On my new adventure: Arriving in Japan!

It has been a long while since I have been able to write. Mostly due to my summer job, but lately also because I had to pack and arrange everything properly for my exchange–student program that started this september! As many of you might know, I am studying for a bachelors degree in Japanese language at the university of Oslo! And as a part of that, it is mandatory to spend 5 months in an exchange–student program in Japan! ^^ (not complaining haha)

Well, I have been in Japan for a couple of weeks by now (I arrived on friday the 4th of September), so I thought it was time to write a bit about my adventures this far! (I am sorry it has taken so long >.<)

Leaving Norway, I and four other students from my class took the same route to Japan:
We flew to the Helsinki airport from Oslo, and onwards to the Narita airport in Japan. It is the longest time I have ever spent in an airplane, so it was really exciting for me! I could hardly sleep at all, even though I had been traveling since the middle of the night on the day before, and had to travel well 24 hours in total to reach my goal! It was my first time on that kind of an airplane, so I was really excited about there being screens to watch movies and stuff hehe ;v;
I saw a chinese movie (with subtitles) called "20 once again", it was a really nice one so I would definitely reccomend it! ^^

 

 

 

 

Arrived in Japan, we were met by some representatives from our designated international university, and we waited with them for a couple of hours before the school bus came to pick us up, to go to Josai International university. There we got a quick briefing about things, before we were handed our apartment keys, and drove off by the same bus to our new living places! 

The place I live is situated in the country-side, so I guess you could call it a sort of village or small town. It´s called Tógane, and it lies in the county of Chiba, just over 1 hour by train to the Tokyo main-station. I have lived in the countryside most of my life so I really didn´t mind being situated here. In the past couple of weeks I have come to find Tógane to be a rather calm and charming town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quite tranquil, isn´t it?

And about the apartment: it is surprisingly big! I must say, it is quite bigger than the place I used to live in, in Oslo! But then again, in Oslo I only had my own sleeping room, while I had to share both bathroom and kitchen. Here in Japan I have an entire apartment, with both kitchen and bathrooms. 

I took a few pictures when I had just arrived and packed out my suitcase.

 

It was so nice, because upon arrival, we got this really big care–package with everything we could possibly need for starting out living in the apartments. I won´t mention everything, but amongst other things there was a few towels, toilet-paper, bedding and bed cover, tableware, soaps and even some really cute slippers! You could say it was a really nice experience over all hehe.

Well, as I have been living here for almost two weeks, I can mention that the first week was just a general orientation week. We had a few sessions at our school with information about this and that, and also we attended the opening ceremony last friday, but the first week was generally a week off so we could pretty much do what we wanted. I used the time to go to Tokyo as much as three times, both the first and second day (since it was a weekend) and also the following wednesday! I had quite a few adventures, including getting really ill and fever–ish due to jet-lag,
but I think I´ll save that for my next updates ;-)

I hope you enjoyed this update about my current living-situation!

I´m still quite excited about everything, and even though I´ve only been here about two weeks it feels like months allready! wow!

Please stay tuned!

+ romanticing summer : nostalgia feelings +

I thought I write a little entry about my general status and life at the moment, for those interested.

If you are following my instagram, you might notice that that is where I post most often. 

I have this tendency to forget about this blog, or feel like my life is to event-less to write about.

But who says there is a rule to what you can and can´t write about? It is my blog after all, and my goal was to create a space for me to express myself, and talk about things that inspire me and that hopefully will inspire you! 

 This summer I had about one month of freetime, and a couple of weeks, before I started my summer-job at the same library I´ve been working at every summer for the past 3 years.

It felt strange, being back in my hometown after having lived in Oslo for about a year now! I am actually working at the local tourist-information this year, since our local town is very small and the library doubles as a tourist-information. I felt really eager to promote my homeplace to the tourists this year, and my mom says it´s because I´ve been away for so long. You get a different view of things when you return after having been away. It´s probably good for my social anxiety as well... I feel happy when I can help people get good experiences when they visit here ^^

When it comes to my personal health, I have become lost in a deep rift of bad-selfconfidence, which basically renders me into a pattern of dressing in the same clothes over and over (having them be oversized and boring) and trying to stick out as little as possible... This is a part of my disorder, and it always becomes worse when I am really sick... 

