Weekend Festival

Click here for the video!

Click here for my youtube channel with all the videos!!


There was a festival in center city Sendai a few weeks ago, and I got a bunch of video of the performances on the two stages they had set up.  Also, 2 weekends ago we went to check out a junior high school festival with my Japanese Culture A class, where they had some traditional dance performances that I got some pictures of.  Enjoy!

Cell Phones, Maps, and Staying Out

I figured out the easy and quick way to embed the videos, so I'll start doing that again.  Of course the videos with music in the background I can't because of the copyright stuff.  If I feel like it, I'll go fix the older posts too.


Youtube link to video (It's in HD!!)

Click here for my youtube channel with all the videos!!

Japanese cell phones are a bit more advanced than America's.  One thing that is really awesome about phones here, is the infrared feature.  Phones here have a little infrared receiver on the side or back, and what you do is tell your phone to send or receive information.  Using this feature, you transfer all your contact info without needing to typing anything in yourself.  Your name, phone number, email address, and any other info you've put for yourself will be transferred.  The email address is an actual address for your phone; the SMS texting feature that we use in America is available to use here, but most people send messages using the phone's email because there is no character limit.  Just something I found really cool about cell phones here.

One thing that is absolutely essential in Japan, is utilizing and getting familiar with maps of where you are.  Larger roads here all have names, however, there are almost NO street signs used here.  The only way to get around is to know landmarks or just know the way already.  That makes memorizing the locations of things you can use to get around essential.  I have memorized the locations of a couple stores and 7-11s that I know I can get either home or to campus from.  I still have some more work to do in order to be confident in getting around the center city area.  After spending a very unfortunate amount of hours lost so far, I'm see really how important it is to know the maps.  The school provided us with a couple maps that work nicely, and a couple that don't help at all.

The importance of knowing your way around becomes much more apparent once you start doing what is popular here.  And that is, staying out past the time the busses and trains stop running.  That seems to be incredibly popular to do here.  On weekend nights, people here like to go to an izakaya (a sort of restaurant/bar) for something to eat and possibly a nomihodai (all you can drink from a menu for a certain amount of time) for a couple drinks.  After you're done eating, you go to a karaoke place and rent out a room, which you get to keep till 6AM.  Around 6AM is when the busses and trains start running again.  So, your options are either to stay and do karaoke for the entire night or you need to walk home.  This is what many people do on Friday nights here, and sometimes both Friday and Saturday nights, if you can afford it.  So, if you don't want to stay out all night, you need to know your way home on foot.

Samurai House, Museum, and Ski Mountain

Youtube link for video (It's in HD!!)

Click here for my Youtube channel!!

Here's another compilation I made using pictures and video from a trip with my Japanese Culture class.  We went to check out an old samurai house used by the Date family (the founding samurai family of Sendai), a very small museum next door, and at the end we took a trip up to the closest ski area to Sendai.  The original plan was to hike a bit up the mountain here, but it had rained all day the day before and it is apparently not safe enough to hike after it has rained.  The view from the mountain was pretty awesome;  you could see the entire city from the parking lot.  It was cloudy that day, but our teacher told us that you can see all the way to the Pacific Ocean when it is clear.

English in Japan

Youtube link for video (It's in HD!!)
 
Click for channel page!!!



 

So today I have just one thing I want to talk about, and that is level of English of the people in Japan. 

In Japan, English is a required subject, like many other places in the world.  Much like we take math and social studies, English is taught in school from a young age.  Now, if this is all you knew about Japan, that might be misleading news.  Hearing that would sure make me think that meeting anyone who has graduated from would be very easy to communicate with using English.  However, that is not the case.  The Japanese school system works based around placement tests and preparing for them.  These tests are supposed to be extremely difficult and apparently cause a lot of stress in school kids, and English is part of these tests.  Apparently, the way English is taught is more or less just by hammering as much vocab and grammar rules as possible into a year, and just cram studying the points that will be on the test.  Because of this, talking with a Japanese person who hasn't taken it upon themselves to learn English on a conversational level will prove to be very difficult.  As a side note, however, it appears if you write or type things down for them to read it becomes a lot easier, as their reading level is generally much higher than their speaking level.

