Japanese Diary - Japanese Lessons!

Since coming to Japan, I knew one of my main goals was to become better at Japanese, so of course the obvious thing I needed to do once I got here was join a language class. I was lucky enough to be introduced to some free, volunteer based Japanese lessons pretty quickly, and although I was originally prepared to pay for classes I'm so glad I have these now instead!

The format seems a little strange at first; the class is run by volunteers and is for learning both English and Japanese. So Japanese residents are there as well as foreigners, and mostly they are teamed up to talk to one another and learn from one another. Although, most of the volunteers do speak both languages, so in my case I was paired with a volunteer, Soma-Sensei, and she teaches me a little more formally (print outs from work books and kanji drills etc.). It's pretty good, especially since she used to be a teacher before. She also kind of chose me, as she loves England, which is cool. She lived there for a couple of years, in Reading too! So she was really excited when I said I lived near there (even her email address is her old Reading Postcode!). As well as that though, every other week there are slight changes to the format, where people are asked to form small groups and talk about a specific subject etc. which is great from a getting to know new people side, as well as being forced to communicate with people who may not share English as a language!

In all, I think these lessons are great for me! I'm already learning a lot, and the chance to talk to natives who are really interested in talking to me, as well as talking to other Japanese learners at a similar level to me is really helping me to cement concepts such as grammar patterns, which I struggle with! Now to just cram vocabulary in my own time and I'll be good... eventually. I really want to aim for N4 in December, maybe I can do it! (Or not...)

This is kind of a short one, but I thought it was an important thing to talk about, if you know where to look then finding quality language lessons is possible!

But for now, またね〜 From Osaka

Japanese Diary - Mount Fuji!

In a bizarre turn of events, it turns out that in just 10 days I will be climbing Mount Fuji with a friend I met here in Osaka. We kinda talked about it for a little while, then all of a sudden we've started booking things and making sure we have appropriate climbing gear?!

Ah, for a little more clarification, Mount Fuji is actually only open to climbers (that aren't professional, and crazy) from early July to early September, as that is the only time that there is little enough snow to actually reach the summit. Apparently its tough, but manageable for amateur climbers. Which is good, as my experience with mountains is 'once I walked across Dartmoor for about 10 minutes, then back to the car'. But I should be climbing it over a weekend, here is my plan in a little more detail:

 We will get an overnight bus from Osaka to Tokyo on the 24th July, arriving at Kawaguchiko station (near Tokyo) at 8.30am on Saturday 25th. From there we will get the shuttle bus to Mount Fuji’s 5th station, about 1/3 of the way up the mountain. After adjusting to the change in altitude for an hour or so (and probably grabbing breakfast)  we'll start climbing Fuji's Yoshida trail, the easiest and most popular trail, and hike for around 5 hours till we reach the 8th station, where we will be staying overnight and leaving again around 3am to hike the last hour and a half to reach the summit for the sunrise. Then I can't wait to post postcards from Japan's highest post office, and have ramen on the summit too. Then we have a 3-4 hour climb back down before getting the bus back to Osaka (ready for work on Monday morning waaah)

I also felt like I really wanted to make this for a good cause, so I decide to set up a just giving page to support Rowcroft Hospice! They do really amazing things and it would be really great if I could do this cool thing whilst also raising a bit of money for them.

Please feel free to donate towards me here!

Have some Mount Fuji Facts (possibly to beef this post out a little and make you think you learned something) 

Mount Fuji (Fuji-san, 富士山 in Japanese) is the highest volcano and highest peak in Japan and considered one of the 3 Holy Mountains (along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku). Fuji is a perfect, beautiful stratovolcano about 60 miles south-west of Tokyo, with an exceptionally symmetrical shape making it into famous symbol of Japan and an important element in Japanese art. It is a popular destination for excursions. More than 200,000 people climb to the top of the Mt Fuji every year. The last eruption of Mt Fuji was in 1707–08. Between 2000 and 2001, seismic activity under the volcano was at slightly elevated levels, rising concern about a possible reawakening of the volcano. 

Gotta get to the top of that...

I'll be posting at least an update when I have finished, maybe even something from on top of the mountain (It has WiFi now...) So keep tuned~

But for now, またね〜 From Osaka

And maybe please consider donating for my climb that'd be cool of you! Click :D 

Japanese Diary - Wakayama Adventure World

Adventure World, Zoo, Safari Park, Research Center and more...

