The Team of Intercultural Alien Lightbringers

Dear friendsils!
I am sorry for not frequently posting, until now it has been around once every 2 weeks. By now my life has pretty much settled down. There are not earthly shocking adventures to report. My life as a Japanese Exchange student includes a lot of Kendo and Go! This is a path I have chosen myself, and is not in any way typical to exchange students in general. What would be typical for all exchange students in Japan is the strange fact that slowly but surely they get tinier eyes... Mine are still awhole and in tact, but take these 2 exchange student friends of mine, Hyo and Yuchan! (They come from Korea and China) And I don't dare to tell them, but I notice how their eyes are allready looking alike the Japanese ones!! Strange but true...
Today, sunday, I went on a day trip to the fields! "Into the fields!" As a crazy Space Pirate Captain would tell his army of swabs. Not just any fields, but stardust fields! (What?) Nooo! I will let go of any crazy Sky Pirate related thoughts now. I am sorry for confusing the bigger part of the people who are reading this. By bigger I mean most people, it could easily be compared in piles. You have a small pile and then the other is bigger, you see? But the fields in which we laboured were Rice Fields! Indeed! This story involves 'we' and 'laboured' ! "What are these strange words?" You might think. But what if I told you they are English words used to build up sentences, involving subjects and verbs and other complicated grammer. Not so strange now huh! 'We', would be aliens, and would be looked at by Japanese. 'We', would be the 5 AFS Exchange Students from my chapter! For me, they are more then just other Exchange Students, they're also cells and monecules held together by a blob of biology!
How much I like biology class in Japan, which feels just as any other class really! The teacher talks, the children listen, half of them are asleep on their desks, and I am studying the small nuances between the Kanji for Convex and the Kanji for Concave, which I can't seem to keep seperated, since I am not scholared in the photographic arts. But I am not talking about like an Alien Abduction here that would snag us from the soil of the earth, and beam us to the fields of the outer Galaxy rings of the Milkyway. Where we are slaved and need to haul bags of deer antlers from one place to another. No! That is not what I am talking about! I am talking about going to the base! The inner source! The base! How is rice made? I and also you will know it after these few words of enlightment. We drove a tracktor through a rice field, which automatically cutted the rice wheat and seperated the actual rice from the plant. (Yes I conjugate 'cut' in past tense to 'cutted'. It's a tradition I am not to break. It all started out with my YouTube movie in 'Rages of Coo!Lness and Creativity! Pt 1.'.) So to not make things not any more difficult then they already appear to be after rereading, I will introduce to you 4 new members of the holly dolly AFS family!


The first member of this evening is a strong and fearsome enemy for musquitos and bugs alike. He would paint his face American before going into battle, and make trinkets of the wings of all those who have fallen to his rage of fearsomeness.
Already has he appeared in the depths of flooding subways in Nagoya. And today once more I had the honor of being inside his Aura of Retribution. His name goes as the old saying goes. He is the lion, he is stronger than the lion, he is Sean.

The next member of this hicky wicky band of international peacebringers is a tall one. With his unbelievible height he is an artisan in both billiarding his enemies of the table, and screaming any foe into a cloud of depression. His 2 Korean arms are as strong as 3 baseball bats. And his mask of alteration lets even the most native fish sailors think he is one of them. His name goes as that old saying goes. He is the ozon layer, he is higher than the ozon layer, he is Hyo.

The third spot is taken by a female member. Not just any female, but a German multilangual Switchback as a matter of fact! Any figure of speech that would be thrown at her will be countered with a sentence, so full of diffrent languages, that any opposing advisary would immediately pull out his hair with anxiety. She is feared mostly by the league of the kimono wearers, because whenever she would see a kimono she would flatten it with the ground within a second. Her name goes as the old saying goes. She is the wooden spatel, she is languager than the wooden spatel, she is Sophia.

Last in this group is the second girl in the row. One would think of her being the sweet angel, but don't let her appearance fool you! Behind that sweet smile lies a deadly arrow with accuracy like no other! Just like Hyo she wears the mask of alteration, and this in combination with soft and tenderness forms a scientogycally unexplainable Chinese roze of darts. Her name goes as the old saying goes. She is the florenzics, she is zenper than the florenzics, she is Yuchan.

Link the first letters of each name to this picture, and find out who is who!

