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...

backblog 4: culture day 文化の日

last tuesday was culture day (a public holiday) which meant no uni (hoorahh). a group of us decided that we needed to appreciate japan not just for cheap booze and greasy delights but for its rich culture and history.
thankfully living in the kansai region provided us with many near-by destination choices. eventually we decided on Nara 奈良 (capital of Japan from 710 to 784) to get our culture on.
we had been enjoying balmy un-Autumn like weather ever since we arrived in Kobe so we were shocked to find that the city dropped what felt like 10 degrees within two hours the night before. consequently, our culture day was a little colder than what we were accustomed to and a mini-all nighter (which was just supposed to be quiet drinks at the pub) the night before put a little strain on our spirits initially but things most definitely improved through out the day.
we caught the misleading "rapid express" train to Nara expecting to arrive in about 45 minutes (probably out of sheet ignorance). An hour and a half later, we arrived in the old capital.

weeeee! in nara at last!

marc, lilly, thomas, yume (me) and mari in front of Go-ju-no-to pagoda in ko-fukuji

So we did what we came here to do -- enjoy the sights of old Japan and freeze a little bit in the process.

after a long (and much deserved) lunch break, the culture gang arrived at Todai-ji where deers roam its grounds freely. sika deers are regarded as messengers of gods in the shinto religion and are treated with respect. you can purchase biscuits to feed the deers as well but good luck trying to get them to eat it. the deers are perpetually full due to the handfuls of tourists that visit the parks with the deer biscuits in hand. i tried to feed the deers but after facing rejection after rejection from the spoilt ones, i ended up feeding some fish in the pond instead.

this deer didn't mind being photographed with.

this is a rare type of shika deer found only on culture days

nara is also famous for having the biggest buddha in japan so after strolling through the deer-filled park, we arrived at the Daibutsuden (Great Buddha Hall) to gaze in awe at its sheer size.

The photographs really do it no justice. This buddha was HUGE.

marc, our lovely tour guide for the day, told us that there was a hole in a wooden pillar the same size as the buddha's nostril you can squeeze through within the Daibutsuten which, upon successfully coming out the other end, give you good luck. since the only people i could see attempting the squeeze were little kids, i was a little reluctant to try at first (to avoid publicly embarrasing myself should i get stuck inside this "nostril") but after witnessing both marc and thomas (who are both taller than me) successfully squeezing through said hole, i decided to give it ago.
boy i wish i wore pants that day. old ladies going "oooh we can see up her skirt" whilst i was wiggling through the hole didn't exactly make the process smooth-sailing. it also didnt help that about two seconds before we decided to attempt the hole squeeze a big group of japanese school kids on a school excursion decided to become spectators. nevertheless i made it through and hopefully now have good luck. i DID find a 100 yen coin on the ground about half an hour...



after snacking on some takoyaki we decided that we were satisfied for the day and headed back home to kobe. we were so exhausted that we all ended up falling asleep on the train.

good work team, looking forward to our next cultural experience. :)

we all felt super japanese falling asleep on the train

n.b. some photo credits go to my fellow culture gang members lilly and lucia

guess who...

last night after odin fed us delicious kimchi nabe for dinner (thanks dad!), i popped by to one of our favourite new watering holes nicknamed the "Buta-bar" in Motomachi　元町 (actually called Time Trip). why? because of this little pet they keep in the bar...

Inappropriately named "Roast" (or more accurately "Ro-su" ロース in Japanese), it hangs around our feet and entertains us while we sip on cheap booze whilst listening to cool jazz. it's incredibly cute and will jump relatively high in the air for peanuts. should i feel guilty about making bacon and eggs this morning? probably...

anyway, at the Buta-Bar (buta being pig in Japanese) a couple of us got chatting to the locals. the game they seem to like to play is "Guess the Gaijin's Nationality" and they really struggled with me. first they guessed German. (!?) then Russian. (!?) then French. (!?) they were definitely convinced i was European of some sort. then i gave them a hint that i was a 'mix' to which they replied Amercian. (!?) Eventually after travelling the world we reached Australia. with a big hint of me being able to speak native japanese not giving anything away, they further struggled for a couple more minutes until they shyly asked "Japan?" to which i nodded in despair as i slipped into another one of those "WHAT AM IIIIII!?!?!" moments.... but not really.

thanks for playing guys, you were terrible contestants!

also, to follow on from yesterday's gutterminded theme, Buta-bar also stocks "Sperm Shots"

If you look closely, the label says "Ich komme". You don't even need to know German to understand what THAT means.

