At least it's still April...

It’s Saturday today. Finally weekend, after a long week of study. It is just three hours a day, but it feels like ages. We have quite some homework and nearly every day, if not every day, we have a little test. So we keep practicing and expanding our kanji, grammar and vocabulary knowledge, but we do not have enough time to practice a lot (in real life, outside the dorm, so to say). However… we are learning stuff, so that’s something! :p

Yesterday, I went with my friends Nadia, Brenda and Marije to a restaurant named Coco’s. We had some really good food there, for a good price! Seriously, I love you Japan! ^^ As in, I had rice gratin with a soft-boiled egg and bacon, which tasted SO good, and it was somewhere under 650 yen (4 euro 60 or so). Then we had parfaits as dessert. I had chocolate, which had, aside from chocolate, of course, banana, cookie, something coffee-ish and cranberry sauce (and I most likely forget stuff, but it was really ‘oishii’ (tasty).

Then we went to a karaoke bar. It were ‘gakusei’ (student) hours, so it was cheaper. Yay! We spent three hours singing our favorite and other funny songs, from Britney Spears’ ‘Oops… I did it again’ to Nightwish’ ‘I wish I had an Angel’, and of course a lot of J-pop and K-pop. It was a lot of fun, and only 900 yen (6 euro something, I guess).

Today I went with Brenda, Marije and Sylvia to Tenjin, where we went shopping. From our nearest train station (Ijiri Station), we have a direct train to Tenjin, which costs 250 yen, so that’s not too bad.  Around Tenjin Station, there are a lot department stores, which are huge and have lots of nice stores. There is so many cute stuff… clothes, shoes, accessories – pretty much anything they sell, actually.

Even though I did not want to buy a lot of stuff, we went to a cheap bookstore with a lot of manga, so I decided to buy four more (I already bought four before) manga. The ones I bought this time are part of the same series, so I hope it is fun story to read J. They were only 108 yen each (the 8 yen tax makes it look incredibly stupid, but unlike the Netherlands, they like to exclude the tax from the price, like I experienced in Canada. It’s stupid, guys.)

I also bought a dungarees (what the fuck is with that word… it’s a ‘tuinbroek’), but a shorts one, not with a skirt or with long leg thingies. ^^’ Now I’m gonna beg all my more ‘oshare’ fashionable friends what I should wear with it. ^^;;;;;

Then, when we went to Tower Records, I decided I could also buy Morning Musume ’14’s latest single (Toki wo Koe Sora wo Koe/Password is 0), and I got a poster with it. Happy me!

However, tomorrow I will be going to a Morning Musume ’14 concert, so I am really excited! I hope it will be a lot of fun! The setlist looked really good, so I have high hopes. Of course (well, I’m a coward, so yes, ‘of course’), I won’t go alone. Together with Marije I will go there! Really, really happy!

Oh! And today we also did some purikura (those overly cute and edited pictures you can make in special booths. I swear, it’s so much fun and kind of addicting…) I wanna make more pictures!

Anyways… for now… good ni~ght!

Fukuoka! ^^

Let’s just laugh at my previous two blog posts, knowing I failed to continue writing, ignore them and focus on what I am currently doing. Which is: being in Fukuoka, Japan (eating Pocky! ^^)

Well, I’m not just here for the Pocky of course. I will stay until late mid-June to improve my Japanese language skills and get to know Japan (or at least Fukuoka/Kyushu)! April 1^st  my mom and Gerard drove me to Schiphol Airport, where we met up with my friends Melisa, Nadia en Sylvia and their families, also discovering another friend, Angela, being on the same flight as us. After a little bit of talking, checking in our suitcases and saying goodbye, we actually went on the plane and made the long flight to Hong Kong International Airport.

The flight itself, which was a Cathay Airlines flight, was pretty okay. It was long – obviously – but it had a screen with films, series and music I actually liked and knew (which is truly a miracle), so it was not such a problem to kill some time. However, long is long and this flight was still seriously long. We were served meals two times, I think. At least I know they tasted good. Very good. Not expected that. However… the weather became a serious mess around the time we landed at Hong Kong Airport. And with a serious mess, I mean it was kind of like a storm. Thankfully, we landed safely. However, we had to wait for about half an hour to leave the plane, because the storm was too heavy and they thought it was not safe enough to leave.

At Hong Kong Airport, we had to wait for eight hours. We saw the weather becoming better, then become worse, then becoming better again, and we had no idea what to expect for our next flight. We saw some flights were cancelled around the time we arrived, some having delays and lots of gate changes, which wasn’t really comforting, of course, but everything was fine after a few hours (except it was way less than an hour to go, until we could see what our gate number was, so we had to hurry to the right gate, even though we had those long eight hours!).

At Hong Kong we also had an in-between landing at Taipei, so after departing, just an hour or so later, the plane landed again. Yay. I was in Taiwan! Anyways, not much happened there, exept we already had a one hour delay on our flight, due to many planes that wanted to depart and we had to wait for. Awesome, huh?!  

