purikura & kotatsu

Today was a very fun day actually :) we set out to climb hakodate yama. Was cool :) got to sample things again. Then we tried purikura :) was my first time haha Got the stickers one :) dunno where i'll stick them yet.

Went up hakodate yama again ^^" 

Then we finally installed Ramin's Kotatsu! it took more space than we thought it would ^^".

I swear to god.... .. He was so zen about everything & couldn't stop smiling. Take a look

Random things lately

So Classes are going normally.. as usual. I tried joining the badminton circle. It was fun but most of them don't seem very sociable to foreigners like me ^^" some of them were tho. I might go again just to play badminton. some of the guys there were pretty good.
Im helping out for the halloween party and it seems pumpkins here are too expensive and small to carve.... Kinda takes the main event out of halloween doesn't it? ^^"
And i decided to try the yosakoi circle as well. Katelyn mentioned how much fun it was while she was in kyoto so i decided to give it a go. Airi took me to their practice where i was more than impressed with the coordination and how the dance itself turns out after all their practicing. The music got catchy too.
They were all really friendly & i always liked extra attention haha. They helped me with some of the moves and i felt like i was wasting their time because it was sooo hard for me ^^" it looks really cool tho so i do want to learn it tho. I'll keep trying my best :). I am actually having fun there so i'll probably join their circle as long as they don't mind me screwing up my routines everytime ^^"
Went to Megadonkey again and i realized i needed track pants for gym class & i always wear my white sweater here... so i needed to wear something else.
Found a shirt with a hood... ish. There were two.. same initial price... one had 30% off... but the other was purple...& they looked practically the same except the one with 30% off had a zipper on the pocket. I was torn ^^" in the end i got the purple one. Despite regretting paying more... i know i would have regretted not getting the one i wanted ^^".

Today we went to a sweets festival!

LOTTTSSS of samples. Got to try cheesecakes, sake ice cream, sponge cakes! and it smelled soooo good. You can easily get into conversations with the venders because they seem to really enjoy talking to foreigners.

I was surprised in the elevator going down. one guy said "excuse me" behind us... and it was this white guy!.... you actually dont see foreigners often in Hakodate.
After that we went to Lucky Pierrot to get that hakodate yama burger. They rang a bell before bringing it to us haha.

It was expensive..... and good but i probably will try other things next time. We had to leave soon so i finished mine in around 10 minutes ^^"
Ramin said he felt sick after his haha

Classes in Japan

So i think this is week 3 ish in Japan.
*on a side note*
I had this dream that i was in Canada working at superstore again & that the one year exchange had already ended. Was extremely sad in that dream because it felt like we left before doing anything(... welll.. only 3 weeks so far...) so i guess it means i'm having fun here.... just not aware of it.. haha
Anyways.. back to the classes...

Classes started 2 weeks ago.
The classes seemed awfully slack at first... we have one for 2 hours per week... but you take like minimum 7 classes. Seems like we have a bunch of Japanese classes as well as some culture classes. The Tea ceremony/ Japanese harp culture class has not started yet but i'm looking forward to it. We had this one class where we were told we would get full marks for just attending it... The prof kept on making us guess what tea, ginger, wasabi, soy sauce, and rice is called in a sushi bar. I remembered that trusty "Japanese tradition" video on youtube and figured out agari, gari, murasaki... etc... The reasons shown on the videos however are not the same haha. He told us how those names changed to the new ones... and i thought it was interesting but hard since i wouldn't have figured it out by myself.
The profs also created a beginner class and called certain people who would then go take it while we take the regular classes. It had me worried because one of our classes is classified under "Advance level Japanese" and i'm kind of wondering if i should have asked if i could go to the beginner level class during that class since i don't think i am qualified to be "advanced level" haha ^^"  The class turns out to be about Archery in Japan. We might go visit their dojo and i am hoping ild get to try but... i could always join the archery club next sem or something. Oh! i might also take 2 chinese classes and korean next sem :D

Last thursday for one of the culture classes, we went to a restaurant. Since she told us it would be like japanese style then asked us if we wanted fish, porc or chicken, I thought she meant grilled salmon and a piece of pork.... so i chose the pork. When we got to the restaurant... they had these for those who chose fish......

