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 ~

Kansai! Nara & Izu

The day before we were supposed to bring the car back, we left behind our Kyoto apartment and headed towards Nara. Traffic took us more time than we thought, but luckily we reached the Nara Park during daylight. We all knew that there was supposed to be deers in Nara Park, but I guess all of us were surprised how many and how fearless they were. Half of the secret were cookies made speacially for deers, which you could buy from a small stalls in the park. The only problem was that if the deers would notice you having a packet you were surrounded immediately. I have dealed with horses since I was young so I didn't find this pony size creatures scary at all. Some of the males tried to poke you with horns if you didn't give the cookie, but just walking fearlessly through the pack would be still enough for you to get your way. But still, how cute those were. <3

The weather was wavering between rain, lightnings and basic sunny day, which made the air so tence and moist that it really didn't courage to walk very much in the forest though. Other challenge were hornets. Hornets are huge, at least size of a thumb, wasp kind of bugs which are much more dangerous than wasps. They were litterally everywhere when you entranced the forest were the temples were. We tried to avoid them as much as possible, but they always found us.

We headed back to the car around 6pm, around the same time when sun was starting to set. We didn't have time to visit at any other sightseeing place than Nara Park which was kind of a pitty, but at least we saw the deers. We had already before the trp decided that the return to Tokyo would be through smaller roads that would not charge money for using them. So when we hit this option to the navigator, it kindly told us that we will arrive to Shizuoka at 3am. It was kind of a pessimistic guess, because acutally we were there already at 2am, so we picked a manga cafe where to get some sleep before last day. This manga cafe wasn't like they usually are (only curtains instead of sliding door, they hit the lights on at 7am, plankets cost money), but we were all too tired to actually care.

Next morning we set our curse towards to Izu penisula. Our big plan was to drive to the head of penisula, spend some time on the beach and then drive all the way to Tokyo to return the car before 19pm. Well, we of course didn't realize (since none of us had been in Izu before) that we were only able to use serpent like mountain roads in order to the get to the tip of Izu. And then you can guess that it took some time. So reality: we had one hour time to be at the beach. So we quickly swam in the sea (my first time in Japan), but I have to say, the waves were much mure higher than I thought they would be. We were in the water about half an hour, but that alone was able to make you tired. Even I have a swimmer backgroud. ^^ So after that we return to the car and returned to Tokyo. Izu is definetly one of those places were I would like to still go back before returning to Finland. And that's how our trip to Kansai area came to the end. Happy and tired.

Nara park

Izu Penisula