Spring Holiday

I'm finally into my spring holiday (struggled not to call it spring break then, I'm becoming Americanized, yuk) and everything is going well. The weather is finally starting to get warmer so I don't have to walk around in my clashing hat, scarf and coat combo and next week I'm off to the tropical Island of Okinawa to visit the wonderful Alice so I shouldn't need a coat at all.

Since my final presentation a couple of weeks ago I have been out and about quite a lot, had one too many bad hangovers and met lots of random people in random places. Unfortunately, not having to study until I get back to university in April I can already feel my academic Japanese slipping away and my Kanji knowledge flying out the window. I thought I would have lots of free time to study this week but as each day has passed my little schedule book has filled up and so I now only have one free day left until Okinawa which I'm sure will no longer be free by Wednesday.
Other than not studying I have been spending most of my time with friends at Yokohama. Lots of people are leaving now so I have to go to every leaving party to say my farewells. It's pretty sad and I'm not so fond of the change but it makes me appreciate all the awesome people from all over the world that I have had the opportunity to meet since coming to Japan and I hope to someday bump in to in the future. My friend Lauren leaves on Friday which I'm rather gutted about; my dorms are going to be quite lonely without her as she is my tea buddy and com padre. Luckily I only have two days in the dorms after she goes before I set off traveling so I wont have too much time to mope about.
Anyway, for one of Laurens leaving do's we all went out to AgeHa (the biggest club in Asia), and it was perhaps one of the most fun nights I have ever had. It was a good drunken night of general merry making, dancing and talking random crap to Japanese people. In Japanese clubs the use of cameras is banned but being foreign, drunk and having a general dislike of pointless rules Lauren brought one in anyway. This ended in her being caught taking photos by security several times and thus being chased around the club because she refused to put it in the locker and also resulting in many comedy style chases in which we were all involved. Eventually we ended up getting thrown out of the club with some people getting banned but it didn't matter- we about to leave anyway since it was 6 in the morning!

Other than getting drunk and general merry making I also went to visit my friend Jay in Kanazawa and have managed to meet up with lots of other Sheffield people. Always good to catch up with people and hopefully I'll be able to see a few people that I have yet to meet in Japan this weekend when I go to see the plum blossom.

I'm sat down on my bed with a rather over brewed cup of tea trying to waste time until I'm tired enough to go to sleep. I have my last presentation tomorrow, report is finished, as is my Sheffield year abroad project plan. Which means from 11.45 tomorrow morning I am a free agent, no more work for a month and a half. It feels really weird. I hope I don't lose all my Japanese in that time.
The next week and a half is pretty crammed full of stuff so I shouldn't be sat about in my room wasting more time on facebook and youtube. Hurrah!

Rather than telling you what I might be up to though, I'll tell you what I have done in the past few eeks. My amazing weekend of 'opportunity' turned out to be a rather quiet one; never made it out clubbing on the Friday night but I did manage to get drunk enough so that my hangover prevented me from leaving bed for the next day thus missing out on the Hakone trip! Better luck next time , eh!
I did however manage to have a week of childish fun which involved a ball pit, a trip to Disney sea (similar to Disney land... but on the sea), seeing dragons dance at Chinese new year and going out to a gay club. It really has been manic, not to mention expensive, but a lot of fun. I think my Japan cold has got even worse but I've learnt to live with it.
The gay club had to be one of the strangest nights I've had in Japan. It wasn't so different from gay clubs in England only there were more gay people and less 'breeders' (as Colleen so nicely calls straight people). The thing is, since most Japanese people don't actually believe that gay people exist in Japan and that it is some foreign evil culture, gay people here don't really expect straight people to have any understanding or tolerance for them. Which is ridiculous but understandable. Anyway, this meant that there was quite a lot of awkward explaining to be done but it turned out to be a brilliantly fun night and we could not stop dancing to all the cheesy classics that are expected from a gay club. There was even a bit of pole dancing. Luckily not too much from me but my friend Jaycob who must have some kind of pole fetish as we could not prise him off it for the life of us.
After an entire night of dancing, looking sweaty and an encounter with a scary fake French model we finally got home at 7.30 in the morning. I was ready to sleep for the entire day but it was a friends birthday so I had to get up after 4 hours sleep to go for an all you can eat buffet. I thought I was going to die, I have never been so tired in my life. Even worse than the night bus/snowboarding trip.

I think I have managed to catch up on my sleep now. I have got all my work done so that's a good sign and I'm going to go to bed relatively early as I have to get up in time for the presentation tomorrow.

Life here is either extremely tiring or it feels like there is nothing to do. The latter in never actually true, just feels that way sometimes. Not from now on though... yikes!