Needless to say.. i was regretting choosing the pork cauz it was Tonkatsu... which i've had a few times already... T_T
Today i joined a Gym class at the last minute. I feel bad for Mutoさん because we keep bothering him with all our requests....
The class seemed alright. Another student from Alaska and I, took the class. Usually, you'ld need to know quite a bit of japanese to take classes with the other students... but it was a gym class so i figured it'ld be ok.
During the warm up... i was confused as to what he wanted us to do sometimes but figured it out by copying the others :p. And then we got set up into Teams to play VolleyBall. I was loving it seeing how apparently, i was one of the MVP on my team haha. The girls on the team were nice & chatted with me so i felt less nervous about being in a class surrounded by japanese students. Apparently, they thought i was a local student until the prof told them that they had 2 exchange students & made us stand up. 「日本人っぽい」と言われたけど。。なぜか分からない＾＾”
I really liked that gym class.. although i was told we would be playing badminton and i was a bit disappointed... but i think we will play eventually....

I also tried joining the badminton team but the manager told me they have to train for a tournament & if i wanted to play for fun i should join the badminton circle and come back next month. She wasn't kidding... they didn't play any games.. they just kept on practicing certain types of shots.... I practiced with one guy and it felt like he was testing me out.... which kind of sucks haha when i told the manager that its ok if i cant join if i am not good enough but she kept saying " no! that's not it at all" (in japanese of course). And the people here are so nice, its hard to tell if they are just being nice. ^^"
Anyways... im looking forward to that gym class now cauz playing a sport again got me all fired up :D

Ricecooker.... quite the investment

So today i went to YamadaDenki and got the cheapest ricecooker there.. LOL 4200 yen.
Hopefully it was a good investment. At least i wont have to eat out every night now.
Here it is!

At first, i wasnt sure how it worked... i understood what the buttons meant.. but i was still puzzled as to how itld actually work. The timer goes up by hours.... and in Canada, it took me several minutes... so i was a bit iffy about that.

In the end, managed to get some sticky rice haha but was ok.
didnt prepare ingredients tonight.... only used furikake since we were only trying the rice cooker. Hoping to be able to cook more in the future (until i go back to canada) :)

The furikake however was quite good haha.. wasabi katsuo :)

HairCuts in Japan

So... i Always thought service was good in Japan... But then Danny & i went to get a haircut...
Now.. THAT was something else....

 Nice staff, Shampoo-ed my hair twice(beginning and at the end), hair cut... used expensive hairwax twice on my hair.. From the neck up..complete massage with hot towels.. nice scented cream, full shave.....more head massage, Hair cut & styling. Used some kind of spray on my hair which made my head feel cool/cold. and to end it off, complementary drink :). 2100 yen.. face feels silky smooth & i leave, a happy customer.

Other side!

Destination Japan video!

i forgot i made a really brief video that i posted on fb for this trip. here it is.

Week 1 in Hakodate

So.... Finally arrived in Hakodate... Got picked up at the airport by Moritani Sensei & Andre. The Airport from the air looked exactly like Mauritius! close to the sea and everything.... except.. you cant swim in this sea.... & also the roads on the way to the airport reminded me of leaving plaissance cauz the buildings and view looked similar. I was enjoying the ride & all the japanese signs. 

So eventually we got to our temporary house... which is the ghost house.. cause apparently, the guy's dorms were full......  not gonna lie, that house creeped us out. its like a temporary house for club activities and stuff i believe.... there were 2 rooms with several bunk beds... & only two of us in the entire house. we got shown our apartments that we could choose from and all.. then went to seven eleven. Got some onigiri and some peach Fanta. Both good. Loved the onigiri. :)

We went back to the house and a truck selling Yakiimo passed by advertising it with its speakers and it sounded a bit like an old lady yelling into the speakers so we were pretty creeped out. needless to say we were uneasy to fall asleep that night. The house was pretty nifty tho.... we had fun with the toilette that sings, warms up and sprays water at your bum. We also had a really hard time figuring out how to throw garbage....... yes you heard right.... it took us like 10 minutes to figure out how to throw a bottle. we had to consult their manual to see if it was burnable.. non burnable.. plastic... etc..
Another thing is we had our three pronged laptop plugs to charge and we went around town looking for an adapter that would allow us to charge them but they couldnt find them anywhere. we were beginning to think we would not be able to charge our laptops......

2nd day we met the other international students. hey were pretty nice and we all went to get our Gaijin cards and other stuff filled out. Also met Kaori, one of the students that recently came back from Australia and she was SUCH a big help. actually everyone here are willing to help you so i really like that. went to get some Taiyaki. got a matcha one :) good stuff. i remember someone saying it to me before.. and it was true. Japan is really clean, you wont find any garbage anywhere easily.... and you wont find a garbage bin either. it was annoying to carry my garbage wrapper around.
then we went to try and get phones.... and every softbanks told us they didnt have prepaid phones so several searches letter we settled for a crappy deal at AU. but meh, it still allows us to communicate to everyone.... and that's via email that is. The guy told us to come pick up our phones the next day.... but me and ramin forgot his name. it was fu..... se? fu..... fu.... something...
so in the end we settled with calling him Fu-Chan. フッちゃぁん～ ... yea we laugh at random things haha.
So we went to a building called テーオー　which had a hyakuen shop and we found a three pronged adapter..... just like that. :/ We went for curry ramen that day. was good :) Kaori said Ajisai wasnt good cauz it was like a chain but hell... still good stuff :p.