These 4 comerades, including me myself, are the protectors of interculturality and organisers of further possible alien invasions in Japan. We meet and do crazy things, beyond one's imagination would ever be able to go! Our adventure of today included rice cutting as you already have read, but today also included playing around on empty rice fields, playing amature baseball! We also stood straight on the back of a transport van, with the wind blowing in our hair. After this amazing day filled with rice and a blue heaven we went to the public ofuro! (bath) And it was really lovely! Afterwards we ate dinner in my favourite restaurant! The Sushi-ya! In the beginning Sushi was not all that great for my stomache, but now I have discovered the inner beauty and learned to taste the true essence of it! I totually love Japanese Sushi, which is definately 100 times better than Belgian Sushi. A day to be proud of it was. Other crazy adventures include last week's weekend! When we, the Team of Intercultural Alien Lightbringers, joined forces to seal enveloppes! We spent a whole day sorting letters, pasting addresses, and sealing enveloppes! No words would ever be able to describe how fun that was! My mouth is still sore from all the laughing that day held! AFS organises great things for us! Cutting rice, posting enveloppes... >,< But no! The enveloppes day was actually some voluntairly helping out, and it really was a fun day! Just as fun as the rice cutting which was also really fun! And a few weekends ago we did another awesome trip! That trip to Obara-Mura! But that is something you have already read in a previous post. In that trip however Yuchan wasn't present, so only recently I have found out about her excistance.

I hope you can read beyond the words I have written here and understand that some of the parts were meant as a joke or had serious irony in it. Though I should be more careful, since no one sees my facial expressions. Nothing I write is meant offending in any way for anyone. I really enjoy my year here, don't get me wrong! xD My exchange student friends are already good friends of mine. My 4 friends are already in Japan for a half year, and they leave again in February. Their Japanese has already reached waay higher standards than mine has. I enjoy every activity AFS organises, and no it's not child labour. xD A word of advice to everyone on this globe we call earth: Make your own happiness, think positive!




Now some pictures, stolen from our Japanese AFS Chapter site...

It had to appear someday! A picture of me and a few of my family members. The left picture shows me and my father and mother. Shot just after I had stepped out of the ShinKanSen, and it was the very first time meeting my host parents! The picture on the right shows my host sister to my left side from the viewer's point of view, and a friend of my host sister in pink.

Meet Khaan. Khaan is an exchange student just like me! He has lived with the same family I am living with, and was on vacation in Japan shortly after I arrived. I have mentioned him in a previous post, since I have gone to Nagoya with him. He's a very nice guy!

Here we see a few pictures of the trip to Obara-Mura! You'll notice Yuchan being absent. But it was a lovely day nevertheless!

And this final picture was shot on the day of the enveloppe pasting party. At the sides of the left picture stands our Chapter President and his wife. Long ago they were a host family for Mark, the bloke in yellow. He now appears on this picture along with his Japanese wife! For he is living a life to its fullest in the land of the rising sun. Japan. We had a lovely chat, and I am sure he might help me a great deal in the future, if I were ever to return to Japan! The other members in the right picture can be sorted out yourself, since it's just the good old Team of Intercultural Alien Lightbringers... Hyo had already gone home by that time, since he had an appointment.

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De Maks!

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Oost Indische Compagnie
Mijn moeder en gezuster, Manuela Van de Perre en Luccia Van Ammel, hebben een nieuwe zaak geopend!
Het is een Thee en koffie huis maar wordt later uitgebreid tot deels boekenwinkel en er worden ook activiteiten georganiseerd daar!
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Allen daar heen!

The School Festival

And so the school festival came to a happy end. Every end is a new beginning right?
So let's start at the beginning!

The Sleep Over
For a numberous of days me and my class had been preparing for the school festival after school hours. Most of the preperations were pretty repetitive and boring, but nevertheless, spending quality time with your Japanese friends and classmates always is time-well-spent! We made things like a bunch of hearts with paper flowers on them. But in this case a bunch really was a bunch. And every heart needed like 10 flowers. And 1 flower took about 15 minutes. But together we are strong! As you all read in my previous post we took a whole day to cook and paint on a holiday. That was loads of fun. And then the thursday before the school festival we only had classes untill noon. Afterwards preperations for the festival began. From thursday onto friday everyone slept at school! Thursday we painted a lot and I helped out a lot, for I enjoy painting and drawing. This time we were making a huge panel with the word 'welcome' and that was hung somewhere outside later. Around half past 3 everyone went to their club activities but I sticked around class.

