Kristins adventure in Japan

Dewa Sanzan

2012-01-30T18:20:00.001+09:00

The sea shore. The ocean was rough today, the wind was strong. Cold, and snowing. I had no idea what to expect from these Buddha carvings and was absolutely blown away. Faces of Buddha was carved into the mountain, and it was as if they were emerging from the stones themselves. A priest carved them for the souls of the fishermen whom fished along the rocky and dangerous shores. They often died. Nature can be harsh.

Back in the bus. Driving through the most peculiar looking landscape. Little hills sticking up like the piles of dirt moles make. Evidently, they turned out to have been island before an earthquake long ago. Written about in Basho's haiku. Now they look strangely alien, covered with snow and trees. Growing out of what easily could have been a rice field. Ocean bottom, once upon a time.

Pagoda, temple and snow up to my waist. Smiling, old ladies speaking unintelligible dialects but still gladly posing for pictures. They light incense to the sound of the priests drums and chanting.

Another temple. Vegan food. Cold floors and numb toes. Walking through a long walkway connecting two parts of the temple. Frozen shoes, and never have my toes been so cold. It was all worth it when we walked in to the main room. The priests ware preforming a ceremony for some local people. I love the sound of the chanting, the smell of the insence and the feeling of the room. I felt calm.

A sleepy town almost lost in the snow. Traditional houses with gorgeous roofs and tori gates. No people, but a bright red bus slowly making it's way down the street. Making it down an almost soapy, slippery hillside to find a "magical" forest. Trees, with white blobs all over them. Again, an absolutely amazing pagoda. I can't imagine how much work, or how long it takes to build something like this.

Hiraizumi, Konjikidō and fire festival

2012-01-27T12:58:00.002+09:00

This semester I'm taking a class called "exploring Tohoku area", and the very first trip was to Iwate prefecture (on the east coast, also the prefecture that had the most damage after the tsunami this spring). To be honest I had little knowledge about what the trip would be, I knew we were seeing some shrines and temples, and then we were going to a fire festival. The place was absolutely beautiful, everywhere smelled so good from all the incense. The most impressive was the Kinjikido, a 800 year old temple covered in gold. The history of the place is interesting, and bloody. Struggle for power, need I say more..?

The fire festival was probably the craziest thing I've seen since coming here. As the day went by more and more rumors were spread regarding what we were to see in the evening, and however strange the rumors might have been, the festival itself was even stranger. The first thing that met us were the old, drunk men giving us sake. A lot of sake. They were friendly enough. After a while they started fighting each other with some burning sticks. They they gave us more sake. There was also a huge fire and some loud, scary sounding music playing. After a while a long parade of people came along, with men wearing very little clothes, carrying huge wooden phallus's, on fire. Then they fought each other with their burning phallus, before they fought each other without them. Did I mention that they were very drunk? After all the fighting was over they broke off pieces of the now not burning penises and gave them to people, preferably girls. Then we went home...

Now, this sounds kinda insane. And I'm sorry I can't explain in any plainer way what actually happened. It did look slightly insane.

I had a lot of fun, even if I didn't understand anything 98% of the time. After trying to research it a little for myself, the burning of the wood is to drive away evil spirits. Maybe it has something to do with fertility? I tried google it, but didn't find any good pages. If anyone knows any good sites, please let me know. I have to write a paper about it, you see.

If you want to see some more pictures, check out Vibeke's blog! :)

Actions speak louder than words

2012-01-27T01:02:00.002+09:00

The later years I've tried to live by the saying "actions speak louder than words". It is one thing saying one will do something, but actually following through with it, and doing it is different. I don't want to make promises I can't keep, and I want my actions to have some kind of relation to what I say and think about things. It always sounded pretty good to me, but I have seen a different side to this saying as well.

Talking with some Japanese students about the Senpai - Kohai relations. Senpai is higher in the hiraky than kohain, and in Japanese culture Kohai have to listen to, and respect senpai. But, even if this is so, there are times where kohai disagrees with senpai. For some reason this topic came up, and as the European I am, I asked: "But what if you disagree? What if you don't want to do what senpai ask of you?".

The answer was something along these lines: When you are told something, you will be respectful and say yes. However, it is your actions that matters. You can choose to do as you are told, but you can also reply by just doing something other than what you're told. You won't say anything about it, just act in accordance to how you want and feel about the matter.

It is easy for me, as an outsider to criticizes this kind of group dynamics. Maybe I'm to individualistic to see the benefits from this. I'm not saying that this is how every Japanese person thinks about the matter. But it got me thinking about what I really mean when I say "actions speaks louder than words". Should it not go both ways? Perhaps what I say, and how I act should be the same.

"It's your actions that defines you". Should my words not also define me equally with my words?

On other notes: I was at a crazy fire festival last weekend. It was amazing, I love Japan.

I have also had the great idea lately that speaking more Japanese is good. This results in the following scenario:

Boy : "Yeah his face is really cute"
Me, thinking I'm saying: "Do you want your face to be (cute) like his?"
But actually saying: "Do you want to ride his face?"

Perhaps, I need a teeny, tiny bite more practice?

Racist Japan..?

2012-01-15T18:03:00.001+09:00

This last days I've been on a winter program arranged by the Student Round Table (SRT) at my university. On Saturday we were given a lecture about the Bustamante report from UN to Japan, concerning their treatment of immigrants and foreigners in Japan. My group was concerned with racism and discrimination of immigrants in Japan.

And this made me think. I am a foreigner, currently living in Japan. I might not be an immigrant, so many of the questions that came up will never concern me directly. It still got me thinking, about whether or not I experience the society as a racist one. After thinking about it, I have to say that I have not been treated in any way badly. The first time I went to Japan I was told not to expect Japanese people to treat me nicely, as they don't like Americans. I might not be an American, but I do look like a westerner, and I was told this was enough. The first time was rather short, only 10 days, and I do remember thinking it was weird that people wouldn't want to sit next to me on the buss or train. Even if there was that free seat, they would rather stand. After living here for the past months though, I realize that it doesn't have that much to do about me, being a gaijin, but more about their culture. I might often experience that I feel left out, that I'm looking from the outside through a window, or invisible barrier. But is that really discrimination or racism?

Many of the people I've talked to, specially people who have gone to, or are going to other universities than mine says that it's difficult to make friends with the Japanese. I can understand what they mean. To get through all the layers of politeness is difficult, and I sometimes feel like I will never understand them. Specially with the language barrier. But I'm slowly loving these people more and more. I like their subtle ways of saying things, I like how they avoid conflicts. It was the most annoying thing in the beginning, why couldn't they just tell me what they meant? But now, I'm slowly learning to "read the air" (read the atmosphere in English, a Japanese friend explained me this Japanese concept of feeling what people really meant when they said something). I'm slowly understanding that they are telling what they feel. I just need to listen. I am, after all, an outsider. It's my job to adapt.

And to those of you who are Japanese friends: thank you for your patience :)

On other notes: This weekend was great. The program was well made and I learned a lot, at the same time as I had so much fun. Being in a group with almost only Japanese people was a new experience, I've mostly been hanging out with the exchange students. Thursday we had Ice-breaking games, Friday was skiing trip, Saturday was the Immigration day, and today we acted as different countries making a trade union. I was South Korea. It was really fun, and difficult to negotiate with all the countries in order to make a good deal for our country.

My wonderful group for the Saturday session

Working hard, haha

And I'm painting again. It's been almost two months, so yey!

Nya, Nya!

2012-01-10T00:29:00.001+09:00

Tokyo was intense.

After checking out my awesome hotel I went out to meet my friends from Norway. First we went to Asakusa, had some nice curry soba, and went on to Shinjuku. We met a friend from AIU, had food again and drinks until late. "Tyrkisk pepper" in the hotel room. It was a good night.

The day after we spent in Akihabara. I've actually never been there, and for some weird reason I was dying to go to a maid cafe. It was awesome, and kinda embarrassing. I had to chant some kinda song while the maid was stirring my coffee. "wan wan, nya nya, pian pian...". They served us cake with pretty drawings on them! (I'll post pictures later, they are on my phone and I can't find the cable..)

After eating, we went to eat again. Nomihodai. Karaoke, Nomihodai. Singing Queen and "Moves like Jagger" until we had no voice left. After that we decided we needed to make friends, and went out into the streets of Tokyo looking for a bar. First we met one guy whom I'm sure wanted to come with us, but his girlfriend didn't agree. After talking to her on the phone he ran away Naruto-style. We found a bar, and to strange guys whom took us to a cosplay bar. We spoke "Japanese" and had beer until 5 in the morning. Back to the hotel, calling the reception with some guys phone in a 7/11 to get in, and talking to a random old man on a bike wile waiting for someone to open the door... Japan is amazing, I keep meeting so many nice people and I'm not even sure how I do it.

I'm really good at taking pictures of us, haha

The day after I woke up drunk, went to find my Norwegian friends whom also woke up drunk. We had sushi in a nice, but crowded sushibar. Half of us enjoyed it, the other half tried one piece and said never again. Success? I think so. After walking about randomly in some streets with a very suspicious looking crowd (Pacchinkos and strip bars at every corner...) we went to find my buss back to Akita.

The buss was nice, a lot warmer than last time, and no snoring people. I even met some other students from AIU and we accompanied each other back to school on the train and bus. After coming back I went straight to a martial arts festival. I'll write about it tomorrow, this post is already getting to long.

It's nice being back. It is so empty though, and soooo much snow! Tomorrow is first day of Japanese class again. I bought a polka-dot notebook to cheer me up! :D

Mono no aware

2012-01-06T14:53:00.001+09:00

Mono no aware (物の哀れ?), literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō?), or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing.

We were invited to spend the day at a school friends house. First of all I felt very honored to be invited to his home. Second off all I felt amazed that he wanted us to meet, and talk with his grandfather. And thirdly, I am so grateful for the hospitality the showed us when we came.

We arrived around one o'clock to the train station, and we walked a short while before we came to their house. There we were greeted by his mother, and shortly after his grandfather also came. We were served lunch, beer, wine, dessert, tea (you name it), and talked about Japanese culture with the grandfather. No English, so my friend had to translate. I'm so fascinated by Japanese culture, in particular Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, and all the different terms originating through that. He answered all of our questions, and we talked about Mono no aware. The beauty of the moment, and the sadness of which that it soon will pass. He told us about what the word "Arigatou" in Japanese really means (exist and difficult), he told us about various terms in Japanese, he showed us kabuki. They showed us how they light incense and pray for their relatives, they showed us baby pictures from Buddhist rituals, and all sorts of objects they have inherited from their ancestors. I learned more about Japanese culture in that day than my entire last semester in school. Not because I don't learn anything in school, but this was first hand experiences, they showed us a piece of their lives.

Before we left, the grandfather was talking about a term called Ichigo ichie (一期一会) meaning "one time, one meeting". It can be translated like "for this time only," "never again," or "one chance in a lifetime." I was so touched from what he said, about how he always met people like he would never see them again, and used the opportunity to one's best in that one meeting. I kept thinking about Aikido, about how each technique is one new meeting, one new opportunity. Life should be lived like that as well. There is not always a chance to do something again, and one should try to enjoy every moment of what one is doing. Pretty difficult, eh? (I also mentioned this concept in this post).

Now I'm sitting in a pretty shabby hotel room in Tokyo, in a pretty shabby street. When we came with the buss the place was full of old, retired people, looking at us like we were there to rob them. The room is about the size of the bathrooms in Komachi (for those who knows them), meaning that the room is a 30x10 cm square for shoes, and then just futon... But for 2000 yen a night it's worth it I guess. I'm on my way out soon, to meet some friends thats visiting Tokyo from Norway (yeeey!). Even if this place smells like shit, and looks like shit I kinda love it. It makes me appreciate my room at school more. I'm actually looking forward to going back there now!