We also discussed our apartments that day and we got this tiny apartment that had an extremely high initial cost. we were not really happy about that :S. It's basically us paying ridiculously more than we should have cauz the guy's dorm is dirt cheap in comparison.... but as im typing this, we have already moved in so i guess there is no point in complaining. The apartment is ok, bathroom and kitchen is kinda small... the toilette is interesting.... the watertank also has a sink on top haha.
We met up with the international guys that guy cauz it was one of their birthdays & we went to a tonkatsu place.... and i had curry rice. was ok. After we went to Danny's room, one of the international students who is from Perth, Australia & was here a semester before us. He had Wifi on so i felt like i remet a long lost friend... everyone took our their iphones haha.
The next day, we moved into our new expensive apartment. The one bed has some sort of storage under it.. Ramin and I, are using it like a bunk bed... sort of. I still think it reminds me of harry potter.

So we went out to buy futons... and no mattress... so our backs kinda hurt but i can live with it. still havent gotten the mattresses as we speak. oh and the apartment has a lil camera that allows us to speak to and see anyone who rings our doorbell.

Later that day, Moritani Sensei took us to Hakodate station to drop off Kaori cauz she was going back to sapporo for a lil bit. we got to walk around and i found the price to go to honshu via train. apparently it goes under the sea so that was pretty cool. We also got to see the fish market and the crabs were HUGE. it was awesome :) i was quite happy to have been there. We went to a place called Sukiya that night and found some local students that we met during orientation. Had to press on a button to order bu we didnt know so we were hesitant. In the end i got cheese curry. Really good stuff... but when i ordered... she asked if that was it. and i said yes...... thinking she meant with my order. so she turned around and left....without Ramin ordering anything ^^".

ok so.. next day. We went to look for random stuff.... We walked past Hakodate station and kept on walking. People on bicycles were passing us so we were annoyed and thought that we needed bikes. It's strange that in Japan, if you have a bike you can go pretty much anywhere you want to go. We walked for i think about 3 hours and got too tired.... and the first bike shop we found, we bought our bikes there. Its a pretty cool bike. has a lil light thingiemajig & it's own built-in lock with a key.... oh and a basket. so we rode out of there and got back home in like 15 minutes haha. it is so convenient. For lunch that day, we bought several ingredients to try and make nabe with whatever we had.... We forgot to buy a cutting board so we had to deal with octopus. After several tries.. we decided to throw in the octopus tentacle even tho it was a bad idea... and yes it was. but it was pretty good, except for the fact that we didnt have a table yet to eat on lol.

Before leaving, we heard a loud noise at our door. We thought someone tried to break in.... and we kept hearing it at all the other doors so we thought someone was trying to break into all the apartments.... we were joking about hitting him with our umbrellas & kept checking the camera at our door to see if he was outside cauz we kept hearing noises. Ramin kept expecting a face to show up on the camera, so we called that guy "no face" since we couldnt see a face on the camera.... There is also a corner that leads nowhere in front of that camera so ramin kept thinking maybe he's hiding behind there. Eventually we decided to leave the house to go outside and we saw the mail on our front steps... and yea.. we had the "oh..... the mailman...".... yea..
So we met up with everyone at the dorms to see what they were up to and they said they wanted to go back to where we were to climb mt Hakodate. kinda wished everyone had bikes but we got to ride the tram which was also cool. So we met up with the girls at the foot of the mountain & climbed up. it was really nice. Hiking up a mountain in the forest at night. sounds creepy but i find that sort of stuff fun. there were a lot of crows on one side of the mountain and two guys in the group got tired and took the gondola thingie up the mountain but we joked around the crows going for them as we left them behind haha. Once we got up there it was freezing but the view was literally breath taking. you see the town with the ocean on both side and seeing pictures on a computer doesnt do it justice.

 it was really nice. So being the cheap students we are, we hiked back down the mountain, this time in complete darkness, having the best flashlight in the group.... my iphone. we were talking about horror movies and scary stories... and the whale burger at lucky pierrot. lol. Danny thought he saw someone but it turned out to be the shadow of a tree haha thought that'ld be worth mentioning.
So after we got down the mountain, we were waiting for another student, Ben, we took the bus down cauz he was too tired. so we waited there for about over an hour or so and still no sign of him. he didnt have his phone yet either. The girls went ahead and us guys waited up here for quite a bit only to receive a phone call from him saying he is already at the dorms..... yea... lol

We originally planned to go for shabushabu that night but instead went to a lil restaurant that had cheap drinks and yakiniku that was close to the university. had some umeshu which was only about 300 yen and the meats were like... liver, gizzard, fat.... I liked it hahah tho a tad unusual.

