Japan Blog
Picture of the week ~ Connor Perrin
15th November 2016, 11:07 pmLast time I 'blogged' I said I had loads of Pictures of the week, this is true, however I can't decide which ones to upload, this is a very stupid problem lol, I should just upload them all, but that defeats the purpose of a picture of the WEEK lol.
Today I had to deal with a (for the sake of Louise, I will be very vague) bugs nest located under the router... very scary however being the man I am, I dealt with it... with minimal swearing :)
Oh and yesterdays Kanji example went really well, I know I made two mistakes, so I think that will be a 95+-% result, not bad.
Today I had a Japanese test, went very well. Interesting thing happened, so I was struggling with a question, then the gentleman to the right of me learned over and said "The answer is 'to'"
Side note:
'to', ? in Japanese, pronounced 'tou' and not 'too'. *Hard to describe, but not relevant.
Very odd for two reasons.
1) He's happy to cheat.
2) He's happy to read my paper
2a) He's very good in Japanese, so he wasn't cheating lol.
So I took his 'advice' as what I had wasn't very good, only time will tell if he was correct.. or just f***ing with me lol.
Not uploading recently ~ Connor Perrin
14th November 2016, 8:24 pmFor some reason, I haven't been uploading to the website recently.
"But Connor, you must have been really busy with uni right?"
Actually... no, not really, last week I had nothing to do on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday... which was scary, felt very wrong, but then I remembered I had a Kanji exam (Side note, Kanji is the Chinese characters in the Japanese written language). So I spent all day Saturday and part of Sunday revising for that.
"So Connor, where did you go on Sunday?"
On Sunday we went to Shibakoen, Minato. This is where the famous Tokyo Tower is.
Like I said, I was revising on Sunday, so we went in the evening as Tokyo Tower is amazing by night (so the forums say). So we left around 3pm (sunset 4:30 ~ 5:00pm). Got there for about 4pm, had some lunch, which by the way, nearly impossible in Shibakoen as nearly every restaurant closes at 4pm and opens again around 6pm. Luckily we did find a nice eating establishment that was open.
Anyway, after our meal we went to the park near Tokyo Tower, where we sat and watched the Tower light up, a very romantic moment if I say so myself.
We also saw the largest moon since 1948.
After we decided to go up to the Tower for a closer look. From there we saw some christmas trees, very christmasy :)
All in all, it was a wonderful weekend adventure, although short due to my revision :(
P.S.
Off topic, but I currently have about 4~5 PoW's I want to upload, so throughout this week I'm going to upload a few PoW's at random points, maybe one a day to catch up? You lucky buggars
5 DAY WEEKEND! ~ Connor Perrin
2nd November 2016, 10:23 pmThat's right, I've got a five day weekend! And what do I plan to do you ask?.. well study of course. I've got 5 pieces of homework to complete within the next couple of weeks, so I'm taking full advantage of this spare time.
That being said, tomorrow I plan to start editing the Yokohama video (my birthday). I've been meaning to do it and I think I'll drop a couple of hours on it tomorrow while Louise goings shopping for some winter clothes (She didn't bring any jeans nor jumpers, silly girl).
Any updates?
Not really, got a new radiator which is surprisingly amazing lol. It's got a timer on it so it turns on in the morning so we have a lovely warm kitchen :D Oh forgot to mention... It's very heavy lol. We collected it from a Polish family, who had the most amazing kitchen known to man. She was very nice although it was a 30 minute train ride and a 20 minute walk at either end but was most certainly worth it.
I'm sure Norman is wondering how Logic is going, well it's become a lot easier as of recent or though there are some confusing bits and bobs here and there, but nothing to worry too much about :)
Wrong date formate ~ Connor Perrin
28th October 2016, 8:45 pmJust working on the website.
I can finally upload PoW straight to the website, which is really nice.
Also just noticed that the date format on past posts was in the American format (MM/DD/YYYY). So a quick change and everything is better :)
Going to work on a birthday section soon, I think it would be nice to have a gallery of all the pictures from my birthday on the website, but that might take a while to collect all the pictures and resize them, so maybe a task for an afternoon and not 8:45pm lol
The Moon and the Lanterns ~ Louise Zhou
October 21, 2016, 11:30 pmFor our last weekend adventure I suggested the Furusato flower field in Sakura, Chiba.