PS: I think the national sport of Japan is eating. I'm pretty sure. Where ever I go the serve me food until I can't walk back home. Also, I've met several girls telling me that one of their hobbies is to eat....

PS 2: I do hate night buses. Could someone please remind me next time? I seem to keep forgetting that freezing on a buss all night next to some snoring man is not something one calls a good time...

Ninjas, soba and champagne

2012-01-01T16:04:00.008+09:00

Happy new years everybody! Hope everyone had as wonderful a celebration as me!
Being in Japan is a little strange in the first place, and the way of celebrating different holidays is also very strange indeed. We decided that we wanted to go out have dinner together, but had a hard time finding a nice place that fit within the price range that everybody wanted to eat at. In the end, we decided that going to a ninja restaurant was a good idea. And indeed it was!
We arrived to find some ninjas waiting at the door for us, and they showed us in through some kind of cave labyrinth. A waiter/ninja-guy kept bouncing about, showing us his ninja climbing skills, telling us to watch our step and head throughout the entire labyrinth. After making us call some kinda ninja password he let us in the door and showed us to our table. We ordered a set dinner, and red wine. The food were all fitting with the ninja theme, and also really good. We had a nice time eating, spent almost four hours there! By the end of our dinner the "ninja master" as he called himself came and showed us some ninja-card-tricks. It was quite impressive actually.

Dark and gloomy picture, but we are in a Ninja restaurant after all

Shuriken tree. They were really good!

Frog cheesecake

After dinner we went to an Irish pub. We were planning on going to a shrine to hear them ringing in the new year in the traditional fashion, but we had such a nice time in the pub, and decided to stay. We bought champagne to toast the new year, and were served soba, on the house. In Japan they eat soba, which is some kind of noodles to celebrate the changing of years. There were live music playing, and they also gave us beer on the house.

Soba and champagne

Thursday we went to Nara, to say hello to the deers. They were really cute. We bought some kind of cookies to feed them with, and they loved us for a while. But when there were no more cookies they didn't want to be our friend anymore. There were also some really nice shrines in the park!

Not to sure if I'm happy about the deers giving me attention

Peek-a-bo!

Friday we met with Cecilie and her boyfriend. First we went to a temple with 1000 golden statues. I were there last time I went to Kyoto, and liked it a lot and wanted to show it to them. After that we had sushi lunch, and after that we went to Gion to look for a tea house. We walked around in the little streets with all the old houses, and found a cozy tea house. The tea and sweets were amazing, like always. We talked about tea ceremony, and the Do-aspect of it, as well as comparing it a little to Aikido. It was an interesting conversation, and it made me reflect a little more over what Do- really is.

Delicious food picture parade :D

Cheese cake!

Sushi lunch

Matcha and sweets

Chocolate fondant! This was the best one of them all!!

Today has been uneventful, but nice. It's a national holiday here as well today, and nothing is open. Pretty unusual actually, things are always open here, even on Sundays. In lack of motivation to do anything else, we went for a walk, ate Mc. Donalds (haha).
Tomorrow we're thinking about going to the movies, and I have to move. Nastja is only allowed to have overnight guests for 7 days every month. I've been allowed to stay at a friend of hers apartment. I'm really exited! I'm gonna live alone, it's going to be scary, but also interesting to live in a tiny, Japanese apartment for a couple of days. I were there when I got the key, so I know what it looks like. But this will be my first time sleeping alone since I came to this country, so I'm pretty nervous. Not really sure why, but I guess it will be strange that nobody is around. Wish me luck with the Japanese ghosts, haha :D

God bye to the old, hello to the new...

2011-12-30T23:08:00.006+09:00

Although people probably rather hear about Kyoto, I wanted to share some thoughts about the year thats passed. It's been, in many ways, a heavy and challenging year. I'm probably not alone when I say that there is no way of counting the amount of tears this year claimed, or the depths of sorrow or despair it brought with it. It's been a tough year with Tsunami, Utøya and various conflicts all over the world...

But there is always a silver lining. For never have I found such support, and love in the people around me. The most beautiful thing, is when even trough the darkest of times, people will share some love with you. It is in these times that the small things matter the most, and I just want to share some of the smallest blessings I received this year. They might look small, in the grand scope of it, but even the smallest rocks will roll.

The commitment from entire societies to rebuild what has been lost.

The beauty in a brave smile from someone who has lost loved ones.

A hug from a stranger after a memorial service.

Standing together, singing old songs about love, peace and togetherness.

Hand written letters from someone far away.

Someone staying up together through the darkest nights in a cold common room.

The trust from a child with which one do not even speak a mutual language.

My proudest moments were seeing the university Aikido club become a part of NAF, passing my Chinese courses (haha), seeing how strong my friends are and being able to be there to support them, and managing to get myself all the way to uni in Japan.

I always think of the years as drawing books, and each new year starts with a blank one. One ought to draw the pages of the book with beautiful colors and pictures to make the most out of the book. I'm happy to say that even if some of the pages are darkened with the tragic events of the past year, most of them are amongst the most beautiful pages ever drawn. I can only hope, and try to paint the next year as beautiful as this one. Hopefully make it even better.

Happy New year!

Amazing 2011 moments picture parade!

(Some of them at least, there are toooo many! And yes, they are not in chronological order, I'm sorry...)

Tinkerbell and Peter Pan

AIU festival, having scones and tea with good friends

My amazing herbs in the window in Lægdene (den fantastiske sintronmelissen heter forresten Thomas!! :D )

Making sushi with a good friend in Bergen

Helsinki!

Making Norwegian apple cake with Japanese mothers and daughters

Some of my wonderful "fadderbarn" <3

Hostfamily <3

Norwegians at the matriculation ceremony

Volunteering to help clean up after the tsunami

Fjords and aikido with Fabrice Somers in Stavanger

Reading poem in Chinese at the Chinese new years celebration

"Vestlandet aikido festival" in Bergen

Student round table meeting group picture

And many more.... <3

Kyoto!

2011-12-27T12:11:00.008+09:00

This last week after the end of the semester has been really quiet and nice, just like a vacation should be. It was sad saying bye to everybody who left to go home, but still we had nice times with dinners and good company. I went sledding for instance, and to Akita city for dinner and karaoke. Christmas eve was spent in an unusual way. We made international dinner, and about 8 of us ate together. There were chicken, guacamole, queseillas and potato salad. After we had a huge chocolate cake. After dinner we had warm red wine, and I skyped with my family for the first time after coming here. It was fun seeing them again.

Taking to my youngest brother. Not sure what we're doing, though :D

Sunday morning we got up at six to take the taxi for the train station. After that we went to Akita, to find a buss to the ferry dock, but we missed it and had to take a taxi instead. We were there a little late, but "luckily" there was a blizzard and the ferry was about one hour to late. The boat rocked all the way from Akita to Tsuruga, it was impossible to sleep.

Yep, it was pretty stormy

Even if the ride was bumpy, I still managed to make a new friend. An middle aged man from Hiroshima. I know how this sounds, haha, but he was really nice. He kept giving us candy, and was talking about japanese culture. He told us that he is some kind of Kendo teacher, for school children, and even offered to drive us to Kyoto! I was so happy, finding a bus or a train in the blizzard would not be fun without any sleep (yes, it was still snowing where we got off, hundreds of kilometers from Akita). He was playing old Japanese pop music in the car, chatting away about their meanings, and other Japanese things. Half English, half Japanese. Honestly I understood only half of what he said, he probably understood less of what we said. But we were still nice friends, who needs to understand as long as one can talk? When it was time for us to part, he gave us his phone number and told us to call when we go to Hiroshima. Cos' we would be going to Hiroshima some day, right?

When we got to Nastjas place, we were pretty tired, and hungry (we though the boat would be in Tsuruga at 5.30 Sunday, not 5.30 Monday morning, lost in translation, haha). We went to the store, made taco with pasta sauce, rice and veggies inside (haha) and after my travel companion went home to go to bed (poor Isaac spent 24 hours being sea sick) Nastja and I went downtown to eat parfait. Yummy! A little to sweet, slightly sickening, but delicious. I was too tired to do anything more, so we walked for a while, looking at the night life before we went back home.

Yesterday we met with a friend of mine from AIU, and he showed us around some temples. First we went to a Shinto shrine, then we went to the golden temple, before we went to his high school and then another temple. We had tea in a little house where the shrine maids set it out for visitors. We talked a lot about japanese culture, and about Shinto and Buddhist beliefs in every day japanese families. He told us about how some families don't really believe in anything anymore, but they still carry out the rituals. It's interesting to see that so many things are the same as at home when it comes to beliefs and religion, even though we worship to different gods. After the walks we went to eat Chinese food before we went to Gion for a walk, and had beer at a British pub. A really nice day!

Today we met another japanese friend, and went to the shrine with all the gates, called Fushimi inari. It was just as beautiful as I thought, having seen so many pictures of it. The atmosphere was lovely, and we were there at a day without so many tourists. At the shrine they were prepering for newyears, everything was beeing nicely decorated.

We tried lifting some sort of stone. If we felt the stone lighter than expected, or wishes for the next year would come true. If it was heavier than expected, they would not. Three girls tried lifting it before me, none of them could, and when it was my turn i let out a squeal when lifting it, for it was so much lighter than I would expect. I was almost afraid I would throw it over my head, haha. I was the only one of us finding it lighter than expected. My wishes will come true then, I suppose. Yay! We walked further up, all the way to the top. Masayuki and I prayed one more time, this time for good luck with university («Just in case, it's better to be sure..»). After that we hung out with some of the shrine cats, one of them wanted to cuddle for a long time and kept miaowing after us when we tried to leave, as to say «please stay and play with me». We had lunch at a cute little ramen shop, before heading back to the city.

These are the stones we were picking up

Now we just had dinner, we made chicken and rice, and we're drinking Japanese rose wine. It's pretty nice. Tomorrow we're heading to Nara, it will be nice I hope!

Sorry about the loooong blogg post, but there are just so many nice things here that I want to share with you! :

Last week of fall semester

2011-12-22T02:02:00.008+09:00

These last two weeks have been really busy. I have had two Japanese exams, three papers to write, one practical examination in Ikebana, one in Tea Ceremony and one in Calligraphy! Looking back at it I'm not even sure how I managed getting through all of that. Now I have vacation, at last.

As my papers probably are of no interest to anyone, I'll talk about my practical instead. The first one was Ikebana. We were allowed to make whatever style of arrangement we wanted to, and I decided to make something to hang on the wall.

Before starting...

...And the finished product!

For Tea ceremony we made our own ceremony. We decided our theme, and everybody had different tasks to preform. The theme were Cinderella, the fairytale. Decorations, equipment and sweets were made to fit with the theme. The sweets were even handmade, shaped like little pumpkins! So cute, and so delicious.

For calligraphy the practical examination was a "writing test" to pass the first level of writing with a pen. It was conducted sometime in November, and in the last class we got the certificate for it. We did however make some nice strips with wishes on to be burned on some kind of festival (sorry about not being more specific, as stated in an earlier post I don't understand much of whats going on in that class). Supposedly, they are burned to send the wishes we wrote on them with the smokes to the Gods. Then maybe the gods will make our wishes come true.

Making them...

..And some posing in front of the finished work

The Japanese exams went fine I think, understood everything. Not sure if my answers were any good though, but at least I understood what I was asked, haha.

Now everybody it seems like are packing up to leave. I'm so sad to see so many leave. Winter semester will be so strange, no new students, and so many gone. I'll miss all of them, I see them so often they almost feel like family. Also, seeing people going home brings out feelings of homesickness for me as well. I want to go home for Christmas so bad! I'll comfort myself with my trip to Kyoto, haha. Leaving on Sunday, can't wait!

