My first weekend in Japan is coming to an end, and I wanted to start off by mentioning a few things I was surprised by (excuse my uncultured self):
- At first, I thought that gas was extremely cheap here, because at most gas stations I've seen, it costs something around 110 yen, which is about 1 USD. Then, I realized that the rest of the world uses liters and not gallons, meaning gas is pretty damn expensive.
- In every parking lot I've seen, everyone parks their car in reverse.
- In the past 4 meals I've eaten, there's been some kind of soup in the meal, but nobody uses spoons. Everyone just drinks the soup right out of the bowl. Which I actually kind of enjoy.
- When I was first learning Japanese, everyone told me that katakana is not used very often. Buuut I see katakana everywhere!! I feel betrayed by my previous Japanese teachers.
One of the hardest things for me so far in my time here has been the lack of communication. I mean, this is something that I expected coming into this experience since I'm far from fluent in Japanese. However, something I did not really think about was how odd it feels to not be able to communicate. The best way to describe this feeling is comparing it to a Sim living in a household full of people with a low social bar. Of course, I talk to people occasionally in my broken Japanese, and I text people back home in English, but I really, really miss having actual, meaningful conversations everyday. That aspect has been really difficult, at least for me, someone who enjoys conversations a whole lot.
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| Casual Sunday - enjoying the shorts weather before it ends |
Anyway, so far I've been to two malls in Kobe with my host family. Everything is so pretty and cute, especially the stationeries! I just want to buy everything. America definitely needs to step up their pen game. I also went to a udon restaurant, which was also a cool experience. They were making all the udon noodles by hand as you order, and you would order each ingredient to be put into the soup. It reminded me of Chipotle, except with udon. I wish I would've taken some pictures here, but I was busy making my soup!
Afterwards, I visited a sake brewery with my host family. It's turned into a museum for history of sake and tasting now since the industrialization of sake making.
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| Rice for the first step of making sake |
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| Gigantic tubs to put the rice in |
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| Drying and cooling of rice |
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| Final steps |
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| Some brush and ink calligraphy because it made me think of Austin |
It was a pretty traditional experience. Apparently the region I'm living in is famous for its sake, and I didn't even know that before. So, I went and tasted some of their famous sake. I've never tried it before, and with alcohol contents of anywhere between 10-20%, I was sure it was going to taste bad (I'm not much of a hard drinker...). However, it was actually really good! My two favorites were lemon-infused and plum-infused sake, each with alcohol contents of ~12-14%. Both were sweet and delicious though. I definitely wouldn't mind having more.
Tomorrow I start my first day at the university I'm attending here, and I'm excited to start and to be able to have more communication again...lol.
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