looooong time no blog

howdy!

not sure whether any one has bothered to check up on this blog (coz I clearly havent) but after months of Thomas nagging me to update it, here it is in a nutshell.

So although I was supposed to only be on exchange for a semester, I decided to extend for one extra semester at Kobe Uni as I had simply fallen in love with it (and I wasn't quite yet ready to go back to the land down under).

So my birthday came and went and New Years also came and went (along with a few incidences and surprises).

January consisted mainly of wrapping up the semester with exams and assignments with some nomihoudais, karaokes and Seijinshiki (coming of age ceremony) thrown into the mix.

February involved the conclusion of my first semester in Kobe and we celebrated by taking a little skiing/onsen trip to Nagano (Nozawa Onsen). While the athletically competent boys tackled the slopes, Agata and I relaxed by soaking in the numerous free onsens scattered around town. On our last day we travelled to a place named Jigokudani (Hell Valley) to check out some monkeys enjoying themselves in some hot springs.

It was around this time that a lot of the students who came to Japan for only a semester headed back home. We said good bye to the likes of Odin, Mandrew, Jesse and Tyson, Min Jung, Alicia, Robin and Kacy to name a few. Pyjama girl also left so the kitchen was now in peace.

A large chunk of March was spent not being in Japan. Agata, Tristan, Marc and I wondered about how we should spend the 2 month Spring break and we decided to skip town and country altogether and hit South-East Asia. We spent a scorching week in Cambodia checking out the World Heritage Angkor Wat as well as soaking up the sun in the beautiful coastal town of Sihanoukville. Drinks and food were dirt cheap and decent accommodation could be acquired for roughly $5 a night. Tuk-tuks became our favourite mode of transport. We had to bid farewell to Tristan after only five days (important presentation required him to come back to Japan) and Agata, Marc and I spent the next two weeks travelling through Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh City all the way to Hanoi courtesy of several (relatively comfortable) sleeper buses. The heat was unbearable at times but it was nice to feel warm for once after spending the past few months shivering our socks off.

Along April came the newbies for the next semester. From all over the world yet again, we now have new friends from Australia, Sweden, Austria, France, the US and the like. They seem to be settling in well and it's nice to have new players for "Never Have I Ever"!

With more English speaking people on my floor, we seem to have dominated the kitchen. Thanks to Agata dating Tristan, gourmet dishes are always being prepared much to our delight. (I should now also mention that Marc also does a great job in the kitchen too.... hem hem)

A lot of us have decided to take the Japanese Language Profeciency Test in July so the past few months have also been spent in preparation for it. Japanese is a ridiculously hard language and it is currently driving me a little insane. It seems as though our wild days are somewhat behind us for now as a lot of us opt for a studious night in than a night of debauchery. Hopefully once everyone's scholarships have been deposited again the crazy days will return once more.

Golden Week involved a day at Nagisa Music Festival in Osaka with some lovely ladies followed by a few days in the Japan Sea side of Honshu (Tottori and Kinosaki Onsen in Hyogo). Marc and I successfully hitchhiked our way to Tottori and back from Kinosaki to Kobe, and we met some delightful people in the process. A group of guys who picked us up near Kobe who we thought would only take us to Himeji coincidentally happened to be travelling all the way to Tottori as well so during the lovely four hour ride treated us to beer and wine and other little knickknacks. They even helped set up our tent at the campsite where the rest of our camping friends had already taken up a few days earlier and also paid for most of the dinner that night. Thanks guys!

Thanks to not having to pay anything for transport, Golden Week turned out to be rather afforable. As the weather warms up, we hope to take more advantgae of the free camp sites and generous drivers. A road trip organised by Val is also in order for one of the following weekends.

Anyway that pretty much brings you back to speed with what's been going on. Obviously there's a lot more that's been going on but for now I will leave it at this.

merry xmas!!!

and happy yumes birthday

december in kobe

you're not experiencing december in kobe unless you experience the beauty that is the Kobe Luminarie. the beautiful light displays were set up in kobe to commemorate the Great Hanshin Earthquake which occured in January, 1995. although visually stunning, one can't help but feel the sombre atmosphere which accompanies the lights.

during the luminarie period, kobe sees a huge influx of people and in order to view the lights, you have to wait in a massive line for at least half an hour. as a friend put it, walking towards the luminarie in a huge crowd pretty much feels like a scene from War of the Worlds.

on a more light-hearted note, erika and jaimie visited me from brisbane last weekend! it was nice to get a dose of home and "feel" brisbane again and i hope they had a fun time. special mention goes out to erika "flammable" bellingham for managing to set her hair on fire during one night out in town. she probably would have been up in flames for real had jaimie not noticed.

