Profiscor on the Your-Japan Blog Network

Ok so

What’s worse than living next to a EuroSkank? Continue Reading »

• You’ll be called an alien, rather than “foreign”
• You’re meant to carry your visa with you at all times until you complete alien registration.
• Then you’re meant to carry round your Alien Reg card at all times.
• If you don’t you have to spend up to 4 days in prison? (don’t quote me on that)

• Facewash is hard to find.

• Make up remover is hard to find.

• But make up is sold to you by the truckload.
• Antiperspirant is hard to find.
• Yet you can find nose scrapers aplenty.
• Sun tan lotion smells like alcohol.

• Bread is crazy expensive compared to everything else.

• Japanese people have NO idea what baked beans are, and you won’t realise that you don’t know how to explain them till you get here.

• Japanese girls will stare at your breasts like crazy if you’re a girl gaijin. (Which actually might solve the mystery of the aging nation?)

• You are English therefore you eat fish and chips every day and all day long whilst sipping tea.

• Japanese people will try to correct your English.

• Japanese mosquitoes are merciless.

• You can’t eat outside while walking because you WILL seem like a child. Except it’s okay for gaijin to do it…(Since we already seem like children? I don’t know)

Stuff that just doesn’t fit

• Japan is meant to be an aging nation but babies and pregnant people are everywhere.

• Japanese Girls walk like ducks.

• What’s up with that?
  

• And the boys like it!

No really

Waiting for my friends I saw this beautiful dignified Japanese girl with a suit on and talking business on her mobile and a few guys see her and say “wow, how ugly I want my woman to stay home”

UGLY? She’s beautiful you R-tards! That’ll hopefully be me in a few years.

Then this other girl comes along with an expression on her face like she’s in pain and waddling along like a duck because she doesn’t know how to walk in heels and the boys are like “wow she was cute.”

Perhaps I should test out this theory to see if it works.

• Waddle like a duck = Getting Attention from Japanese Males.

• At shops you’re meant to take your change with both hands, because it’s rude, yet they actively go out of their way to place it in one of your hands.

• Japanese people not of large cities are meant to stare at us gaijin folk yet Tsukuba folk don’t bat an eyelid but people freak out in Tokyo as you stand in line for the Tokyo Tower.

• Japanese University Students studying Biology can read papers such as “Alternative Intrinsic Cell sources for Neural Retina Regeneration in Adult Urodelean Amphibians”

• but freak the hell out when they have to actually speak basic English.

There will more than likely to be more to come!

My Japanese class is made up of mostly American and Chinese people, in fact out of all the international students, America and China take the lead by quite a few people. Compare that to 4 British University students out of which only 3 are actually from England (The German goes to my uni back home) we don’t make up very many, so therefore not only do I represent my university but also my country, and I’m trying my best in class to be helpful, honest and polite…Yet my teacher hates me. Continue Reading »

Happy that I had been sent up from advanced beginners n00bs’ class to the intermediate n00bs, I came to the class bright and early the next day nervous that they would put me down if I made even the slightest wrong move. I figured I wasn’t going to be sent back because I was late

I go into the classroom and sit down, not taking in my surroundings.

I looked up and guess who’s sitting infront of me and decided to turn round and smile at me.

*Cue dramatic music* Continue Reading »

Having the opportunity to come to Tsukuba University and do a lab project also means that I must attend 6 hours of Japanese class including one hour of kanji. Ontop of this I have to do four more hours of classes from the course handbook, such as Japanese culture or if you’re as crazy as me you can take the science courses for Japanese people. (Yep, totally in Japanese)

They give you these as a minimum set of requirements and if we don’t get them for one reason or another, our student visa is voided and we must return to our respective country.

Yikes.

Anyway, after doing that Japanese ability exam, which sucked because I was ill, tired and hungry when taking it, I got put in a low class.

Eventually after 2 weeks of grovelling they put me in a higher class where I belong but for those 2 weeks I had to endure the wrath that is…*cue dramatic music* Continue Reading »

Over the last week I’ve been going through a spot of bad luck, and it’s been getting me a bit down but in a way it’s made me stronger.

On Friday my lab took me to dinner as a welcome party which is the custom here in Japan. We walked there from labs. My professor and I were the only two with bicycles so we walked alongside them with the other lab members. Also my money hasn’t come yet so I was glad I didn’t have to pay, as hideously cheap as that sounds, but I’m literally down to my last pennies. Continue Reading »

Okay so everyone says this but hear me out.

I am at the end of the corridor and live next the only person in the ENTIRE university halls of residence that owns a sub woofer and speakers the size of my head and she is a tall, scary looking blonde girl from eastern Europe who has bleached, platinum blonde hair and goes to university wearing next to nothing. And if this wasn’t enough to make her stand out like a massive brutal sore thumb with bulging veins, she wears ridiculously inappropriate high heels which just add to her height, making her tower over Japanese people.

She may think she looks beautiful but she looks like she’s just walked out of the red light district.

But what’s worse than a tall, scary and angry-looking Eastern European girl? Continue Reading »

My professor is my role model and hero.

A polite man with a kind attitude who takes pride in his work. Ok so he might resemble Wayne Szalinkski from “Honey I Shrunk the kids” in stature and “stand up for yourself” ability but he is a truly amazing man.

Let me explain. Most people come to the exchange programme here in Tsukuba to learn Japanese or do the 3^rd year of their Japanese studies or “nihon gaku” course, maybe take a few culture classes and bounce around the campus and Japan for a year.

My university back home didn’t start this Japanese Studies course until last year. So previous students have taken either Biology (or any of the bio sciences) and Japanese, or Maths and Japanese. Including yours truly. Mainly because I want science to be my Major but I love the Japanese language. To have the chance to do both, I’m truly blessed! Continue Reading »

All my childhood and all my teen years I had wanted to experience Tokyo. I cant tell you why I have such an interest in Japan, but to fill the void I tell myself I was Japanese in a past life. I don’t read manga, I seldom watch anime, but the Japanese history and culture intrigues me, such as the way they built houses in the edo period, the tea ceremony and the like. I also like technological advances and Akihabara is the centre of all this in the world, so to be here and be able to see and even have the opportunity to buy some of the things I see, I’m in a way achieving a dream.

When the time came that someone asked me if I wanted to go to Tokyo in the weekend, I was the first one up for it, even though my money hadn’t come through (it still hasn’t!) I wanted to go. We got cheap tickets in the morning from a local shopping centre and inquired about some phones with some Italian people(we bought the phones the next day). We then ran to the station, and then set off for Tokyo, narrowly catching the train. Continue Reading »