Grave of the fireflies -火垂るの墓 Hotaru no Haka

I have a general disregard for insects bugs and all creepy crawlies, and I go about dealing with this disregard in a very non African way. slowly walking away scared in the opposite direction. I would easily be bullied out of my room by a spider smaller than my wrist watch leaving my mum or girlfriend or anybody to help me get rid of it. This is one way I feel like I fail as a man. (Hold that though it will be relevant in a minute)

Yesterday was a good day .Binboo na seikatsu. Life of a poor man. it always happens we overspend the first half of the month and then scrimp the second half. Cost of living in japan is quite high if everything is new and you want to do everything and you want to go out, but if you cook and do free things like go for walks with friends to riverside temples then you can save some money. Convenience store drinks and takoyaki can serve as lunch.

SO yesterday I went to a shrine based in the land between the Kamogawa river delta, it took like an hour to walk whilst talking and it was 28 degrees yesterday so water breaks were definitely needed. Was a really fun and FREE time entrance fee was non existent but I paid my fee in Mosquito bites which are troubling my ankles making them swell a little , I look like a girl with CANKLES, you know what cankles are right？ well my ankles look like a girl with cankles ankles.

Ankles aside I look like me.

Now here is where the opening para becomes relevant, there are a few places in Kyoto where you can see fireflies HOTARA and you can see fireflies all over the world but because i loved the Studio Ghibli film grave of the fireflies and because Japan is so beautiful and because firefly season is just starting at about half 8 last night, the journey was made to a canal north Kyoto where the fireflies usually appear in abundance. there were only a few around but it was still fascinating to see . i ha vent seen fireflies since I was a young boy in the Cub scouts and I didn't care then. But I care now ( a bit) and i prayed that I could catch one and I did , It was a small thing to happen but it meant a lot to me and I was excited as a 26 year old man because I had a disco fly in my hands.(shrugs)

I'll be back in 2 weeks when I'm told there would be hundreds.

Level 4 Mamachari

So I've been here a month and a bit, time is running out. so i've basically entered my fourth stage in my trip, which is my own room.

1st Francis's for a week +,
2nd Homestay
3rd Francis for a week
4th Own room


It is not huge, I'm using my suitcase as a makeshift desk, I Park my bicycle in my boys house across the street, which i could literally jump.

And I say my bicycle like it is my bicycle but it is not my bicycle it is my boys bicycle, he has at least 2 bicycles. Balling.It's not about Maybachs out here it's about Mamacharis.(google is your friend and note picture) We don't ride mamacharis though we are rolling on Mountain bikes with the kick stand attachment. mamacharis are col though you have the basket for carrying your conbinience store shopping.

Anyway the couple that I live with are young 26 and 28 and are quite friendly, they got excited about my level of japanese and I'm sure they were very happy that I was the BFG and not Big angry Foreigner. I've spent most of the day just chilling used the kitchen to make a west african egg stew with Korean Kimchi in the mix. I didn't do a great job. I know there is something missing but for the life of me I do not know what. Friends finish work soon so will probably treat myself to something nice to eat before having my first nights sleep in this room I think it would be a 6 tatami room. Enough space for pushups so I'm happy.

Tomorrow I think i will be out all day polishing up the linguistics

Okay I need to buy something to make this room smell less , i want it to smell sweet and stuff but I don't want air freshener. HMmmmm what to buy??

i don't know what I want to do for a living but I know where I want to be while I'm living.

This is a short blog post, if you don't understand it then I can't help you.

I Run Kamogawa

If you know me a little, you may know that I like water, I mean I'm not a great swimmer but I like being by lakes, the sea, rivers ponds, even a bucket of water will keep a smile on my face.
In London i live like 2 stones throw from the river Thames, like literally you throw a stone walk up to where it lands,pick it up, throw it again it should land in the waters deep.

I usually cross tower bridge and London bridge and then return to my dwelling place very sweaty faced and exhausted but with a sense of accomplishment and that sort of thing. Now being 5895.882 miles away from my post code( and yes I just spent 10 minutes on http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm working it out) I am fortunate enough to be very close to a smaller but more scenic river the Kamogawa river in Kyoto. Pretty pretty and I ran along it yesterday and the day before and I will again today maybe.