Taurus

My iGoogle daily horoscope told me this today- 'Don't be afraid of enjoying your own company, no matter what you are doing.' Of course being a highly reliable source and great guide to life I always take iGoogles advice very seriously, especially as horoscopes are so accurate... or maybe not. But this one really did make me think. It's something that I really do need to learn to do; be able to be by myself and not feel really bored, lonely and after a while, quite sad. I don't know if it's just that I am a really 'social' (i.e. can't keep my big mouth shut) person and love company or just that I have no idea how to spend my time if someone else isn't occupying it. It's probably a mix of both to be fair but from now on I'm going to try and learn to enjoy the time I have to myself because sometimes people are just too busy to so something. Like this week, where I have finished most of my work and everyone else still has exams.

Saying that though, I do have a pretty packed weekend ahead- I'm going out clubbing tomorrow night and then to Hakone to go to some hot springs on Saturday night and then I have to finish my report and presentation by next week sometime. So spare time to drive myself crazy in my room isn't abundant to say the least.
I'm really looking forward to having the time to go out and have fun without having to think about any uni work, meet new people and get to know the people I already know even better. It wont be long now, just two weeks I hope, I'm sure I can hold out for that long.

I decided on my new years resolution too- I always go for a nice vague one and it's the same this year- from now on I'm going to take every opportunity that I can. I feel like I've missed out on quite a bit here at Yokohama and also doing things in Japan in general so from now on I'm going to make sure I take every opportunity I have to do interesting and fun stuff here. No saying no to offers, no making excuses about lots of work; I forgot somewhere along the way that I did Japanese to have an awesome year in Japan having loads of fun, not just to get better at Japanese (albeit that is important too!). It's all about the experience and I don't want to waste my time in a tiny dorm room (Someone I know here who only goes out for lectures or to get something from the supermarket).
My opinion might change somewhat when I start all my hard classes next semester but then it'll be about balance I suppose.

That's all for my ramblings today; not got much to say, will write more after this weekend I hope

Snowboarding!

That's right, believe your eyes...it's me on a snowboard going down a mountain! A beautiful vision in red.
This weekend I went to Nagano, a mountainous region in Japan with one of the societies at my university and it was brilliant! I was so nervous about going, what with never having snowboarded before and being a little more than retarded at sports but everything turned out to be great.
The weekend started with a rather hellish night bus journey that lasted 8 hours, regardless of Nagano only being a four hour drive away. We spent the night on the bus instead of getting there quickly and having a nice bed. Japan does have it's ways of saving money. After only having one hours sleep we arrived at 7 in the morning and got on to the slopes straight away. I felt like death and wanted nothing more to be in a nice warm bed with a hot water bottle.
So, as I said before, not having any experience in snowboarding when I stood up for the first time and slipped about 1 meter down hill I was on my arse after a good 2 seconds. Not bad for my first try! Luckily for me I had my friend Lauren on hand; without her I don't think I would have had the will to keep trying. She taught me all the basics and by lunch time I was much further than I ever could imagine and was going down the best of the learner slopes (albeit falling over every ten seconds but at least I was getting to the bottom!). Half-way through the day and I was pooped, I really felt like giving up and going back to the hotel to sleep but my friends persuaded me to go up the mountain instead and give it a go. I'm so so so so happy that I did it! I was terrified at first, the slope was so steep but it was such an awesome feeling to get to the bottom.
After the first day my muscles murdered. I actually couldn't comprehend how I could do the second day because everything hurt so much.However, I don't know why but as soon as you stand up on a snowboard and get started you forget all those feelings and just want to bomb it down the mountainside. By the end of the second day, and the trip, I felt like I had achieved a lot (with thanks to all the people I was with who kept me cheerful, on my feet, having a good time and telling me how to do it :-) ), I had got some basic stuff down and was beginning to get to grips with being able to snowboard properly. I never learned how to turn properly but I did manage to slide down a mountain on a piece of plastic without breaking anything. something to be proud of methinks! I even enjoyed falling over all the time; I must say, I did spent about 60% of my time on the floor trying to get up again. Thanks to this trip I'd really love to snowboard again and I'm already planning a trip to France. Hehe!


I haven't blogged for ages now and ,again, I'm really sorry. What have I been doing? I went to Oz and had a surprisingly not so hot Xmas, been dealing with heart-break and trying to be on top of all my work; this month being even worse than the others... and this coming week is the worst yet as I have two exams and three presentations on top of all the usual stuff I have to do. But as is the way, life goes on and things will get better; some through hard work and others through the time. At the moment it can sometimes feel like everything is hard work, like being smiley and cheerful (my usual self I suppose), but I know that'll fix after a while, especially with the help of everyone here and at home. Thank you to those people- you know who you are!!! :-)