Eventful weekend

This past weekend was crazy! On Saturday we had a sort of picnic gathering with a bunch of other exchange students from other schools. It was really nice meeting other people who were doing the same thing that I was. We were the only ones from Hawaii, let alone the US. All the other exchange students were from China or Korea or even the Middle East. And they were all really good at Japanese AND English. It was very motivational to see other people who had become so proficient in languages that were not their mother tongues. We made a lot of friends there! After that we went to a bar and stayed out the whole night. I don't like alcohol so I didn't drink anything. I just talked to people and made even more friends. There was this one lady who got so drunk she was throwing chairs around the bar. Perfect example of why alcohol can be bad! On Sunday we went to a Halloween party with one of the teachers here and though the crowd was generally an older one, it was still a lot of fun! We made lots of friends there too. We made lots of plans with our new friends so we're going to be very busy from here on out!

University Festival

Today was the university festival. It was really fun! There was a lot of food you could buy, but the good stuff sold out really quickly and we ended up not being able to try all the food that we wanted. There were a lot of booths and galleries and stuff but I spent most of the time in the music club room. They had various bands from the music club performing on stage and a lot of them were REALLY good! This school has some very talented musicians. I'm hoping I can learn to play something as good as all of them by the time I leave here! All in all today was a really fun day.

Lots of friends!

Just a couple of quick tip for any student readers who are planning to study abroad here in the future:

1. NO ENGLISH
Well, not absolutely none. In my opinion you need to speak English sometimes in order to ease your headache from constantly having to think when you talk. HOWEVER, you should really meet up with the other HPU student(s) that are going with you and work out a deal to try your best to only talk to each other in Japanese. In my opinion the other two guys and I have been talking WAY too much English and it's hindering out learning speed.

2. MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS
When you move in try and make it a point to introduce yourself to at least a couple of the people in the dorm. There are only 16 rooms in the dorms so it shouldn't be too hard to meet everyone. The Chinese students (they come here for their junior and senior year) are REALLY good people to make friends with because a lot of the time they know a bit of English and have also been here for over a year and can show you around and introduce you. Also, since they also learned Japanese in a classroom setting, they know how to "lower" their speech to a level that you would be able to understand. That and they cook really good food :)

3. PREPARE FOR CELEBRITY LIFE
Seriously. EVERYONE will stare at you. EVERYONE. Students, pedestrians.... even people in their cars will stare at you as they drive through an intersection. No one is trying to be rude. Everyone is just amazed that there are foreigners out here in the country side. This makes it pretty easy to make friends with people though because everyone wants to talk to you. Random people will actually ask you to take a picture with them. It's already happened to the 3 of us many times. Be prepared for it.

I'm having a lot of fun here and I'm learning a lot. My Japanese is still very weak but I'm much more comfortable in speaking what I can and don't mind making mistakes as much as I did before.

Part Time Job!

Last week me and the two other students who came with me were helped in getting a part time job so we could get a little more income each month. It's a pretty sweet job! It's an English teaching class. You teach English to Japanese people who kind of just want to learn for fun. No Japanese is allowed by you while teaching the class, so I don't have to worry about having poor Japanese skills; I can still do my job! You meet once a week for 1 hour and the pay is 2500 yen per session, so that comes out to about $30ish with the exchange rate. The students are an older crowd; maybe mid 30s and up. They're all really nice people! You're given an easy to follow workbook to use with the class and I haven't had any problems yet. I actually have my next class in a couple of hours so it's time to get to work!

First week of instruction

We just finished our first week of instruction. The classes are entirely in Japanese and no other languages are allowed to be spoken during class. The teachers use elementary vocabulary for the most part, so you should have little trouble with following along with instructions and whatnot. The work load is pretty small, but I was told that it will get pretty intense in the future. We only have class Monday-Thursday so every weekend is a 3 day weekend! I'm going to spend this 3 day weekend at the school studying and stuff to try to expand my vocabulary!

About bills and living space

I'm waiting for my camera charger to come in, so I'll add pictures later when it does.

Room:
-Single apartment. 1 room, 1 full bath
-Furnished (some apartments more so than others depending on what previous students left there)
-Washing machine/dryer hybrid in the room
-5 minute walk from the school

Bills:
-Rent: 12000 yen/month
-Gas: Did some number crunching. We get a flat charge for gas that's just about 2,000 yen. Each m^3 of gas is about 790 yen. A 10 minute shower cost about 160 yen in the sense of gas. Rough estimates but relatively close.
-Water: About 5,000 yen/2 months. You will always pay the same price unless you go over your water budget, which is pretty much impossible.
-Electric: About 1,500 yen/month
-Health insurance 2,000 yen/month. This is an estimate for now as we didn't sign up for it yet.
-Phone bill 1,200 yen/month. This is for the most basic plan. The phone was free.
-Internet : 840 yen/month for the best internet plan we could get.

There is no WIFI at the apartments, so 2 of us decided to get internet and split the bill 420 yen each. The school is signing us up with health insurance. Don says it's easier this way. We believe it's about $20/month but I'll update that for sure later. Electric and gas/water as you probably assumed depends from person to person. The gas company representative told us that in the winter time, students have had bills of about $300/month because they would constantly leave the room heater on. In the end it all depends on how careful you are. Also, BRING LOTS OF MONEY when you come here. It takes a while for the stipend to kick in so you'll be without money for a while. We are unsure of when we will get our first stipend. I brought about $1700 and after 3 days I'm down to about $1500 (I bought pots and pans and groceries and stuff), so I think I'm pretty set. One of the other students on the other hand came with only about $100 and now has no money until who knows when. Also, try and find a way to get in contact with the students who are currently here before you come up. They can tell you what exactly is in the apartment, what they are willing to donate/sell to you and what you may need to bring yourself so you can decide if you wanna bring stuff from home or try and buy it out here.

Also, US plugs will fit in the outlets here if they are 2 prong. 3 prongs wont fit and you will need to buy an adapter. Try to buy an adapter for your 3 prong plugs before you come here as I've found them a bit difficult to find up here.

School in Japan!

Hello readers! I arrived in Hakodate Japan just about 3 days ago. The host school has been extremely helpful so far! Don Millar, the professor in charge of English speaking foreign student was nice enough to meet me at the airport upon my arrival and bring me to my apartment, which was a really big help seeing as I brought over a ton of luggage! Yesterday, Don took us to get our bank accounts set up and to get us Japanese phones so we can get in touch with the school and new friends without paying roaming charges. I have to say, all of this would have been near impossible for me to do, seeing as how I am no where near fluent in Japanese. Don even bought us all (there are 2 other students from HPU here: Ali and Stephen) lunch on two separate occasions! And apparently Don and another teacher took Ali and Stephen to a pretty expensive dinner when they got here. I got here a day after the two of them did so I didn't get to be a part of that. Nonetheless, Don and the rest of the faculty has been a big help! If you're thinking about studying abroad in Hakodate, but are afraid to for whatever reason, do not worry. The staff at this school is really nice, especially Don and you always have them to help you out.