AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I feel like you may have answered these already somewhere in the thread, but oh well.

1. What's it like living with your host family?
2. What animals do you see frequently?
3. What are your studies like?
4. Do you have trouble speaking Japanese to others?
5. What advice can you give to people trying to learn Japanese? (i.e: Me. I took two semesters and speak like a Japanese 4th grader.)
6. Have you made any new Japanese friends?
7. Have you done one of those silly photo booths?
8. Do Japanese neighborhoods do that little chime thing where they say "All good children should be going home now"? (Otherwise known as a 5 PM bell)
9. Oh and another one: How much did the trip cost? (expenses and souvenirs aside)

Do you rave?

You if you play your cards right.

Yellow. TOO BAD POKEMON YELLOW SUCKS THO OHHHHHH



1. Lots of fun. It was very casual but nice to have dinner with other people and enjoy some home cooking in addition to ramen and onigiri. However I lived about an hour and a half out from my school which meant I didn't see them much if I had after school activities , which made me upset because I liked being around them so much but I didn't want to miss out on JAPAN either. I feel satisfied with the balance I struck though but I hope to go back and see them again with more free time.
2. Mostly Heron and little swallows. Did not see any monkeys and I only saw two cats on one of the last days. There's a decent amount of dogs but they're not as numerous as in the US. Also they're mostly Shibas, Akitas, and poodles. I did see a corgi though and I melted.
3. Really dumb honestly. The college I went to treated everyone like idiots and refused any discussion in English which messed us up on quizzes and stuff. Everyone did good but the system was annoying and we didn't learn anything. Culture classes and trips were great though.
4. I can hold very basic conversations, but my biggest weakness is self-confidence because Japanese people just stare at you when you talk to them and you cannot read their face if they're confused or not. I'm a bit more confident after the trip... But yeah.
5. Practice and get cracking on learning Kanji. The more you rely on hiragana the more it stunts your learning like romaji does. Once you know Kanji, focus on speaking and translating. Writing letters is good too.
6. Yes I have atleast 2 Japanese friends I'm keeping in touch with. One is coming to Washington state for 4 years starting in September!
7. Yes the first day we had Japanese students give us a tour of Nagoya and we went to a girl's arcade and did a makeup and anime eye booth. I am the prettiest goat lady.
8. All towns have a 7 am, noon, and 7 pm chime in the area I lived. Schools had the same chime for when the school first opened, closed, and for class changes.
9. I spent about $7500 on this trip with everything. $3000 was to school, $1500 was to host family stay, $1200 for flight, $300 for transportation, $300 for food, and about $1200 for "everything else". It's hard to say though because school tuition covered a lot of trips that would have cost more individually, and homestay was cheaper than a hotel, but there was some pork belly in those costs aswell. But financial aid and pell grants paid for some of it so... All in all that amount was just right because anymore and I would have had to ship back stuff really expensively.

I crave the rave.

ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING

SHOULD I PUT ON THE SEXY PANTS??

I thought it was fun but by no means close to the best of the series. Ditch Pikachu for Jolteon, rock out with all 3 starters, kill all your playground friends.

Man that's so cool, Kamak. I can barely hold conversations, I still second guess myself whenever I talk. Kanji is difficult too, but I guess I could get better at it since I did buy my text book and can practice it at any time.

There's a study abroad to Japan program that's going to happen at my college. It's $4,000 though for it all, and I'm not sure if I should do it. It's going to be one week, during spring break, and I can barely save my cheddar anyways.. Plus, I wanna go to university that following fall, and it's hella expensive. I might do it if I get the scholarships that are available to me, but idk. I feel like I'd spend SO MUCH cheddar on things.

Depending on the program, a week should be plenty of time if you can bounce back from the flights which can be rough, assuming you'll be sightseeing the whole time instead of them cramming you into a room to do serious Kanji studying. Most touristy places in Japan are fairly good about having a way to communicate with English speakers either with Engrish, cue cards, or even some form of pantomime to get the point across so even for someone who has trouble speaking there isn't as much to worry about. Definitely don't plan on going around by yourself without knowing a meeting place if you get lost from people, have cell phone numbers on hand for the people you are with, and be smart about spending cheddar. Kyoto is a tourist town and can milk you for all you're worth because people don't know they can get things elsewhere (there are a few places that are good deals in Kyoto, you just need to know where to look). Ultimately it's up to you, but going to Japan is an amazing experience and it can help you figure out what you might want to do in the future, maybe looking into other programs that go longer (or save you from deciding to go for a year long program if you didn't like Japan).

ANYWAYS, I'm back in the States and reunited with my laptop, which means I can start uploading photos. I'll probably make constant updates with photos because there are over 2000 of them to sort through and upload. So look forward to those.

Dude if your japanese pal comes to washington you guys totally need to hang out with me

Welcome back, Kamak!

edit: disregard am bad read

just gonna post in here


so Kamak has to be reminded more often that he needs to resize and post 10,000+ pictures

so much jpeg

get on it

*cough*

1. what is it like forgetting this ask thread that still hasn't paid off with pictures and replacing it with a new one about 10k posts
2. who is your favorite mod

*fart*

Better get those 10,000 pics out of the way before some OTHER THINGS happen where you take 10,000 more pictures.