Around 7 in the evening clubs were over and with a lot of boys from our class we went to have dinner in a Ramen Restaurant! Shocked as I was to be served by a schoolmate! He was doing part time job there! While you are in High School in Japan it's actually forbidden to do part time jobs somewhere. If the school finds out, you can get kicked out of the school. It gives a negative image, because it shows that you are not dedicated to studying. That's the reason for them to forbid it I think. Also in Japan every single store, or restaurant, or anything with customer service has uniforms! I love that fact! Ofcourse the best would be cafes with maid uniforms, though I have yet to visit one of those. The Ramen Restaurant had awesome marine blue vests with scarlet red bandanas. After this very delisious meal, like all the meals are in Japan, we went back to school. Painting and watching television in class was a good combination. Everyone was happy and having fun. We saw one of the many crazy Japanese game shows which I absolutely totually didn't understand one bit at all. Their game shows are really crazy. From 10 until 12 in the evening we had class! But not that serious. English class in which we played a word game with remembering and speaking out loud. I sucked. "You are hungry. Are you hungry? You are not hungry. Aren't you hungry? You are hungry, aren't you? You are not hungry, are you?" Is an example of what we had to memorize in a limited amount of time and then say out loud without mistakes. It was hilarious! Almost all Japanese have a funny accent when speaking English. A lot of the girls of my class were unfortunately a bit shy in using English. But it was a lesson unlike any other!

At around midnight we went in the school baths. The school has it's own baths which is pretty cool. It was in a part of the school I hadn't been to yet before. Japanese and bathing really is strange. No one is shy. Suddenly being between your naked boy classmates and your English teacher is still a bit weird for me though. But after the washing comes the bath itself, which always is very relaxing. Just recently I found out that, above the baths, on the second floor of that part of the building, is another sportshall! I keep finding new sportshalls in our school! What's up with Johsei (my school) and sports right? I have learned that Okazaki Johsei is a private school, and that it is not common at all to have all the things my school has. My school is rich because it is a private school. I don't really understand the diffrence yet between a private school and a public school yet, only that a private is more expensive but also more rich (in building and property). It seems that a lot really is diffrent from what I hear from my exchange student friends, who go to Public Schools. More on this in a later post maybe.

In a lot of classes half of the students are asleep, since the Japanese way of classes is lecture, like in Belgian Universities. It's quite funny that half is asleep and the teacher doesn't say anything. Half is asleep, but they still ALL like to go to school, and almost everyone goes earlier to school for extra lessons on weekdays and also like half goes to extra lessons in weekends. But if you would not sleep during the day, you would not have to go to extra lessons right? I really don't understand this yet. Also something I don't understand is how all the girls and boys are seperated alot. During lunch everyone eats in the classroom right, but there is no way that you would eat next to a girl, all the girls clit together, as the boys do. During dinner thursday night it was also boys and girls seperated. Not that in the restaurant they had a line which said "Girls over there! Boys over here!" But I mean that we went to a diffrent restaurant with all the boys. During Kendo practice there is no way that a girls would ever fight or train with a boy. But since I am still a newbie I can for now train with the girls sometimes! Which is very fun! Our Kendo club has around 30 members who train vigorously every day! (Yes! Even on sundays I found out!) And now I also learned that it's only the 1st and 2nd years. All the 3th years quit club activities from June until the end of the year to prepare for exams. So our Kendo club is even bigger! Okazaki Johsei is a private sports school, because we have a lot of sport clubs and almost all of them are in the top of Aichi-ken. Our Kendo club has over 100 golden medals! Now back to the school festival!

After the baths the preperations began again until around half past 1 at night. Then we played a ghost game! Just like in those high school anime series! You had to go in pairs of 2 and follow a certain route through the school building. But only our class and our neighbour class slept over at school, and it was almost pitch black. That's why it kind of was scary... But not for me, it seems that by this age I have been able to remove a large part of my darkness-fear, because I wasn't scared at all! Along the way people scared you, but also that didn't made me squeel. So after my route I decided to go walk around a bit on my own through the school. It was actually quite pretty, an empty school at night. And then I sneaked like a real ninja into the room of the people who were scaring other people. And that was really perfectly done by me. I scared my English teacher really hard. It was hilarious. ^^ To make things clear, only our English teacher stayed up with us all night, he is very fun and is only 23 years old. Our homeroom teacher went missing during the night, so he probably went to bed somewhere. Except for those 2 there were no other teachers around. Around half past 3 at night I went to sleep somewhere in a classroom. Since the next day, friday, I was going to Nagoya. When I woke up around 6 it was quite funny to find everyone really sleepy since many didn't sleep at all, and everywhere you looked you'd always find someone sleeping in a corner. That was the sleepover at school!

