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Mase's Space16 marzo 日記3月13日火曜日 － 日記を書くことにします。
今日は晴れでした。今日から日記を書くことにしようと思います。一応書く目的は三つ あります。日本語を練習するため、僕のしたことを覚えるため、日本語のアサインメントに使うためです。 その三つの目的 をもとにして書きたいと思います。
３月14日水曜日 － なんで？？！！
なんでいつもこうなるの？？20分ぐらいずっと書いていて、そして全部消されてしまった！もう信じられへん！コンピューター嫌い！またあとで。
3月15日木曜日 － 大学の生活
今日は大変暑かったです。夏は好きですけど最近夏はいつまでも続くという感じです！やっぱり地球温暖化かな？今日は一般的に僕の大学生活について書きたいと思います。
今は1年生の1学期の3週間目です。大学の一学期が始まったのは２月２７日でした。大学と学校はいろいろな違いがあります。一番大きい違いは授業の回数です。学校では月曜日から金曜日まで学校に行かないといけないけど大学での僕の授業は週に１２時間しかありません。
大学で法律学を専攻しています。今学期二つの法律の科目と二つの日本語の科目を取っています。経済も国際関係学も勉強したいと思っているけどまだ迷っています。日本語の勉強を続けて頑張って忘れないようにしたいと思います。大学の生活は確かに楽しいけど家に帰ってもたくさん宿題をしないといけません。大学ではいろいろなサークルやクラブがあって面白そうです。
大学以外していることはディベートの審判やディベートのコーチをしたり、サッカーをしたり、友達と会ったりしています。僕の人生にはいっぱい楽しいことがあるけど一番問題のことはお金です。お金がないです。仕事は見つけなければなりません。またね！
３月１６日金曜日― 三日間の週末
今日は金曜日で授業がありませんでした。今朝は物理療法者に行ってきて午後は目医者に行ってきました。目医者から帰ってきたらずっと契約法を勉強しました。めちゃ頑張っているけど試験は絶対難しいと思う。でも、継続は力なりですね！
25 diciembre Japan day 340...Last dayI`m off.
I leave at 8:30pm tonight from Kansai airport to arrive at 12:30 on the 26th of December at Sydney. I have to make two changes, at Cairns and at Brisbane. .. Goodbye Japan
for the last time
From the land of the rising sun
Tim 20 diciembre Japan day 335...sayonara!!Hello Everyone,
I tried to write this up a few days ago but it was late at night and I was tired so I didn’t get around to it. This will be my second last entry from Japan, although the last one may be only a paragraph seeing as I expect to be very busy. I have been busy recently, as I expected I would be with now just under a week left until I go home. My last entry was exactly two weeks ago so I will take it from there.
On Thursday I had my last lessons of teaching with my four classes. Since Daniel had nothing else to do Sawabu sensei enlisted him to help out with the lesson as well. Seeing as it was the last lesson I had gathered together prizes for the games we had been playing and keeping score of all year. The prizes were little koala toys, Tim Tams and a few other assorted Australian goodies.
Sawabu sensei left the class completely to Daniel and I for 50 minutes whilst she checked over the writing tests I had marked. For the lesson I first talked about some of the common mistakes on the kids English essays. Then we got the kids to do a speaking exercise about “What I did this year.” After that, for the last twenty minutes we played our last game for the year and gave out prizes to the winners then took photos with all four classes.
They were all good lessons and I think the kids enjoyed them too. At the end they gave me a present that Sawabu sensei had organized. All the kids had written a little message for me on a card and they were all put together with photos of the class. Some of their English clearly hasn’t changed since I came, some quotes like: “Don’t forget me, so I remember you.” But it was a very thoughtful and cool present.
On Saturday I went over to Daniel’s new host family’s house. His host family’s house is a temple and the host Dad is a monk. At Daniels place after a few computer problems we got to work making another video and burning DVDs of data. Then we played the Wii! (Nintendo’s new gaming console that Daniel had lined up for on the day of its release.) It was good fun, but more on that later.
On Sunday I went to tennis with Yoshiteru in the morning and did nothing particular for the rest of the day.
