Earthquake survivor

When walking to school everyday in the heat I've noticed something. There is no button at the traffic lights like in sweden. Instead they seems to cycle automagicly and it works fine, and sometimes every car stands still because none is where there is green. And ofcourse the pedestrian crossings works the same way, this is a real pain because I have to pass some large crossings and always I got like four tries before I actually have to stop and wait for green light and every single day this far I've been forced to wait at the last one for a green light. Such a drag!

Other then that I've not much to complain about. I'm intrigued that we dont have a dishtowel in the kitchen neither do we have a washing-up brush (diskborste). Instead we use toilet paper ( I mean seriously toilet paper why not even some higher quality paper.. )  and a sponge for the dishes.

Can also report that I've survived my first earthquake. I was asleep at the time, woke up and noticed it shaking and thought a second about the durability of houses in Japan then I went back to sleep right after it stopped, it was just a tiny rumble. Next day I thought it was a dream until my friends at school discussed the earthquake.

And not it's time to study, have 3 big tests this week, already done one of them. It's placements tests so you can get into a higher Japanese class, but because I'll be leaving the school in about 10 days it doesn't really matter what I score, except for my self-esteem.

Cellphone and fluff

I've now started to get settled in the land of the rising sun. I've been going to language school for one whole week now and as long as it doesn't get any harder I think it will be just fine. I'm in a now very high level class but the speed of the class suits me. Every part of the class is in japanese so very good practicing for listening comprehension. I understand for the most part everything the teacher says, but I can't yet keep up with normal speed of japanese people. The lessons here is not what I'm used to compared to the lessons in sweden. Here we draw kanji after our sensei showed us the stroke order, and we have shadowing where the teacher reads a text and then we read it direct afterwards everyone at the same time.. (and everyone reads in different paces so it sounds horrible).

I've also managed to get myself a cellphone, a Softbank prepaid phone. I had checked up Softbanks english homepage and had seen they had alot of diffrent cellphones and also noticed that they only had two on their online-shop. So when I went to the first Softbank store with english speaking personal in Ginza, there they did not have any prepaid phones in stock so I quickly left and went for Harajuku. In Harajuku they had one phone in store, but they did not know anything about other phones as they were not in stock. Neither could they see if other stores had phones in stock. So I left that store too and went to Akihabara. There I went to a random huge store with Softbank counter and there they claimed to knew that it only existed to phones for prepaidplan. I belived them and bought a phone from them.

To buy the phone was a long process where I had to show them my passport, my registration card, give them a phone number (which I did not have but found on the internet for the school). I also picked the 4  final numbers on my phonenumber, and also got to pick my email-adress for the phone. Offcourse the personel here was none-english speaking but it worked out fine using my japanese skills. Only part that I could not understand and had to get an english speaking person for me to understand was a problem with my name. My name consists of family name, 2 middle names and one first name, ofcourse the computer system only allowed 3 names and I could not remove one name, that was impossible.. but we solved it. So now I'm a happy owner of a 携帯 (without å ä ö.. ).

/ Henrik

P.S. Sorry for making this so long D.S.

Some updates

Can report that getting the "id-card thingy" at the airport was very easy, I got some papers on the airplane to fill out, then when I got to the visum control I just gave a japanese dude the papers, he looked trough them, took my fingerprints and a photo then suddenly I had a card, no hard questions or anything that I expected. I've also gone to my local ward office and got my living address registered. They had a english speaking women that helped me out together with two other none-english speaking. It just took some time for them to figure out if I should have room 101 or 101b (my bed designation) or not on the addres, after some phone calls and discussions they made the conclusion that it doesn't matter! 

In my few days here in Japan I've now been at Harajuku, Akihabara and also the top of mount Fuji. Climbing mount fuji was very experiencing, never climbed a mountain, or well a vulcan, before. We climbed up late evening and 5 hours later we reached the top and the waited for the sunrise in the cold. We did not have that much gear with us as most of the other climbers but we did just fine, perhaps some freezing at the top but it was worth it for the awesome view of the sunrise! 

I've also been to a rotating sushi bar and karaoke with the habitants of the same house as I am living in, a real fun experience. I wonderd what japanese people do on their spare time and now I know! Karaoke was a bit embarrassing because my not so awesome singing skills, but it went just fine. 

But now my free time is over, school starts and at 10 o'clock tomorrow.

Oh and now I've met another habitant of the house here. I've have to get used to normal speaking pace of japanese otherwise I'll never be able to keep up with what people are talking about.