boobs

...available at your local kobe chinatown (Kobe Nankinmachi) for 'stress relieving' purposes. if anyone fancies a boob in the mail, give me a holler.

i can also provide you with this little number:


holy crap it's a panda on the can! (pun intended). also available from the same china town store.

and to continue on the gutterminded nature of this post, i leave you with this monument i came across yesterday in the city:

i should have realised that it was an anchor (with kobe being a port city and all) but i was too distracted by the suss-ness of it in this angle. yes call me gutterminded. but i wasn't the one that pointed it out. thanks thomas.

swine flu

...illness of a different nature, i came to the realisation that i had three of these between the hours of 7pm and 2am last night.

um they're 100 yen (aud 1.20) so how could one resist?

it did fuel me for the night for wacky activities... as much as i love sannomiya, i feel like we have exhausted a lot of the clubs/bars lately. time to start searching for more clubs and funky bars i say. by the way ben, i dont know what it is you're trying to attempt in this photo...

i am taking over the world...

...one product at a time.

this is yume's town

backblog 3: friends

so apparently i have friends. in fear of forgetting someone (or realising that they aren't friends of mine after all), i won't name anyone.

halloween shenanigans

i've even got a so called "exchange family" with an aussie mother, a breakdancing father, a rather feminine and tea loving british step-father, a couple of french-flaired sisters, a promiscuous brother and maybe even a grandma (i'm looking at you, polish tv show fiend!)

countries of origin include australia, america, korea, poland, germany, england, japan, france and more. there are five aussies in total, three from UQ (myself included) and two from Western Australia. i've also made friends with some cool japanese locals, a nigerian bartender, another club owner who gives me free drinks, crazy people who walk around with cats on leashes and people who i "infrared" telephone numbers/email addresses with when slightly drunk. (more on "infrared"-ing sometime later...)

first night out in kobe (sorry about the unflattering picture) xx

they're all great and i'm sure that i will be blogging more about them in due course.

ka-ra-o-ke ok!

you're not partying in japan like a local until you hit up one of these joints...

this is what i have been doing on five separate occasions.

note basim's emotional rendition of "i don't wanna miss a thing" and thomas' heart-felt performance of "umbrella" caught on camera and exposed to the world. there is no shame when karaokeing!

i got a little carried away in my first week of kobe... so much so that i karaoked four times in one week. after attending karaokeholics anonymous, i have now cut back to about once (or twice) a month.

backblog 2: kobe university

so apparently Kobe University - 神戸大学 (Kobe Daigaku) or　(神大 (Shin Dai) as it is so affectionately called in Japan) is one of the best universities in Japan. the reaction you get from the Japanese when you mention that you are an exchange student at Shindai is so overwhelming and flattering that I just let them think that I am super amazing/clever/awesome. (little do they know that brains had nothing to do with my acceptance at kobe...)

the japanese university system seems to be a lot different to the UQ style that i am so used to. for starters, you have to register for your classes by filling in a form. you work out your timetable by looking at a large A3 piece of recycled paper. there is no such thing as online sign-ons however there seems to be a Blackboard equivalent but i can't seem to access it.

Full time equivalent of 4 courses at UQ is 8 courses at Kobe University (or 15 class hours). Each course has one 1.5 hour class per week and a large chunk of your assessment is based on attendance. i'm part of the faculty of letters (文学部) so I have a nice six month break from anything law related (hooray!). im doing a course on english linguistics (class held in japanese), psychology (on memory), second language acquisition, american short stories (held in english - the lecturer doesn't even speak japanese), catcher in the rye seminar (we spend a whole semester reading one book and dissecting every little sentence), French culture studies (watched Paris Je T'aime the other day), Japanese writing composition class, Japanese Newspaper article reading class and a kanji class where we learn obscure words we will probably never use again (let alone write) for the rest of our lives. i go into uni four days a week.

as if it isn't hard enough feeling motivated to go to uni, the founders of kobe university decided to build it on a bloody mountain (Mt Rokko). sure the view from the top is great, but the steep hike is pretty tough for the unfit ones (i.e. me). thankfully my faculty and the international student/exchange student centre is at the bottom of the campus so i don't have to hike up the mountain too much. but i do feel a strange sense of satisfaction and accomplishment every day upon reaching the university...

view from the top -- kobe university exchange student centre i.e. our hangout

we had our student orientation about a week after we moved into our residences and it pretty much went like this: "if you do drug, you will DIE". this went on for about half an hour.

