Tarto in Japan

I'm really pissed off!...I never had any problem while leaving it for hours at the station and the supermarket, and it was stolen at the student village, right in front of the window of another student!...

It's not a matter of money (I was renting it 5000 yen, that is around 40 dollars, for 3 months...), but I don't like knowing that this kind of thing happens in Japan too. I've talked about that fact with many people and it seems to eventually happens if you don't lock your bike. According to the Japanese people, it happens VERY often: obviously they don't know how it is in other countries, because a bike wouldn't survive more than an hour in Paris in such conditions! :-)

That doesn't change my overall opinion about security in Japan, but still it's not anymore what it used to be...too much western influence maybe?...

Sorry, I haven't been able to update my blog for the last 2 days. I'm still tired because of the jetlag, yesterday I spent the whole day alternating between naps and Japanese studies. But I'm starting to get accustomed to my new life. I've found a department store 5 minutes walk from my place, cheaper than the combini (convenient store), and met a couple other students.

As for food, I'd like to prepare my own meals because I like to cook. So far, I've exclusively eaten bentos (tonkatsu, sushis), and I even had my first "instant lamen" (instant noodle soup) today. Instant lamen is the counterpart of steak-pasta in France, it's the base dish of every student :-) But I'll start preparing my own meals soon, and I'd really like to become able to read Japanese cookbooks!

Besides, I can't live without fruits, and they're much more expensive here than in France. Moreover, I don't know where all the delicious exotic fruits one can find in southeast Asia go, but definitely not to Japan :-( I remember insane prices in big department stores such as Mitsukoshi and Daimaru 3 years ago in Fukuoka, for instance melons at 30 euros and apples at 10 euros (each of course!). Of course, these are extreme examples but it's still a bit scary...However it's not the rule but still, prices seem about twice as expensive as in France. So I bought kiwis I found at a reasonable price (5 kiwis for 3 euros). As for the rest of the food, I need to make a small comparison but so far, it looks like prepared meals are cheaper, whereas base products are more expensive than in France. To be confirmed.

I also took my placement test this morning, and there's nothing to complain about the organization and seriousness of the process! It started with a written test, then we had to fill a form, and finally there was an oral test with two female interviewers (yes, only women, dunno why!). As soon as the written test was over, the correctors were already working to provide results to the interviewers, who could then tailor the oral test to suit each student's level. Everything was done well and quick...that's Japanese efficiency! Overall, I found the tests very well designed. The first exercises were a piece of cake, then the difficulty raised progressively, until the last exercise that I could hardly understand ;-) Same for the oral test: the questions used more and more complex vocabulary and grammar, and after one hour I was exhausted and couldn't understand anything :-) Thankfully, the interviewers were very friendly and did everything to make us feel comfortable. In the end, I think the results perfectly match my expectations. I'm going to start in an intermediate group. Basically, I can understand all common grammatical forms, but I get lost as sentences get longer and start combining several forms. It's right in the continuity of the Japanese course I followed in Paris prior to coming here.

I wanted to go to the center this afternoon to take pics and buy a bicycle, but I was still suffering from the jetlag and I ended up sleeping in bed all afternoon. Tonight I went to Okazaki arcade center...and was disappointed. No DDR, many games I don't give a shit about, there were pulikulas but it's meaningless when you're alone and most important, I didn't have this feeling of gigantism and amazing things I had in Fukuoka's Namco center. I still enjoyed playing Taiko no tatsujin, but the sound was too low (which sucks for a music game!). I guess most of you haven't understood my last two sentences :-), so I'll detail that later (I have one year to tell you about Japan, it should be enough...).

Tomorrow, I'm going to Nagoya with other students I met today. I've no idea what we're gonna do there, but for this first visit I don't want to plan anything and I'll see how it goes. Don't worry, I'll take pictures!

Mata ne (see you)!

Not translated yet

Contrary to what I thought, I have VERY little feedback from you English speakers. Please let me know if you actually read my blog, otherwise I'll just update the French section, as it's quite time-consuming to translate every single post. Thanks!

A quick hello from Seoul! Everything's fine, the 10 hours of flight passed rather quickly, but I still want to arrive soon! It's 07:45AM GMT+9 (or 8, not completely sure), and my plane takes off at 08:45 ! Nagoya, I'm coming !

A dream comes true!

I've been preparing this trip for almost 2 years, and it finally becomes reality! Now it's more concrete than ever: I'm leaving France today, and I'm going to spend one year in Japan! I feel very excited about this trip, but I also feel very sad, because my girlfriend is staying in France and we're not gonna see each other for 3 months...

As you all know, my mother is Japanese, but I've always lived in France. It's been nearly 2 years since I made the decision to go to Japan. This idea came during my first trip to Cambodia, when I met a French guy who was living in Japan. He told me about his (fascinating) story, how he arrived in Japan with absolutely no knowledge of the language, no job and hardly any money, how he managed to get a job in his field, and how he ended up spending 5 years there. Then I don't know what happened, but as the days passed I started myself to consider going to Japan. I think he had somewhat awaken a feeling lying in me...Anyway, by the time I came back to France, I had made up my mind.

However, I had no clue what to do there. Would I try to find a job, or just tour the country? How long would I stay, where would I go? Sure, I have relatives there, but they live in a small (and boring) town and there's no way I'd like to stay there for more than a month. There seemed to be too many obstacles to overcome, but in the end it all went down to three words: money, job, language. Finding a job was definitely impossible because my Japanese was way too bad. On the other hand, to afford studying Japanese in Tokyo, I needed a job that would provide an income...

I decided not to rush headlong into this project and accepted the fact that it might take one or two years to achieve. I entered a Japanese institute in Paris to improve my Japanese and went back to my mom's apartment to save up money (much!) faster. I gathered information about the visas, checked out the job offers in Japan, browsed through a bunch of Japan-related websites to gather information and read about other people's experiences...But I still couldn't find a way to put everything together.

I found the solution by chance: as I was browsing the Internet, I came up across a Japanese language institute called Yamasa. They had an incredibly detailed and informative website, and I quickly found out that it was a very serious institute with high-quality language courses. On top of that, they were located near Nagoya, which made them much cheaper than their counterparts in Tokyo, making it affordable for me...I had made my decision!

From then on, everything flowed nicely. I obtained a working-holiday visa pretty easily, which allows me to stay one year in Japan and have a part-time job. I found a flight that wasn't too expensive, took out a health insurance, resigned from my job, subscribed a new bank account to make overseas fun transfers easier, and did a lot of other little things to prepare my trip. And the most important: I met a pretty and lovely girl I fell in love with!!! :-D

So here's my planned schedule:
- spend the first 3 months at Yamasa institute
- go to Tokyo, meet my girlfriend there and spend one month with her. We'll probably stay a couple of days at Tokyo then travel around.
- maybe go back to Yamasa for another 2 months
- visit my relatives in the south-west of the country, for about a month
- visit friends in Tokyo and find a part-time job there
- meet my girlfriend again, and tour Japan with her and other friends
Of course, this is likely to change...But I'll keep you posted!