Slowly - yukkiri (ゆっきり）

I'm at the two week mark of my study abroad adventure and all I can say is that I have been very busy. I'm still trying to adjust to life here but overall I feel very comfortable in Japan. Living here would not be so bad if it wasn't for the bureaucracy. Its annoying but you can't fight it. For example, I have a stipend from my school but I am not going to get it until the end of February. It has to process and go through all these loops and holes. I'll get it eventually.

I finished my first week of classes and it was very tiring. The classes in English are no problem...actually I think I will enjoy them very much. But the Japanese classes Speaking and Reading and Writing are tougher. I wanted to skip a level because I was placed in level 2 which is very low to level 3. What is annoying is that level 2 is way to easy for me but level 3 is a bit hard. I took the test for level 3 and I think I failed. I don't mind taking level 2 but I would not be challenging myself very much. I'm probably one of the rare cases where my reading and writing is better than my spoken Japanese. It is very hard for me to create my own sentences but I'm working on that.

This week I also got my awesomely cool and cheap Japanese cellphone. Its called keitai here and it is essential in having a social life here in Japan. What is interesting here is that people usually don't call each other instead they extensively use mail. Like text messaging in America. They have very cute emoticons too. It takes me a long time to text in Japanese but I'm learning how to compose my thoughts better. Why my phone kicks butt? It has video, camera, currency converter, it animates text messages, voice recorder, and the menu animates. Take that verizon! The only thing it needs is an easier way to change the default email address and a kanji dictionary.

(I asked for the cheapest of the cheap and this is what they gave me. The phone is around $50 and the prepaid plan varied from $30-$50)

For those of you who didn't know, I'm living with a host family. So far, I really like. I live in Nagao, Osaka which is not to far from Kansai Gaidai. I'm hearing a lot of Kansai ben here. Haha...I'll be speaking Japanese with an accent. I noticed the my host family says "yusho!" a lot. I'm still not sure what it means but I guess it means "Yes! or Alright!" I also learned "nande ya nen" which means "What the heck?" Yuta (Kansai ben) means iu which in English means to say.

This week was also interesting but the first day I rode the bike to school and I got completely lost. I got to school after two hours of asking "Kansai Gaidai wa doko desu ka?" (Where is Kansai Gaidai?) I keep getting the answer "eh tooi desu ne. masugu zutto zutto." (Wow that is far. Keep going straight...and straight.) The next day I took the bus to school I got to school fine but I got lost on the way back. I must be really stupid. A new word I learned that day was Myoutta (I'm lost.)