Japanese Diary - A brief recap!

Okay, we are absolutely going to gloss over the fact that I haven't posted in too long and I'm just going to pick up where I left of by filling in the massive gap with a wonderful recap of all the things worth noting in between! (Shhhh just go along with it)

So, where did I last leave off? Sometime in September I think (uhhhh)! Since then, I've done a ton of stuff, my mum and sister Tamla came to visit me and we went to Nara and Disneyland and a load of other stuff, I finally went to Kyoto, went to pet expo, I took a JLPT exam, I actually went home for Christmas (but still managed to do some cool things!), my friend Alex came back with me from England and we spent New Year together, I've visited a ton of temples and shrines, I baked a lot, a POKEMON GYM opened nearby, I bought a lot (I dress way cuter now) and pretty much the list of things goes on.

I swear, this will just be a brief post and then I will bombard with loads of extra posts about each major event individually until I've made up for my lazy absence! So with that, lets go!

Okay, so, to start off, in October I had the wonderful pleasure of being visited by my mum and oldest little sister Tamla for 10 days! It was a very jam-packed week and a bit to be honest, we managed to fit so much in and were completely exhausted by the end of it, but it was their first time visiting Japan and we had so much fun! I'm going to be writing about the week in it's own post I think, there is just toooo much to fit in to here, and it includes two days in Tokyo and Tokyo Disneyland, a day in Nara, a trip to the top of the Umeda Sky Tower, and more!

In November I FINALLY after being here SO LONG made it to Kyoto for a day trip! I went with a Japanese friend, my teachers daughter Erika, as she goes to Kyoto University and could show me around! We spent time around Gion and the shrines and gardens, and then we to the Kyoto University School Festival to have a look around! I ate some chameleon yakisoba, made by the science clubs food stall (It changed colour when you added lemon juice! it was amazing!) and we wandered around various university club exhibitions, including the calligraphy, origami and pokemon club, and held a cute lizard in some sort of science related club room, and there was traditional Japanese dancing to watch too, it was all pretty busy. After that we went wandering round a few of the shops near Gion and found the KitKat Chocolatory store. Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I love kitkats so this was pretty much heaven for me!

In November I also went to pet expo with my host family and the dogs! It was a pretty incredible experience, a huge convention hall filled with people and their pets, sooooo many cute dogs, almost all wearing clothes, some wearing sunglasses, there was a goat on a lead and a stall from a company that organises pet weddings, complete with cake!

Another thing I did with my host family was visit Tanzan Jinja, a shrine on a mountain nearby, to view the momiji, or the autumn leaves. It was a rainy day, but it was actually breathtakingly beautiful to see so many colours in the leaves, and I took so many photographs! My personal reccomendation is for everyone to visit Japan in the Autumn, it is really the best season to see Japan in all its beauty, without the heat of summer, or the price of spring!

Behold, my expert photography skills

December started off with me pretty immediately taking the JLPT at level N5. Exams are scary, but I revised hard and still have no idea if I passed, the results should be coming out next week!

I then spent half of the month back in England, Christmas is a pretty important time to spend together in my family and there is absolutely no way I could have coped not seeing them all over Christmas! I also got to spend some lovely time with my boyfriend, Jason, long distance relationships are hard but not impossible, but it did feel so much better to be together again! I also got to enjoy my AMAZING Christmas present from him, which was tickets to the Pokemon Symphonic Evolutions orchestral concert in London! There was something truly magical about listening to all of the music from the pokemon games being played in a theatre by the London philharmonic, especially when it ended with a sing-a-long of 'I want to be the very best'! But overall I had a pretty typical Christmas surrounded by my family, it was really great!

The end of December, when I returned to Osaka, I was joined by my cool friend Alex 'The Blue Girl'. As my host family were going away for a few days over new year and didn't want me to be lonely, they said I could invite a friend to stay if I wanted to, and then we proceeded to cram as much activity into every single possible minute that we could whilst she was here! We did Nara, Kyoto, soooooo much shopping, went to Expo City, we stayed overnight in a buddhist temple on top of a mountain, on new years ever we went for midnight at Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, we went to an owl cafe, literally just so much that its getting its own blog post!!!

So yeah, maybe I have had a lot going on the last few months but that still doesn't excuse me from my lack of posting. ごめんなさいいいいい！

Okay, that was a not so brief catch up, but more detailed accounts of some things will be following... sometime I guess, but for now, またね〜 From Osaka!

