About the daily life

School...

So about two months ago, I moved from C to the first intermediate level class, D. A lot of things changed in our normal daily routine. For example acted videos about chapter conversation vanished and instead of having three books, we now have... five. Before our schedule was build on moving forward with the Minna no Nihongo book series, but now we do that only three days in a week. Remaining twon days we have speacial divided classes for those who are weak in kanji and those who has done kanji ok this far. Those who don't need extra prepping in kanji, will do N3 JLPT practising.

This class has turned out to be really usefull and also time by time challenging. When it comes to JLPT material, the texts have furigana only for kanji that are from upper levels (so in our case, N2 or N1). For the rest, they expect you to be able to read. But of course the schools rarely build their material JLPT in their thoughts, so I have found it to be good practise to challenge yourself with kanji you are unfamiliar. Also the art of guessing by contects and kanji radicals has improved a lot. For me the weakness is still definetly the reading, just because of the kanji. The N3 level listening and other parts of the test feels already rather easy, which is relief. After all, I am aiming to take the N2 level in December. Still three months to go! For that I am also participating to N2 extra class in my school, which doesn't cost extra for students, held once in a week after normal studies.

Other changes in school are the tests. I have been thinking that our tests have been rather easy. Before we had kanji test about every second or third week (we also did only 4 kanji in a day). So that has much changed now. Our kanji speed is double or triple, kanji test is now every week. The midterm exams are once in a month and the level has turned to be more challenging than before. During beginner level classes I usually had about 20 minutes extra time after finishing my test, so I would take my time to check the test in case of writing mistakes or so after turning the paper in. That is not the case anymore. Last time I had a minute extra before handing the test in and that was the case with most of us. I really like about this change, becouse before the tests also didn't really check if you were able to use the grammar more creative way, only to check if you knew the rule. Now there is a lot of half plank sentences you are expect to fill in the best fitting way. After this I am waiting the D-class finals same time terrified and excited.

Here is some pictures about my school stuff (essey included, we have to write them in these days in these "real" essey writing sheets. Before we did them with free lines.). After writing an essey we have to hold a speach based on that. Both writing and performing are worth of 30 points. 

Other...

Outside of the school I have been working part-time now since June, but by that time I only had one Finnish language student. Now the number has increased to four. I find teaching my own language really hard, much harder than you would expect. Maybe it is because you rarely think the rules or the grammar of your native language. Things just either sounds right to your ear or not. Other challenging side in teaching Finnish is the lack of teaching material, so I have basically made all my material by myself and it takes rather a lot of time. But teaching is so much fun, that it kind of makes it worth it.

Aside the work, I found a new hobby, kendo. I am so excited to see how it starts to roll. The school were the practise is held is only couple of hundred meters a way from my apartment and everybody are so nice there. I also found the art of making Temari by hand. Temari balls are made from lint and thread and... well nothing else. I made my first pair of earrings about a month ago.

I rarely update pictures about food or about the everyday life, so this time I decided to add a hin of that too. First there is pictures about a couple of aid packages we have received from Finland. I can say salmiak and Geisha chocolate has never tastes this good. Second row is from my favourite Kamakura cafe, cafe Bisquit. Their speciality is hot lemonade and grand size pancakes with fresh berries. Below that some of my favourite Ramen and an burger by J.S Burger Cafe. Then some of my favourite summer sweets: Baskin Robbins ice cream and traditional shaved ice with lemon flavour. With shaved ice you really have to be a quick eater. Mine melted in minutes. ^^ Below that more Baskin Robbins, but this time, my birthday cake. I am such a child I know. ^^ But it was delicious! Last pictures include one half made Temari ball and things from our balcony garden: huge paprika and delicious mini tomatoes. We also have enjoyed cucumbers and strawberries, but time for those is about over by now. That's all for now, see you ~

Course begins!

Yesterday the school started again after two weeks of spring holiday. Before the B course ending our class had already made multiple guesses how the school would deal with when forming C classes. The fact was that there had only been two B classes, but there was enough teachers to teach three C classes and the teachers had been complaning about the B class sizes, so it was kind of obvious they would probably divide us again. The classes had been divided earlier too when my class proceeded from A class to B class (when I were not there), but that time people who came to Japan together, were let to be together. So that's what we guessed that would happen.