Anyways, after departing for the third time, our final destination, Fukuoka Airport, was finally getting really close. After a much more enjoyable landing, around ten at night (local time), we had to find our luggage and get a taxi to the place we are staying for these months. Lovely thing to note: the taxi drivers did not know where it was. Yay. Awesome. Because a bad weather landing, eight hours of waiting and a one hour delay weren’t bad enough yet. Thank you. Well, they worked together, the two man driving us, and in the end they were able to safely deliver us there. Then we got a short introduction of the building and our room keys! I got room 306, which was luckily very close to Nadia, who stays at room 301. The other girls were put on different floors, but as there are thirty-eight of us in total, you can say you can pretty much find someone you know on every floor.

After emptying my 22,8 kilos suitcase (which is obviously a little bit too heavy) and putting everything in place, I could sleep for a few hours. In a bed. With a TERRIBLE pillow. Other than that, the room is fine. Tiny (as in EVERYTHING is tiny and low. My height = OK. But you cannot be much taller, or you won’t fit under the shower or will not be able to see yourself in the mirror, et cetera) but fine.

Took a nice shower in the morning, then the group had together and we went to the school we will have classes from next week on. After this introduction, I went with my friends Brenda and Richt to a 100 yen shop, where I bought way too much! But also useful stuff, like eating utensils, a cup and more like that. As everything is just 100 yen (which is somewhere under 1 euro), it is very easy to say ‘YES!’ to something. After that, we went to a supermarket to buy some food and drinks. We dropped the food in our rooms, and then went to a different part of Hakata, the area of Fukuoka where we are staying. We went to…  yes! The Pokémon Center! Even though we had a hard time finding it (it actually was to be found in the department store IN the station. We were looking around it. We fail. But who cares. We found a bunch of cute stuff, even though there was mainly a lot from Pokémon X&Y (which honestly has lots of awesome Pokémon, so I really do love XY).

After that, we went to eat, before we went to a manga and anime shop in a different department store. I had curry rice, which was a tad spicy, but tasted really good! It was under 400 yen, so at least food did not take all our money. No. The next store did (okay, that’s a lie. I spend more at the Pokémon Center. And I still have a good amount of money. xD)…

The manga and anime shop had lots of manga – no shit Sherlock – but also quite some merchandise, even though I did not recognize anything. I felt like a bad Japanese language student XD! So I found myself a few manga to read. But at least it is good for my Japanese skills to read those.

Then we went back to Ijiri station and then to the common room, where we talked a bit with some of our classmates. Then we split up and went to our own rooms. Tomorrow we will have an entrance ceremony at the school, whatever that exactly might be. After that, I believe we will get a sort of introduction tour-something in Hakata. Well, we will see!

おやすみ！

I do remember... I really do...

Writing isn't that hard at all. It's like talking to yourself and if there's something I don't have problems with, it's exactly that. I hate talking, I hate replying to others, not always being able to see what they mean. Paper doesn't reply – nor does a word processor.

Still I have problems to actively write here. Why? I really do remember I should write. It's like a barrier makes me afraid to write, which results in procrastinating; doing all kind of random things. Yesterday I finished watching Season 1 of the Dexter series for the second time, and then I watched CSI: New York and Law and Order (Special Victims Unit). Really, it's like I didn't want to write at all...

At least spring has finally arrived. There's still no sun, but there is rain. I don't like it, but I guess the nature is happy with it. Many flowers are finally showing their colours, which makes me really happy

Next weekend there will be the Elf Fantasy Fair at Castle the Haar, Haarzuilens. It will be the sixth time I go there, I think. It's all about dressing up and having fun. It's like you really can be someone else if you want. Last year I went with friends as legendary Pokémon; this year I will join another group of friends. We decided to pick characters from the Harry Potter series and I can't wait to see it. I'll dress up like Bellatrix Lestrange, with great thanks to my mother and the neighbour for making my dress and corset; and my dad and my mother's boyfriend for making and colouring my wand.

Monday... Why is it Monday already? It's like I missed 2/3 of my weekend, and still I haven't done anything for my study nor for my hobbies. It's kinda sad how wasting time seems to be one of the easiest actions human beings can do.

Let's try to be less useless from now on. Even though I hate it, I still like it as well. It's just, time won't ever stop because someone needs it... 

Too bad... Exams are coming up, so studying would be recommended... 

How to say 'hello' again...

I guess the easiest way is just to say it...

However, it feels weird to create a blog, after not blogging for nearly three years. I only managed to write maybe five times, during three months. It is kinda sad, I must admit that, but I will try to write more this time. Even though university life is stressing and busy sometimes, I feel like I might need a place where I can write about it.

Life isn't always nice, but I am not always nice to myself either. I guess it is about learning how to appreciate life and how we should not take it for granted. Writing about your daily life is a way to show both yourself and others how small things can make your life a happy thing, but also to deal with problems and disappointments.

Writing, just like music in general, has been a great support for me and I hope for now that it will continue to do so.

I do not know where life will take me, but I guess I just go...

wherever my road goes...