The weather was a bit warm for October, but perfect for our exploration. The area was very quiet with just one straight road stretching into the distance, and we had to walk for half an hour to get to the destination.
Connor has already written a lovely blog about our time there, but I would just like to add that the walk from the station to the windmill was also wonderfully pleasant, the two of us were holding hands all along the way, the sky was curiously blue, and there was the autumn sunshine shading everything we saw in a cheerful gold colour.
After our visit to the flower field, we headed back to the Sakura station for a late lunch, 'could just chill and walk around a little bit?'
That was the plan.
However, we should have noticed that there were way too many people at the station for a small place like Sakura.
We finally realised something was going on when a beautifully decorated traditional Japanese carriage stopped in front of us. It could be described as something of a large rickshaw, garnished with an abundance of mini paper lanterns and various patterned fabrics, brilliant, almost to an excess. At least a dozen people were pulling the carriage itself, with another 15 or so girls singing and fan-dancing around it.
Connor and I exchanged an excited look. That was definitely something we don’t see everyday.
Suddenly, several people jumped onto the rickshaw. Some of them appeared to be musicians while the others put on their peculiar masks of distorted human face and started performing what seemed to be a dance of some sort, mainly moving their arms and fingers. As some quaintly orderly music filled the street, we could almost sense the change in the air, as if the exotic tunes of flute and drums were painting the town with mystery, whispering of an inexplicable lure.
I found out later that such carriages are called Mikoshi, they serve as substitutes of real shrines in certain religious activities.
And yes, presenting its charm to us was the Grand Autumn Festival of Sakura.
The night fell and so did we, - down the rabbit hole. The streets of Sakura were filled with a hypnotising mix of colours, music, laughter, and food stalls. Some unusual activities were also available, e.g. goldfish scooping (see picture)! The most amazing, – ‘Louise, look up!’ – was the perfect full moon which seemed unbelievably close to us, Connor was going to ‘throw a lasso and pull it down’ for me. ;) All in all, the ambience had been so overwhelming it felt to us that we were in a completely different world.
Like everyone else, we followed the Mikoshi and the lanterns, one trailing after another, like an infinite loop. Nonetheless, we did finally come to a crossroad and it had appeared to be the time to head home. I walked back briefly to take a picture, trying to capture one small piece of this precious, glorious night. But somehow I knew it then: this feeling would just slip away, never coming back to me again.
I returned to the end of the road, but nobody was there. "You should never have let him out of your sight!’’ Being slightly annoyed with myself, I looked around for Connor, It is extremely easy to lose one person amid a busy festival like this.
Fortunately, the boy was just a few steps away, his back towards me, looking at the lantern-lit path traveling further and further, until it blurred into the darkness.
Maybe it isn’t that easy to lose him after all. I smiled. It’s like at the Takadanobaba station every weekday evening. I would have known him in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand.
It somehow reminded me of a random line from some book I read long ago:
- I will see you where the roads meet.
Bit irrelevant. But romantic, isn’t it?
‘Shall we go home?’
‘Yeah. Let’s.’
Been Busy ~ Connor Perrin
October 20, 2016, 3:21 pmHello all,
Sorry for the lack of content on the website, been rather busy with uni studies and what not.
Lucky for me, I have access to Norman and Boris, both very helpful in this field of work.
So, what's been happening and what's going to happen.
We've been very busy on the weekends, yes, we are still doing our weekend adventures, just for some reason we haven't had the time to upload pictures or blogs :(
But don't worry, I'm going to upload a PoW now (of this weekend just past) and Louise is going to write two blogs on the last two weekend adventures :) Expect a long, detailed post... tonight? Who knows lol, she was going to write them last night although... I kind of asked her for some maths help and then 3 hours later it was time for bed, so that's my bad.
Oh and this weeks PoW is going to be small in size as for some reason when I send pictures from Louise's phone they are sent in a smaller size than if I downloaded them, so will hopefully update the PoW tonight (when she returns home from work).
So why am I writing this blog post now?
Well I have just finished my homework :) So I have some time :)
Oh and check out the 'Maps' section, you'll see a new marker, it's our longest adventurer yet.
Just a thought, I'm thinking about making the last/most recent destination a different colour... might be interesting :)
P.S. FINALLY ORDERED CURTAINS FOR THE KITCHEN!!
