The Telegraphic

Some of you may have noticed that I have “royally fucked” a few of the pages up. If you did, I hope you also noticed the new entry page I made which allows you to choose a stylesheet. Yeah, at the moment they’re all pretty much the same, but it’s pretty cool nontheless. When I get a chance, I’ll fix them. I need to have my laptop hooked up to the net though, so that’s gonna take a little while longer.

I’m doing fine. I just got a haircut (which cost $30 – but it was good.. It’s the first time I’ve got my hair washed (before and after the haircut), and also got a neck massage). My hair has never looked so Japanese.

The orientation camp was pretty fun but a complete waste of time. The following day we were forced out of our beds at 7:00 to raise a flag, then have breakfast, which sucked balls (also could have quite possibly contained them). We then had until 12.00 to kill time, so we went for a walk around the base of the mountain which we were told not to climb, because we’d more than likely get ravaged by wild boars.

We’ve also started Uni, which entails 2-3 hours of learning Japanese a day. Today we just had words thrown at us to do with facial features. I don’t remember 90% of them and I don’t think that many of them would ever come up in conversation. Which is what I want to learn, so I can talk to people in Japanese. Call me crazy.

Well I’m off now, so to quote the Mr. Scruff album:
Keep it unreal
Dan

I’d like to point out that this entry has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. You have to admit it’s a good title though.

I’ve just hopped on to my host family’s computer for a while for a quick ‘news flash’. I haven’t been able to connect up my laptop to the net (for all of those CISCO buffs, I think the most of the ISPs over here do MAC address filtering), meaning that the amazing, amzing changes in store will have to be in store for a few more days.

Tomorrow we’re going to a orientation camp, which is actually on a different island to the university. It’s supposedly just a ‘big piss up’. The morning after we get to make sake out of crushed up rice in a sake factory. I think it sounds more fun that it’ll actually be, because:

a) Sake smells like shit; and
b) We hit rice with a hammer, potentially for hours.

Aaaanyway I wont be ‘blogging’ for a little while so yeah. Have a good ‘un.

Dan

Just a message to everyone – can you leave your email addresses in the comment area thing below? I’ve got quite a few emails which I can’t reply to because I don’t have the right email address… So yeah,　leave me yer address (If your worried about spam write it like dprice AHT gmm DOHT com DOHT au or something), and I’ll get back to ya.

On Thursday (the 31st), Jo and I arrived at Himeji station with all of our luggage. We went across the road to the Hotel Sun Garden, where we`d arranged to meet Simon and Romit (our Japanese teacher form UWA). Somehow it worked out perfectly and Romit bought us all a coffee before we caught the taxi to our Uni for the next four months, Himeji Dokkyo.

As soon as we arrived we met our host families and were told about how to get to university and suchlike. I was met by Kyoko, my host mother who (thankfully) can talk a bit of English. We took a cab to her house and then after she`d made me a massive plate of Yakitori (fried noddles and chicken), I had a nap. After that she showed me the way to Uni by bike. It`s gonna take about 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back each day so thats about 40 minutes more exercise than I usually get.

On the way back we visited Shosha San (Mt. Shosha), which is where parts of `The Last Samurai` were filmed. I can see why, on the little mountain trails between the temples atop the mountain you can`t see any traces of modern civilisation. I think I enjoyed the walk more than the temples in Sagano just because they were in a more natural, forest setting.

The next day Kyoko had planned a visit to the Toy museum with her Daughter Naoko and her Granddaughter Hakaru. Shigehiro (my host father), had to work (he`s the general manager for FujiPreen, who stick a film on LCD screens for Sony, Toshiba, Nokia etc), so he couldn`t come. It was interesting-ish, pretty much the Himeji version of History Village. Kyoko`s spoiling me – I told her what Japanese foods I like and she`s going to cook them all for me.

Anyway I`m having a good time and I hope all you people in Australia are too.
I Can`t wait to offload all my stories onto all of you when I get back,
Danny