Kimono event and christmas dinner

2011-12-20T19:07:00.004+09:00

Last Saturday I spent my day taking pictures of beautiful people trying on kimonos. Not much to say about it, just wanted to share some pictures.

There are some pictures of me somewhere too, after I was done taking pictures I got to put on kimono as well. I'll upload some when I've edited them too :)

After the event was over I went to my host family to have Christmas dinner. The food was as always amazing! She made "traditional Japanese Christmas dinner", consisting of fried chicken. Even if it don't scream Christmas for me, it was really good. My sisters are crazy, I love it.

And I finally have winter vacation! Soon I'll be leaving for Kyoto to see Nastja! And hopefully some of my other friends living in the area. It's gonna be an amazing holiday I'm sure.

I'll post some pictures and thoughts about my last two weeks of the semester tomorrow :)

2011-12-08T01:08:00.003+09:00

Calligraphy class is pretty interesting, specially when I'm there, not understanding anything of what is going on. It's at those times I find it the most important to try reflect about whats being said later on. Today she gave us a text which I were not able to understand right away, but it still touched me somehow. Thats why I decided to share it with you guys here. Be ready for some philosophy on calligraphy!

"I went to Shaoshin and saw the Rantei monument. In Ranteijyo it was written that the scenery of this place is very beautiful, but when I went there I noticed it's not a beautiful place, it was terrible. In Japan, all the people don't want to notice their bad points and want to forget them.

Nowadays I have a lot of letters and calls from my friends who went to China. The guard of Tenanmon is becoming loose and many people are able to go there. The contents of the letters or telephone call is "I bought a brush", "I bought an ink stick", "I bought a rubbing", and they always ask is this good or not? And I always answer it is commensurate to the price. But for the ink stick I can't say such a thing, because they don't sell real ones.

Once I got an ink stick from a famous artist. It looked very expensive but the color and quality was really bad. But I had to thank him. Rubbings are also like ink sticks. There are no originals. There are only some copies of them, And because these are copies they become model. This is terrible. Rentijo is also not the original. There are about 500 copies of it. Your eyes must be clever to understand the difference between the copy and the real thing."

Now, ranteijyo is a kind of script used to write calligraphy. And also, it's probably not the deepest text ever.

The text is a little difficult to understand at first glance, mostly because I think the translation is probably not the best one. But what I get the most from it, is to learn to appreciate the real thing, instead of liking the "cheaper alternatives". The first part, about Japan not seeing their bad points is the same all over the world I imagine. It's difficult to see one selfs or ones cultures bad points.

I'm really sad this class is coming to an end. Only two more weeks, and it's finished. It has been my favorite class this semester, it feels nice trying to do something "with my heart" as the teacher says.

Some pictures from class. A seal I made. The kanji on them is in some old style, and are the characters my teacher gave me as my name when I studied Chinese. They mean beautiful instrument. Next is one of my works framed, its written in Norwegian and means "Life passes in color". Last is the work of the entire class one day. We were asked to paint a bird and a fish, and to interpret it any way we wanted to.

You know you're in Japan when...

2011-12-02T00:27:00.005+09:00

...even the candy looks cute!

You can even build with the Lego-candy! And it tastes yummy too.

I don't have much to say this week, have been quiet. I watched a lot of Lost (yes, I am kinda addicted. Feels weird, but I can't think about anything else. I.. Have... To.. Finish... it!)

Have started planing the trip to Kyoto/Osaka/Tokyo for this Christmas. I can't wait! Reserved the ferry tickets today, so I guess we're really going. I'm so nervous, traveling in Japan stresses me a little. Not that it's difficult, I'm just so worried about not understanding something important.

Here is this weeks photo club pictures. The theme was shadows:

1: Shadows of yesterday
2: My shadows (they were following three steps behind me, screaming orders of what they wanted me to do while taking pictures, haha)
3: Shadows on the mountains

Other than that, not much is going on. I should prepare for my exams, snow is coming soon, and life is as always, really, really good :D

2011-11-27T19:02:00.007+09:00

I went to see my host family yesterday, and we had a great time!

First we went to the family hippo club, and it was as chaotic as last time. At least I kinda knew the games this time. I'm so impressed still about how many languages the kids can introduce themselves in. No food this time, haha, but it was still fun.

After that we went to the family's house. We were two more this time, two girls from Mongolia were also there. We celebrated one of the Mongolian girls, and Iris's birthday, and we were all making food from our own countries. I can't seem to figure out what kind of Norwegian food to cook, so I made the apple cake we made at the elementary school. Okaasan made sushi. All of the food was so good, and I ate until I could have rolled my way home.

And there were of course birthday cake! Iris and I decorated it :)

After eating all the girls played card games, before we played truth or dare. I find playing truth or dare with them so funny, they keep asking about boyfriends, and they are all very embarrassed about it. I think the reason is the age difference, and also a culture difference as well. They are a lot more "up tight" about relationships and things like that here than what I'm used to from home.

Today was more quiet, got up, had breakfast. We played some kind of language game in Japanese, and I gave up cos' I didn't really understand anything.

Okaasan saw that I was bored, went upstairs and found a cosplay costume. She asked me to put it on, and I though "what the heck"... I find it hilarious. It's school girls uniform looking, but has shorts instead. I look absolutely ridiculous. I love it, haha!

Then we went to manga shoukou again. Always a lot of fun things too look at there. Manga shoukou is a HUGE used store, where they have everything from clothes to video games, CD s', manga and so on.

Also, on a last note: I love how they make everything look so cute here.. This is some foods from the supermarket, and they have faces. I have no clue whats inside, but don't you just want to buy them for the sake of the cuteness? I think thats the point.

AIU supporters

2011-11-24T22:50:00.002+09:00

Yesterday I went on a volunteer trip to go to the tsunami area to help clean up after the tsunami. We had the day off school, and I though it was a good way of spending my free day. It's far away, so we had to get up at 4 in the morning to take the buss.

We were sent to a more rural area, and helped clean up around on of the old foundations of a house. Everything between where the house had been and the ocean were gone. It was sad to see just how much the tsunami had damaged.

We spent the day cutting the bamboo around the house to clear out belongings, pieces of houses and boats. We dug around the old house and found toys, kitchenware, clothes and all sorts of pieces of life. We even found photographs.

It felt good to help, it felt bad to see how much is still needed to be done. I feel for the sufferers, it's difficult to grasp just how devastating it was without seeing it for myself. I appreciate living in such a safe place as I do even more after seeing it.

I wont post any pictures for this, I guess you can google it if you want to see it..

Seoul

2011-11-21T19:14:00.007+09:00

This last weekend we went to Korea. What would summarize this weekend best? Maybe words like military, crazy taxi drivers, streetlights, umbrellas, art, no sleep, sitting on the floor and food would be the best ones used.

We left for Tokyo in the morning Thursday, with the Shinkansen. Without having any specific plan about how to get there, I'm pretty impressed we made it there so easily. We arrived at our hotel in Seoul at about 11 in the night, and went out to eat. The only place we found that late was some Chinese restaurant. The food was decent enough, though we were to tired to care to much.

Friday morning we got up pretty early, and went to go to DMZ (demilitarized zone) between North- and South-Korea. I had no idea what to expect, as I know fairly little about the conflict. We got to talk to a North-Korean girl who escaped at the age of 14, we saw the line between north and south, and some other places of significance, some underground tunnels build by the north-Korean to infiltrate the south, the most northern train station in south-Korea. I don't know what I think about the trip. It was interesting seeing the places, and hearing some about the conflict. We have been talking about it for a while before we went, but I feel I have far to little knowledge about it all to say anything about it. I did not like how they made the conflict into a tourist attraction, though. We would stop to buy souvenirs, there were some museums there etc. I felt everything were made to entertain us. We didn't go for the sake of entertainment, but because we wanted to see for ourselves what the zone is all about.

When we got back to Seoul we had dinner at a really nice place, went back to the hotel and got drunk.

Saturday we went sightseeing, saw some temple, went to an art museum, walked up to Seoul tower through a nice park, and went to an underground shopping mall, before we went to a small kimchi-place. The taxi driver whom took us from Seoul tower to the shopping mall was crazy. He were screaming out the window at some girls crossing the street, told me several times that he loved me and wanted me to say it in Korean, told us about Korean dating customs etc. When we stopped answering him, he started making weird sounds. He looked absolutely crazy even before we got into the car, so I'm not entirely sure why we rode with him. It was just funny, though I think I would have been more worried if I were in the car with him alone.

Sunday we headed back to Japan, and spent the day in Tokyo. We went to the government building, and had lunch in the restaurant at the top of one of the towers. After that we went to a park to see a shrine we went to when I was in japan last time (three years ago). I had some troubles remembering how to get there, and we took a huge detour. I'm so happy I understand enough Japanese to ask directions. Some nice construction worker pointed us in the right direction, and we finally found it. This weekend was the Sichigosan-festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shichi-Go-San) so there were a lot of people in kimonos, specially children, at the shrine.

After that we went to the train station to but tickets. The train was of course full, and we had to sit on the floor all the way from Tokyo to Akita (4 hours). We bought bento-boxes, and ate them at our "seats" in the hallway. Honestly, eating the bento-boxes there, with good friends at the floor was one of my happiest moments. It doesn't take much to make me happy.

I like Seoul. It was easy to get around, it seemed less chaotic than Tokyo to me, and the people were more easy going. A lot of couples were holding hands and kissing for instance, something I rarely see in public in Japan.

Tokyo on Sunday were nice too, the weather was amazing, so the walk in the park to the shrine was really nice. It was also nice being back in Japan, and to able to understand something of what people said, and what the signs says.

Also, I bought a new book for the way back. It's by a Korean author, Young-Ha Kim, and is called "I have the right to destroy myself". I loved it. Check it out if you need anything new to read, and want to read weird, morbid korean litterature.

It feels strange being back, it's difficult to consentrate on my homework. I'm just dreaming of traveling again.

And I bought a camera! Look at all the pretty pictures, lol! Isaac has been teaching me to use lightroom, yey!

Apple cake

2011-11-07T13:19:00.005+09:00

Getting up at 6 in the morning to go make apple cake with little kids have never been my idea of a good time, but surprisingly, it was not so bad. I think mainly it's due to all the sugar we put in that cake, and the fact that we only had two kids in our group.

We were asked to go to an elementary-school to make Norwegian food with some kids. First off all, what were we going to make? Second, did I want to spend my Saturday being tortured by little kids high on sugar? Despite my reservations and negativeness I decided to give it a go. Cecilie came up with the idea to make her grandmothers apple cake, which was a great idea.

The recipe, translated to Japanese!

And the ingredients

The cake turned out amazing! I felt kinda homesick, and really wanted to go home and have coffee and apple cake.

Also, one of the Chinese guys we met at the farming trip was there. His group were making dumplings, and he kept feeding me. I was so happy, dumplings are one of my favorite foods in the world!

Not much more to say, let the picture talk for them selves! :D

Us Norwegian girls, before we start.

Getting ready

Some amazing shoes we had to wear...

Cecilie is singing "Bæ, bæ, lille lam" to "our" kids while we are waiting for the cake to finish.

Finally finished!

Look at all that cake!

We even came in the newspaper. French girls in the front on the picture, me in the back some where if it's possible to see it.

Autumn in Akita

2011-11-02T15:39:00.005+09:00

Autumn is my absolute favorite season. I love putting on layers of clothes, and the cold air against my face. I love the "going back to school" feeling, and the sound of the leaves under my feet.

Yesterday me and a friend went out to take some pictures, and the colors around the school at the moment are amazingly beautiful. I love the yellow, orange and red covering the trees.

