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...

保育園と野球 (nursery school and baseball)

I have had busy two weeks and a lot has happened. A couple of my friends came to visit Fukuoka and Kyushu from Finland. With them I got to visit Fukuoka Tower during the day time and I have to say that the view is really nice also when you can see the sea properly from there. We also went together to the Robosquare which one of the famous attractions in Fukuoka but which I had not visited before even though it has a free entry. All the moving robots from a dog and a seal to Transformers-looking robots were nice to watch. They even could do some cool tricks.

Of course I guided my friends also to good restaurants and Canal City and Tenjin Core shopping malls. They wanted to go for yakiniku where the customers can grill their own food on a small grill on the table. We had tabehodai means one can order as much food as possible within the time limit. Oh boy, it was so good and we ate so much! One floor below the restaurant there happened to be a gaming hall so we decided to check that too. So many coin machines to try to catch something nice from figures and toys to baguettes. And so many gaming machines from speed games to fighting games and different anime games. Otaku's favourite place and we saw some otakus who for sure come there many times a week to practice those games! And during the last evening my visitors were here, it was necessary to go for Japanese karaoke. That is just so much fun!

I had interesting experiences also after my friends visited me. I had promised to give a presentation about Finland last week Saturday. My audience was mostly formed by nursery school children and elementary school children and their parents. Me and one man from Peru gave a short presentation about our home countries and then we read picture books in our own languages. Since I had an opportunity, it was a clear choice that I would read a Moomin book because Japanese people seem to love the Moomins. I also taught them two of the games I used to play a lot at that age: "Viimeinen pari uunista ulos" and "Värikuningas". I taught them to say some names of the colours in Finnish as well. It all worked out surprisingly well even though I had been a little bit worried how I would manage to do it all in Japanese. But besides of one question asked by a parent, I didn't feel uncomfortable using only Japanese. (Well, I also had some help if needed from the Japanese who worked together with me.)

I also got a great contact during that Saturday. One of the organizers was a nursery school teacher. Since I had wished to visit a day care center here in Japan, I asked if it was possible to go and see her working place. She contacted the principal of the nursery school and I was offered to go and visit on the next Tuesday. I had to accept the offer even though I knew the night before it would be tough. Our locking group didn't practice at the usual time on Monday. Instead of dancing 19-21 at school we had a long night training in a further place so that I needed to take a subway and a train to go there. But the toughest thing was that the training was hold 00-05. I cannot understand why to train the whole night through and especially in the beginning of the school week and not on the weekend. But I wouldn't even have had a choice if I want to keep dancing. My exchange student friend who joined the circle with me had told our group leader that she cannot join these two Monday night trainings we have because her Tuesday school day starts early and is long. She only got an answer that then it is better for her to quit. Wow, I thought our circle is not so strict but looks like I was wrong. Well... I take this also as an experience. I get to see more of the Japanese student life since this seems to be quite common here.

Our training session was fun and I was not even tired there. We finished around 4:30 but some of us had to stay for one hour extra because the first train in the morning leaves at 5:30. I got back to the dormitory around 6:30, had a shower and breakfast and a nap of 20 minutes. And then heading to the nursery school. I was a bit tired sitting in the metro but after arriving all the exhaustiveness was gone. The principal was really nice and guided me around all the groups from the babies until 5-year-olds without hurry and answered to all my questions about Japanese education system. (Again I could be happy that I had learned enough of Japanese because the principal said he would not be able to have good conversations in English.) It was very interesting with some similarities and some differences compared to the Finnish day care centers I have seen. It would be a story of its own to describe it all... One of the most memorable moments was when the principal said to the 4-year-olds that I would be their new English teacher. (Yes, they do start learning English at that age.) After that the children asked in English what my name was, though they didn't remember how to answer that question themselves. And then everyone started to call me Ei-go no sensei (English teacher). Oh, it was so funny!

Each age group had different color hats.

They had a real melon as a model for their drawings.

They were actually learning do-re-mi-fa..

I got a lunch at the nursery school. All the children had the same kind of Japanese dish.