Another reason for not posting pictures of myself is because of that. 

So! I wanted to summarise some events over the past few weeks/months,
all presented to you by some of my recent instagram-posts:

 

When I came home, one of the first things I did was this jigsaw puzzle, featuring flower fairies, and 1000 pieces in total! It went remarkably fast, as I downloaded the Audible app from Amazon, and listened to exciting audiobooks while doing it ^^! I would reccomend this to everyone, very calming and it makes you feel pretty accomplished finishing a jigsaw puzzle with this many pieces 

 

 

My oldest sister came home from South-Africa this summer! She had these white fabric shoes, that she didn´t really use, and as we can use the same kind of shoes, she told me I could borrow them for the summer! I of course was very happy, as I only had shoes with ties on them, and these were so easy to wear since I could just slip them on. Later on, she actually told me I could have them if I wanted, and that she originally bought them to draw on them, but never got around to it! That was my idea also, so I ended up with this cute little egg-design that says "tamago tomodachi" in japanese, meaning "egg friend" haha ^^

 

When I was down in Oslo, I desperatly wanted proper drawing-things and as quality can be sort of pricy, I actually asked my parents for a favour, helping me get a new artbook and some good drawing pens.... The nice thing was that they actually said yes, so after coming home for summer vacation, I started my brand new 240 page A4 size drawing-book/sketch-book, determined to make every page count ^^ This was a hair-study I did that I was quite happy with!

Another page in my drawing-book, showing off my brand new OC that still lacks a name... if you have a good idea, please let me know ^^ hehe

 

(don´t mind my oversized outfit)... And that brings me up until last weekend. My family, at that moment my next-oldest sister and her boyfriend were joining us, and my oldest sister had gone back to South Africa, took me with them on a trip to another island, about 5-6 hours by car from our own island to join in on the 50th anniversary of an old family-friend of ours. This consisted of driving in a 5-person car that was quite heated due to the weather and having it be completely full.... We slept in a small camping-hut that we rented on a local camping-place in the area, and because I´m a light-sleeper, I could hardly close an eye the day before leaving, and almost not at all on the night we spent there, as my roomates were a bit ... ehm... nosiy in their sleep.... 

BUT it was a lovely experience through and through! I haven´t gone on a trip like that with my family since my childhood... there was no connection to internet anywhere and everything was just nature, clouds, wind and sun, grass and ocean *sigh*

Just look at the beautiful sunset on the night we stayed there!

 

And lastly, I wanted to mention that I went to a wedding this week! The first ever wedding I´ve attended, being able to remember it! My family says I was at a wedding when I was about 3 or something, but I only have vague memories from it, so this was basically a new experience for me!

Me, my mom and my dad arrived rather late, as all of us had work to attend to before being able to go. My sister and her boyfriend however, are still on vacation, so they could go directly and experienced the whole seremony. 

I was a bit scared of going because of just having finished that trip with everyone, and it´s really stressfull for me having social events scheduled to go to...( needless to say, I became sick afterwards... brain overload) I had a hard time finding anything I could wear that wouldn´t be revealing at all, and ended up with a white, foot-long maxi summerdress, with some pink details!

 

 

So yeah, decided to brake the "don´t wear a white dress in a wedding"-rule on my first wedding-attendance! Well, it wasn´t a very big deal, since they were the kids of family-friends we´ve known since before I was born ^^ hehe

And that pretty much is the things I wanted to mention up until now.

Other than these events and my current summer job, I haven´t been doing very interesting things this summer. Spending a lot of time outside in nature, climbing the local hills and mountains, working my way through interesting looking movies from all kinds of categories, and preferably around the 80s. Playing some games, and also drawing a bit ofcourse! 

It is now 31 days until I leave for Japan!

 

 and I must admit I am quite eager to get back into business! This is by far the longest summer-vacation I´ve ever had, being a university student, it´s about 3 months! 

I want to write an entry about some of the movies I´ve seen lately, so I might do that in a not too distant future ^^ stay tuned! I hope you enjoyed this entry!