As a treat, for my arrival in Japan, and as Maikens last weekend in Japan, my host family took us to Wakayama for a weekend to visit ADVENTURE WORLD! After my experience at Ueno Zoo, I wasn't too sure what to expect from this, but I did some research beforehand and it seemed overall positive. And it really was! WAW is a really weird mix of zoo/safari/theme park, and is most famous for it's excellent Panda breeding program, 7 have been born at the zoo to date, and it is the most successful Panda breeding centre outside of China. In fact, two adorable baby panda twins were born last December, so they are at a cute toddler stage at the moment, and when we visited.

Red Panda!

There really was so much to do at Adventure World, but first things first, we arrived two hours before it opened to get in first to run to the safari booth and book tickets on the car safari, because that's how the Japanese roll (Also it was already pretty busy when we arrived, and half an hour before it opened there were a few hundred people queued behind us!) The car Safari was such a great experience too! I'm so glad we got onto it, I got some great pictures too! But first of all, after we got a slot on the safari (for later in the day) we headed over to the Arctic zone to see the penguins and Polar Bears! It was almost polar bear feeding time, and although I love the penguins and appreciate their cuteness (I got tons of photos) I was really excited to see a polar bear in a better environment than in Ueno zoo. Although maybe the enclosures could have been a bit bigger, it was definitely a great improvement on the Ueno area, most importantly these bears were inside so they had a lovely temperature controlled cool place to rest (In Ueno the bears were locked outside until it was time to go in :( ). The bears were so beautiful and it was amazing to see them diving into the water to chase the food as it was thrown in, though one bear was quite grumpy and even stuck his tongue out, it was cute! After that, we wondered around at our own pace for a while till it was time for the safari. I was really excited to find a section called 'Wan Wan Garden', which was a huge area filled with dogs, you could just go and sit or play with! There was a ton of different breeds of dogs, from Labradors to Jack Russels to Corgis, and although most of them were sleeping were sleeping when we went in, the ones that were awake were so friendly! 

Only in Japan
This dog just wondered around the park, smiling at people <3

When we finally got to the safari, it was so worth it! I've never been on any sort of safari before, and although it wasn't truly in a huge open space (It was still within the zoo, as you could walk around the enclosures on the walking safari) It was still a pretty big series of areas (lions, tigers, bears and cheetahs were separated) and the animals really did come up SO CLOSE! At one point a Tiger almost escaped from its area into the cheetahs, it was exciting but they managed to scare it away with a siren and bribes of meat. It was also so interesting to see the kinds of animals that lived well together... there were some strange giant cow animals that happily loved alongside the cheetahs for no reason, but neither hurt the other, which is good I guess. One day I'd love to go on a real safari, but for now this was a really amazing experience!

No zoom, he was almost at the window of the car!

Next we went to see the star attractions; the baby pandas! It was kind of a long queue around the panda area, I think we waited for 30 minutes, but there were signs saying that the wait could be over an hour! But basically, in the panda room, its a continuous line of people walking past to see them, so even after ll that wait you only really get a minute or so to walk past, and take photos. I really didn't mind though, it was amazing to see the pandas so happy and playing together (it was the two babies and the mum, I believe) and I still got some really cute photos as I walked past!

 

One of the Panda twins~

We also saw two different shows through the day, the dolphin performance, which was beautifully choreographed and really interesting to watch, but my favourite was the second, Animal Magic. It was a really varied show consisting of loads and loads of different trained animals from dogs, to otters, to goats and horses, to seals, and it was really entertaining, in a whoah kind of way, and it was really funny too. All of the animals were trained so well, so really fun to watch, my favourite part though was when a few sealions came out to do tricks, followed by one fat seal and he was jiggling along and I loved him!

Of course, when we stopped for lunch, all of the food options were completely adorable. 99% of things were plastered in cute Panda decorations, but I went for this adorable Tiger Donburi (Rice bowl) and it was tastyyyyy! めっちゃ美味しい！ It was also a pretty hot day, so there was tons of ice cream and other cool treats to be had pretty much everywhere. Churros were also really popular, and I finally got to try castella pastries, in the form of cute little baby animals.

The food is adorable no matter where you are in Japan.

That about sums up my trip to Adventure world, well, at least all I can remember anyway! I left this post waaaay too long! If anyone wants to know anything more then please leave a comment and I'll get back to you!

So for now, またね〜 From Osaka