My day was not over yet when I got back to the dormitory early afternoon. After a few hours I needed to take a subway again because I happened to have tickets for a baseball game. I had got those for free on the volunteer Japanese class. (I am so happy I ever started to go to those!) I asked one of the new Korean students on our class to join me and she was so happy. Like many other Koreans, she loves baseball and this was her first time to ever see it on live. For me this was the second time because we went to see the university's baseball team's match last autumn. But it was the first time for me too to see professional baseball and Soft Bank Hawks, the team of Fukuoka. And it was the first time I went to the huge Yafuoku Dome. What an atmosphere it had! If the game got boring, it was fun to watch also the audience. When Soft Bank Hawks were about to start their 7th round, all the audience blew balloons and let them free. It was to wish some extra luck because the number 7 is a lucky number in Japan. Quite interesting how different even a sports game can be here!

避難訓練 (Fire drill)

Today we had a fire drill at our international dormitory. At 9:30 there announced for the imaginative fire on the third floor and everyone had to go outside where there were two firemen waiting for us. The floor leaders checked if everyone from their floors had come and then we practiced to use the fire extinguishers. A row at a time had to scream "kaji" (fire), grab the extinguishers and spout water. I was one of the "lucky" eight people who got to do the second round and empty the whole extinguisher.

The second part of the drill was to see how to use the long water hoses inside the dorm. It was kind of funny when the fire fighters chose to students to try it and they asked their nationality and found out they both were Japanese. The last part was to see the CPR method and a short video about how to prevent fires. The announcement in the beginning was made both in Japanese and in English but after that all the instructions were given only in Japanese. Kind of interesting from the view of a foreigner who cannot understand everything in Japanese but at least I know they would probably announce something in English if there ever will be a fire here.

During this week finally all the first year students needed to choose their genre groups in the dance circle of the university. That means that now also I can fully concentrate on locking. Me and my Taiwanese friends who also joined the circle got a little bit surprised when our group leader sent a message this week to the locking group chat on Line. She informed us that there will be a late time trainings n two Mondays of this month, starting at midnight in a place far from the university. We were not sure what that was so we asked our senpai (a person who is more experienced compared to us) at the Thursday's training. He explained it is for locking people and that it lasts until 5 a.m and that it would be good to go there. Well, I happen to have no lessons on Tuesday but my friend has. So she sent a message to our leader telling that unfortunately she cannot join the night training because of the long Tuesday school day. The leader just answered that if my friend cannot join either of the night trainings, she should quit. We got so surprised and realized our circle is much more strict than it had seemed so far. Oh dear me... I hope to survive there. Now I am alone there since my friend really quit. I hope there are not many surprises like that coming in the future.

I like walking next to the sports field after dancing.

Yesterday evening some of the European exchange students went for izakaya. It had been long time for me not going to one. We had also one Korean student and our lovely exchange coordinator from our university with us. We had talked many times with the coordinator that she should go out with us one time and finally it became true. Too many times Japanese people just thank for the invitation and tell that they are a bit busy or something but they actually never plan to meet. But this time we saw they can also really mean that they will join one day.

Many workers cleaning the campus area. It is important to collect all the fallen leaves.

This would not happen in Finland.

We had our grammar lesson in a different room this week.
The teacher even let us to play with the screens in the beginning of the class.

The school lunch options just seem so much more interesting than in Finland.

博多どんたく祭り (Hakata Dontaku Festival)

The Golden Week is here. It is only a name for the period when there are more holidays following each others. Wednesday was Constitution Memorial Day, followed by Greenery Day and today is Children's Day. Actually the Golden Week started last Saturday with Showa Day but it was only a one-day off.

For the Constitution Memorial Day and Greenery Day there was a two-day festival in Fukuoka, called Dontaku Matsuri (=Dontaku Festival). The word Dontaku comes originally from the Dutch word Zondag which means Sunday or holiday. A describing name for a festival during the Golden Week. The festival is known for the long parades that walk on the streets. Music is a signicifant part of the parades and many people clap shamoji, wooden spoons for serving rice. They are an image of a cooking woman who rushes out of her house to join the parade. Unfortunately on Wednesday when we got to the parade street the weather changed suddenly from the sunshine to heavy rain. Thousands of people who had come to see the parade ran indoors or under the roofs. It was kind of sad to see the gorgeous dragon structure passing by when it didn't get the kind of cheering it had deserved. And soon after that we heard that the rest of the parade had been cancelled. But since all the rain came down at one time, it was dry soon again and we got to see other shows around the center.