Nagoya
I went to drop off all my stuff at home and had a quick shower. After that I returned to school where I met up with Ryuhei with whom I was going to Nagoya. He was late! A Japanese person who is late! That's rare! But I talked with some girls from the first year so I didn't mind. This was the third time I went to Nagoya. My first time in Nagoya was with Khaan. Khaan is an exchange student from 10 years ago. Now he is 24 years old, and he lived for a year with my host family here when he was 14 years old. He is from Thailand and comes back to Japan every summer vacation. He only stayed 2 weeks, but he is a very nice guy. He helped me a lot with any problems I had, because he could speak pretty good English, and my Japanese was still lacking (it still is now, but I improve). We went to Nagoya to buy some Japanese Kanji books, and he adviced me a really fun one with a lot of pictures which contained 100 Kanji which I learned in 2 weeks! But it were all very basic Kanji so I bet you could do it too! My next book is 300 Kanji, from the same publisher. I haven't started it yet, because after my first 100 Kanji I started learning grammer again, and I have been keeping a Japanese diary. Monday 6 October I'll start in my next Kanji book! In school I don't understand any lesson except for sports, so I just study almost every hour! I study around 5 hours every day now. In December I have my Japanese Profience Test in Nagoya, it's a test that foreigners who live in Japan need to take. I am not obligated since I am only staying for a year, but I like to test my Japanese skills so I am taking it on level 3! 4 Levels are available in which lvl 1 is the most difficult. If you search for work in Japan you would need to have done the test. For example, a normal low life job would require lvl 4 of the Japanese Profience Test for Foreigners, while a well-paid businessman-job or being a teacher would require a much higher level, level 2 or even 1. This makes sure that the few foreigners who are in Japan (less then 1%) can speak and write Japanese! I think they should also apply this rule in Belgium. In Brussels I want to be helped out in Dutch and not in French, that is why people who work in Brussels should have a Dutch- and French-Language Profience Test. As well as all foreigners in Belgium. But without goverment there won't be changing much right? xD

The second time I went to Nagoya was with Sean, my American Exchange Student friend. That was loads of fun! Since we went to the Nagoya Pokemon Center! How Coo!L is that? REALLY COO!L That day it was sunday and the Pokemon Center was packed with children! It was unbelieveble. So I didn't stay long. We also went to the largest temple in Nagoya but we were late and it was already closed. Anyway, it was also very fun that day! But Friday before the School Festival I went to Nagoya for my third time. Ryuhei and I went to Nagoya to visit Anime stores mainly. Ryuhei is a friend of mine who also like anime, manga and Suzumiya Haruhi. He took me to some insane places. An anime and manga store which had 6 floors!! 6 floors packed with items and books and dvds and dolls and everything there is of every possible anime series! One thing though I don't really like. In Japan there is a lot of Hentai, Hentai is drawn manga-styled pornography. But the Hentai always is right next or mixed with the non Hentai manga. If you are browsing manga and slowly walking and viewing everything they have for sale, suddenly that sweet and beautiful manga changes into breasts and skin... But there is no line or anything! So you always suddenly are standing between tons of Hentai! And what you also might see are posters of 2 girls having sex in the middle of the store to make advertisement for a new Hentai series... So Anime stores are really awesome, but the Hentai ruins it a bit... I asked Ryuhei why the Japanese are shamelessy browsing Hentai, and that is because they don't really care. Japan is all about saving your face, but they don't care if people see them browsing Hentai... I don't understand. And the fact that there is no clear seperation is bad right? For example if children come to these stores. To which Ryuhei explained that kids don't come to these stores. Only students from High School on come to these stores. High School in japan is from 16 until 18 years old. As it was getting dark we had been to 4 diffrent anime stores and once more to the Pokemon Center, not packed with children this time, since only our school had vacation this friday. To end this day which had really been fun we played some DDR in a game center and had dinner. I was home around 10 in the evening and went straight to bed after bath.