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

Japanese Diary -Arriving in Japan, Part 2

So, where were we when I left off at part one? Arriving in Osaka I guess! It was the first time I had ever flown domestically so to be honest, I was not expecting the simplicity. I mean, it sounds stupid but I wasn't expecting it to be so quick! I flew between Haneda Airport and Itami, and it was a really pleasant short flight, actually! Just over an hour, but there was so much complimentary food and they brought drinks round every 5 minutes!

 

Osaka!!

 Upon arriving at Itami I got a taxi to my new home for a year-ish. The airport is actually in the middle of the city so it's kind of cool to see it from a distance, looks like the planes are landing right between the buildings! So the taxi pulls up outside where I am staying, the security guard comes out to help me with my bags and open the huge entrance gates for me, pretty much from that point on it became a surreal dream. One thing I was really lucky about was to have the previous au pair girl still there for two weeks. The very sweet Maiken from Norway, if it wasn't for her I would have been so much more lost and panicky. She gave me so much advice and instruction both before and after my arrival. She had also told me that the house was really big but I still underestimated it and didn't really believe it till I arrived. 

Scale model of the house...

The house is kind of a mix between some huge English mansion, with marble floors and statues, and huge crystal chandeliers, and a traditional Japanese house, with tatami flooring, a tea house, even an onsen style outdoor bath. As I said, it feels totally surreal to be here and I'm still not sure if I really am! So, obviously I am here to work, as an au pair to the couple that live here, and lets not forget the best bit; they don't have children, I am au pairing for their two poodle puppies. Yeah, dream job. Their names are Shiro and Kuro, translating to white and black, from Japanese. Incase you were wondering, Shiro is the white poodle, Kuro is the black one :)

 

So not only are the couple really sweet, the dogs are great (though really really naughty at times) although they take very little looking after, so most of my work is cleaning and tidying the house and gardens, which as you can imagine is a lot of work. It can be quite varied though, as there are so many things to do. It can range from scrubbing the floor, to sweeping leaves, to making rice, so far my favourite tasks are grocery shopping and taking the dogs out, though I do dislike going outside for any other reason. Somehow, I am a magnet for bugs, especially ones that bite, so it doesn't matter how much mosquito repellent I wear, I will always come inside covered in marks. I now sleep with a pesticide near my head as they bite my face in the night, isn't that sad? The main problem though is just how many bugs Japan has. The answer is too many, and they are all so damn big, I mean giant versions of normal bugs, and it's terrifying. I could actually go on for ages about the bugs, but maybe I should leave that for another blog. Or maybe I should just leave it altogether... 

Aaaaaaaaanyway. 

So I've been here a month now, I feel like I should quickly summarise a few of the things that have happened, and some of them will be getting their own posts too! So, I was shown all the best shopping spots in Osaka by Maiken, including my new favourite clothes shop called Secret Honey, and most importantly, the Pokemon Center. I have frequented the Pokemon Center many times, and there are many more times to come.

We went to Wakayama Adventure World! This is an amazing Safari Park/Zoo/Research Center and we  had a great time there!

Maiken left Japan two weeks after I arrived, and then I had to continue on my own from there... It hasn't been too bad though, I think I have mastered the trains and busses now, and getting around is just so easy!

I started my Japanese Lessons! Its a free volunteer-based thing, but I feel like it's really good for me, and I'll write more about this one at some point.

FOOD. I have eaten so much good food in Japan. I've tried Osaka's speciality, Okonomiyaki, and I've eaten so much cake! I've also learnt how to cook a few dishes myself. I think food deserves it's own blog post at some point.

I've also joined a boardgames group/club? I've only been once so far (next meet is next month) but it was tons of fun and I think it was a super great way to make friends.

Ah, to be honest this last month has passed by so fast, I'm probably missing quite a few things that I can't even remember any more! I hope I can do more frequent (but maybe shorter) posts and try and record all the cool things that happen here on a daily basis, thats a much better plan.

So for now, またね〜 From Osaka, I really hope I don't slip up on updating this thing, but I forgot how hard blogging was!

New start!

So, it's completely possible that in am really bad at blogging. I've started and stopped this so many times the place is a bit of a mess really,  but at the moment I am currently residing in Osaka, Japan, and working as kind of an aupair, and I want to talk about it properly. I'm going to to try and kick start this blog as a sort of diary of living in Japan, and I hope it won't be too boring. I'll try and sort out some sort of schedule too, I want to do this properly! I've only been here one week so far and I don't have internet on my laptop yet, but soon that should all be sorted :)

So for now, またね~ from Osaka!