i guess in exchange for me letting the two crash in my tiny room on Port Island, erika was nice enough to decorate my room with christmas lights and tinsel and jaimie was un-nice enough to cover my walls with underwear and bizarre lingerie that came in an underwear gift pack she bought. they also spent an afternoon making me Ikea-bought gingerbread house which I am still nibbling through. unfortunately the house kept toppling over thanks to pyjama girl and her meat cleaver... (pyjama girl is worthy of a blog devoted solely to her.)

on yet another pointless note, my pink bike Babs seems to be under the weather as she has now started squeaking every time i brake and this makes me a little sad.

fyi, this is babs and the tall mysterious man hug-violating me is thomas.

someone romance with me!

kobe is really pretty this time of the year...
... and christmas is awesome.

so that was kobember...

it's been two months since my exchange began and i dont know where the days have gone! things are going very quickly and it seems like everything and everyone has finally settled in. studies are going well and things aren't too overwhelming, although i am starting to get a little panicky about my linguistics and psychology class... theres so many kanjis i cant read that my mind boggles.

i COULD go into details as to how my long weekend went (in Shikoku) but so much happened during my time there that quite frankly, i can't be arsed. in summary, crazy things happen in Japan and it's awesome. maybe i will oneday expand on the trip but as for now "what happens in the box, stays in the box".



speaking of crazy things, kobe uni held their annual festival called Rokkosai 六甲祭 about two weeks ago. during the day the university was alive with bands, games and food stalls organised and run by various university clubs and circles. so that was fun and amusing enough, but the REAL party began when the sun went down.


the intercultural faculty became a bar/restaurant/cinema/jam room where things and people got loose and messy. although you needed to be of age to be part of the shenanigans, we cheated the system thanks to overage friends with age verification stamps that were easily transferrable onto other hands...

the classrooms turned into fancy bars serving 200yen drinks (now thats cheap!) and as the night wore on, even the servers were a little tipsy so there were a couple of times where no one came to collect the money for the drinks.



a very drunk physics student proposed to lilly upon discovering that she was from france and asked her to "hold me tight" however quickly revoked the wedding proposal after discovering she was not single and rebounded with me. i accepted the proposal on the basis that his father was a pilot and that he would fly us all first class everywhere. yep, ive taken one for the team.

a lot more drinks later, for about an hour two drunk french people were running down the corridors screaming "ouiiiiiiiiiiii" (yes, marc and lilly) i swear, and went MIA for a while. i later discovered them jamming with a band in a random classroom so i joined them. i managed to bash the drums for a while and to my surprise the japanese students seemed somewhat impressed. (my drumming skills is probably equivalent to meg white and that's not saying much) i think they were just humouring me... i think they were more so impressed with my ability to sit up right after so many "Fuzzy Navels". Either way, it was pretty fun and made me miss the Murrays household! (Dont worry, they werent as good).

at about 3am we decided it was time to leave. As I walked down one of the corridors to leave, I walked past about eight classrooms with a passed out man each. now why cant UQ have a big event like this? it sure would be fun to drink in the mooting court in the law library...

also this month, we celebrated HK tony's 21st and marc, lilly and i discovered Mon Frere (280 yen) and the deliciously cheap booze Don Quixote offers (normal sized Smirnoff Red 950 yen... that's about $12AUD!!!)

celebrating tony's 21st at beber... (can we pls find a different club???)

we (about a group of 20) also celebrated Anika's 21st birthday by taking over a small Pakistani restaurant in the middle of sannomiya where the restaurant owner was so overwhelmed, Andrew (fellow exchangie from Perth who enjoys the Twilight series so much, he had to watch New Moon the day it came out and wouldnt wait to watch it with me a few days later therefore a BIG FAT GIRL WHO WEARS GIRLS JEANS) volunteered his waiteRESSing skills. needless to say, we were the only customers in this tiny restaurant so i dont think the owner was complaining as we brought him a lot of business.

i also discovered more about the beautiful city of kobe during random tourist days this month. i just keep falling in love with the city more and more! it's only going to get even more stunning as the christmas lights illuminate the city and the famous Kobe Luminarie begin.

lights in
sannomiya

all in all, november was pretty brilliant. let's see what december is going to be like...

my weekend was better than yours...

... but i cant tell you why.

im not even going to explain what is going on here. coz quite frankly, its unexplainable.

im addicted to...

wasabeef (wasabi and beef flavoured chips).
im eating now as i type.
this is by far my favourite 100 yen find.
i think i average at least three packets a week.

ok my minor work procrastination done for now...