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Konbanwa Room 5, watashi wa Eddie desu. Hisashiburi.
Konbanwa Room 5, watashi wa Eddie desu. Hisashiburi.
Wow, my Japanese is getting a lot better even though I have only been here a short time. I just said, Good evening, I am Eddie, long time no see. Hisashiburi is what you say to someone you haven't seen for a long time. The person who has been away is usually the one who says it first but it doesn't really matter who says it.
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Well, I had an interesting weekend. On Friday I went to soccer practice with Mrs Luke at the Kochi Womens University. They have this huge gymnasium that any sports team can hire and use. On the top floor there were people practising for the Yosakoi Dance Festival which is the annual festival held here in Kochi. It runs for three days and there are many teams. Each team has a theme and dances to traditional or modern music using traditional Japanese dance form. It looked really good. |
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Mrs Luke told me that she is in the international team. You can have a team of up to 100 people. You dance all day in various locations around the city and you can win medals if you dance well. Children as young as three years old dance. On Saturday it was a normal day. Mrs Luke and her husband went to the gym in the morning. The Japanese people really like to use the swimming pool at the gym. They don't actually swim they like to walk up and down it. Pretty boring if you ask me but I am from NZ and we like to swim in the swimming pool. |
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The gym is like any other in NZ so not much difference there apart from the fact that you must have shoes for working out in the gym that are different from the shoes you would wear outside the gym. So you have to change shoes. It is the same in all places. You can't wear shoes inside the house. At school all students have the shoes they come to school in, the shoes they wear in class and the shoes they wear for PE. The teachers are the same. However, in Japan even if you had a really good pair of shoes noone would steal them or touch them. |
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The crime rate is very low over here in regards to people stealing personal property. If you left your wallet or purse in the supermarket and you went back the next day to the exact same place it would still be there. Nobody touches other peoples belongings. You can even leave your keys in the car and come back and noone would have stolen it. That is great I think, it is very safe. After going to the gym we cleaned the apartment. First you have to put your futons out on the balcony to be aired. A futon is a mattress that you sleep on. It is not a full sized padded mattress but a small kind of one that you would use on camping trips. Most Japanese people sleep on these but they are slowly moving in to sleeping on beds. |
Airing futons on balcony
The futons have to stay out for at
least one hour. After that you have to whack them with a
whacker(I don't know the name of it but it is like a huge
fly swatter) to get rid of the bugs that live in the futon.
Because the futon is placed on the floor you are more likely
to get bugs in it. Once the futon has been whacked you have
to turn it over and do it all over again. The rest of the apartment is cleaned
like a house would be in NZ.
A beater
Then, we went to get the weekly
groceries. Inside the supermarket there is a bakery where
you can sit down and eat lunch. There are also salad bars,
and sushi bars like a food restaurant in the supermarket. It
is a good idea because you can eat so many different things
all in the one place and then go and do your groceries.
Mrs Luke and her husband mostly eat
chicken and mince for their dinners. The steak over here if
full of fat and so they don't eat that at all. There is also
a lot of fish on sale but they don't taste as good as in NZ
so they don't eat much fish.
Sushi at a sushi bar
On Sunday we went to Suzaki which is
one hours drive from where we live for a dragonboating
practice. It was really cool. The big dragonboat race is in July
and everyone is training for it. Mrs Luke coaches the womens
team and they looked really good. There is also a mens team.
The teams are made up of foreigners to Japan and they will
compete against Japanese teams. So that was my weekend. Today I am
having a rest as I did so much over the weekend. I hope your
weekend was as good as mine. Ja mada, See you later, Eddie.