It's so comforting to walk around in the park with the trees. Everything is calm, as if the entire forest is meditating. The temperature and the lighting made it easy for me to be almost meditating too. Just walking around, looking at the beauty of nature made me feel at ease, and energized again. I should definitely walk around in the forest more often.

Other than the nice season life is going by "normal" here in Akita, though nothing is truly normal when I'm around. We had a "Finished with lesson test celebration" yesterday, that was... interesting. I also have to compose 5 haiku that is related to this season by the end of next week, and "compete" against the others in my literature class. That will be interesting, don't quite know how well I am at composing literature, but we'll see. If they are good enough I might even post them here, who knows. Life is good. Life is beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQLha4zcQI

A visitor from Kyoto

2011-11-01T00:34:00.009+09:00

There is something very strange about connecting two worlds into one moment. This week a very good friend from Norway came to visit med fro Kyoto, where she lives now, and though we live in the same country, it was strange seeing her here, in Japan. These last months I've been feeling so disconnected from my real life, she was a breath of the reality of the outside world.

Seeing her was absolutely amazing!

Sh e arrived Friday, and I went to pick her up in Akita. We don't have the best bus connections, and I am not the most organzied person as most might know, so you can believe I was relieved that I found her! I don't have a Japanese phone yet, so I don't know what I would do if I couldn't find her. We had some coffee and waited for the train, and talked about life.

When we came back to school, we went to the schools Halloween party. I dressed up like Pesta. Not many got that I was not a witch, only the ones who knew the plan already and the other Norwegians. It was fun dressing up none the less.

Saturday we went to Akita city for some sightseeing. The weather was nice, the company was amazing. We had a lot of fun, and even made some new "friends"...

Though Cecilies new friend didn't particularly want to befriend her...

After saying bye to our new friends we bought really cheap white wine, cheap candy and some nice cheese which we had in the evening. The cheese and wine was consumed like it should with students, off a shared plate on the floor. fantastic! I want to sit on the floor every day.

Sunday goes by like Sunday does. She is on her way back, and I am waiting for my train to Wada. Siting in the train station watching the all the Japanese people going by is quite interesting. There is some comfort in knowing I will never understand them. I am happy about that, let's leave some mystery in our lives!

Some Highlights of the weekend:

-Seeing Anastasia and the relief in knowing I for once were in the right place at the right time!

-Anastasia rearranging my bed, just to put it back like it used to be. I have a futon bed, it's quite hard. The comforter is more comfortable as a mattress than the mattress, so I sleep on my comforter and under my mattress. It took Anastasia about 10 seconds of lying down to understand why.

-Finally finding a nice cardigan. I bought two in different colors. It was cheap, and I'm so tired of looking for clothes that fit me.

-Cookies and chocolate from Norway!

-Sleeping crowded in my tiny bed felt just like it did when we were kids. Good times :)

-Last but not least, our strange gaijin "friends". Not often we meet foreigners that is not in our school, and even more seldom do they speak to us. The line "Do you speak English?" was a strange start though...

A creative weekend

2011-10-23T23:08:00.004+09:00

This weekend I've been at my host family again, this time I spent the night there.

We left here at 10 on Saturday, and went to the «Hippo family club». The club is for learning different languages, and the whole family would join. We made kiritampo, and ate green tea flavored cake. The food was amazing, the people were nice and I love the concept of learning a little of different languages. It was however really confusing for me, we played some games and I didn't understand anything of what was going on 80% of the time. Singing strange songs, doing dance moves I’ve never seen before, a language I don't understand... It was a nice experience though.

After that we went to Akita prefecture museum, which showed articles from all the way back to the stone age, up through modern history. There were also a botanical section, with fish, plants and bugs.

The evening went by quietly in their house. We celebrated Sayakas 19th. birthday, had delicious Halloween inspired food, and watched TV. Since I couldn’t understand anything of the program I drew instead. I've been working on a paper about Heian period Literature, and drew some girls in the Heian era outfits.

Today we made earrings. It was nice, quiet and I got out some creative energy. And I have some nice earrings to wear myself, or give as little gifts to someone.

This last week was crazy. I pretty much didn't do any school work at all. And friend and I decided to be rebells, and have turned the normal structure around. Instead of beeing good studenst during the week, and party in the weekend, we decided that caluah and milk was a good way of spending our evenings. Now I have so much to make up for this week. I need to read some Japanese, and finish my literature essay. It's an interesting theme, but I can't seem to find any inspiration to start writing on it. I don't particular like writing essays, I never seem to find a good thread to keep through the whole thing and always end up confusing myself. But I just have to do it!

Cecilie is my friend :D

Some pictures from these last weeks :) Cecilie as binding thread of my life here, as you might see xD

Starbucks. Cheese cake! <3

A pizza with an egg. Yummy..?

Eating snikkers and banan bread at the same time..

Caluah and Milk to drown our sorrows about all our tests and papers.

Farm stay

2011-10-17T23:48:00.008+09:00

This weekend i got the opportunity to go stay with a farm family out in the district of Akita. It was a really good opportunity to see and talk to local people, and also to learn about their culture.

We left school at Saturday, 7.50 in the morning, and went to the other university in the city to pick up the rest of the participants in the program. It turned out to be about 60 Asian people from different Asian countries, and about 4 western people. Only me and one of the other Norwegian girls were western from my university, and people were really excited when the guide said there were two girls from Norway in the trip. Its strange to be the exotic one!

We arrived at the place where we were to meet our farm families for the weekend. I stayed with five other participants, from USA, China, Japan, Mongolia and Singapore. I don't speak Japanese, only two of them spoke very good English, but we could all communicate despite of our language barriers. It was a nice mix of cultures, and I think all of us learned new things about far and strange countries.

The farm I stayed on is a rice farm, and the family is grandma, grandpa, mom and dad, son and his wife with a 5 year old child, the cat and John the samurai (who is pretty scary, and lives in the guestroom...). On Saturday they showed us around the farm, we got to see all the different machines, and we made kiritampo, a traditional rice dish. We grilled it in the greenhouse, and eat it with miso paste. Later we went to the Onsen, and when we came back we got served a delicious dinner, with lots of sake.

Ready for your closeup, John?

The amazing dinner

On Sunday we got up early, and went to gather chestnuts in the forest. It brought back many childhood memories of picking blueberries, and I liked it a lot. After that we went back to the farm, and were taught how to pack the finished, polished rice into 30 kilo bags. It was heavy work, and so much more difficult than I would have imagined. After working we went to the local town hall to meet the other groups, and talk about our experiences at the different farms. We also talked with the farmers about their challenges and joys about the farm life.

All the chestnuts we gathered

What leaves the biggest impression on me is how happy they all seemed to have their farm, and how devoted they were to their work. They have great pride in the finished product, and strive to make it the best it can be. They told us about the uncertain future, and the difficulties in competing with foreign products than can be produced cheaper, and about how that can take away their farms. We are going back in November to make a photo album, and to talk about how international students can help promote farming in Akita. This trip just makes me want to buy ecological food, and to support the farmers in that way. It feels like such a small thing, I hope I can think of other things to help farmers keep their farms. I don't like the way I have so little knowledge of where the food I eat come from. The though of fabricated food scares me, I should be better at thinking about the people who produce the food also.

Talking about what the different groups did. This group harvested spinach

I'm so happy for the opportunity to meet these people, and for their warmth in letting us into their houses. Even if we could not talk to each other in any way, we still tried to communicate, and I learned a lot from their warm smiles and open hearts.

We are the world

2011-10-10T22:48:00.008+09:00

This weekend has been the amazing AIU festival. All of the students have been working really hard before the festival, and it really payed off. I had no idea just how big it was going to be, but it turned out a lot bigger and better than I could imagine! The school had decorations and food stands and Akita people everywhere. I have never eaten so much food before.

What I liked the most about the festival was the way they focused on the international aspect of the uni. There were food stands with foods from all over the world, and the rooms were decorated to be different countries and parts of the world. They arranged some kind of treasure hunt for the children where part of the tasks was to ask two international students in English for their signature. So many cute kids! The theme of the festival was hoop. I didn't quite understand exactly why, but it was something about the university being a hoop, or a ring of people all over the world. It set a beautiful mood for the festival.

Sunday the Norwegian girls and I decided to wear our kimono or yukata. It was really fun, and I'm so thankful to the three Japanese girls whom helped us put them on! It's a lot more difficult than I would have ever imagined. I felt so cute, everybody kept telling me how pretty I looked in my kimono. Its nice to be told that sometimes.

The last picture my friend Isaac took. His pictures are so amaaazing, find more of his photos here

We mostly wandered through the area, looking at the different places and stands. We watched the karaoke contest for a while, eat lots of food, made a promise at the ICC-promise tree, smiled a lot and took funny pictures. One of the best parts of the day must have been the tea and scone in the English cafe!

Today I spent the first part of the day folding origami "people" for someones project. They were making a Mosaic with promises on it, and needed 2500 folded people. I helped them for an hour or so, while watching the freshmen preform their dances on the stage. They worked really hard with their dances, and it was really cool to see them all dancing. After that I walked around again, while occasionally returning to the stage for more dance performances. We also went to the haunted house they made. It was fun, I was scared a couple of times. Not surprising really xD

The final show was amazing. They had some difficulties as it started to rain, and they had to move it inside. It ended up with not being time for everything, but the improvised show was very good. The dancing was again amazing, and the videos they had were really moving. The final movie was about all the terrible thing 2011 have brought so far, but with a smile we can get through it together. We then went outside to watch some fireworks. After that the winers of the freshmen dances showed their dance again on an very improvised stage outside the multipurpose hall, before we all ended the festival by standing in a huge circle (bout 400 people maybe), holding each others hands and singing "We are the world".

The festival was in other words really nice! I'm so sad it's over :(

Beautiful days

2011-10-07T18:44:00.004+09:00

These last days have been beautiful in so many ways. Tuesday was the field trip to the flower garden, Wednesday I were drawing with the people from the Anime club, yesterday we went to buy kimono, and today I went on a field trip to a tea house and a Japanese garden.

The anime drawing club was nice. I don't really draw anime, but its always nice to be surounded by creative people :D

My drawing. It's called "Let me just have my Coffey, okey?"

The kimono were bought in a secondhand kimono shop in Akita city. There were so many beautiful kimonos, ranging from 2000 to 50000 yen. For a while we were just looking through them, seeing if I found anything I liked, and after looking for a while the girl in the shop came to help me. I tried on three or four different kimonos before I finally found what I wanted. Its the cutest thing I have ever seen! I'm going to wear it on Sunday for the "Akita international university festival". I'm looking forward to see how it looks with everything that goes with it.

Picture of the shopping bag! More pictures in next post, I promise :D

Today we went to a samurai house and a Japanese garden with my tea ceremony class. I'm loving this class more and more for every time I have it. Both the house and the garden were beautiful. The pictures are not so good, I'm afraid, but it gives a feeling about what it looked like.

Some pictures from our field trip :)

I really am starting to want a camera now, my phone is so slow. Maybe I'll just have my mom send me mine from Norway even though its old.

Tonight I'm dancing salsa with our new salsa group (third week, I love it!) and after that me and some other are going to this huge arcade called round one and staying all night! And we are going to the onsen in the morning. Onsen will be amazing.

Fields and flowers

2011-10-04T23:50:00.004+09:00

So I survived the rice harvest despite of my difficult morning of being one hour to early for the bus. It was amazing! We went to a tiny village, and were met by some locals who were to show us how to harvest and hang the rice for drying. Cutting the rice was not to difficult, but tying the rice together showed to be a more difficult task. And old, Japanese lady with a very strange dialect decided that she would teach me how to do it. She showed me 17 times how to do it, made me do it 10 times, and then gave up. I am obviously not meant to be a rice farmer. I felt a little bad, I really wanted to be able to it. The harvest was nice, the weather was perfect and the mood was great.