Then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were our three last days of Japanese lessons. Sawabu sensei was in Hawaii from the weekend until Tuesday and on Tuesday we were also greeted by a new exchange student- Andrew from New Zealand. In our Japanese lessons I prepared my goodbye speech for the end of term ceremony on Friday.
On Wednesday Sawabu sensei took us out to an Italian restaurant as a goodbye lunch for me. After that I went with Henrique to the gym and we met up with my host brother Yoshiteru too. We then had tennis for the second last time on a Wednesday night.
On Thursday a group of six of Yoshiteru’s friends came over and we all went out to tennis. We had booked two courts for three hours, one inside and one outside. It looked a lot like it was going to pour down rain all through the day but we managed to get two hours of two courts so that was worthwhile. Then we came home and I watched some soccer on the TV.
Friday was my last day at Konan High School. It was the End of Term Ceremony that went from 9:30 to 10:30. I had to do a goodbye speech in Japanese.
I had prepared about a two-minute speech and learnt it off, I delivered it well and everyone seemed to love it. I thanked everyone and talked about the great time I had had. They even laughed at the right places and I got a big handshake from the School Principal at the end too. So that turned out very well. I left the hall after my speech but according to Daniel, the Vice Principal who was up next, continually referenced my speech when he was talking about enjoying life and respecting its importance.
After that was finished I went with Henrique, Daniel, Andrew and Yoshiteru into U-Para for the last time. This time we ended up playing darts, table tennis and soccer for most of the time. Afterwards Daniel and I met up with Mutsumi and Maia and had dinner.
On Saturday Daniel came over to my place so that we could finish making the DVD full of our videos so it would be ready for my sayonara party on Tuesday. It took us until 6:30 Sunday morning but we managed to complete two full videos and put together in a DVD format all of the ones we had made and organize my photos as well. We only had one problem at the end of that…The DVD would not work on a TV. Not sure why that was but in the end it didn’t matter because we showed everyone the videos from a laptop on Tuesday anyway.
After our hard night of work and two hours sleep Daniel and I headed back into Sannomiya to meet up with Henrique, Andrew and their host brother (Andrew is staying with the same family as Henrique) to do some shopping and watch a movie. Eragon had just come out – for those of you who don’t know this is a movie based on an international bestseller fantasy written by a 17 year old boy. I have read Eragon and absolutely love the book. Unfortunately the movie was nothing short of terrible. It was extremely painful for me because I had to watch as the movie destroyed what I knew to be such a wonderful story.
Then on Monday I went with my host brothers Yoshiteru and Yugo to Universal Studios Japan for the day. It was a hell of a lot of fun. We went on the Spiderman 2 3D ride, the Terminator 2 3D ride, the Sesame Street 3D adventure and then rode 4 times on the Jurassic Park Ride. Although there were long waits at the start of the day, by the end we were able to go on the Jurassic park ride three times in a row with no wait.
My host mum and Ayane came and met up with us in the afternoon and joined us for those last 3 Jurassic Park rides and for Sesame Street. We then went out for ramen for dinner. It was a very fun day.
Yesterday! Yesterday was my sayonara party which we had at my host family’s house starting from 3 O’clock and onwards. It was a barbeque party. Ten of Yoshiteru’s friends (all of whom I knew) arrived at three and took over the living room for about the first hour. As my friends gradually arrived we pushed Yoshiteru’s friends into the next room where we had set up the PS2 on the small TV and thanks to Daniel his Wii on the big TV. This proved to be a massive hit with everyone there and opened up the table for the people I had invited. Whilst we ate and chatted we would constantly hear screams and shouts coming from the next room.
The people who I had invited were; Mutsumi, Saori and Ikuko who I had known throughout this year, having met Saori three years ago. Nanae and Mokeo who I had also met three years ago but who I actually met for the first time this year yesterday. Sai Hanna – a young lady from Inner Mongolia whom I had befriended at the Japanese language course I attended. Junya Inoue who had home stayed at my home for three months two years ago, my Japanese teacher, the ever present Daniel and Henrique.
It was probably about 5:00 pm by the time everyone had gathered and we ate for about an hour. Then we showed people the videos Daniel and I had made, I intend to put these up on Youtube, some I already have. If you would like to see them then search for Tim Mason and they should come up.
