Halloween and the cultural festival

Thanks to the Kanazawa University Cultural Festival (or Kindaisai, as everyone usually calls it) we got no less than five days’ holiday. To celebrate the newfound freedom, they threw a Halloween party in the common area of my dorm on Thursday night. It was rather similar to the one I had attended earlier, only this time with costumes. Some people had really gone all out on the theme, and there were a lot of interesting costumes. I just went with the classic black clothes + yellow accessories + the witch hat – however, that was enough for me to fit right in.

The party was a lot of fun and my bed was literally within 50 metres’ radius from the common hall, so I didn’t bother going to sleep until around five in the morning. Friday was spent mostly sleeping and drinking tea while watching various TV shows online and eating mainly cup noodles and other quick fix meals  – a very successful day, indeed.

 

Saturday and Monday were reserved for the actual festival (Sunday was mainly shopping and lazing around in my neighbours' houses eating and bonding over silly things). Those who have watched school-themed anime series probably know what goes on: the campus is filled with food stalls and stages, most classrooms are turned into cafés and exhibitions etc. Student clubs or “circles” each arrange some sort of performance or sell street-kitchen type foods to raise funds for their activities. I visited two different art exhibitions, saw a juggling show, bought some manga from a second-hand bookshop, tried shooting with a beam rifle, enjoyed a kimono fashion show (some of my favourite ones below)…all the while buying several helpings of delicious foods. Of course there were plenty of other things I didn’t have time for, from volleyball tournaments to history lectures to miniature train displays – plus at least two live band concerts going on in different locations practically nonstop, for three days.

 

  

One of my favourite performances was right at the end. It was a dance group who mix traditional Japanese dance with more modern elements and they are very, very cheerful about it. The whole show just put me in a really good mood and their costumes were simply amazing! I did actually manage to take decent video this time, but am experiencing technical difficulties uploading it... Hopefully it will be up in the near future.

The dance group "Irodori"

The weather was cold (for the first time since my arrival) but the food was delicious!
The picture is from Monday, and there were clearly less people around already.

EDIT: Finally got the video to work...somewhat. I had to take a tiny little clip and the quality of course became pure rubbish in the uploading process....... Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose.
 

 

In and out of town

Life is starting to settle to a comfortable rhythm here. I have classes in the morning and afternoon, which leaves me a nice, 2,5 hour period between so I can work on any unfinished homework, have lunch, look at the books in the student union store or just go back to the dorm and take a nap. All the official procedures are now more or less complete: I even bought a Japanese mobile phone recently! It was a bit of a bother because I didn’t have all the necessary documents the first time I went to the shop and my Japanese ATM card still hasn’t arrived…but the phone does seem to be working.

The last weekend of October was surprisingly busy considering that I originally hadn’t had any plans. However, as soon as I had arranged a shopping / sightseeing trip to the Kanazawa city centre with a couple of international students for Saturday, my tutor told me that I could come mountain-climbing with her on Sunday, after all (originally we thought there would not be enough seats in the car to take us near the place).

Saturday’s adventure began with Kenrokuen. I had never seen the place in daylight and the weather was absolutely lovely, so it was a nice start for the day. We also visited the museum of traditional arts and crafts inside the garden.

As if I don't have enough pictures of Kenrokuen...

 

Some traditional Instruments...

 

...and some lovely boxes from the crafts museum.

From there, we walked to the Noh museum. The museum was pretty small, and the coolest thing there probably was the area where you could have your picture taken while wearing a Noh costume and a mask. The staff was pretty busy with the three of us suddenly showing up at once, but luckily it was a slow day in the museum.

 

Me in the Noh clothes. It was really hard to see anything with the mask on...
especially since I was not wearing my glasses.

By now, lunchtime was fast approaching, so we stopped to have a meal in an udon restaurant on the way to the Kanazawa station. The food was delicious, but it was a bit surprising that the drink the waitress brought us was not in fact water, but probably cold green tea (or possibly something like mugicha, barley tea? I’m not yet tea savvy enough to tell the difference). The taste takes some getting used to.