After coming back from the harvest I went with two others to cut my hair. It feels so much lighter now, and I think its really cute.

When in Japan, do as the Japanese.. We took pictures in one of those photo booth thingies :D

After cutting our hair we went to eat sushi :D It was absolutely amazing, if I had the money I would eat sushi every single day!

Today we went with our flower arrangement class to visit a flower garden. After getting there we found out that we were in someones garden. His flowers were amazing. I must say I went there in a quite a grumpy mood, I have decided I don't like flower arrangement. After being in the garden for a while I did cheer up though. The flowers were to beautiful for me to be grumpy.

He even gave us some flowers to take home.

After coming back I went to meet my conversational partner! She is really nice, and she is going to Bergen to study in January. So, all off you from uni in Bergen who read this, take care of her when she arrives! :D We have a lot of the same interests, on Wednesday we are going to the movies to see the new Ghibli movie! Hopefully they have subtitles in English. Probably not, though, but I'll still enjoy it.

Don't know what else is new, I decided to maybe buy a new camera, though I'm still thinking about it. Also I am in the debating club or something. Don't know how that happened, they recruited me by force, and every time I see them they are reminding me to come next meeting. I am looking kinda forward to it, t debating is scary in English. Other than that not much have been going on, are mostly learning verbs for Japanese at the moment. See ya later! :D

Just an ordinary post, about ordinary Japan

2011-10-01T08:08:00.002+09:00

This week must have been the most ordinary week I have had in this place...

I woke up at 07.00 this morning, when my roomie came back from wherever she’s been hiding. Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means a complaint. It’s more a note upon behavior that to me is strange. This place is filled with Japanese students whom either don't sleep, or sleep very obviously in very public spaces. I would have never imagined that sleeping all over your homework in the library would be so comfortable, even more so than your own bed, but the numbers of sleeping students are starting to convince me otherwise. At first I were wondering if it was the pressure of academic life that pushed them to resorting to sleeping in the library, as an last attempt of maybe having the knowledge seep through the books and into their mind during sleep. It worried me; I have never been the kind of person who deals well with too high academic expectations. After some weeks of classes however, I have found that the academic level of my classes are as they are supposed to with a fulltime study. So why are they sleeping everywhere, and not when they are supposed to?

This question has puzzled me for some weeks, and for some reason, whenever we international students talk about it, it always seems as their roommate don’t have a regular sleeping pattern. They sleep everywhere, anytime, except in their bed, at night. A new theory, after my “difficult studies”-theory is that maybe the pressure lies not with the classes themselves, but rather in the fact that the classes are held in English. Witch to me is amazing. I everyday see examples of Japanese students struggling with their English, and seeing what they have difficulties with, gives me a deeper understanding of the Japanese language. I just wish I understood more Japanese than I do now. I just hope I get to stay here until over the summer. Maybe then, when my Japanese studies get harder, will also I resort to sleeping in the library.

I don’t have any answers yet. I doubt I will before I leave.

As said at the top of the page, this week has been my most ordinary so far. I don’t think that is because this place has stopped being weird, but more because I have gotten used to Japan being a weird, weird place. Now that I think about it, this week has not been ordinary at all. My Japanese class is still a kindergarten, the food still holds many surprises (even when I think that the cafeteria can not surprise me anymore, they rise to new heights of surprise in the creativity in which they prepare our meals), and random Japanese people still tell me weird things in English. The other day a guy went past me, and as I caught his eye he smiled and said “I just had a shower”. Now, I do not know if that is an invitation to something, or just an status update upon his personal hygiene. Two days ago, while trying to do homework, a specimen of the male gender showed very strange behavior in the common room. He is already known for running around naked in the hallways late at night. I was shocked the first time, now it is just normal behavior.

It is now 8.37 in the morning. I am soon going to try my hand at Japanese farm work, by harvesting rice. It’s early, it’s raining. I am positive. I WAS positive an hour ago when I got up, but when you get up at seven and have breakfast, just to find out it starts at nine in stead of eight… It’s early.

This is me in an hour. Except it’s a Vietnamese rice field with a Vietnamese farmer…..

Have a wonderful weekend!

The joys of writing systems...

2011-09-27T23:49:00.005+09:00

This last week has been influenced by the joys of learning the interesting, but also very annoying, writing system of katakana. The symbols are too alike, and I keep confusing them. I know it would be a piece of cake if I just sat down and actually tried to learn it, but there is so many other fun things to do here. Like studying kanji..... Now, before you say anything, it is very productive to learn kanji, its just maybe not the right time.

As you might see, my learning method is not the best for memorizing katakana.

I was so bored that I even made a gummybear story with Ellens gummybears. Here is a picture of them, without the story, moahaha!

Yesterday with calligraphy we went to a shrine nearby the school to copy some characters off the stone monuments there. It was really interesting to try the new technique, and the shrine was very nice and peaceful. (Well, it would have been without the class, Japanese students make more sound than you would think! :D ).

I am very fascinated about how the Japanese people like my hair color. They are pointing at it, asking me if its my real color, telling me how nice it is. It is very red now, even more than before. I have joined the photography club here, even though I only have my phone to take pictures with. So being "inspired" before the meeting, I took pictures of my pretty, red hair. Enjoy my nice face xD

Any more events since Sunday? I do not think so. I wanna start doing post on more specific topics soon, so please feel free to ask questions about things you want to know, or if you have suggestions on topics I would be very happy to hear them!

HAVE A GOOD WEEK! (Yeah, I had a lot of cofe today. Can you tell? Haha)

Akita City

2011-09-25T19:17:00.009+09:00

Yesterday I went to Akita city with three other exchange students. We wanted to go sightseeing in the city, and went to see the park in the middle of the city. It was the perfect day to go walking in the city, after two weeks of the worst rain I have ever seen, the sun was finally shining again, and it was warm and nice outside. There were some nice shrines in the park, and it felt like we were far away from the city. There were even some turtles living in a pond in the middle of the park!

The shrine. There was even a shrine maid there!

We went to eat lunch in a really nice Italian restaurant. The food was... interesting though.

I don't have problems eating meat, but when you can see the little faces. I have to get used to it, I am after all in Japan and they eat a lot of food like that.

Andy trying Taylors drink. Not a good idea to order things we don't know what is, but then again, we don't know what anything is...

After lunch we walked around some more, went to a second hand shop (again, haha). We found some nice items, I just love how cheap it is. After that we walked around some more to see what we could find in the city.

The English here is so funny sometimes. There is a lot going on in the mountain, virgin, beach forest in the top there, and the party gallery gotta be a nice place to be..

The sun is setting on the other side og the bridge.

A picture of the bridges railing. It was so cute, haha.

In the evening we went to a nice restaurant to eat. The others had been there before, and I understand why they wanted to go back! The food was delicious, and we had a great evening eating and drinking. They have a deal where you get food and all you can drink for 90 min, and its not too bad priced. I had maybe a tiny bit too much, so the train trip back was funny. May bee not for the poor Japanese people, they are used to the trains being quiet...

Picture from the train trip back. We look very happy!

I liked Akita a lot. They have a sport from here that is very popular and a big part of the place. There were decorations on the streets from the sport, and I took some pictures to show you.

They have a festival for it every summer.

"Kanto Festival (竿灯祭). Early August. This is Akita's most famous festival, where men balance towering tiers of lanterns on various parts of their bodies, escorted by women playing traditional melodies on the flute, bell and taiko. The lattices of lanterns symbolize ears of rice, and usher in a good harvest. This festival is a form of Tanabata celebration, and is over 350 years old."

They are practicing in the parking lot outside school!

There is not so much happening today. I slept until late, and have to practice for a test tomorrow. I don't want tooo, studying katekana is too boring... But it have to be done! So I'll just bite my teeth together and do it!

I painted the other day btw. A lovely photograph of my "lovely" painting. I need better paper, but getting decent water color paper is more difficult here than I would have imagined. And yeah, my desk looks like always, completely covered in books and papers and random stuff...

Host Family

2011-09-23T21:46:00.007+09:00

Today is a holiday, so there is no school. I did however go to visit my host family for the first time!

My host mother and one of my sisters

Iris and I were picked up at 10.30, and we went to my host family home. First we had some tea and talked about our different countries for a while, and had lunch. She made Udon (I think that was the name) and it was absolutely amazing! So much better than the ones we get in the cafeteria at school!

I tried hard, but eating nudels with chopstiks is not so easy always...

After that we went second-hand-store-shopping! First we went to a place called Second Street. There were so many nice clothes and things you could buy there, and everything was really cheap. After trying on a lot off different clothes I finally ended up with two shirts, a skirt, and four pairs of tights for less than 3000 yen! (200 kr maybe?) We then went to a place called manga shokou (or something like that). It has to bee the biggest second hand shop I have ever seen! What they didn’t have there you could not find second hand. There I found three dresses, a skirt and a trench coat for 1000 yen! That’s 70 kr! I cant believe that I came back with so many clothes for just 3000 yen. I wont have to buy new clothes for a long while!

When we came back to the house we had home made ice cream made from tofu, honey and coco. It was so delicious!

Then we had dinner:

It is a traditional dish from Akita. I can’t remember what it was called but it was really good! She made cake as well. My sisters are decorating the cake!

And after that we played cards and talked a lot!
Some Japanese card game. I lost all the rounds :D

The last picture is from Iris from facebook

I can’t believe how nice they were, and all the good food we got! She even gave us a bag with snacks to take home when we left. In about three weeks we are going back to see them. I'm looking so much forward to it!

Iris and I! (Her picture from facebook)

The cutest fruit forks ever!

AIU library

2011-09-21T13:36:00.004+09:00

This week has been amazing! We have both Monday and Friday off, and that means I can sleep a lot. I have been a good student, though, on Monday I studied Japanese for five hours in the library. Yey me. I don’t really have that much to share, but as our library looks so nice I wanted to share some pictures off it. It’s not nearly as many books as in the library at home, but it has such a good atmosphere! And it’s open 24/7. That means I get to study in the night, yey again!

Tomorrow theres a jelly-shot-party. Reminds me of Anastasias orange-jelly-shots. And playing baseball on wii with her and Sandra. I miss you guys <3

Yet another week!

2011-09-16T19:59:00.005+09:00

Yet another week has gone by, I can’t believe how fast the time goes. This week has been great! Monday was calligraphy, and I got to use my own equipment for the first time. I bought a pink bag with hearts on it, witch contained all the equipment for class. We also had to try write by our selves for the first time. Last time the teacher showed us how to write and we copied, today we had to find characters and paint them ourselves. She just said “The artist painted these characters whit his hear, now you paint them with your hearts”.
My best painting of the day :)

Tuesday I made cupcakes! Going to the store to buy the ingredients was a NIGHTMARE! My friend don’t speak that much Japanese either, but he can read katakana, witch helped a lot. Some times we just looked really confused trying to make sense out of what the katakana said, witch is not too easy. Random Japanese people came over to help us. They are so nice, they are really shy, but if you need help they do their best to try and help you. We managed in the end to buy what we wanted, even though the supermarket didn’t have lemons (?!). I found it really fun trying to find out what to buy, looking at all the weird things there; my friend was slightly more annoyed. We must have been good entertainment, walking in circles around the store a hundred times before we finally found what we were looking for. The cupcakes turned out alright, not as good as at home, but still good!

Today Mette and I made Oreo cake! Well, she made Oreo cake, and I made the chocolate mousse that goes into it. It was soooo good, but really sweet. I think I’ve had what I need of sweets this entire week.