This might be a little disappointing, given that, for example, Sweden (there are many students here from Sweden) also has English taught all throughout school, and it is apparently rare to meet a person from Sweden who isn't fluent in English.  The difference is actually astounding, given that they both spend about the same amount of time learning English as a second language.  I know that there is a decent sized population of Japanese citizens that want the system to be changed to allow for more conversational based learning, rather than just vocab and grammar rules.  I know that for me, when learning Japanese, knowing the rules governing a sentence and how to comprehend it while reading do not do very much to help you when someone actually says that sentence to you out loud.  The only way to increase your skills in conversation is to actually practice speaking and listening.  All the reading and writing in the world won't do anything for you when you're stuck at a counter trying to respond to questions from a cashier.

I don't really have any relevant pictures for this so here's a random picture from a festival here last weekend.  I'm going to write about that next.

Getting Lost

Got lost after a festival late at night.  Made a video about it when I got back.

Trash, recycling, and convenience stores!

Figured I'll start posting the written portion of what I'm talking about under each video.  This will be whatever it was that I posted to Drexel's blog site.

Trash, recycling, and convenience stores!  These things work just a little bit differently here in Japan.  I'll start with the trash and recycling.  Now, from what I have read, how they handle garbage and such can be a bit different depending on what prefecture you are living in.  So, all the details I give are about Sendai, which is in the Miyagi prefecture in the northeastern part of Japan's main island, Honshu.  As a general statement, the Japanese do more separation of their garbage and recycling than we do in the USA.

The photo attached is actually a picture I just took of the trash cans in the kitchen of my unit.  The one on the left is for cans and PET bottles.  Soda cans or other soft drinks go in here, along with PET plastics, which so far it seems to pretty much just be soft drink bottles.  Plastics that are PET say so under the little recyclable triangle symbol.  Next, the bin on the right is for regular garbage, which I BELIEVE is supposed to be combustible trash.  Paper, napkins, food scraps, etc.  Finally, the middle bin is for plastics OTHER than PET bottles.  I believe these are separated because, if I'm remembering correctly from my materials science course, there are types of plastics that, when heated, either break down completely or sort of melt and are able to be reformed (recycled).  I guess PET plastics can be reformed.  Things like plastic bags from stores or meal containers from convenience stores go into the middle can.  Cardboard boxes need to be folded up and put separately from the other trash, or the city won't even pick it up.

Next, Convenience stores!  These things are actually, really... convenient here.  I know back in the US we have 7-11 and wawa, but they are only convenient... if you're lucky enough to live near one.  I know that my apartment back in Philly was about a 15-20 minute walk from the nearest wawa, which sucks when you just want something quick to eat.  Here, at least in Sendai, and the one residential area of Tokyo I was in, you can't walk more than 6-7 minutes without running into a convenience store.  This is great, because you can buy actual meals there for like 250-400 yen (2.50$-4$).  You bring it up and the person at the register asks you if you want it microwaved, then you walk back home with something to eat.  This is probably about 90% of what the convenience stores are used for here.  There's other things you would expect:  an ATM, small supplies, drinks, etc.  In short, convenience stores here truly live up to the name.

Videos

So I figured out what I have to do to get the videos with music to link to here.  It's a little bit different than what I wanted, but its the best that I can do.

J Video Blog - "Trip Around Sendai, With Some Drunken Karaoke" - 3

First weekend in Japan video/pic compilation - 1

Trip Around Sendai, With Some Drunken Karaoke

Well, here's another case of Germany sucking.  Looks like any video I have with music in the background I won't be able to directly link here, so I'll just have to paste the url.

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

Mostly from the first weekend in Sendai.  Went out drinking and karaoke-ing Friday and Saturday night, and walked to check out the 2 campuses where we have our classes.  There's a bridge over a river, and a literal trip up a mountain where the pics came from mostly.