For the rest of the day, we visited various shopping centres and smaller stores. We ran into some other friends from the dorm, who could point us to an excellent 100 yen store. I got a full bag of useful things for everyday living with less than 1,000 yen. However, the most interesting place was undoubtedly right door. It was a shop that has nicknamed itself “exciting book store” and…it was an experience by its own right. As another student described, “it’s not the kind of place where you can find something you’re looking for”. You just go there and see if anything catches your eye.

Firstly, the place was absolutely packed. The shelves were full of stuff and there were so close to each other that I really had to be careful not to knock anything down while passing through.  I wonder if even the staff knows what items are where. The selection was different from a regular bookstore and they also had other kinds of things: CDs, toys, makeup products, candy, miscellaneous strange things… I actually managed to find a cheap witch hat for my Halloween costume here (so far I had only found ones that were too small or too fancy). I also could not help purchasing a volume of the original Moomin comics translated to Japanese!

The next day it was time to conquer Iou-san, the mountain. I left home around 7:30 to make it in time to the parking lot where the others were waiting. The party consisted of my tutor and her fellow students of the German language plus their teachers (Japanese and German). After a 25-minute drive to the visitors’ centre at the base of the mountain, we set off to the journey.

As a warm-up exercise, we walked on the other side and descended quite a long way to get to a place where a small waterfall had created a large valley in the mountain (or so the Japanese teacher told us). The waterfall was lovely and the leaves of the trees above us were sometimes torn free by gusts of wind, softly falling down on us. It was very calming and somehow inspiring.

After a short break, we started the actual climbing process. Now might be a good time to confess that I am not a sports enthusiast. I like taking walks and often opt for using my two feet instead of other means of transportation for convenience (and to save the bus fare) but otherwise, I tend to avoid unnecessary exercise. Thus I was not completely prepared for what turned out to be a 90 minutes’ hike on a steep path with no proper resting place – the best you could do was to lean on a tree branch to catch your breath while you’re letting someone from the opposite direction pass you on the narrow path. The teacher leading the group – a 60-something gentleman who was obviously used to hiking in high places – pushed on cheerfully at a pace that was impressive for someone half his age, while I found myself wheezing and hoping to just get the climb over with. This was when we passed a sign that said it would take approximately 45 minutes more to get to the top. It was not a particularly enjoyable experience, but I managed to make it without complaining or slowing everyone down. Thank goodness I had had the sense to pack a generous amount of water.

The view at our destination and the feeling of accomplishment made up for all the trouble, in the end. It was great having packed lunch up there with everyone while looking at the scenery – the sunshine felt incredibly nice, even though it made me very sleepy after I had finished my meal…

I had been dreading the journey back down as I am prone to tripping and falling even on perfectly level ground, but it wasn’t too bad in the end. At least I managed to get back safely to deliver these photos.

 

 On the next day, I got to participate in yet another different experience. There was a wagashi (Japanese sweets) making session for local and international students of the university. The teacher of the class was an elderly man who apparently had a traditional wagashi shop, so he really knew the tricks of the trade. He started by showing us two different shapes – the cherry blossom and the camellia flower – before we got to try making them ourselves. Surprisingly, I turned out to be pretty good at moulding the sweet mass (which I suppose was mochi?) around the anko paste. Usually I’m terrible at doing anything with my hands, but especially the cherry blossom turned out pretty nicely, and I got a lot of compliments for it. I accidentally skipped one step when trying to do the camellia, but the end result was decent.



A (somewhat skaken) picture of the fruits of my labour

After completing the sweet treats, we brewed some green tea with some basic tea ceremony tools. I did have some experience of this, so I was not too worried when we were told to make tea for the person on the opposite side of the table and not ourselves – the process of making green tea usually involves offering the beverage to someone else. The Chinese student whose tea I drank had made a small miscalculation when measuring the tea powder, so the drink wasn’t very strong, but it had a nice, gentle taste. I ate one of the sweets in class and saved the other for my private teatime in the evening – I’ve developed a habit of making green tea every evening.

BONUS: The entrance of the Kanazawa station is pretty nice.

Lights up!