I’m not really sure what we will spend the weekend doing, some people are going to buy anime, some are going to this huge arcade in the city, some are drinking… Monday we have the day off. I Guess I should spend the time learning katakana, but…

Next week will be great! We have two days off. Thursday I’m volunteering as a English conversation partner in an English class. I’m really looking forward to that, its not so easy to talk to Japanese students here, as we are so many international students this semester. It will be interesting to see them in their own “environment”. Friday I’m going to visit my host family for the first time! I am very nervous about meeting them, but they seem really nice. I’m sharing with a girl from Taiwan, maybe I get to practice some Chinese as well!

My Akita familly. My brother wrote when he saw this picture: "I finally realize just how SHORT Japanse people are". My Host mother's picture from facebook.

A picture of all the Norweegian ones. I must say we're not much shorter than the Japanese ones, ey? ;) Cecilies picture from facebook :)

Tea ceremony

2011-09-09T16:43:00.002+09:00

Today I had my second class of tea ceremony, and it was absolutely wonderful. We started learning about how to bow, how to walk, how to open the door, and all the rituals concerning making and serving the tea. We also tried to do the procedures for the first time. It was really nice, though I find it a little difficult. What I find the most interesting is all the aspects of chado that are similar to what I have learned in aikido. I have to remember the posture, sit centered, do all of the procedures in front of the center in a certain way, the state of mind. What I like the most is the way or Sensei say that “One meeting, one opportunity”. She say that in the old times when they would do the tea ceremony for the samurais before they went out to war, they never knew if they would return, and they had to make this one tea ceremony as perfect and complete as possible. The ceremony was a way to go away from the real world, and just meditate and relax over a cup of tea.

Our teacher is very nice. She wears her kimono to class, and looks so graceful all the time. She has the warmest smile. I also like how she does not treat us exchange students any different from the Japanese ones; we have to ask ourselves if there is something we don’t understand. Everything happens in English, I sometimes believe that some of the Japanese students have a harder time following the class than me.

In the end of the semester we will make our own tea gathering, and I’m really looking forward to it! The gathering will be a part of our exam, and we have to practice a lot to be able to do all of the rituals as good as possible for our exam. We can invite our friends or family (to bad they are too far away) to come have tea.

The other classes are great as well, they only class I’m not happy with is my literature class… I have problems following what the teacher is trying to tell us, and that means a lot of extra work both before and after class. Luckily we just have to write a paper for our exam, so I think it’ll be okay.
The Japanese is slowly improving; today we learned to read time, and to say our age. We have a hiragana quiz on Monday, and even though I already know hiragana I’m still nervous.

The food is still not great, but it’s going better and better every day. I would die for Friday-taco at home with my family, I just have to hold on to January and I can have some. And Norwegian chocolate… Or “Smash”.

The campus is great, the people are amazing, my roomy is still very quiet and my back hurts from the futon-bed. It’s all good! And all so very Japanese!

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yocca/4389834402/in/photostream/ Go see the rest of them, they are so beautiful!

Lectures

2011-09-05T18:22:00.005+09:00

There has been an entire week since last time, but I didn’t really have much to say. Last week was all about orientation, and we were oriented about pretty much everything. We have lectures about earth quake evacuation, say no to drugs, sex-ed, STDs, how to defend yourself, how to pick your classes, how to use the internet and so on and so on. The translations were pretty horrible, but that just made the otherwise not so interesting lectures more fun. I do understand why they want to teach us these things, but it doesn’t make it fun still.

Picture from the selfdefence class.

The week all ended in a matriculations ceremony where we all were very properly matriculated in to the university. There was guests from the Japanese government…. And we had to stand up one by one after they read our name out loud in their weird Japanese way… We took a group picture with all the Norwegians after.

The weekend has been… interesting...
On Friday we went to Akita city, witch is the city closest to here. We just had dinner and some drinks in an restaurant. It was really nice though, to get out of the school campus. You tend to start feeling a little stuck in the middle of nowhere after a while.
Saturday started out quietly. I were supposed to go to Akita again with some other friends, but I had had a lot of bad dreams the night before, and felt pretty bad so I decided not to go. For a while I just wandered around with Becky, but after dinner we met up with three other guys who stayed behind… One of them had a bottle of vodka. There was a party for the Japanese freshmen… We went there. What happened after can be told at a later time.
Sunday went by as Sundays do, we spent the day doing nothing.

The most interesting picture I took in Akita on firday, haha. (the other one is a coin...)

Today is our first week of real lectures and I’m so excited! I got to do all of the classes I wanted to do. I’m doing:

Elementary Japanese
Sado – tea ceremony
Shodo – calligraphy
Kado – flower arrangement
Japanese Literature

This is going to be some fun three months! I had my first Sado class on Friday, and what we basically did was talk a little about what we are going to learn. We will learn to pour and make the tea for tea ceremony, learn some of the traditional movements. We will learn about the do-aspects behind the ceremony and the philosophy. We will make the sweets for the ceremony! We also have two field trips where we get to go to real Japanese gardens and tea-houses to experience tea ceremony! In the end of the semester we will make our own gathering, and invite our friends for tea. Maybe we get to put on the kimono for it! At the end of the class she made a small ceremony and asked me to volunteer. I was so lucky to get to taste the sweets and the tea.

Today I had my first calligraphy class. It was interesting to watch and learn about it, but so difficult to do it myself. We tried the best we could. The teacher was very nice and helpful.

The top picture is the equipment, middle one is all of the classes work for today, and the last one is mine!

The top charakter means nothing or emptiness or something i think, and the last one means wind. Everybody had to do the same characters.

Tomorrow is my first class of flower arrangement, wish me luck!

First weekend!

2011-08-28T23:05:00.003+09:00

I'm finally in Japan!

Now I've moved in and everything, and the room is almost the same as in "folekhøgskolen" in quality (old and you hear everything your neighbors do) but really cosy! None of the others who live I'm my dormitory like it, it i do think it's kinda nice. After all, it's just for 4 months. My roomie seems really sweet, though she moved in just yesterday, and I haven't seen her much yet. The school is placed in the middle of NOWHERE! There as been actual sightings of bears in the school area... It's really hot here, and the bugs are huge. They have the biggest dragonflies and butterflies I have ever seen.

My room right now. Don't have much on mys side but it's still mine <3

There has been a lot happening, so I'll just make a quick summary!

I arrived on Thursday, really late in the evening. For some reason did the exchange coordinate know who I was when I came, as I walked through the main door he went "Kristin-San!" and came to shake my hand. It was nice, I felt very welcome! I went through the check-in procedures and it took forever, and when I finally got to my room I tried to make my futon bed (probably did it wrong) and went to bed.

The Friday went by with a lot of information meetings and an placement test (I didn't do that, I starting at the beginner course) and an Ice-cream party in the evening!

Yesterday (Saturday) we first went to the close by shopping mall to get some shampoo and other items. The shopping mall was really, really big. I did not expect a shopping mall bigger then any of the ones in Bergen to be placed in the middle of nowhere. They have shops like "Drug Shop" (who sell clothes) and restaurants called "Surprise Donkey"... Hmmm.. In the evening we went to a fireworks festival. It was great! They made frogs and smilyes and harts from the fireworks. I don't have any pictures though, forgot my camera. When we came back we played dirty word scrabble, Settlers and Twiter untill three in the morning! It was really great, the other studnets here are so much fun.

Today we went to see a traditional No theater. It was three hours long, and very boring. It was interesting though to see a piece of old, traditional, Shinto shrine theater, but we could not understand a thing. Even the Japanese have difficulties understanding what it's about. I found a picture off of google to show what it is. The background is the same, and the outfits like almost the same. Even though it was boring, it was so beautiful. They did a lot off traditional chanting and dancing. There was three parts, first a serious one, then a dance, then a comedy one and a serious one in the end. The comedy was quite funny, I could understand what was going on from their actions. A man with a sword tried robbing another man, and ended up being robbed himself.

Tomorrow "lectures" start. At least the ones thats part of the orientation week. We are going to have harrasment lecture, sex education lecture, say no to drugs lecture.... It's gonna be a boring week. I don't even understand why we are doing it, all of the exchange students have home universities and had lectures like that before. I just wanna start classes... But when it is a school like this I guess they have to. We are after all a lot of people living practically atop of each other in a very small space. I'm not looking forward to the boredom though. Just have to get through it!

Have a nice week!

Endelig på vei...!

2011-08-24T19:11:00.003+09:00

I've had some amazing last weeks before school starts! Last week was "fadderuke" at UiB, I got to be "fadder" for the new students starting the Japanese course, and they were all absolutely wonderful! We had quizzes, pub-to-pup rounds, barbecue, sports tournaments and even a theme party with Disney as the theme. Some of the time we had two really nice Japanese girls with us.

The past three days now, I've been in Helsinki visiting some friends. Even though the weather was horrible, I had a nice time! Sunday I was tired from my early flight (06.30 :S ) so I didn't have the energy to run around everywhere. We walked around a bit, looking at the people and some nice buildings, then we ate some Chinese food, before we went to see the last Harry Potter movie! (I loved it btw, but then again, of course I did...)

Monday we went to some museum called "Heureka". It's a lot like "Vil vite" in Bergen, only bigger, and it has a planetarium! I've never been to one before, and it was really fun! We saw a movie about black holes, and even though it was a bit scary, it was great. After we went shopping for a while, I found a pretty, blue dress.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I went to meet with a friend I met at the uni in Bergen who recently moved to Helsinki. I was so happy to see him again! We went shopping, drank coffee, had a lot of cake and Sushi!

And now I'm here, waiting for my gate to open, so I can start my 11 hour flight to the orient... I am not looking forward to the flight. Hope they have some good movies.

Thats it, see you in Japan!

Hello, this is London calling!

2011-08-07T04:52:00.002+09:00

so, cheeres from london. im blogging from my phone, and for some weird reason im not allowed to write large letters, so bear with me. anyways, second day in london, and its lovely. yesterday we went shopping at the cambden marked. even if i were there last year aswell, i still cant believe how huge it is. we found all sorts of new places to go. im suprised we found the way out again. i bought myself two new dresses and a belt. loving them, they are soo cute. later, we went to a musical in the evening. betwixt it was called. really nice, small studio, and handsome actors. the play was really funny, weird and untraditional. in other words, it was great. today we spendt the day shopping, and we went to china town for dumplings. yummy. mom as not so happy with her food, but mine was pretty good. dont know what we will be doing tomorrow, maybee some sightseeing. sorry about no pictures, the phone wont let me.

have a great weekend, see you monday

Here we go again...

2011-08-02T02:50:00.002+09:00

As I'm soon departing for Japan, I though it would be a good idea to start up the blogg again. It makes updating with friends and family so much easier!

Since it's been two years since last, here's a little update:

I'm now almost 22, I live in Bergen and I study linguistics. I love languages, and then particularly Japanese and Chinese. I have been thinking long and hard about where to apply for universities for an exchange semester, and after some going back and forth I finally decided to go to Japan. Maybe not the best choice job opportunity wise, but I have to follow my heart I guess, and my heart is pulling towards Japan. I do speak more Chinese than Japanese, but I have my ambitions to study hard, and maybe master both. Anyways, in 20 days (omg..!) I'm leaving for Akita, Japan. I can hardly wait! Airplane tickets are bought, Visum is finished, so all I have to do is pack my bags and wait. Luckily I wont have to just sit here waiting, on Thursday I'm off to London for 4 days, and I'm altso going to be a "fadder" (buddy, kinda) for the new students at the university here in Bergen before I go. It's going to be some fun 20 days, I'm sure!

Just a little update! See ya soon :)

Aikido-camp!

2009-07-08T03:20:00.003+09:00

Tomorrow I'll be leaving for a week. I'm going to an Aikido-camp in my old school. <3>

Hurra!

