my exchange year in japan is now over. that is, the "going to class" part's over as of today — i have a few assignments left to do and i'll be in japan for another month and a half, but otherwise this is it.

thus ends an entire school year where none of my credits counted towards my degree, where i worked my ass off, had the time of my life, met a ton of great people and did a ton of fun stuff in general. i mean, now i know what it's like to actually WANT to go to a school reunion 5, 10 years in the future. now i know what it's like to actually feel like i belong to the town i live in. i also finally became decently proficient in japanese, which had been my goal since i was 7-8 years old.

there's a ton of stuff that i didn't get to do during this year, whether due to lack of money or lack of people who were willing to come with me/show me how to do it. these things are:

• going to hokkaido, aomori, okinawa, miyagi prefecture's cat island, the Go Nagai museum, and in general visit all the places i have friends in.
• pachinko, beach/river party, maid café, cat/critter café, camping, zen buddhist meditation service, firefly watching, middle/high school open house, english practice café, anime convention/comiket, ride in a rickshaw
• didn't end up learning anything about ainu or the ryuukyuu languages etc, though i learned various historical facts about ainu language research
• didn't end up learning japanese braille or sign language

(stuff i WILL do but have yet to: go to the movies, fireworks, sendai's tourist bus, aquarium, amusement park!)

stuff i did do for the first time:

• went to tokyo, yamagata prefecture, and various places around sendai

• karaoke, japanese traditional hotel, hot spring hotel, night bus, bullet train, esperanto café, flower viewing, manga café, cult-y buddhist chanting service, japanese catholic church service, got my first part-time job (food stall), got my second part-time job (teaching english), used a fire extinguisher, cherry picking in a greenhouse, went to a chorus concert, spoke in a speech contest, took classes with and meant for japanese students, visited elementary schools, visited a special ed school, japanese fabric dyeing, doujinshi shops, various festivals, rented manga & DVDs, wore zori, wore yukata, published in an esperanto periodical, appeared on TV (twice!), got and went to job interviews, wore a suit, entertained guests in my own "house", acted as interpreter on a field trip, registered for a japanese bank account, bought a japanese phone + phone plan + internet plan...

• used a ton of new or different tools, ex. shoe pads, strange glue bottles, IH ovens and cleaning "erasers" for said ovens, balcony clothes-drying pole, futon goods, ink signature stamps, pressure cooker, yoghurt maker, chopsticks, convenience store scanner/printers, convenience store payment for yahoo goods/magazine subscriptions. learned how to use the bus (you enter the back, take a ticket and watch for the price on the screen then exit in the front!), subway and school library (you insert your student card in a card-reader to enter the building!), how to pay bills at a bank machine, how to renew a bus card via machine, etc.

• read my first novel in japanese, got to where i can watch TV in japanese, etc. started learning chinese.

• ate konnyaku, grilled clams, japanese shish kebabs (yakitori), sashimi, sheep-brain curry, japanese sweet potatoes, japanese grapes, pickled eggs, pickled plum, new year's soup with mochi in it, freshly-made mochi, amazake, whole grilled fish, barley tea, pickled plum tea, dried squid, dried sweet potato, amazake-marinated fish, dried blowfish fins, "onsen eggs", rice with egg...

• learned a ton about japanese society, as in how people act, how you have to summarize + say good things about basically anything you do after the activity is over ("感想"), the common types of personalities that are out there, how to act at a meeting or open up a presentation (you ALWAYS have to say "hello" even if 10 other people before you have said "hello" when opening their own presentations, and even if people directly ask for your opinion/comment they actually only want 1-2 sentences!)...

when i have time, i'll try to still update this blog with photos and stuff i did over the course of my time here.

————

anyway, long story short, despite studying japanese for about 3 years in university, since i couldn't get info from the teachers on how to pass the pre-bachelor's thesis course at Högskolan Dalarna (my original swedish university), my japanese degree has gone down the toilet and that also means i couldn't get jobs in japan (or, of course, sweden). it could take 1.5 years or more for me to finish my japanese degree at this point. having no money and being two people living off my one student loan, we were really worried for a long while.

however, i instantly got a job teaching english in taiwan (桃園 "peach garden") and so am leaving for taiwan on september 19th, 2018, and will live there for 1-3 years while i keep trying to finish my degree at högskolan dalarna — then i'll get a job in japan, hopefully sendai, and come back here. i don't know anything about taiwan, except that it has some similarities with japan due to having been under japanese rule.

i don't speak any chinese, but i've started self-study and will start classes in "chinese language" at Högskolan Dalarna alongside attempting to finish my japanese degree (by the way, mandarin is 2-3x easier than japanese, due to being more regular in word usage, having simpler grammar, usually having only one pronunciation per letter, and the pronunciation of vowels/consonants being easier for native english speakers).

working around 5 hours a day, 20 hours a week, i'll be making the same wage as working 35+ hours a week in japan at the same job, so i'll still have enough free time to do full-time university.

now i have to:
1. get the living permit papers all sorted for taiwan,
2. do my remaining homework,
3. clean out my whole apartment and prepare to move (I have to leave my apartment September 14th; I leave for Taiwan the 19th but will be able to sleep at an Esperanto clubmate's house in the meantime),
4. read all my manga/books and toss as many as i can,
5. finish all the chinese lessons at "domino chinese" + contact esperanto people in taiwan
6. figure out how to do mail forwarding from both japan and sweden to taiwan

June, June, June. My exchange ends at the end of next month. I've found out the first thing I really dislike about Japan (although I'm making no claims that it's UNIQUE to Japan), and that's the interview process for jobs + people who obssess over you needing to have perfect, super-polite Japanese. I've been applying for jobs like crazy since May.