After the first week of courses, I finally had a chance to get out of the campus area and go see Kanazawa city center! I and a Polish girl from another dorm unit took an uncomfortably full bus to the Musashigatsuji station, where my tutor and a couple of her friends were waiting for us. We went to have dinner at a nearby restaurant...and it turned out that my other tutor works part-time in that very place! (Yes, I have two tutors – it has something to do with the fact how one of them may become quite busy in the spring term with her studies, or so I was told.)



Food. I finally learned how wasabi actually should be used.

After dinner, we were supposed to go to see a show called Projection Mapping at Kanazawa Castle. We saw a long queue outside the castle and tried to find the end, but a staff member appeared and told us that there were already more people in the queue than the four performances of the night could take, so there was no use in staying. A little disappointed, we decided to go to the Kenrokuen Garden instead – it had been on the list of our places to visit, either way.

In Kenrokuen, they had lit up certain places in the garden as a special celebration and it was absolutely wonderful. I had no hope of capturing the lovely views with the camera of my phone, but I decided to definitely visit again on a quieter day.

Quite soon after we arrived, there was a performance on the garden lake: a kimono-clad woman sat in a boat and played a wistful song with yokobue, a traditional Japanese flute. Below is a video from a similar show from the summer event (the video is obviously not mine).

 

Me and my Polish companion were aiming for the last bus back to the university (on weekdays you can get around pretty well, but you must be careful in the weekends because most buses stop running around 9 or10 in the evening), but my tutors friend offered to give us a ride in his car. We sort of felt bad for being such a bother, but still accepted the offer because the last bus would probably have been even fuller than the one we had taken on our way to town.

Near the entrance of the Kenrokuen.

Since I had missed the castle on Saturday, I set off on another adventure the next day, this time accompanied by a Slovakian friend from the neighbouring unit. We left the dorm around noon, and thus had several hours to look around before going to see the castle. First, we visited some shopping centres in the Katamachi area. It was just for fun, though, as most items were ones we could not afford or that we could easily find elsewhere. The number of shop assistants was a little surprising: no less than three smartly dressed ladies patrolled a tiny area selling designer wallets and all of them greeted us individually with a bow and a cheery cry of Irasshaimase (“welcome” as used by customer service staff). They seemed to keep an eye on us even after that, and I’m not sure if it was just so that they could see if we needed help or to make sure we didn’t steal anything… It was a little unnerving.





First time spotting kimonos with furisode (long sleeves)!

A little way away from the larger shopping centres, we found a street full of small, individual shops that were more pleasant to look around. The interesting thing here was how different tastes and ideas coexisted peacefully: right next to an indie/punk themed clothes shop (with matching music plying in the background), there was a tiny accessory shop where someone was holding a classical violin mini-concert. We also found a local gathering for some local subcultures: lolita fashion, manga and anime merchandise, board and card game playing areas…plus a maid café in the highest floor (didn’t visit though – we were not quite ready for that particular experience at this point).

We headed towards the castle and stopped by the Museum of Modern Art. After having a quick lunch (courtesy of a takoyaki van outside the museum) we had a look at the collection of the musem. It was exactly what modern art usually is like…some of it clever and inspiring, some just a little strange…

 

A very fun piece in the museum: the people in the room below look like they're standing inside a pool filled with water!

We finally headed for the castle sometime around 17:30, about 45 minutes before the show. Only when we walked inside did I realise how incredibly LONG the line had been the previous day. For us, the mass of people seemed just crazy already but Saturday had to have been something else entirely. The show itself was much more amazing than I had anticipated – my camera couldn’t do it justice (and I didn’t want to distract myself or the people behind me by trying to take too many pictures anyway) so I’ll direct you to this Youtube video… (again, not mine)

After managing to get ourselves out of the castle area (that was more of a challenge than it sounds like, thanks to the crowd) we visited the Kenrokuen again, as my companion had not yet had a chance to do so. The garden was still nice and I didn’t mind listening to the boat concert again, so I had a good time again.

Monday was a holiday due to it being Health and Sports Day (got to love Japanese public holidays, right?). However, this was a little ironic because the typhoon that had been going around the country decided to arrive on this particular day. I stayed firmly inside, taking naps at inappropriate hours and getting some homework done – I think the rain didn’t stop all day.

- BONUS - Things Japan and Finland have in common: "if it exists, you can get a Moomin version of it". 