-Mik’s – Arrest that Pirate -Daniel’s animations
After watching through all those we did a room swap with Yoshiteru’s friends coming in to watch the videos and us going into play the Wii. This is when I discovered that the Wii is undoubtedly the best video game console for parties there is. It was hilarious watching four people (usually females) start swinging their controllers around and playing tennis.
All of a sudden we were the ones yelling, screaming and laughing our heads off. We let everyone have a go, then watched the two most shy girls have a boxing match and finally played some bowling. Even my little host sister could do it. After that, with everyone extremely pumped (high tension is the way of saying this in Japan) we went upstairs and took some photos of everyone.
After that we came back down and had dessert and said goodbye. We walked to the train station and I waved off all of my friends, most of whom I expect I will not see again for a long time. I came home with Yoshiteru and opened the presents that many people had given to me then we took a family photos because Akitoshi is going on a ski trip with school and won’t be back before I go.
It was a great party. A huge lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed it and got to know each other a bit more. It was great that everyone could come too. It is very sad to be leaving everyone though.
This morning I said goodbye to Akitoshi as he departed for his Ski trip.
I have put up all of my photos from yesterday and the day before on my site again for all to see!
With one entry left…
From the Land of the Rising Sun
Tim
08 diciembre Japan day 323...No more teaching, no more booksHello again,
It has been a while since my last update. I have been busy. I guess it is to be expected as I am in the last few weeks of my stay here. I have just over two weeks left in Japan now, so I suspect that will be two more entries. One of those I hope to be a summary of my year here.
Lets see...it is cold.
The last week of November I spent at school and university as usual. On monday Daniel and I finished our last practice test for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The rest of the week was a lot of marking for me. Since the kids were busy studying for exams in their classes Sawabu sensei gave me the job of marking the kids 100 word english essays about "My Favorite Story." (note American spelling)
Over a week I marked all of their essay which would have been over a hundred. There is some fun in marking them. When the kids do different stories and their english is at least reasonable then it is not too much of a drag. But after about the 10th Death Note story (a manga made into a movie) I was getting kind of bored. Certainly there were far too many manga for my liking, and too much dodgy english.
On a completely different topic one of the things that I have noticed that could be used to sum up about 90% of the exchange students who come to Japan "Anime freaks and Asians" - not that there is anything wrong with Asians. It makes sense in a way that a lot of the people, even from Australia or other Western countries who come to Japan are of Asian, often Chinese descent. The fact that I am not one and am here, gives me an advantage in some ways too. But what has surprised me is the number of people who come to Japan as anime obsessed Japanophiles. Even amongst the older, businessmen who I see there really are a lot. Meh. ANYWAY...
I had written the example story and the other thing that was annoying was being copied off by the lazier kids. It did have some odd results though. One of my sentences was "It is surprising that even though the story was written a long time ago it is still popular today." This word in my story in the context of Shakespeare, but it really doesn`t work when put into a paragraph about Harry Potter. (She still hasn`t finished writing the series guys!!!)
The most popular stories would have to have been Deathnote, Harry Potter and Slamdunk (another manga). There were quite a few stories about Lord of the Rings, most of them by kids who hadn`t read the books, another sticking point for me! Read the books first! I could say the same for Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Eragon... but anyway.
The best Engrish I found in the stories was this:
My Favourite Story: The Load of the Rings
hehehe
Moving on...On last sunday, the 3rd of December I sat for the Level 2 of the Japanese Proficiency Test. Daniel, Jess and a few other exchange students were all there as well. I am confident that I have passed, I have done enough practice tests to be able to have a good idea of what my mark will be and I cannot see it being worse than 80%. Seeing as the passing mark is 60% I can`t see any troubles. I am glad that I was able to take the test as I wanted something to show my Japanese level and that is the standard test taken all around the world and now, hopefully I will have passed level 2 (level 1 being the highest level).
The other day I worked out that in preparation specifically for the test, not including study of other general textbooks I completed: a text book each on grammar, listening and reading comprehension, 31 practice tests for Kanji and vocabulary (35 minutes each), 15 practice tests for grammar (30 minutes each) and 4 complete past paper practice tests.
