Cultural experience: check!

Having been quite a few weeks since my last post, obviously quite a few things have happened.
Firstly, I completed the move into my new apartment. Unfortunately the only decent photo I had on it was of Morito posing like an idiot.
This is the main room, I also have a kitchen/dining area but due to the fact it's gotten so cold now, and my bedroom has a heater AND a nice, toasty kotatsu (the table in the photo, it has a heater underneath. Genius!), I only use it to make my meals. But it's a nice place, and on top of that I finally have the internet. All is right with the world!

Secondly - Halloween! ...which is pretty much non-existent in Japan. Despite all the decorations and merchandise sold in shops, no one really celebrates it. So as a Brit, it was my duty to dress up stupidly and go get drunk, of course. While I didn't really get drunk, I did dress up like a fool. I met up with a friend from Hosei university and a group of Hosei students and went to a club in Shibuya. It was fun, and as a foreigner I get in cheap (if you have a discount ticket, you get them given to you when you leave), which I can't complain about. I went there again a week later in fact (sans silly outfit). Good fun. (I'm the pink panther on the left)

Also, Japan has many national holidays, to give poor workers an excuse to have time off from their busy schedules. As a student, I got almost the whole week off, due to Culture Day. You would think I would have taken more time to do more cultural things, but that didn't really happen. I did have at least one cultural trip however!

One of my teachers took me and some classmates to a few places she thought might be of interest. The first was the Basho museum, Basho being a famous haiku poet. While her intentions were good, we had to sit through a video we barely understood (I was very sleepy too, I wasn't even watching it) and then look around the very tiny place, with all the information too difficult to read!
The second was the Fukugawa Edo museum, which was about the lifestyles of people back then, and had a reconstruction of an Edo style village. It was okay, we looked around and there were a few interesting things. But then a member of staff came over and explained every single building we'd already looked at, meaning we had to walk around again! Let me emphasise the fact that I was very tired.
The third and final place was by far the best, and made the whole day worthwhile in my opinion.

It was a park, and while we had to pay to get in, it wasn't so expensive, and was a really pretty place. I forget the name, but never mind. It was a large lake surrounded by trees and had rocks representing certain Japanese ideologies (or something) scattered around. They looked like normal rocks to me, but the idea is nice I suppose.


So all in all a nice day out. And I experienced some culture too, which is something I haven't done much of since arriving, to be honest.

On a more language related topic, while I feel more confident in speaking Japanese, I still don't feel like I'm doing enough of it. I've met random Japanese people in random places and spoken to them, but I haven't made friends who I hang out with regularly, bar those at Seijo who I eat lunch with every week, but that's for like 45 minutes. This must be remedied!

Well that's about all I have to say, I've done random stuff, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. I also have almost no money this month, so I'm a bit limited!!

Bye x