2009-05-18T02:27:00.004+09:00

Today is 17.th of May, wich is Norways national day. This is the day for eating hotdogs, icecreams and marching in a parade singing songs. But best of all, we all wear our national suits today! I really love mine, wich is the one particular for Bergen! Happy 17.th of May everybody!

And yeah, I decided to start in english again x)

Vel hjemme, og nå er snart sommeren her!

2009-04-22T23:36:00.003+09:00

Nå er det lenge siden jeg har blogget, men nå er tiden inne for å oppdatere min lille blogg.

Den siste tiden har vært ganske hektisk, Japan-tur, påskeferie med masse familiebesøk, og hektiske dager med forberedelser til gradering (som forresten gikk veldig bra, jeg har nå min første grad i aikido!). Nå er tiden endelig inne for å slappe litt av, og nyte de siste ukene som er igjen av skolen.

Jeg vet jeg lovde å skrive litt om Japanturen, men ettersom at jeg ikke helt har fått fordøyd alle inntrykkene enda, så kan jeg poste noen par bilder istedet, også kommer det nok litt om turen i neste omgang!

Bilde fra Kyoto, vi fannt to kjempe pene Maiko-er, som gladlig stillte opp på bilde sammen med oss turister. Bildet under er av meg og noen sakura-blomster, og det nederste bildet er fra et tempel i Fukoaka.

Så dere får nyte solen resten av uken folkens!

Japan- here I come

2009-03-23T07:42:00.003+09:00

Nå er det 10 timer til bussen fra skolen kjører meg og resten av gjengen avgårde til Gardermoen for å dra til Japan. Og om nesten 24 timer er jeg nesten fremme i Tokyo!

Jeg gleder meg nok ikke så mye enda, men det er nok mest fordi det ikke helt har gått opp for meg at jeg skal dra enda. Men det blir nok en kjempe-tur! Jeg skal prøve å få skrevet litt på bloggen mens jeg er borte, men jeg kan nok ikke love noe. Det blir uansett oppdatering og bilder når jeg er tilbake. Så da snakkes vi om to uker folkens! Dere får kose dere her hjemme imens jeg er borte =)

Jeg drømmer...

2009-03-06T05:47:00.004+09:00

Jeg drømmer om å sitte i båten på plenen og se på stjernene om natten.

Jeg drømmer om å svømme i en innsjø gjemmt i en skog.

Jeg drømmer om å løpe barfødt i mose.

Jeg drømmer om å male med tykk, tykk oljemaling.

Jeg drømmer om høsten, og om en verden farget i oransje.

Men mest av alt drømmer jeg om livet, og om at jeg ikke kan vente til å gjøre det helt mitt eget...

Fjortis..?

2009-03-05T00:48:00.005+09:00

Jeg har i løpet av de siste dagene kommet frem til at jeg elsker fjortisfakter.

Jeg elsker baksnakkingen, sminken, og alle kravene om at alle skal være helt like.

Jeg elsker tanken på at alle jeg kjenner skal gå rundt å kle seg i rosa merkeklær under et tre cm-tykkt lag med brunkrem.

Jeg elsker å skulle bruke all tiden min på å snakke om ting so betyr absolutt ingenting.

Også elsker jeg å have i drama som minner meg veldig om det som var på ungdomsskolen.

Over til noe annet! I går var det første trening etter to uker uten! Det var helt utrolig fantastisk. Endelig fikke eg falle høy og hardt. Det er faktisk utrolig morro å bli kastet rundt på som en liten filledukke (og dette er ikke ironi). Også fikk jeg masse skryt da, på at fallteknikken min hadde blitt bedre, så nå er jeg kjempe motivert for å trene mer, og bli enda flinkere.

Om 19 dager er det Japan. Hjelp! Det er ikke lenge i det hele tatt... Det blir nok kjempe fint, det er tilogmed mulighet for at vi får sett noe Sakura-blomstring!

Håper det er like harde treninger som jeg ser for meg. Jeg gleder meg veldig til å trene, og til å bli kjempe sliten. Jeg har også hørt rykter om at det er veldig vondt tattami, så det blir morro. Jo vondere underlag å falle på, jo bedre må fallteknikken bli.

Og jeg maler igjen, i tilfelle noen lurte... Tror ikke jeg kommer til å vise noen, men om det blir vist interesse for det kan jeg vel sikkert legge ut noe her på bloggen... x)

MEN nå må jeg snart komme meg bort fra pc-en, vi har besøk av en Sensei fra Sverige, og om 25 minutter skal ha trening for oss. Ha det flott resten av uken, folkens! :D

(bildene er hentet fra Deviantart.com)

Takk

2009-01-28T23:20:00.007+09:00

I dag har vært det man kan kalle en "spennende" dag. Mye diskutering, masing og sutring fra alle kanter. Men det går seg vel til, regner jeg med :) Tar det ikke så veldig tungt, må bare kvitte med med mine egne negative energier først. Gleder meg til danse-time i kveld, så jeg bare kan koble ut hodet.

Egentlig ville jeg bare dedikere dette innlegget til venner, fantastiske venner. De av den typen som støtter deg, og backer deg uansett hvor vannskelig eller ekkelt ting blir. De vennene som er laget av det materialet at de tørr å motsi deg når du har feil, de som er helt og hundre prosent ærlig. For dem er det faktisk få av. Jeg vil påstå at mange "venner" ikke ville fortelle deg hvor teit du er når du krangler på ting, eller hvor irriterende det er at du sutrer sånn, eller at det er påtide å slutte å synes synd på deg selv. Men slike venner har da altså jeg. Så derfor er det klart at de fortjener et innlegg i bloggen min til ære for seg.

Jeg er så sinnsykt takknemmelig når folk motsier meg, eller gjør meg obs på at synspunkt eller meninger jeg har kanskje ikke er helt reflektert. Og jeg er utrolig takknemmelig når det tørr å støtte meg på en vannskelig sak, selvom det setter dem selv i et dårlig eller vannskelig lys. Så takk!

Spessielt til Ida, min kjære lille hissigpropp, PJONG, som er så fantastisk kranglete og Valskogen min da, som alltid gidder å høre på sutringen min, og som sier "jada, det er synd på deg" når jeg trenger det. Takk for at dere holder ut med meg :D

Bildet er hentet fra: http://lenupet.deviantart.com/art/Friendship-108747919

2009-01-28T07:57:00.002+09:00

Warning: Strong pictures, but I do belive that people needs to see this. This video alone shows us that it's time to do something... Wear a button, tell your mother, scream it out on the streets... Stop the killing.

I feel sick...

2009-01-25T10:05:00.003+09:00

... From listening to people who does not give shit. My soul feels like its beeing ripped apart when people say "Yes, I know people in that place far away is beeing killed in great numbers every day, but I can't do annything about it. So why bother?". The onley thing I can say is that I hope nothing bad happens to them, so they can continue live in their own fantasy, beacous I don't ever want them in my reality.

Think, people! There is so manny things you can do, but the first one is to open your eyes. The Palestine-Israel conflict is happening on this very earth we are walking on. Childern, mothers and fathers are beeing killed every day. I don't even care who is right annymore, but it is just to sick to sit here watching everything from afar. I really wish there was something I could do to help the victims of the conflikt.

So maybee it's time to open our eyes to see that every day, familys are beeing ripped apart. And for what? What if it were your family?

Enda en uke er gått...

2009-01-24T06:58:00.006+09:00

... Og for en slitsom uke...

Har sovet sikkelig dårlig denne uken, våkner til stadighet av mareritt. Men, selvom det har vært en slitsom uke, har det vært en lærerrik uke, og jeg har fått mange nye synspunkt på ting... (Om noen lurer så får de heller spørre) Det har vært veldig harde treninger denne uken, og eg har mange fler blåmerker enn jeg pleier. Og det er IKKE klaging, jeg elsker det! Alle de harde fallene og blåmerkene svinner henn når jeg kjenner kroppen suse gjennom luften. Hvem skulle tro det kunne føltes så fantastisk å falle på trynet? :D

Lørdagen var det som jeg har skrevet Rock-star party, og det ble en kjempesuksess! Alle koset seg kjempemasse, og den lille "dansen" vi viste frem ble også mottatt med mye jubel. Vegard gjorde en kjempejobb som bekrykket vokalist!

Søndagen fulgte med allt som det pleier morgenen etter en "fest"... Som du kan se av søndagens bilde....

Mandagen var som "vangli" (helt siden forrige mandag) kjempe flott! Det var akrobatikk, og vi lærte å ta baklengs salto på trampet, og jeg lærte å hoppe over bukk med bare en hånd! Det er så deilig å se hvordan all treningen begynner å få små uttellinger. Jeg har aldri kommet med over en bukk før! :D Men best av alt, det kom pakke til meg på mandag, med bankkort og røde, fine briller! Så nå kan jeg se hva jeg leser. Og bilde følger, som lovet.

Tirsdag var en relativt grei da, mange var sliten etter helgen fremdeles, så istedet for å trene første økt dro gjengen på kafee og drakk kaffe og snakket om Japan. Det nærmer seg med stormskritt nå! Deretter var det to økter med aikido, det var utrolig kjekt selvom det ikke ble noen øvelser på høyt fall. Bildet fra tirsdagen viser hvor langt håret mitt har blitt, (høhø, nei, det er ikke en dårlig spøk! :D) må ha det i klemmer nå når jeg trener...

Bildet fra Onsdag er av sangboken vår. Vi sang i rektors time! Det var morro =)

Torsdag er det bilde av den nyeste skissen til et bilde jeg driver å tegner på, Og det siste bildet er av japanskboken min, igjen... Fordi det er det jeg har bedrevet mye tid på i dag =) Og så hadde vi en sikkelig morrsom aikido-time, med tema "The magic of Aikido", der vi fikk vite noen små glimt av aikidos mange hemmeligheter.

Men uansett, ha en fantastisk helg folkens, også er det vel på sin plass å ønske Tonje en flott bursdag, siden hun blir 19 i dag :) Gratulerer!

Rock n' Roll party

2009-01-17T20:19:00.002+09:00

I dag skal det være fjordårstreff på skolen, d.v.s. at alle elevene fra i fjord kommer på besøk til skolen. I den anledning er det tradisjon at elevene på skolen arrangerer fest for dem. I år skal det være rock star party. Det kommer til bli utrooolig kjekt! Dagen i dag har bare gått med til forberedelser, og det kommer nok resten av dagen til å gå med til også. Jeg og Cecilie har bakt, det er utrolig koselig å stå på kjøkkenet sammen med Cecilie! Senere i dag blir det aikido trening, for de aller siste forberedelsene skal gjøres. Det skal øves, pyntes og klees på.

Vi fikk pikekyss i forrigårs, og i går fikk jeg nye buttons på skjerfet mitt. Enjoooy x)

Maling!

2009-01-15T09:52:00.002+09:00

I dag har vi malt plakater til fjordårstreffet. Annelin, Malin, Ida Sofie, Vegard og jeg. Det var utrooolig morro! Vi var like hypre alle sammen, og vi har funnet et genialt innslag til treffet. Det kommer til å bli knall bra. Etter hvert som klokken begynnte bli mange, ble det malingskrig. Resulatet av den kan du se på dagens bilde :)

(Klikk på det for å få det stort)

Høyt fall :O

2009-01-14T02:51:00.002+09:00

I dag var en meget spennende trening... Vi startet å øve på høyt fall. Noe som var meget skummelt.... Men kjempegøy likevel. Som dere ser av dagens bilde er det ikke bare fordeler ved å trene aikido, om man er uforsiktig eller litt for "modig" er det lett for å få noen blåmerker og småsår. Men om man har Dumbo-plaster er det overhodet ikke noe problem :D

12. Januar

2009-01-13T05:46:00.002+09:00

Bilde for i dag:

I dag har vi begynnt med valgfag, og det gikk over alle forventinger! Jeg hadde sangteknikk og akrobatikk!! Akrobatikken var helt vanvittig gøy, det er nok det morrsomste jeg har gjort på lenge. Vi hoppet rundt og lekte oss, og hadde det rett og slett utrolig gøy! Jeg har aldri hatt det så gøy med fysisk aktivitet på lenge. Vi hoppet over bukk, hoppet på trampett, lekte med benker, og svingte oss på noen stenger. Utrolig festelig for å si det mildt!

