Marlene in Japan

Konbanwa! It´s now Friday, and the orientation week is over. It has been kind of intense, there has been a lot of things we had to get done before our classes start on Monday. I will do a short sum of what I´ve been up to! We got our result back on the placement test, I got in the level I was aiming for, which was in level 3. We will see how that goes^^ I also forgot to write about which host family I´m going to stay with. It´s an elderly couple who lives in Hirakata and only ten minutes from the University, which is amazing! I will meet them on Sunday, so I really hope they are nice people :3. The host mother likes volunteer work, traveling and cooking. Hopefully, I learn a few tricks about Japanese home-cooking ;) The host dad likes computers, to golf and to play tennis. I have also been to Kyoto, two days in a row this week. The first time was with Kenji-san who I haven´t met since 2010 when he visited in my hometown to run O-ringen (big orienteering competition). He kn

Good morning! Yesterday was our first day of orientation. Kansai Gaidai has two campuses, which I already knew. What I didn´t know is that it´s around 15 min walk in order to get to the other campus. So... I went to the wrong campus at first. ^^'  Luckily, I made it in time for the information meeting. The sad thing is that I can´t take some of the classes that I wanted to take because they are on different campuses, and you only have a 10 min break between classes. The rest of the day included a Class advisor meeting, a Japanese placement test, and a Campus Tour. There is not much to say about the class advisor meeting, all students got divided into groups and met one teacher that will be like our contact person during our time here at Kansai Gaidai. The Japanese placement test was scheduled for 1,5 h, but apparently, we only had 1 h (?). I took it so slowly because I thought that I had a lot of time... But I was almost done when they came and said "5 min left", bu

Hey! So how do I start this? Well, I haven´t had time to write every day as I planed...  It has been a tight schedule here in Tokyo, a lot of things that I wanted to do before I´m going south. So... this post will be along one, hehe. Thursday: My dad and I went into Tokyo, and the plan was to walk in Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is the largest park in Tokyo, which include Yoyogi Park and Meiji shrine (please correct me if I am wrong). It started with that we went off too early (at Yoyogi station) when you actually should get off at Harajuku... So if you are going to Yoyogi park, Harajuku is the right station! It was extremely warm outside and my dad and I were sweating like pigs, haha. Inside the park, we were met by a sound of probably thousands of crickets. It was so peaceful in the park and almost no people, which probably was because we went to "the wrong" entrance. But it was nice, no tourists :3 We went to Meiji Shrine (visited it in 2017 also), but this time it was few

On the 21st we went to dinner with Misao-san. We went to a restaurant in her neighborhood who had almost everything, sashimi, noodles, pizza, pasta, meat, etc. I took a tuna rice bowl set which was delicious. Misao-san had invited a few of her friends, but they weren´t only from Japan, two girls were from Nepal, and two were from Vietnam. They all had moved her a few years back to study, and gosh their Japanese was so good...  They all were super nice and hopefully I will be able to meet them again. :3  Besides the food the restaurant also had a lot of desserts, myself who is a sweet tooth was in heaven, haha. A woman had also made us obentos (obento = lunch box here in Japan), so sweet of her. It was with various kinds of food and included a heart and a bear of rice. She does these kinds of boxes every day for her and her family (4 boxes every day), I must say very impressive! In Japan, the kids need to bring there own lunch to school, or buy lunch at school. In Sweden, all the

Then it was time for my first post from Japan. We have now landed in Tokyo and I can only say, Japan in the summer is really hot and humid (33 C right now). We are staying at a friend's house in Omiya which is located in Saitama Prefecture, close to Tokyo.  The flight was really pleasant and before we know it, the crew announced that it was time for landing. We travelled with Finnair and Japan Airlines through Finland. On our trip 2017, we travelled with Emirates through Dubai. I think both routes are good, JAL takes around 13 h, and Emirates takes slightly longer (around 19 h) but are a little bit cheaper. If you are travelling from Sweden, or any other country, I can really recommend travelling with JAL or Emirates. On both planes you get free drinks, foods, snacks, can watch movies, etc.  Some food... and snacks on the plane :3 Instead of some window cover, you had this button to press in order to make the window go darker. The drink

Time för Japan 2017 part two. You can find the first part here . This post will include, a trip to Mt.Fuji, Nikko, and the last few days in Tokyo. Besides exploring Tokyo we also took day-trips to Mt.Fuji and Nikko. We got up super early to take the bus to Mt.Fuji. I almost slept through the whole trip, so not much to say there. We were supposed to change buses so we could get up on the mountain but because of the weather, the second bus was canceled...  So we had to change our plans and instead of going up, we took another bus to Lake Kawaguchi. We took a ride on the gondolas, went on a short hike, ate lunch, and went to Fuji-Q Highland.  Picture from the Gondolas At the top, my dad, me, Akiko-san, Yasushi-san and Yasumi-chan The lower part of Mt.Fuji, unfortunately, we did not see much more of it Fuji-Q from above Yasumi-chan at Fuji-Q Last picture before we went home The next day trip was to Nikko Tosho-Gu . Yasumi had started s