P.S.S. It's 28 degrees today.... I'm dying!! Why is it so hot in October! Not use to this lol
"One post a night is the goal" ~ Connor Perrin
October 5, 2016, 9:24 pmHmmmm, didn't really achieve the goal of "One post a night" did I?
So what has happened this week so far?
Once again, not a lot. Had a few class' this week. Had an interesting class last week, it was so terrible that around 80% of the students have decided to drop the it. So the class isn't really a class, it's more like self study where you get marked. Sound pretty good, however, you have to learn an entire programming language in around 5 weeks with no help whatsoever from the lecturer (Who arrived 10 minutes late) and seemed to care more about his coffee than the students. So, not for me.
Last Friday I had my first Japanese lesson... OH MY GOD! I chose the wrong level, the lecturer only spoke Japanese (but could speak excellent english). I knew I had made a mistake before the class had even started. I was going to the classroom with a friend of mine, assuming he was in the same building but a different room, once realising that he was in the same room as me I realised my mistake, you see, Sam is very good a Japanese... and I am not.
After what seemed like 2 hours (20 minutes), the lecturer did the unimaginably... he asked me a question... arrrrrr shit.... I told him that I had bitten off more than I could chew and that I was on the wrong class, lucky for me he was the nicest lecturer I had encountered. He told me stand up and face the class ("Nicest Lecturer"? Just wait, it gets better). He then put he head on my shoulder and held my name sheet (We had to write our names on a piece of paper) on my chest (had his arms around me, almost like a hug from behind) and said "repeat in English".
lecturer - ç§ã®åå‰ã¯ã‚³ãƒŠãƒ¼ã§ã™ã€‚
Me - My name is Connor
lecturer - ç§ã®è¶£å‘³ã‚ゴルフ。
Me - My hobby is golf.
lecturer - ã‚よã—ããŠé¡˜ã„ã—。
Me - Pleased to meet you.
During the other student introductions, he sat next to me and explain what everyones hobbies were.
A very very nice man.
All in all, it was a great class and an good experience for me. I said my apologises to the lecturer and he told me that I could still take the class if I wanted to... I politely refuged :D
~~~~~~
Oh almost forgot, please enjoy another video.
This video is short but shows the sunset from out kitchen window, sadly you can see the bug screen in the video as I didn't push the camera close enough to it, but you get the picture :D
I know I know ~ Connor Perrin
October 2, 2016, 12:33 amYes, I know I said I was alive and then appear to be dead.
University has been hard work this week so I haven't had time to do anything to the website.
But this next week, I'll be better :) One post a night is the goal... but we'll see :)
Oh and please enjoy a new video :)
IT'S ALIVE! ~ Connor Perrin
September 24, 2016, 11:02 pmYes yes, I'm not dead, I'm in fact alive.
Sorry for not updating the blog, I've been busy with University and life, but I'm back :D
So what's been happening? Before today? Not a lot really, just been going to Uni nearly everyday getting things sorted and chatting to people from around the world, finally made a friend from Russia which is pretty cool if you ask me :D
I've finally chosen my courses although I couldn't take a module called Acoustic (A-Koo-Sticks) Systems, sounded really interesting but they said it was for other students but I'm going to ask if I could still go as it would help my final year project :)
Anyway, today Louise took me to a really cool shrine, I'll upload it to the PoW. It was a great day :) Louise also spent WAY too much on my birthday present, little bugga, although she was going to spend over 12,000 yen (around £100) on a pair of shoes for me, I couldn't let her do that, no way.
Forgot to post! ~ Connor Perrin
September 12, 2016, 10:24 pmOh, forgot to mention that as of the 9th of September I have been in Japan for one month!
"This marks the longest I've stayed in one place since I left the farm at 17"
This definitely marks the longest I've been away from my family, I'm pretty sure that includes time at University, just couldn't stay away from the golf cour.... family... couldn't stay away from the family :P
Anyway, how did we celebrate me being in Japan for one month? We had ramen of course :D
Speaking of ramen, tonight was the first night we cooked in the house... well, I say cooked, we had instant noodles but cooked some chicken, this is cooking in my books.
We ate and watched a film called "Le Petit Prince", I wonderful film, filled with amazing animation and desktop wall paper scenes. A top 25 film me thinks :)