This one is a very describing picture for half an hour on the first day.

The most interesting "potato chips"

I had a chance to check the festival again on Thursday since I went to the center anyway because I had a ticket for a concert. One of my volunteer Japanese class teachers had given me again a free ticket and this time I got to listen to Fukuoka flute orchestra. It was once again really nice and I liked especially their arrangement of Tonari no Totoro movie. After the concert I could enjoy the festival parade though had to stand behind a mass of people. Because the weather was much better than the day before, lots of people were trying to find the best spot to see. There were many many groups walking in the parade, so that it was still going on after I went to check Canal City shopping center for a couple of hours. The whole festival reminded me of vappu but just in a bigger scale and with some Asian additions.

Nordic walking team. And they even announced: "Sport in Finland, the country of Santa Clause." I was happy to hear that after we had had a wrong information about Santa Clauses home in our reading material last semester.

Last days it really became summer here. It is too warm even with a t-shirt when the sun is shining. Well, at least I can say bye to the coldness in my room. It reached almost 30 degrees today inside even thought it was a half cloudy day. Oh dear, and it will just just get hotter an hotter... Now it feels like I am in the Southern Japan again.

有田陶器市 (Arita porcelain)

Last Saturday my Japanese volunteer class that gathers on Wednesdays had a bus tour to Arita. I left the dorm early in the morning with my Taiwanese and Vietnamese friends who also take part on the Japanese classes. We met others at Hakata station and got on a bus. With extra stops to pick up more people and to rest for a while, it took about three hours to reach our destination: The Arita Ceramics Fair. Arita is known for its porcelain and once a year, during the Golden Week (which starts tomorrow) they have a one-week festival when the town is filled up with thousands and thousands of cheap porcelain bowls, cups, chopstick holders, vases etc. The main area for shopping porcelains in a 3-kilometer-long street with hundreds of small stores. The whole big street was full of people trying to find either the finest or the cheapest porcelains. For me and my friends it was basically looking at the beautiful and cute designs because whatever we would buy, ends up to take space and weight in our bags after 3 months when it is our time to return back home.

Many ways to use to porcelain bowls

In addition to the porcelains and ceramics we could enjoy a street performance of a guy who mastered many utensils. He was also very helpful for the security officers because he could announce with a microphone he used that there was an ambulance coming and people should make space for it. One interesting here in Japan is the emergency vehicles. They always announce orally if they need space or if they are turning.

After walking back and forth on the 3-kilometer road and climbing to a hill on a sunny day everyone was rather exhausted. But we still had another destination before returning to Fukuoka. On the way there I just thought I would not have energy to enjoy the second place but had to change my mind when we got there. It was kind of nostalgic to see European style buildings. On the other side of a sake tasting building (which I gladly just walked through) there were German style houses and a castle that seemed to belong more to France than to Japan. My friends went crazy for seeing that place. Based on what I have heard during my stay in Japan, many Asian people fancy Europe and would like to go there.

Vappu (first of May) came and went. The first time I had to go to school on that day and didn't even have serpentine to wrap around me or my room. I still had made some sima (lemon drink) which I also took school instead of water. This week in Japan is the opposite to this week in Finland. As Finland had a day off on Monday and works normally from Tuesday on, I had school only on Monday and have the rest of the week off. I don't happen to have any lessons on Tuesdays and there is Golden Week from Wednesday till Friday. Happens to be nicely this year giving us super long weekend.

And to mention one "sign of the spring", in addition to the birds there are also some not-so-nice animals appearing. I was surprisingly fine with the bigger spiders when I saw them at school staying on one spot on their nets. But. I had always thought I might not be so calm if I saw one inside our dormitory. Well, yesterday I did. There was a 5-centimeter-long ugly spider in the dining room. I am not safe here anymore...