But before the Japanese proficency test on sunday Daniel had another plan. On saturday morning the Nintendo Wii was due for release in Japan. And Daniel wanted one. Alot. A very lot. Enough to skip school on friday to be in front of Yodobashi camera at 9:00 the morning before the release of the game and wait in line until 7:00 saturday morning to get his game machine.
Well... he seems to be enjoying it, so to each their own. He has bought three games and four (extremely funky looking) controllers too. The thing that surprised me more than that though was that he cannot actually use it when he goes back to Australia to play Australian games. (Unless someone develops a way to cheat the machine, reasonably likely it seems).
So anyway, after our test was over I came back to my host family`s place and we had a "barbeque" (not a real barbeque, but it didn`t taste bad) in practice for my goodbye party on the 19th. The rest of the week I have spent relaxing, I went to Sannomiya and the Umeda with a friend on Tuesday the fifth. We now have one week left of school, and that week is short, the students are in exams so it is easygoing half days for the exchange students. I had my last lessons of Table tennis and World History and yesterday I had my last day of teaching classes.
Time goes fast, I can remember Calum having his last lesson of classes and it seems recent and yet I can remember a whole huge amount of things that I have done since then. For my last lesson Sawabu gave me the class to teach myself and Daniel came along to help. I talked a little bit about the kids english composition, then got the kids to write a quick speech about "what I have done this year" and then we did our final game for the year. At the end we handed out prizes to the individual winners and team winners. In that way I got rid of the last of the little koala toys I had. At the end we took a photo with everyone, which along with the table tennis photo I have put up on my site.
My schedule is rapidly filling up with things to do and people to meet in my last two weeks in Japan. Tomorrow I am going to play the Wii with Daniel, next week is meeting some friends to do...somthing, tennis, Upara, karaoke, Wii with many people, a goodbye lunch at Konan and a goodbye speech that I have to do. I will make the effort to put in another update though.
That is all for now, for most like the the third last time? Coming to you from the Land of the Rising Sun...
Tim
Japanese phrase of the week: 果報は寝て待て For good fortune sleep, and wait (Everything comes to he who waits) 24 noviembre Japan day 309...one month to go (darts)Hi everyone, It has been a while since my last entry and now I find myself with exactly one month left in Japan. I have not been overly busy for the past week and a bit. My weekends have been relaxed, I have spent more time studying for the Japanese Langauge Proficiency Test which is on the 3rd of December. I have continued to play tennis on wednesdays and weekends with Yoshiteru as well. The only real thing I have been doing new is playing darts. I went out on the 16th of November with friends for another friends birthday party and they decided they wanted to play darts. So we played darts for 3 hours. And it was actually very enjoyable. I was surprised. Then, on this sunday we went out again for another three hours. We discovered many different types of games and I am actually getting pretty good too. So I now add darts to the list of random games and sports that I have learnt or gotten much better at whilst here (along with soccer, tennis, table tennis, squash, racquet ball, shogi, go, scrabble, othello, poker and chess). Anyway apart from that there is not too much to tell I guess. I have had a very busy week this week in terms of one thing though...fitness. Yoshiteru has a noh performance on saturday and he was complaining about how he always gets tired toward the end of the show. He says he has no stamina. So we decided to work on building up hi stamina. So we went to the gym on sunday, were there for about 2 hours including playing 40 minutes of racquet ball. Monday we went for a 40 minute jog. Then tuesday I went to the gym, came home, heard that Yoshiteru wanted to go so I went again. On wednesday we had an event at school where everyone climbs Mount Rokko together. So for four hours we climbed up the mountain just next to the school. Then we went to some hot springs before coming home for two hours and then heading out to tennis again. Yesterday was a public holiday so I stayed at home and had a rest/study day, Yoshiteru meanwhile had rehearsal and today was normal school. I have done marking for four hours. And that's about all I've been up to, nothing overly exciting. I am both looking forward coming home a lot and somewhat sad to be leaving everyone. I especially feel very close to my host family and will miss them. Oh well, I have once again put another video up on Youtube for all to see. This is my noh performance from July, I still have to edit the recent one down to size before I can put it up. But for now here is the first one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF64QwlyeBs Bye all Japanese phrase of the week: 鉄は熱いうちに打て： strike while the iron is hot 15 noviembre From KonanHi everyone,
Yesterday a year 11 student from my school committed suicide at his house. The news was announced today at school and there were shortened periods for the day. I personally did not know the kid, I teach the year 10s and take some classes with the year 12s but have little contact with the year 11s. It came as a shock to everyone as I suppose these things must always do. Although it does not affect me directly it has knocked the wind out of me. It comes in the context of a string of high school suicides in Japan in the last few days. I feel quite confused about it all but I guess I am ok. Although a large number of suicides tend to result from bullying, it does not appear that that is the problem in this case and indeed no-one seems to know why it happened. I guess there is little left but to pray for his family and hope the school and teachers manage to get over this and move on.