The next day which would be sunday, we went around looking for stuff....it seems thats all we've been doing... trying to buy random stuff for the house.... rode our bikes further down and we managed to find another McDonalds and another Lucky pierrot. This time we decided to go into the Lucky Pierrot and got the chinese chicken burger for like... 298 yen.

We thought itld be small but it was pretty big and really tasty. :). We spent the day at home watching TV and i noticed japanese reenactments are extremely overdramatized and exaggerated. here was a show of some chick that was overweight and they kept showing people laughing at her as if they were all in a cartoon or something..... This reminds me, i forgot when but there was a show about some masseuse massaging a bunch of girl's breasts to make them smaller or bigger during a variety show. it was amusing to see her stick her hand in the girl's swimsuit and everyone was watching... something you would never do on tv in north america hahaha. We finally got internet! yeyey! managed to talk to my mom on skype which made me happy. That night we didnt go to bed until 4 am. Thank god classes were at 1pm the next day....
First day of classes were ok, had an overview of stuff we had to do and im still nervous during introductions/自己紹介. Went to look for some stuff later on. Got on our bikes to look for the DonkeyHote(forgot the proper way to spell it) and found Mos burger along the way but Danny said it wasnt as good as Lucky Pierrot  here. Also found a Kaitenzushi place but Moritani sensei said he'll show us a nice one one day. I asked one guy where Donkeyhote was and he had a smirk on his face for some reason.... He confirmed... "Mega donkey?" and we couldnt stop laughing after we heard that. This branch is the Mega one apparently.

Found a KFC nearby and i want to try it haha. We went into donkeyhote and checked out the basement... LOTS of cheap sushi... storepacked stuff but they were better than Calgary quality. Ramin found his beloved cherry coke and we go a bunch of storebought sushi to go... I also got my lipton milk tea which i really like :p.
I dont recommend putting poorly sealed sushi boxes in your bicycle basket if you encounter a lot of bumps on the way to your house. yea... by the time we got home, my sushi was all mixed haha and some fell out into the plastic bag...... but it was still really good :P haha.

Thats it for week 1.... This blog is extremely annoying to write... maybe ill do it only when funny things come up. anyways... stay tuned!

Leaving for Hakodate!


-Leaving Calgary
That was a tough one to do. leaving family behind for one year... I have never felt so closer to my family than these past months i spent with them, whether it were my dad's side in mauritius, or my mom's side of the family.

So got to the airport... Ramin checked in both his luggage.... got charged for his 2nd one... i go in expecting to have to pay..... but didnt have to... ^^" then as soon as we went in, he was asked to show his passport.... while i was let through without any problems.... &........ the thing at baggage checks beeped at him ^^" bad start for ramin haha. then we wanted to charge our phones.... so we found some outlets.. at a pay phone. haha 

I was kinda sad to be leaving Calgary but hey.... onto the next adventure. Calgary to LA to Korea to Japan(sapporo) to Japn(hakodate) flights... here we go.
Arrived at the airport in LA & we were kinda lost but managed to get to our gates... Ramin had his bags checked again and almost lost his tablet.. but disaster averted. hen we got on the flight to incheon which was long as hell.. even longer than london to mauritius....

Incheon airport was AWEsome..... really nice wifi, nice food.. etc....

& we saw a nice sunrise over there .

And we had some octopus bibimbap.... which was exTREMEly tasty... i expected the octopus to be chewy.. but they literally melt in your mouth.... was awesome :p

And for some reason... in LA....... to Seoul...... and on Korea Air... they kept speaking korean to me.... i felt so bad to have to interupt them :S i guess i should have learned to say i cant speak korean...

anyways... soon going to Sapporo... and i noticed that for the 2nd time.. we pass hakodate again.. but we dont stop there haha.. but hey! we were in Japan!

Holy crap was that fun... It was weird to be told something in japan without me approaching the person first... i didnt know what to say.. i kinda froze.. and go really excited to speak japanese hahaha the guy at the japanese customs was really nice. asked me where i came from and for some reason, a lot of Japanese people know about mauritius.... 

then we had to board a small propeller plane to hakodate.

View from the plane was amazing! loved the mountains and stuff that we saw on the way.

Andddd i couldnt wait to get off our forth and last flight...