we later had an official welcome party with professional catering accompanied by the university officials. we got to enjoy delicious food and drink beer with our fellow exchange students, our tutors and uni officials. one of the officials joined a couple of us sitting outside having a smoking break and gave us a spiel about how awesome smoking is. ("smoking makes you happy!") he then bitched about how one of the universities was beating kobe in the university rankings and then he disappeared into the dark. [can anybody remember what he said about smoking better? i know it went on for a while...something involving the requirement of smokers ("the minorities") to stand up against the government...]

welcome party -- officials giving speeches before we began wining and dining

since then, there have been other miscellanious events organised by the university involving copious amounts of drinking and eating. all in all kobe uni appears to encourage smoking and drinking but "NO DRUG".

anyway, university is awesome.

backblog 1: kobe international residence

ive decided that this is a much better pastime than say, studying. i also need to keep my hands busy or i will end up stuffing my face with food (it is becoming an addiction, i swear).

so i have now been in Japan for well over a month, having landed in Kansai Airport on the 17th of September. after spending the next two weeks in front of a japanese telly and eating, courtesy of my grandparents, i finally moved into the international residence on port island in Kobe on the 1st of october.

id actually visited port island before in april when my dear fatherly figure friend odin (hi dad!) began his first semester of study at kobe uni. aaaand to be honest, i felt a little depressed looking at the building as it looked so grim and slightly beaten up. but nevertheless it was a building where one could sleep and that was good enough for me. (and did i tell you how cheap the rent was?)

i was warned that the bathrooms were going to be communal (an idea which i didnt like the sound of too much) so when i finally found my room i was stoked to find my own ensuite (a luxury most other residence buddies do without). considering i only pay a mere 5,900 yen a month (plus utilities), i felt like i won the dorm room lottery. oh wait there's more.

i also have my own desk, chair, bed (phew), bookshelf, closet, shoe closet (what's the word for this? i can only think of the japanese word) and a big set of drawers. my desk is yet to be used for study. i also always have food on it. or tea, or both. sometimes wine. actually, often wine.

to top it off, i have my own balcony where i can get exclusive views of... a bloody primary school. needless to say, i am yet to get used to the sound of the school bells going off every hour from about 7.30am. if im home in the afternoon, i am soothed by the sounds of school children bashing the crap out of a poor defenceless piano.

my balcony is also currently decorated with about a month and a half's worth of rubbish, courtesy of japan's ridiculous (but ecofriendly) rubbish disposal system. is plastic burnable or non-burnable? what can i actually put in burnable? could someone please advise???

anyway, we also have a lobby with a couple of seats and a tv and a pingpong table (yes we have played beer pong already). we also have a little office where people apparently work (i think all they do is issue us bills). we did have a residence orientation sometime back but i dont remember too well as it was too early in the morning. the main gist was: watch out for the aggressive sparrows and please dispose rubbish properly. there's also a guy that lives in the residence who is kind of like the dorm supervisor. anyway, his name is Shantypants (for he says "you shan't" A LOT) and no one really knows what he does or what his actual name is.

oh and we have to make our own meals so each section on a floor have their own little kitchen. i think some friends of mine would find it hard to imagine me cooking but i am starting to become quite the Master Chef (if by that you mean I know how to put rice in the rice cooker and pour hot water onto instant miso soup). thankfully i have friends who are nice enough to offer me proper food. thanks guys!

my dorm colleagues are all pretty cool. there's a high ratio of girls in this dorm this semester which im sure the guys aren't complaining about. there's people from all over the world as you would expect but most people come from the Asian continent (which is also not very surprising).

i dont really have that much more to say about the residence. it's only about fifteen minutes away from Sannomiya (the city centre) and it's pretty peaceful. there's a no-nonresidence-visitors-in-rooms policy but i dont think many people are abiding by this rule and Shantypants doesn't seem to strongly enforce it. Hey Erika and Jaimie, maybe you COULD stay in my room. But you probably wouldn't want to. It's starting to smell funny.

And for now, I leave you with this:
Could someone please tell me when rubbish day is? I think some things are starting to go off...

blog blog blog

this is a blog that may or may not accurately catalogue my semester abroad studying at Kobe University in Kobe, Japan so that i do not have to rely on my faulty memory when looking back.

apparently this is what all the cool kids are doing so I am jumpin on the bandwagon. no one needs to enjoy this blog -- this is more of a selfish indulgence than anything... but if you do enjoy it, then hooray!

i am about a month behind on blogging so i may do some "backblogging" to make up for the loss.

i also dont believe in capital letters and finding apostrophes and commas on a japanese keyboard is bloody annoying/impossible.

for now, i will leave you with this -

Responsible for many a good times and times forgotten.

fyi that is AUD 3.60

oh it's classier than goon.

and deadlier.