Here is an article about the incident itself:
and here is another one about the large number of suicides in the past week:
In other news Daniel has moved host families again. This will be his 5th host family (compared to my 2). Apparently this family are Buddists, the father a monk and the family living in a temple. Be interesting to see how that turns out too I guess.
Otherwise I am well, nothing in particular going on, it is getting cold though. Just have to hope everything works out and somehow returns to normal.
Bye all
Tim 09 noviembre Japan day 294...18!!!!Hi everyone,
I'm am 18 :-) Thank you very much to everyone who sent messages and best wishes. Very much appreciated and yes I did have an awesome day. And got lots of prezzies too which was fantastic!! 2 sundays ago was where I left off so I will start off there. After going out and doing things on most of the days of the week before I decided to take it easy sunday. I spent the whole day at home. I did achieve the reading of Harry Potter 3 in Japanese though so I was happy with that, I really just relaxed all day and probably read for a total of about 7. :)
On monday we entered Konan culture without Sawabu Sensei who was in Chicago with the Konan basketball club. During the Konan culture week students spend their time doing various cultural activities instead of normal classes. The main justification for such a week is that November the third is a national holiday for "Culture Day" (it is also my birthday).
As for the exchange students...
On monday this meant Japanese lessons as usual for us but this was then followed by a movie. (Very cultural). The chosen movie was "Twelve Angry Men", black and white but very good, I'd seen it once before in year 10 English. After the movie I had university followed by my Japanese langauage course from 6:00. Tuesday was just Japanese lessons and Wednesday I did another practice test for the JLPT, with no problems (85%) and then went to the gym and then university. On thursday after a short day at school Daniel and Maia came over and with Yoshiteru we played some tennis on the second floor of the house followed by some scrabble (highest scoring word, a well placed: writing). Yoshiteru and Daniel had a fierce battle of shogi (Japanese chess) in which each move was followed by an insult or taunts whilst Maia and I played chess. It was very good fun and a great way to spend the day before my birthday.
And then...Friday!!! My eighteenth!
There certainly were reasons to be dissapointed about spending my eighteenth in a foreign country. Being away from friends and family, the very people I most wanted to spend the day with was certainly hard. Although I was unable to be with all of my friends and familly I must say thank you to all of the people who did send happy birthday wishes, cards and presents and really made the day much more special...Even so it turned out to be an awesome birthday and a great 18th party.
In the morning I opened the presents that had come from my parents and cards from my grandparents. I got a copy of "The Prophet" from my mum and also had requested Barack Obama`s "The Audacity of Hope" which they had bought for me over Amazon.com, they also sent his other book "Dreams from my Father." The package from Amazon arrived on the very morning of my birthday so that was a great start to the day.
After opening those and my cards I headed of to school with Yoshiteru for the Konan Culture Festival. I had been to the Culture Festival 3 years ago (just as I had had my 15th birthday in Japan at that time) so I knew what to expect. Basically it was an open day for the school with students doing various things. There were stalls of all various foods and sweets run by the students as well as lots of kids running around with drinks. I managed to get a lot of things cheap from the kids I knew including an absolutely massive stick of fairy floss and some good tasting fried ice cream.