AFS Trip
Saturday the School Festival began, but only for Johsei students I think. I couldn't go because I had an AFS trip, but I found out later that saturday it was very quiet and not so interesting at school, so I didn't mind! So saturday morning I met up with my LP, Ooyamasan, and we joined the other exchange students from around the neighbourhood. This includes Sean from America, Hyo from Korea and Sofia from Germany. I had been to Karaoke with Sean and Hyo, but it was the first time meeting Sofia. We all went in Ooyama's huge car and left for a small village somewhere in the mountains. In this village, Obara-mura, we learned from a video how a special form of paper is made. This special paper can be altered during the baking section, and colour and shape can be added. And so we played with this strange gelly adding shape and colour, creating a beautiful image. My friends drew things as the night sea, a sunrise, a dolphin, palm trees, and flowers. But I drew happy Pokemon! Unfortunately time was only short to make this. So I couldn't add things as trees in the background, and a sun, and flowers. But it was very very fun nevertheless! The end result was surprisingly fluffy! It't not really paper, but I think more like cloth and paper combined! Besides this fun activity we got the chance to talk alot about Japan, its pros and cons, how schools differ, Japanese politeness and respect, cultural diferences, and so on. It was really interesting and delightful!

The School Festival
From saturday to sunday I could finally catch up my sleep a bit. I was very tired since I had slept very very little the last 3 days. When I arrived at school I was plesantly surprised by everyone's selection of clothes. Most of the students wore their Winter Uniform! This was the first day it was allowed and lately the temperature hasn't hit 30 degrees anymore. Now it has been probably the same as it usually is in Belgium, not warm and not cold. Anyway, seeing the Winter Uniform was a nice event in the inner part of my eyeballs. It looks GAAF! That's Dutch for Awesome! Nice! Neat! Everything at once! It's really a suit! I bougth my summer uniform on my own, with my own money, so I could bring it home after my AFS-Year. AFS said that they could make sure I could borrow it for free, but borrowing is not enough for me! I want to keep it! xD So I had to pay it. My Summer Uniform, Summer Sport clothing, inside sport shoes and slipper had a total of about 25000 Yen or about 150 Euro. My winter outfit and sports wear would be about the double of that... Quite expensive... So my Host Mother called AFS and made sure they'd pay! And they will pay it for me, AND I will be able to bring it home! Isn't that wonderful! Isn't life wonderful! Yes it is! AFS was expensive enough, so it's not like they pay, I still pay it, I just already did with the price AFS required right? About the festival. If you'd seen some anime you know what it's like, because it's exactly the same. Anime, and especially high school anime really is a good reference to how Japan really is. I never had any culture shock, nor was I disappointed in anything. I was surpriced that Japan really is as I did expect it would be! Anime is your best shot at avoiding a culture shock! Anime really is a good invention! Anime translated in English sucks! Do not watch it please! So at school, outside there were food stands all over! And what you do most on a school festival is eating I guess. Trying all kinds of diffrent food from every class or club. Besides that there are a lot of games like fishing with a net that easily breaks when you put it in the water. I really couldn't do it! It's soo hard! But I got to try for free! xD And afterwards the guy from that fishing game stand thingy showed me how it's done and he caught like a bunch of bouncing balls out of the water with 1 single net! It only broke very very late! Then I got his prize as a present. ^^ All day long there were concerts and preformances, and inside was a lot of art to be viewed. I met up with my exchange student friends later on. The best thing about the school festival was all the girls from other schools! Really a lot of girls were walking around in their school uniforms. It was very nice and interesting to see how other uniforms look like. I filmed a lot, walking around and filming, to get a global feeling of how it feels to be at a Japanese School Festival. Though uploading videos is for after I return to Belgium, because there I have Adobe Premiere Pro, and here I have no means for editing. I should have taken a lot more pictures of people posing for my picture with the appropriate peace sign, but I am still a bit shy to ask such things in Japanese. So I am not too proud of my photos of that day. But go look anyway! And so the school festival came to a happy end. Every end is a new beginning right?

Now it's over and there is some spare time which I can fill with other things. 3 or 4 times a week is enough for the Kendo club, so I was thinking of joining another club which I hadn't decided yet. But then my host mother found a Go Salon in the neighbourhood! Only 5 minutes by bike, and it's open 6 days a week! Again I have felt the beauty of Go so these days I have spent a numerous of hours there. It's a real Go Salon as you'd see in Hikaru no Go, the anime. I would say it look most like that Go Salon where Hikaru met Mitani for the first time. Pretty small, not all too formal. With a manager who watches tv on a little television and makes tea. And ofcourse a bunch of old grandad's who smoke a lot! And the best thing about the old men is the way they laugh, it's also just as in Anime! I love it there! It's always fun, and everyone is insanely strong! The Japanese Go-Youth has let me down, but the old folks have made up for it! As I practice Kendo, I also play Go about 3 or 4 times a week. I have found the perfect balance and I have achieved what I wanted most. Doing both Kendo and Go in Japan and enjoying every minute of it! Like Ward of my Belgian Go club would say: Go for the mind, Kendo for the body.