First day I ran though it was so hot like 28degrees and blazing sun , I nearly keeled over due to the heat but it was such a good run. And I saw some serious wildlife , Huge fish in the river. I am going to stick my neck out and say they are koi but they may not be. The other day me and the Mrs walked by a otter type thing called a Kawauso and there are always Cranes and a huge bird called the Tonbi -Japanese black kite which isn't actually black but hey.They are spectacular to watch and they will swoop down and steal your food. I ran past a snake in the grass, it was pretty long as well. I wanted to take a picture but it was too fast and i was too scared. I saw another snake swimming but this is when I was studying later on when the killer sun had taken some time off behind the buildings.

the sun seriously tried to scorch my hairless head so i need to take a cap next sunny day, lately its been cloudy but still hot in the high 20's enough to really make you feel exhausted. Okay it's nearly 10 I need to run now or I will just make myself a sandwich and be done with any chance of exercise.

Schools out

日本語を勉強するために日本行きました。
I came to Japan to brush up my Japanese and enjoy a place I love and this involved attending a popular school called the human academy which sounds like a weird institution where body parts are harvested for the socialist elite, like in Never let me go.

So Friday just gone was my last day at school after attending for a month and I was pretty much devastated when it ended (for real) , I built a nice rapport with my international class mates the awkwardness of being new boy was over and I was getting into the swing of things. I couldn't afford to go to school any longer but if i could I would be there now or at least on my way class starts at 9.20 :(.

Somebody want to sponsor me please huh?

After University I didn't think I would want to study any more but this didn't feel like studying I think im a have to do this again after my japanese level 2. I loved languages at school getting good grades at French , German and Latin I am still puzzled as to why I didnot follow langauges through to A-level and degree level.
.
no point looking back, it's onwards and upwards


I managed to buy a plain fan from a 100en shop, a sensu which is one of those fold out fans you see Geisha using. I got all my classmates to sign it and I will keep it as my little souvenir, it is priceless now. I had classmates from China,Taiwan,India,Ukraine,Hawaii,Bolivia,The Phillipines and Korea sign it and my teachers

Robosquare

When it came time to make the decision as to what degree to study for I chose Computer Science, why because I liked robots and gadgets and all those things. There was a module in my degree which included AI Artificial intelligence, which I am very interested in but i did not choose it as my programming skills were non existent so I chose E-business which was a lot easier resulting in my final 2:1 (almost a 1st) degree.

Anyway the point of that introduction was to introduce you to a GEM that we found in the Fukuoka tower building, on the 2nd floor lived an army of miniature robots ranging from the cute Hello Kitty Robot which speaks to you in Japanese and AIBO the robot dog to the necessary robot that helped locate survivors after 9/11. The robot I wanted to buy would have left me living in a trash can like that guy in sesame street, so I bought a miniature Tamorobot which is attracted to light. Basically a glorified children's toy but i like it.

My inner geek turned up to Robosquare big smiles discussing in Japanese with the Otaku sales clerk on the best use I could get out of my own personal robot. My smile turned to a frown when I realised i would need to be able to program to make some of the larger robots do something more interesting than walk forward and turn right.
Damn the level of programming instruction at XXXX University that I attended. All is not lost I can write algorithms and then pay a programmer to write the code, The only language I'm interested in learning is 日本語

Fuji San

I will upload my own picture when I have the chance but I just wanted to mention Mr Fuji, Japans greatest mountain and pretty damn beautiful I must say. Although Fuji is not even half the size of Mt verest it still gets a place on my wall of pretty big things.

Me and the Mrs rented Jitenshas aka push bikes and cycled around lake kawaguchiko. I say around like we circumferenced it, but we did not we cycled for a while got hungry and cycled back but that had us out and about forthe best part of 4 hours. We took the same rope car that we took last year but thistime we could see Fuji. Yeah we came here last year but it was so cloudy that we could not see this Godzilla mountain. Mountain is elusive but this has been the best day weather wise for a while -take note this is the start of the rainy season- 25 degreesand blue skies.
have to go and catch a bus to the station so we can roll to tokyo. Have to say bye bye to the Mrs, return to Osaka, move out of my home stay, go to kyoto and sort out my flat and all by 2morow evening. Ganbarimasu.