But it was the opposite of that. Yes, we were divided to be three classes like we guessed, the class size is now approximately 13 students for each intead the old 20, but they really split us. Not a single person who became better friends with anyone was maintained together. Me and Mikko too, were put on different classes. During the first day you were able to sence the tence feeling, everyone were little bit shocked I guess. I thought there was good and bad sides. Bad maybe that the bonding was already done, so it is kind of hard to form again "us" spirit for gymnastic events and so when you competite against your old class (also it seems that the B2 class I was in had more strong "we" spirit than any other class). But good side is that when the class size is muh smaller, there is more opportunities to speak out in the class and of course, get to know new people.

Yoshida institute as a building is very small and thus some of the classes are in a separate building behind the main building. I was first little bit sceptical since I never had been there in the river side class rooms. And it was also common knowledge that river side classes became more isolated, since those students never had enough time during breaks to come all the way up to the main building. So in this point it was even more clear that the old classes were broke down completely (only one class from three new C classes was on the river side). When I first stepped in the class room, the floor was full of fallen sakura flowers. It was much smaller than the class room we had before, but there was much more light. It is litterally right next to the Kanda river, really beautiful place. Even though yesterday was rainy, it was still warm enough to keep the door open during breaks. After school we all still met in school front, so now it just seems more like Finnish high school when you have different courses and meet up with your friends after school.

Otherwice studying in the C class seems much like B class. Some teachers have changed, but some of the old B class teachers are still teaching my C2 class. Then again Mikkos class don't have all the old ones mine class does. I'm kinda looking forward to see how different our classes are, since already after first day we receaved different homework even though we of course have completely same schedule, books and study program. ^^ New things in the schedule are speech contest in the end of the class, double emount of kanji tests and sports event in May. What I am not looking forward is to try to beat my B class score, but hey, everyone has to have goals!

Shinagawa

Welcome to School!

For all of you thinking to apply to a language school in Japan, I warmly recommend reading this no matter where you are coming from. For everyone else, sorry, this is probably very boring post. ^^

My school started Monday 5th of January 10am. We were handed a personal information form to fill in with a number in a corner. I was number 6. a Teacher guided us to a classroom where we were able to sit wherever we pleased. After a moment the teachers started calling out numbers starting from one taking two people at the time. Most of the students hadn't even arrived yet. I was called out pretty soon and it happened to be the interview test part. Of course I knew the interview would be held in some point, but it really came surprisingly fast. I went completely locked and when the interviewer spoke only japanese I jammed completely. My name? What was it again...? It went badly, but I wasn't luckily the only one.

The seriously surprising part were the classes. This is the part I want really to all of you applying to study to take a good look at, because this is where I was most surprised. I originally made my plans in order to apply to intermediate class in Yoshida Institute. In class levels that would have been the class D (starting class is A). So when we originally had checked the levels and books, we should have been able to go to D class. Maybe with few kanji less than them, but otherwice. Now to the truth. It doesn't go like that. The courses are much harder than what it seems in the paper.

We made an entrance test after the teachers had explained the rules of the school. Teachers had decided a test for you by the interview and what you had told them (how many kanji, how many years, how many books...). I was able to do the B-C test. Aaand it happened to be pretty tough one. We had one hour time and the test was 6 A3 pages long, I barely made it till the end. So be very realistic when setting your goals and understand that the language schools here gets after a some point very surprisingly hard (Basically in the swich between beginner and intermediate, intermediate students are already super talented). After the first shock I'm verry happy with my class.

My result was in between so I was able to decide if I wanted to go to A or to B class. I decided to pick out the B, but there is a condition to success well in the first grammary test held approximately 2 weeks after study begins. If you don't they will move you to A class no matter what. The school also has an ability to deport you from the country if they feel that you are not suitable to study Japanese. Of course that is a supreme matter and that would mean that if you cannot learn even hiragana and katakana in certain time (it was a quite long time tough, months or so), that would happen. (The school also tells that they will call to our parents if our attendance rate is falling, which is quite hilarious from a Scandinavian point of view.)

Also the Go!Go!Nihon doesn't really take any part for the course picking. The school didn't really relay on any information we had last year given to Go!Go!Nihon and it didn't affect on our entrance exams in any way. So I could have been telling to Go!Go!Nihon that I'm advanced leveller and it wouldn't really had made any difference. So don't take any pressure about the level you pick for them.