I tillegg har det blitt et matlangings valgfag, og de laget kake til hele skolen! Det var utrolig godt, de var kjempe flink! De skal lage mat til oss hver mandag <3

Pluttselig ble den fryktede mandagen favoritt dagen min i uken =)

Tilbake på Vestoppland!

2009-01-12T07:04:00.006+09:00

Det er utroolig deilig å være tilbake på skolen. Det er så fint å se alle folkene igjen etter jul, for ikke å snakke om hvor flott det er å trene igjen. Jeg har vært syk denne første uken da, men er heldigvis frisk igjen nå :) Uken har vært ganske rolig, Sensei har vært borte, så der et Joakim og Evind som har hatt trening med oss. Uvandt, men kjekt likevel.

I helgen som var, var det nyttårsleir i Oslo, men siden jeg var syk kunne jeg ikke dra. Istedet dro Ida Sofie og jeg til Oslo på demonstrasjon for fritt Palestina. Det var... veldig, veldig rart. Det er andre gangen jeg har gjort noe som helst politisk, og jeg følte meg liiiitt teit der eg sto, uten å høre til noe parti. Vi gikk sammen med SU, og alle fra SU var kjempe flotte mennesker, så det gikk fint selvom vi ikke kjennte så mange. Vi var en tur på kontoret deres før vi gikk i toget, og der oppe ble det jobbet for fullt med å ordne flagg og bannere. Den delen av demonstrasjonen vi var med på gikk relativt rolig for seg, men etter at vi dro brakte det løs med voldelige demonstranter, og politi som svarte med tåregass. Fint at ikke vi var der da! Etter demonstrasjonen traff vi Ingvar, som er en kompis av Sandra. Det var veldig koselig :)

Er litt lat ja, men her er bildene for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 og 11. Januar x) De kommer i den rekkefølgen som det står skrevet. Om noen lurer på hva det er bilde av, eller hvorfor så er det bare å spørre :)

Så var det klart for en ny uke ja.. Ha en strålende uke!

Bildee

2009-01-04T11:04:00.005+09:00

Her er bildet fra 3. Januar. Bildet sier egentlig bare at jeg er en fareklatt, som elsker å bruke farger. Det er ikke så viktig om fargene passer sammen. Bildet tok jeg når jeg gjorde en aktivitet som jeg så altfor ofte gjør her ute på landet, nemmelig når jeg ventet på bussen x)

Nytt år!

2009-01-04T05:24:00.005+09:00

Det er nytt år. Og jeg skal skrive på norsk. Hvorfor? Jeg er for lat til å tenke på engelsk =)

Jeg har i år tre nyttårsforsetter.

1: Jeg skal stole på noen

2: Jeg skal i løpet av året bli med som frivillig i en organisasjon som jobber med noe jeg liker

3: Jeg skal ta et "selvpotrett" fra livet mitt hver dag i et år

Det trengs vel ingen begrundelse til hvorfor jeg vil gjøre de forskjellige tingene, men det er bra for noe. Julen i år har vært altfor kort, jeg har jobbet mye. Også har det vært en fin jul, og tiden går mye fortere når man har det kjekt.

Men, siden man først er i gang, kan jeg vel laste opp bildene for 1. og 2. Januar :) De er ikke så veldig spennende enda, men det er da en begynnelse !

Så hva er dine nyttårsforsetter da? :) Lykke til med dem uansett! Ha et strålende år!

Christmas?

2008-12-24T07:24:00.002+09:00

Is just so jolly! Looking at all the people buying eachother things they don't need as gifts, decorating their houses with all kind of silly looking things, and wishing eachother a jolly holliday just to be polite. What can be more magic?

Me, myself look foreward to just having the day off, spending time with my family, waching stupid movies on the tv, like we always do. Eating dinner together, wich we never do. To me, that present would be more then enough.

Marry christmas people, and I say that the way it's supposed to be, with a true wish for you to have a wonderfull christmas. Have fun with your... Gifts and stuff, whatever makes you happy.

Trackmania

2008-12-09T06:20:00.001+09:00

SUCKS!

Ow... And I colloured my hair red, just for the fun of it :P

In the aromathreaphy today we got to make bodylotion! It was really fun, and now I have some christmas presents. The lotion is supposed to be good for lots of stuffs I guess, and altso it smells like lavendel and rose. Aaand I got the usual massage that comes with mondays too =) Hurray!

Appart from the sucky trackmania (wich iiis kinda fun, but I can't seem to get the hang of it) the start of the week has been really nice, realxing and everything. But I must admit, that the week is looking weird, we are getting a visit from some lady who will talk about I don't know what. Some of the second year students say it was boring, some say it was good, so I guess it's worth a try. She will stay the entire week, but friday there will be some christmas workshop, for making christmas presents again. We will make soap and candy, and some other stuffs, so it will probobly be great fun. Saturday we are gonna make gingerbreadhouses! And altso we are going to Hamar to watch the grading for some of my classmates whom are more advanced then uss. They are graiding to 5 kuy and 1 kuy I think. Will be fun to watch.

Oh Oh! And tomorrow I'm starting some online Japaneese course with a guy from Edufire.com. Will be interesting, but I think it will be awsome, and altso it's gonna be nice to have someone teach me some japanese, I'm getting tired of reading on my own. ONLEY 4 months or so untill Japan! I'm getting really excited. Annyways, have a great weekend, and take care of the memories you will make this week!

Love- Kristin

ShantiGarden

2008-12-07T22:52:00.000+09:00

Yesterday there was a concert at school with a band called ShantiGarden, and I must say they were truly, really wonderfull. The music was really inspiering and beautifull. The concert in it self was altso a great experience, we were sitting on the floor, there was candles, and everybody was totally relaxed. The whole atmosphere in the room was so nice. Annyways, if you're looking for some great, new music, take a look at they're page at www.shantigarden.no

Link to my favorite song:

http://shantigarden.no/att/Gently%20by%20your%20side.mp3

Have a lovely and inspiering week people!

-Kristin

Mama Mia =)

2008-12-02T08:13:00.000+09:00

Today I wached Mama mia, and I have to say it was really a cool movie!!! Loved it! Just thougth I would share my favorite song from the movie with you. Enjoy =)

Gresk aften <3

2008-12-01T08:31:00.000+09:00

Now the evening is over, and it was really nice! There was great food, entertainment and all the people who was a part of the "crew" did a great job acting, it was all very greek. Altso, people were all dressed up, so manny pretty dresses and handsome boys ;) Altso, the song I was singign went good, some mistakes here and there, but it was still good I hope. For those who would be interested in seeing that, it's posted on facebook. And DO be kind if you see it, I onley rehearsed for a little over 24 hours, and it is in greek xD Altso my Sensei, who is greek, danced and preformed a song for us - it was really good! I liked the dacing alot, that is altso on facebook btw.

Well annyways, the evening was as I said before really nice, and I wish you a great week!

The top picture is of the waithers, and the bottom is me in my dress.

Greek evening

2008-11-29T19:35:00.001+09:00

So the big day is here, tonight is the greek evening we at school have been waiting for. All the dresses are picked out, and now it's onley to wait until it starts. I have been practising since 10 this morning for a song I'm going to sing.. In greek... I don't know greek, luckily nobody else does either. The song is called "Κυκλοφορώ κι οπλοφορώ" if you would be interested to find it on youtube or something. Well, annyways, need to go back to my practising. Just thought I would just post something random. I will post some pictures from tonight later :)

Have a nice weekend!

My school

2008-11-25T05:40:00.000+09:00

Just thougth I would share a video from my school. This is the students from last year doing Aikido. So here you can maybe se something of what we do at school. Enjoy =)

Ylang ylang <3

2008-11-24T04:50:00.000+09:00

Bougth some insence yesterday at an alternative fair we went to with school. This was just such a nice picture, thougth I would share it with you. It smells ylang ylang in my entire room now! Ylang ylang is good agains depression and its really good if you're unable to sleep to, specially as insence. So I guess I wont have sleeping problems (not that I have anny).

Nothing much out of the ordinary happening here, just going to be another week of training I guess. This saturday though there will be a Greek party, with food, music and dancing. Looking foreward to that! We are all going to dress up and everyting =) I'm going to make origami flowers to put in my hair aswell.

Annyways, have a nice week people!

A new ice-age?

2008-11-20T08:37:00.001+09:00

Scared of climate changes? Don't know how to survive deadly cold air and big masses of water coming towards you? Just run to the closest library....

Today I used 2 hours of my life watching "Day after tomorrow"...
An interesting movie about climate-changes... The movie and theme itself is okey, but I mean, whats up with the wolfs in the middle of it? All the people is freezing to death, but a pack of wolfs which runs away from a zoo survives the whole thing, and all of the sudden turn man-eating and tries to eat the entire crowd. But thanks to the fast reaction and brave actions from the main-person, they all get killed by a door, and we get to go back to the two love stories and a broken father-son relationship that the entire movie is using to get people interested in the movie. Super nice and cliche and everything, everybody we like survives and get back together and lives happily ever after.... Also I must say that the thing about the people surviving the killing-freezing-helicoperfuel-in-a-second-cold air from the stratosphere coming down to earth in a raising speed by just burning books on a small fire is beyond me. I wish I had those kinda survival-skills, I'd be superman. Never have to be cold again. A handy skill at this freezing to death school in the winter. I'm by the way looking very much forward until it gets even colder here. The though of walking from my room to the dojo in my dogi is just so tempting I can hardly wait. But not to worry, I can just isolate with some books...

Grading practise

2008-11-14T22:01:00.000+09:00

Made a new picture with two boys as you can see, thougth I would show you. Annyways, at training today we got to see what a grading would look like, and it was really interesting. Looked like hard work, but it don't look to hard. After seeing the "grading" we trained a little on what to on the grading in March, and I'm happy to say I do remembre how to do almost all the teknikes.

So its the weekend now, thank heavens! I'm so tired after the week, so it will be good to rest. It's supposed to be some seminar tomorrow in a martial art called tekkyon (hope it's spelled this way). Not to sure if I'll go, even though it seems rather interesting. Altso some people at school is making "Sanmudo weekend", so they are going to live as though they're in an Korean temple. I wanted to go, but I dont think I have the energy for it, so I'm not going. Maybee next time ;P Well annyways, have a niiice weekend, and I wish the people doing the sanmudo weekend all luck, hope they will enjoy it!

See ya -Kristin

2008-11-13T04:38:00.000+09:00

Just to start of my blogg I though I should post a picture I painted not long ago. At the moment I'm attending school far away from home, and in a moment of homesickness I painted this. The sign sais "Bergen" wich is my home city. Annyways, a littlebit about myself for those who wonders... I love to paint, draw or do annything creative really. My favorite medium is pencil, pen and whatercollours. Other then that I train Aikido 5 days a week at the school I'm attending at the moment. It's really a lovely school; so manny great people and the training is wonderfull too. Well, thats all I have to say for now, I have to go to my drama-group now. See ya :D

Blogg? :O

2008-11-13T03:20:00.000+09:00

Hello big, scary internett world! I have now made myself a blogg to tell all you interested people about my life. In honour of my friend Hemmo I shall write in english. Wish me luck ;P