Wall of text incoming

It’s been a long time since I wrote a proper post, but here goes. Click on more!

  A lot of stuff happened obviously since the last time I wrote a blog post. First of all school ended, which is kind of a shame because I had a good time this semester, met a lot of great people and am going to miss them during the remainder of my stay in Japan. The riverside crew was a cool assortment of guys, how they managed to put us all in the same building I do not know but it was a good move on their part because we had a lot of fun!

But even the Riverside gang had to end I guess because we all had to move out by the tenth, some of us overstayed our welcome just a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to matter much. At the end of it all I was getting kind of paranoid about the cleaning crew coming to clean my apartment for the next tenants to occupy the room. So that made me move out and move to Eelco and Simon’s new place in Iogi, which is not a bad flat besides the bad internet and the train coming by every 5 minutes or so. It sort of reminded me of the time me and Eelco spent in Tokyo before going to Obirin. We went clubbing a few times which is always a good thing. Except for the hangovers, which are killing me nowadays haha.

Sleeping on the kitchen floor in a non-air-conditioned room, was slowly getting the best of me though. So I was trying to get out of that place as much as I could and spent it with Tomomi before I had to go to Tokyo. We did a lot of fun stuff together, walked around Kichijoji and Shibuya (We went to this very lame museum on energy conservation). But the places that stood out more were Atami and Odaiba. Atami is a nice sea side town famous for its onsen. They certainly are there a lot so we could not pass up the opportunity to enter one. Onsen means hot spring, and that’s the best way to describe it I guess, It’s a hot bath that comes from a natural source. It really feels good. After the onsen somebody decided to walk to a temple. It looked a lot closer than it was and ended up climbing a mountain for 3 kilometers, it was fun but it was way to hot for that kind of stuff. Once we got to the temple, it was kind of a let down but the view from the top of the mountain was superb.

I already went to Odaiba once with Eelco, but this was in March and in September it is a totally different place. You feel that there is more of a beach atmosphere and get a nice island feeling. We stayed in Odaiba pretty much all day, riding a boat in the Tokyo Bay, eating some good Chinese food, watching the new BECK movie, and at the end of the day we watched the view onto Tokyo, which was really beautiful.

I also spent a lot more time at Tomomi’s house and obviously with her parents, they are really nice people, even though they made me cook dinner for them, so I whipped out Tim’s recipe for salmon pasta with broccoli, made it, and it was good luckily. It’s a good thing I like soccer, because all the Japanse people I seem to meet love it too so I can converse with them about something!

All in all it’s been a hot few months in Tokyo, but the Tokyo story ends here for now, because yesterday I packed my things and went to Ooita.

But before that I spent a night in Beppu, Beppu is a very interesting little beachside town. It all looks very old and there is a lot of vacant buildings all around. But the people at the Hostel in Beppu were ever so nice and helpful. I found a nice little family run restaurant/bar, they had some awesome spicy Gyoza and told me make it even spicier by adding Soy sauce with Karashi. I spent most of the night in that restaurant before going to another bar with some very nice and drunk Japanese guys from Tokyo I just met. The town really came alive at night with a lot of people in the streets. I drank way too much and that didn’t help me today.

Ooita is probably the opposite of Tokyo. The total travel yesterday and today took me about 8 hours to get from Tokyo to Oita, Oita is very close to Beppu, it take about 15 minutes. Oita is really the countryside but the city centre has a nice feeling to it, and has at least two big department stores and I found some other cool shops too. Obviously it is not as crowded as Tokyo but I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. People here seem to take it a little bit more easy judging by the amount of benches on the pavement (there are none in Tokyo). But all the shops are there, except for a Yodobashi or a Big Camera, which is kind of a shame because those are good places to waste some time in.

But I didn’t come to Oita just for the fun. I also have to an internship here, I went to the company today and the people there were ever so friendly. Driving me to my host family. Which was a good thing because the suitcase I was carrying with me is just way to heavy. On the way to my host family we realized we had some time to spare, and as I had told them I wanted to climb a mountain in Oita, we decided to drive up the first mountain we saw. That was to fun I think I had my mouth open most of the time hehe, mountains are still a weird thing to me. The view from the mountain was really nice all the little lights made it a beautiful sight. 

After this I went to my host family, the people are very friendly, but I don’t really know if I want to stay here for four months. After living by myself for about 3 years now I kind of really like it and am considering finding an apartment somewhere closer to work and on my own. The kids of the family are all very nice the smallest one really enjoys my Nintendo DS and I watched Music Station with the daughter hehe(Matsujun was on!). Oita looks like a lot of fun, there is so much stuff I want to do so I made a list with things so I don’t forget. Once again I will try to update more.

(wrote this on saturday, pictures might come later if I feel like it!hehehe)