have left in Japan. Two months and I would be flying back to Europe. Or so I would think. I have no tickets yet...