2 months left!

Today there is only 2 months left until our take off. The last month was rough between waiting to get some good news about job situation and doing some one-day shifts as a bartender and studying Japanese. Though the last mentioned received terribly small amount of attention between everything else. I have now settled down all the arriving details with our landlord and now we are only waiting for our visas. They should send then COE data for us in the end of next month (November), so that we can do the last payment (payment for 6 months of school) and after that receive our real visas from the embassy here in Helsinki.

I have been forming a bucket list for Japan for a year now and been able to gather plenty of interesting cafés, restaurants, city areas and also events that I would like to see in Tokyo, but also in other places in Japan. We already know where our holidays (two weeks at the time) are settling, so if we just have enough money we want to visit Osaka during spring and maybe Kyoto at the autumn. We also have a list of our family members as well as some friends that are planning to come to see us while we're there. My greatest concern is that we're too busy with school to actually guide people, but that is left to be seen in January. The school comes first after all.

I miss Tokyo so much and I can't even express how excited I'm to get there so soon. Piece by piece we are having everything done for the trip. I already stopped my contract with the gym I've been using due to two months expiration time and also arranged our internet to end few days before leaving, after all we're going to hand over the apartment keys days before actual depart so that we can spend some time with our families.

Here is some autumn pics I took few weeks ago <3

 

 

Go!Go!Email

I want to keep you updated for how all the things work with Go!Go!Nihon, so during this day I received an e-mail from them giving me more instruction for how to plan the trip. It was pretty nice, informative message listing up what all has to be done before jumping to the airplane, when is the best time to arrive to Japan (if arriving at night you may not be able to get your key right away and need to stay in Hotel so on so on), what to study beforehand if you are starting the beginner course, a list of the places to search for accommodation and also a word about health insurance. 

For us most of the knowledge was right now pretty useless since we already have booked our flights, arranged apartment and we are applying for intermediate course. Even so it was very nice to receive a message from Go!Go!Nihon for a while because when we are mostly just waiting all the time for different things, you almost feel like you have been forgotten and that of course is not the case. From my personal opinion, I would get to the business especially with the apartment a little bit earlier than 3 months before arriving, but because Japan seems to be a country where every this kind of a thing is handled “one month before arriving” (like the visa will be issued one month earlier as well), it seems that for normal agencies for apartments applying this close is ok. “-- most housing agencies do not allow reservations earlier than 1 month prior to your arrival.” That’s the exact thing what was written in the e-mail. That also explains why our landlord was a little bit hesitant to reserve for us since we booked our apartment 1 year before arriving…

I wish to write a lot of more about Go!Go!Nihon and the experience with them when we actually are in Japan and the process is over. But as my travel journal, it is kind of fun to read later when different things happened, don’t you think? For now, thanks for Go!Go!Nihon for helping us out!

Harajuku (Tokyo) 2012

Autumn and JLPT4

The autumn has finally really arrived, the leaves are turning red and yellow and the weather is colder, though it’s still warmer than it usually is during fall. I’m a big fan of all the foliage colours and it always makes me just want to knit something warm and paint a lot with bright colours. Too bad I haven’t really had time for those things. For few weeks now I have been running from job interview to another and actually I managed to get contract with two companies which hire extra workers for grocery stores, cafes and bars. There is no such a thing as a minimum hours in a week, so it’s really mostly about luck and how volunteer you’re jumping to the metro and getting to work whenever someone calls you. I have done this couple of years ago and it’s easy as long as you don’t do any other plans you need to keep. And the variety of places you will work in is actually quite fun.

Japan… I don’t know how many times I have already written that it is getting closer. An obvious fact, but I guess writing it up makes it easier to wait ^^. I have been a huge fan of this blog called GaijinPot, very nice articles about different phenomena in Japan. One of the most interesting ones was this post about the “UchiSoto” culture in Japan. Reading that made me see the Japan little bit differently and also I had a great wake up experience about our last visit in Japan. It made me really see the natural reason behind the help we received and why we were treated like we were. I recommend reading that, it’s not that long.

From the subject to another, I’m actually really proud of myself for completing the first Kanji Book. I’m still going to do the reviews about the chapters (always after every 4-5 chapters I think) to check that I actually am still able to do even the kanji from the beginning. The next book will be little bit different to study because with this Book 1, I decided right from the beginning that I would study every kanji from that book no matter if those ones weren’t on the kanji list for JLPT4. In this point I guess I have to point out that for JLPT tests there doesn’t exist a real kanji list anymore. After the test was renewed few years ago they dropped all the official material out, leaving the situation hanging on those very flowing sentences about one’s skills (see them in on this blogs page “Project data”).

But because many people feel that it’s really hard to study without any base, most of the people still use these old kanji lists which you can still find from the web. Here is the list where I have based my estimation about JLPT4 kanji (the list is cumulative with N5 kanji too). One reason why I decided to read the whole Kanji Book 1 including all the 251 kanji (even when I circle out the lists kanji there comes only approximately 170 kanji from the book 1 and rest from the book 2) was that the list is old and not valid, though it still gives you a quite a good glimpse what is to be expected.

Cheers

Acha

Roppongi (Tokyo), 2012

Öland (Sweden), 2010