In the morning I went and watched a jazz band with one of my friends playing in it, from him I recieved a ring that he had made for me himself. I also got given a present from Henrique the Brazilian exchange student. An orange soccer ball. Very pleased. Very Brazilian. At lunchtime Mutsumi and Maia arrived to join in the swarm of female students touring the school along with the parents. We had lunch and then went to watch Akitoshi my host brother in his band performance. Akitoshi was the drummer and had only been playing the drums for about 6 months (practicing loudly and at all hours at home). But I thought it was very good.
His was the first of a group of school bands to play and they all dressed up in Female clothes, Akitsoshi in Maid clothes and the other three in Chinese dresses. They did two songs and then we watched some other bands. Then after finishing up, showing off my desk, grabbing some more food and finally meeting up with everyone we left the festival at 3:00.
Everyone eventually managed to met up at about 5:30 and from there we headed to a cakestore and bought a cake. It worked out extremely well because the biggest cake (11 people were at the party so we needed big) was also the cheapest and turned out to be delicious as well. After picking up the cake we headed to the park, it was dark but we continued with our plan to play soccer for a while. At this stage Yoshiteru, Daniel, Jess, Mutsumi, Maia, Funamoto, Funamoto`s girlfriend Yu (あなたじゃない), Henrique and I were there.
We played soccer for a while even though it was dark and then transfered over to scrabble except for Henrique and Yoshiteru who continued with soccer and Funamoto who slept, we only had to spend an hour in the park because we had booked a place to eat dinner from 7:30.
We went to a special kind of Japanese restaurant where all dishes and drinks are 300Yen (about $3) each. There are all different types of food you can get and share around with everyone. It was a great time. We all sat down at these low style Japanese tables, Ikuko had now joined us and Saori came along a bit later. We had some really good food and everyone sang happy birthday to me.
About halfway through everyone decided to give me their presents. I was surprised by their kindness and all the stuff they gave me was amazing and really appreciated. I took photos of the presents too.
I got... a mean looking chocolate cake from Jess (it was actually eaten the next day by someone in my host family after I had put it in the fridge...lol, I suspect it may have actually been my host dad since Yoshiteru doesn`t eat chocolate). Mutsumi gave me a photo frame (always useful), Ikuko her 18 year old younger sister gave me 2 plates in the shape of big leaves (random but cool) and a kendama (a Japanese toy with a ball attached to a string where the goal is to catch the ball in increasingly smaller holes). Funamoto gave me a Japanese style cup, Saori a big bag full of chocolates and sweets (she works at a convenience store), Maia gave me a black stone/pendant and I also got given a handmade little photo album that everyone had written little messages next to their own photos. So that, handmade and from everyone was the best.
After getting presents we had the cake, delicious and we eventually left the place at I suspect 11:00. One random highlight of the night was a Japanese guy wandering over to our table on his way out, wishing me happy birthday and telling us all he was Dutch...good for you mate. As Saori, Jess, Henrique, Funamoto and Yu had left a bit earlier calculating the bill was a mess, it took a while but eventually we worked something out. We hung around afterwards just chatting amongst the remaining 5 of us before catching a train home at about 12:00pm. It was late so Daniel ended up staying over at my place and sleeping in the spare room. And that was it, a great 18th birthday. Lots of fun, good friends and some great presents too. The next day I slept in, ate, took some photos of my presents and read my book for a while. Saturday night I went to stay over at Daniel`s place because my host family were all going to Hiroshima. The whole time I was over there neither of us got anything to eat, this seemed to be punishment to Daniel for his misbehaviour. This did not matter because I spent sunday out anyway. On sunday I went out to Sannomiya with him and we did some shopping. We had some good ramen at Kyoto station before going home.
I stayed over at Daniels on sunday night as well and went to university on monday then came home. Tuesday school finished at 2:00 due to short classes. After some good table tennis I went home and with my family we had another birthday cake for me. They were busy and I was out on my actual birthday. I got a shirt from my host mother, a sweat band from Yoshiteru and some deodarant from Akitoshi. And that was my eighteenth birthday!
A great day(s). There are also about 50 new photos from the day up on my site as well.
By the way I have put another video up on youtube for everyone to see. Again you don't have to download the video to watch it. It's my host brother :) ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLWGZdhNhas Japanese phrase of the week: 学問に王道なし ： There is no royal road to learning. Bye all Tim |
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