We started from the Minna no Nihongo book 1, chapter 20 in the B class. The speed is really nice, I really like the teachers. They only speak Japanese in the lessons and we have at least half of the 3 hours we sit in class speaking with each other and for the whole class. We study only 4 kanji in a day (with kanji I'm very much ahead, but it's nice to review these). Our class is pretty big compared to others, we have 22 students. About 1/5 is swedish, 3/5 from another Asian countries 1/5 is other European or USA/Canadian. I really like our class, people are really nice there! And so many languages are spoken there aside Japanese.

Oh and rules are pretty strict in here. Two times 15 minutes late is same as not showing up at all once. And for every time you're not showing up, you loose 3% (or more possibly if it happens all the time, I'm not really sure about this) from your finale course score. The score is build up from attendance, tests in a mid-way and home work = 300 points. And with the final exam total 300 points. So the complete total is 600 points. You have to score over 60% to be able to make it to next level. And if you wish to continue your visa (in order to continu studying here), your attendance rate has to be over 80% (so if it lows 3% everytime you're gone, count from that). And if you wish to continue to a "real" higher educational school, the attendance rate has to be over 90%. However, if you have influenza and paper from a doctor for it, it doesn't affect your attendance rate.

Our school is really lively and it is really easy to chat with other students from other classes too. I have already made friends with some people. Classes from A to C all study from 13:20 to 16:40 so it's pretty easy to meet people from levels close to yours. (D to advanced are studying at morning from 8am)

Here is some pictures from the park close to our school
and from Takadanobaba, where our school is.

Mata ne~

6 days

I'm terribly sorry about not posting anything for nearly two months, but here we can go on again. I was awfully clumsy and poured some water on my computer nearly 6 weeks ago and well, this was the time they took in Germany to fix this thing. I was really lucky to react super fast and flip my laptop around, so basically nothing vital or expencive went broken. Instead I had just really long waiting time and 6 weeks without computer on top of that.

It is 6 days now untill the take off. My emotions are suffeling from super excited, happy and overwhelmed to anxious, nervous and "not wanting to go". I still remember the ordeals you face when moving to new country from the time I moved to Sweden and yeah, not all those experiences I wait really keenly. But going we are and in the middle of all this packing and last time shopping and husttling, I try to also find a moment for my self just to relax. I now try to tell thrpough the changes that has been happening during the past two months.

Go Go Nihon! and COE

After the last message I blogged about, we went again many weeks without hearing nothing untill it came. The copy of my Certificate of Eligibility (COE) which would grant me permission to apply visa. I received the COE copy in e-mail with working permit papers and with the school bill for the first 6 months. When I paid away the bill, they shipped out the real COE by air mail. It took couple of days the papers to reach us but it was super fast when compared to some shippings from Japan to Finland. The ackward part was a little mistake from GoGoNihon's side, they sent wrong persons COE copy for Mikko. We don't know how they made the mistake, but gladly it got fixed really quick and our real COE's were sent out together (as we have the same address). But it sure was odd for a second.

Yoshida Institute

With the real version of our COE there was also other papers about our new school, Yoshida Insitute. The school had attached really nice info booklet and also a map how to get to school. With the papers there were also our school's pincipals personal info, what we needed to fill in our visa applications in Embassy.

Visa pending and Embassy

To apply student visa to Japan from Finland, you need one passport photo, 23,5 euro in cash (has to be the exact amount), your real COE and of course a passport. The Embassy of Japan is a small place with quiet athmosphere. You will fill in your personal info when entering the Embassy and after that you can continue to do your business with the counselor. We received a visa application form and started filling it out. I was glad that I had checked out multiple small info beforehand becouse the form includes for example questions like "your becoming address in Japan", "the landlords personal info" and if you had visited Japan before you have to be able to write down the dates of the trip.

There was quite amount of hussle in the Embassy when we left our applications, so the counselor suggested that I would come to pick up our visas next day and so happened. All went really smoothly, they called be around midday to tell the best time to visit so that I would not have to wait for long and it was really empty at that time. I dealt with a very nice gentleman, who went all the papers through with my one by one. I have heard before that people have had problems with GoGoNihon for not telling them for example about residence card, but I feel it kind of odd that their embassy haven't took care of that becouse we sure got very straight and clear instuctions what to do from the moment we would leave Finland, all the way to our new home address in Finland. I was wished happy year in Japan when I left.