 

The first classes

The office building and the main gate of the dorm (you have to use your student card to get in).

My first Monday in Japan was pretty peaceful. I didn't have any classes until 13:00, so I just woke up slowly and hung around the (nearly empty) house until I went to run some insurance-related errands before class.



A pretty standard cafeteria lunch. This one is called Mushi dori yasai ramen.

They have a somewhat intriguing system with the classes here. The first week of each class is open for anyone to just come and see what it's like. Usually the teacher just hands out the syllabus, talks about the grading and what sort of excercises the class is going to have. You can attend as many of these "trial periods" as you want, and you only fill in your course registration after! It's a very handy system if you are in doubt whether you should take a certain course or not. For example, I took two classes on Monday afternoon but I will only receive credit from the one which I eventually choose.

The program I'm in has two kinds of classes: compulsory Japanese classes and elective classes. Electives are mostly held in English (some partly in Japanese though) and they deal with various kinds of topics. I'm mostly geared towards history, politics and cultural studies, but there are courses on e.g. fluid mechanics and environmental studies. All of these are joint classes with Japanese students, meaning that they will have some international students and some regular, local students. For them, the course also acts as language instruction.


Look, I actually cooked something proper! I...won't say it was delicious (I'm still a bit in the dark about which ingredients actually go together), but it was okay. I'm getting there.

Some of the classes have a limited number of participants (because it's a little difficult to have a conversation-based course with 50 people) and extra people have to be thrown out. So was the case with my Tuesday afternoon course on cultural representations. There was a 20-person limit and there were about 34 people who wanted to take the course. The teacher simply took our student cards and randomly drew a certain number of exchange students and Japanese students, the rest had to go. Luckily, I was among those who were allowed to take the course.

 

My Japanese classroom. The whole humanities department has this charming (?) traditional feel to it... The science department, on the other hand, is pretty fancy (isn't that how it always is).

I also had my first Japanese class on Tuesday. I was a bit worried about it, because I really had not expected to get level E...not to mention that I've never really had any intention of writing a thesis in Japanese (which levels E and F are supposedly leading up to). But, to my surprise, I actually understood about 95% of what the teacher said during the first class, and the texts of the first unit didn't seem too bad, either. Well, the teacher also said that the difficulty level would rise relatively soon. But I only have about 15 hours of weekly classes (actually it will be closer to 10 one some weeks, since one course takes place only biweekly) so I will have plenty of time to do my homework properly and make sure I keep up.



Rainy evening @ the Acanthus Bridge. The sun sets REALLY quickly, I'm shocked every time.

The story so far #2: Weekend fun!

I had no particular plans for Saturday, except perhaps for writing this blog. However, that train of thought was disrupted by a visit from the Vietnamese girl from the second floor. (She’s shorter than me – something I’m not quite used to – and she has this very youthful air. My first instinct would be to go all senpai on her even though I have absolutely no qualifications to do so :D) She asked me whether I wanted to come to play football (not the American one) with her and some other Vietnamese students. Sports are definitely not my strong point, but I didn’t have anything better to do at the moment and the weather was incredibly nice, so I said why not. In the end, neither of us did any actual playing, since the guys were pretty serious about it, but we watched the game and had a nice, long chat about various things. On the neighbouring field, a group of Japanese students was practising some kind of festival dance, which was also a sight worth seeing.

In the evening I made my first Skype call home, which was very nice : ) Not feeling home sick quite yet.

Sunday was rainy and surprisingly cold. The temperature had been around 20-28 degrees Celcius so far, and this was the first time I really remembered that it was October. Originally I planned to take a trip to the big department store to buy groceries, but ran into a group of students – a Bulgarian, a Hungarian, a Finn and the Bulgarian’s Japanese friend – who were on their way to town. I had lunch with them, visited the 100 yen shop (I finally bought a hanko stamp!) and then we went to a place that calls itself an “internet café”, but I find that to be something of an understatement. You pay a fee (about 1,000 yen for 3 hours unless I’m mistaken) and you can read manga (the selection is massive), sing karaoke and play online games/pool/darts etc. You can get as many hot and cold beverages as you want (probably no alcohol though) as well as ice cream! My roommates found it amusing that I would enjoy eating something cold on a cool day, but who says no to free ice cream?

