I'll skip the apologies and get stuck straight in.
My friends and family back home generally ask me the following four questions:
How are your classes going?
What have you been up to lately?
Is it cold and/or has it been snowing in Akita?
What are your plans for Xmas?
I'll attempt to tackle each one in turn.
How are your classes going?
Generally pretty well I think. Been getting some generally pretty good marks, but nothing worth sticking on the fridge. I still have no idea how well I'm doing relative to my Newcastle classmates, though, which to me is the most important thing. I could be top of my class at AIU (which I'm not, but still...) and it would mean nothing if I went back to Newcastle and was still rubbish compared to my NCL chums.
But I have been knuckling down compared to last year, and seem to have found a bit of a system that seems to work. Although it might be worth mentioning that I did lose my bet with Sophie by 7 points (a fairly close margin for the semester), which means I have to declare myself a 'massive homosexual' in front of a cafeteria full of bemused students at the height of dinnertime... If I have anything to do with it there will be no video evidence, but you might be lucky.
What have you been up to lately?
Nothing tooo exciting as yet (see question 4). Quite a lot of walking around taking pictures of local scenery and stuff. One thing AIU has got going for it is that it's in a gorgeous location. A few weeks ago, on a nice Autumn day me and my friend Aishah decided to go and explore, taking some scenic snaps as we went. Would you believe THIS scene is about 15 minutes walk from campus:
Click on photo for more mobile Autumn pics
In another, albeit colder excursion, me and my friend Qwen decided to walk to Wada, small town 40 minutes walk away, in search of cream puffs:
mmmm... cream puff!
We've also been eating out quite a lot, which is the best way lose and gain pounds at the same time. There has been all you can eat yakiniku, several trips to the sushi place, Japanese-style burgers and okonomiyaki, to name but a few...
No-one told me they were meant to be round...
Other notable activites since the last post include:
Self mummified priests - We went to Yamagata to see some 400-year-old Buddhists who somehow managed to mummify themselves. The day also included a visit to a sake brewery. I don't really like sake that much, but free alcohol is free alcohol and much free samples were had by all.
Kamakura, Manga Museum and Weird Fun-Castle - Another school trip to various places around the prefecture, including the Kamakura Hall in Yokote. These Kamakura are basically Japanified igloos that never melt because they are kept at a constant -10°C inside a walk-in freezer much like the one in Budgens. The manga museum was nothing to write home about, but the Weird Fun-Castle was pretty cool. Four floors of optical illusions and games culminating in a 30ft vertical slide in a potato sack. Fun times.
More Exploration - As I had to go to the City to buy my train ticket (see question 4), me and Qwen decided to explore some sections of the city we hadn't seen yet.
Here are a few more pics
Is it cold and/or has it been snowing in Akita?
Yes, it is getting pretty cold, but so far we've only had one day of snow. We're expecting it pretty soon though, and it's going to be pretty bad around these parts, judging by the huge metal walls being erected at the sides of the roads, the wooden structures being erected around the trees in people's gardens and the red-and-white poles being erected along walkways throughout campus and the prefecture at large (I think that's enough erections for one paragraph, thank you very much). Hopefully Japan's public transport system can cope with whatever December throws at it (see question 4), but they seem ready for it:
What are your plans for Xmas?
Question 4 - you may have already seen it.
In December I get a nice 2 or 3 weeks off around Xmas. The train ticket I mentioned earlier is the 'Seichun 18 Kippu', a ticket that allows you 5 separate days of train travel, the only catch being that you must stick to the slow local trains. The ticket costs £90. If I was to do the trip I'm planning to do using the Shinkansen and express trains, I could be looking at spending four or five hundred pounds on trains alone. Put another way, without this ticket I would most probably be sitting alone in my room on Xmas day.
I've been invited to a couple of parties in various locations around central Japan. I'm going to try to make it to both, but it all depends on timing. I'm waiting on some times and dates before I make any concrete plans but the general gist is this:
Akita --> Niigata (where I should have a roof for the night courtesy of Couchsurfing.org) --> Kansai (Kyoto/Osaka and thereabouts --> Tokyo --> Sendai --> Back to Akita
The whole thing should take about 10-12 days, and will cover Xmas, if not New Year's Eve aswell, and should be an all round barrel of laughs
That's about it I think.
Bye for now x