Savings

It all turned out better than I ever expected. My last salary will come in January so it basically comes tax free and it is all extra for the budget. We made the last calculations about the monthly expected budget and I have to say that this care free I haven't been for years. We honestly don't really have to worry about money much as long as we won't go completely overboard with shopping. It is an awesome feeling, maybe a little bit hard to decribe, but when you have been living about two years thinking every euro you use, how could you pinch in more cents... Yeah, it is awesome feeling to think that I will finally be able to think something else than "can I afford to do this", I can just do it. It has been so much swet and tears on a way, but I really believe it will be worth it. I already couple of weeks ago went to a bank and changed some euro to yen because we are expecting the first month to go pretty much with cash since opening the bank account takes some time.

Moving

Like told before, we have been selling our things in flea markets and already collecting things together since summer, but this November and December, now we are talking about some insane months. We have gone through all our things. I have given to charity over 10 bags of clothing and shoes, some furniture went for free to people moving to their first homes. It is actually pretty hard to get rid off stuff. Really, believe me... It is so time consuming and same time really hard. We luckily have relatives who can take some of our belongings so we didn't have to rent any sort of storage. Now we have basically only boxes left, all the furniture taken away except the bed we struggle to give away (nobody wants it...). And piano, we still have the piano becouse I insisted to keep it as long as possible since we can't take it with us, surprise surprise! Tomorrow is the day we have plannes to have the apartment empty and be able to clean it from the floor to the ceiling. Only minus is that I'll be working last day tomorrow and it's a lot in Mikko's hands to get this thing finished. In our plans we won't return here after tomorrow and so we can spend the holidays with our families without any moving stress.

I would like to write more, but more comes later, sorry for all the mistakes in my english, this is one fastly done post! ;)

From the Beginning

So time to start the story here in Tokyo Through Blue Eyes. It's 22th of July 2014 and there is approximately 160 days until the take off. Me and Mikko have been completing all our documents for our student visas, paid the application fees for Go!Go!Nihon and now we're just waiting for the results. The school we picked is called Yoshida Institute located in Waseda, Shinjuku-ku and the program level we're aiming for is intermediate (starting from N4 level aiming to N2) which takes 9 months. We already have arranged the apartment for us from Tokyo, with a bit of luck and out nationality it worked out very easily for us. We're going to be living in place called Nekotalo (neko = Japanese means cat, talo = Finnish, means house), which is owned by very friendly Hirasawa-san. The room itself is small (only 19 m^2), but the rent and reliability as well as the location in Koenji made us feel strong about our decision. We're looking forward this so much!

One of our biggest concerns at the moment is, not very surprisingly, money. Month after month we've been re-calculating our estimation how much it will cost to live in Tokyo for one month, but it has appeared to be really hard. We've been in Tokyo only as a tourists before, so it is extremely hard to figure out how low we can actually go for example with the food cost (because even eating out was actually pretty cheap and back then yen was really strong against euro, now we have advantage over that because yen is now weak against euro). Also estimating the cost of using public transportation and calling by phone has been almost impossible even with all the googling and research we have done, so we're estimating it hopefully far too high (100 euro for both in a month). Mikko actually checked the student fee for public transportation for our route from home to school and the program estimated it to be from 20-50 euro. The reason why the range is so wide is that is that the student visa we'll have will affect the discount and we're not sure how much.

Our goal for the coming 9 months has been 10 000 euro. When you apply a student visa in Japan for 6 months the government expects to see 1 000 000 yen in your account as a warranty that you are going to survive with life cost there. We've applied for that 6 months visa, because there is no 9 months visa and the warranty amount rises fast to 2 000 000 yen. The 6 months can be extended very easily so that's why we are depending on it. So our warranty amount, the 1 million yen is right now equivalent to approximately 7 300 euro. We're already over that and with the way our savings are going now, we're going to easily pass the 10 000 euro. It's huge relief for me, though I'm still wondering how our finances and calculations are going to work out.

And then when it comes to this moment, our biggest worry after all is to complete the N4 level in JLPT test in December. Without any lessons or courses it has took quite much of a self discipline because the kanji amount is quite a lot for only half a year. And the fact that we ordered our Minna no Nihongo -books almost 2 months ago and still haven't received them irritates me since the time is running all the time.

Oh well, we're still looking forward for it so much and gazing the suitable flights gets me exited every time! And we're lucky to have awesome parents too who have promised to back us up if the worst case scenario happens even though it's really the last option, since we want to do this on our own. (but the idea about it that this won't be at least ruined by money is pretty comforting)
Happy summer for all!
Yours, Acha

 

Nippori (Tokyo), 2012