A fellow Finn showing off his throwing skills (?)

The Japanese guy offered to take us all back to the campus in his car, but I still needed to go to the department store, so he dropped me off partway and kindly reminded me when the next bus would be leaving.

Grocery shopping in Japan is…an experience. Everything is wrapped in shiny colourful plastic that has stylized kanji scribbled all over. I can’t tell which ingredient should be used for what and fervently wished that I had paid more attention to the culinary sections of various Japan-related books I have read along the years (but reading about food is no fun, is it?) In the end, I just end up buying a collection of what seems to be fairly versatile stuff and try to mix and match them. So far I’ve done okay.

One more thing: the results of the placement test were announced on Sunday morning! From levels A to F (A being the easiest) I was assigned to level E, and kanji group 6 from 1-7. The result was a mild shock for me, since I had expected to get a D at most. According to the study guide, the course for level E is for the student to “acquire enough Japanese ability to be able to study and research at universities” – there is more lean towards academic settings and situations that I’m strictly comfortable with. On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of advanced instruction that I would never be able to have in Finland, and there is a two-week period during which you can change to a different group if the level feels inappropriate…so I’ll give it a go.

Protip: You know you're in Japan...when your closest major store has a KIMONO DEPARTMENT (right there, wedged between men's clothing and regular sewing materials?)

The story so far #1: It begins

Welcome to my blog! This is where I share my experiences as an exchange student in Kanazawa university from October 2014 to August 2015. I have two main goals for the blog: firstly, to keep my friends and relatives etc. up to date with how I’m doing and secondly, to give information about living in Kanazawa (or just Japan in general) to anyone who is planning to have a similar adventure.

Updates are likely to be more frequent at the beginning when everything is new and shiny and strange, but I’ll try to keep an at least weekly pace even afterwards, probably focusing more on special events and/or themes.

Since almost a week has already passed, here is a recap of my first few days in Japan!

The flight was pretty smooth. There was no one sitting on the seat next to me, so I could keep my bag there and move around just as much as I wanted. However, I couldn’t fall asleep except for about 40 minutes near the end…which was fun considering that I arrived in Japan 9:00 local time (October 1^st).

View from the plane during the takeoff. See you later, Finland!

I had signed up for a charter bus from Kansai International Airport to Kanazawa, and it was there that I made my first friend: a British girl who turned out to be in the same program and in the same dormitory as I.

After the fairly uneventful 6-hour bus ride, we finally got to the dorm. The dorm consists of several “units”, each of which rooms 8 people. The kitchen/living room is shared by the entire unit, and there are 2 showers and toilets in each unit. Everyone has their own bedroom (which, if I may say so, is pretty spacious by Japanese standards. It’s about the same size as my room at home, but with less stuff!).

Thursday and Friday were orientation days. So far they’ve handed out probably 300+ pages’ worth of info about course registration, syllabus, traffic rules, disaster prevention, insurance, house rules, university Wifi connection, language programs, garbage sorting guidelines…

On Friday morning, we also had a Japanese language placement test to determine which lessons we should take. The test was done in a computer lab and it was nothing too special: multiple-choice questions testing kanji skills and reading/grammar. The slightly surprising part was that we had to write a composition BY HAND after completing the other tests. But the theme was quite easy (along the lines of “In order to become good at a foreign language, one must go live in a country that speaks the language. Discuss.”) and the space reserved for the text was less than half of an A4 sheet, so it was alright.

The plans for Friday night included a welcome party in the other international dorm (the one that has a more convenient location than mine but has really small rooms and looks a little depressing). You had to pay 1,000 yen to get inside and there were snacks and free drinks and a whole lot of people. This was a place where I got to witness the power of what the Japanese call “nominication” (nomu (=to drink) + communication). The local students were really enthusiastic about getting to know the newcomers and I had to keep introducing myself left and right – thank goodness for the person who came up with the idea that everyone could write their name in their plastic cup, which made the task of learning foreign names much easier in a noisy environment. I am happy to announce that I made a few acquaintances (Japanese and international) and was invited to a couple of things I’ll probably write about later. Mission accomplished!

The Central area as viewed from the South area (where I live)