For hotel work, English-teaching jobs, etc, legally you can get a work VISA in Japan if you only have an Associate's degree, but the problem is most companies don't know that and don't want to risk it so they require a Bachelor's instead. If you want to be an artist or entertainer (comic artist, TV star, etc) you don't need a degree OR experience, you just need someone who'll hire you.

I got a TEFL (Teaching English as a Second Language) certificate/qualification online, the 120-hour course actually only took 7 hours. With an Associate's and a TEFL (and, depending on where you're teaching, a passport from an English-speaking country) you can get a job in quite a few countries.

I'll describe my experience at job interviews in Japan here.

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sorry i haven't updated in so long! so much stuff has happened and i've been so busy! i'll try to start updating again so i'll first summarize what's happened here, and then talk about what i did today.

it's the last third of may, i've now been on exchange/lived in japan for 8 months. my current timeline is:

• july: big, voluntary japanese test (JLPT N1), exchange year ends
• september: the contract for my apartment ends, so i need to get a new place to stay before then
• january: my student VISA expires and i have to leave japan, if i haven't found a full-time job by then

my japanese is now to the point where i can understand everything on tv, i can read novels, i can understand the shopkeepers' polite speech 99% of the time (even if i don't know how to respond), my pronunciation's drastically improved, and japanese people usually speak to me exactly as if they were speaking to a japanese person (no simplified language or slowed-down pronunciation or anything). some stuff to do with this is like, in general people will ask you - even before they know if you really speak much japanese or not - "how many YEARS have you been in japan?". i don't know why they ask years, maybe it's the clothes? or maybe only someone who's lived here for years tends to sit and eat dried sweet potato at a grocery store parking lot's benches.

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at miyagi university of education the classes are no-stress compared to at högskolan dalarna. we need 8 japanese language-related classes, each class meets once a week and is around 90 minutes long, meaning 8 classes is 12 hours of lessons per week (compared to dalarna's 3 hours). we have almost no homework, writing only in hiragana is okay, showing up to presentations/speeches unprepared is okay. the lessons are JLPT N1 level, but not understanding is okay. for example, one exchange student is N3 level so there's a lot they don't get. it seems like the teachers just want you to learn "something".

everything is entirely in japanese. there's about 12 exchange students studying japanese, around 7 are taiwanese or chinese, 3 swedish, 1 estonian, 1 russian. 8 others aren't studying any japanese so we haven't met them. those who know chinese already know almost all the kanji meanings, though they don't know japanese grammar or pronunciation so well. one taiwanese girl has only studied japanese for half a year but she's already as good as i was after a whole year, and she's probably better at kanji than i am even now after a year and a half!

when going to MUE from the tohoku uni student apartments (sanjo machi, 三条町) you turn left, take a right at the first traffic light that you can in fact see already from the front of the apartments, and the bus stop for bus 70 is there. ride that bus to River Inside (kawa uchi, 川内) subway station, it's the final stop (終点) so you can't really miss it. the subway is the 東西 "east-west" line, you ride one single stop (towards the zoo) to Blue Leaf Mountain station (青葉山).



from blue leaf mountain station, turn right


MUE's entrance/exit


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Anna, my wife and i went and explored the shops around the big sendai bus/train station. before leaving we asked the people at the apartment reception desk how to use the fish grill on our oven (something that doesn't exist on swedish ovens). it says "please don't put in water" (水を入れないでください).

"no one uses those! i thought the fish grills were all locked... i don't know how to use them either! i think there was some kind of accident with them a few years ago, so you shouldn't use them, buy a stovetop one instead." was the advice i got. so we did that.

entering the bookshop, i got a really strong "i'm in japan!!" feeling. manga and books are THIS cheap! in japan, it seems like a new manga volume is usually 300-800 yen, but in sweden it's (depending on language - english is more expensive than swedish) 1400-2500 yen. in other words, a NEW japanese book is cheaper than a USED swedish book! also they were selling doujinshi (parody) compilations in a bookstore along with normal manga!!

most bookshops also have a rental feature, where you can rent select titles for really cheap (ex. 10 books for 600 yen), in general renting is really big here and you can rent CDs, DVDs, books, even clothing (like kimono or costumes)! there's also the used bookstore called "bookoff" which has extremely cheap books (100 yen each for example) but those photos are on another camera. in the average bookstore 1/3rd to 1/2 of the books are comics.







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(sorry i'm actually posting this on oct 28th, but we had problems with our computer charger and not having time to update and things)

the plane ride from stockholm to helsinki (finland's capital) was about 1 hour. from there it was a 9-hour flight to narita airport in japan. the one fellow exchange student from dalarna university (Anna), coming from estonia, was taking the same flight so we met for the first time at the finnish airport.

stockholm airport









my school's called "dalarna university" (meaning, "the university in the dalarna region"). this kind of wooden horse is called a "dalarna horse" and while they're sold throughout sweden, it's a famous thing from dalarna. all exchange students coming from dalarna uni get one of these and have to take photos of/with it during the exchange.

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it's already time. oct 3rd, i'll arrive in japan!



we tossed/sold almost everything



made books smaller and lighter. removed any hard covers and then cut away the whitespace.

in order to take the "japanese language proficiency test" (JLPT), N2 level, i went from uppsala to stockholm. via bus-then-train it's about an hour, by car 30 min.

uppsala station

spår＝(train)track。ut＝out。gång＝go, time(s)。"out-go-(way)" —> = exit 。






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Info about the general exchange process, how long I had to prepare in advance etc. Note that if you're that single person who's won the Japanese government scholarship it's different.

( Before-Exchange Timeline )

During the exchange:
(nothing yet)

yesterday i went to my wife's unpaid-internship place for the first time. it's a "horse-riding club and secondhand horse-equipment shop" in a town called knutby (knut=knot, by=town). my wife mainly runs the shop

EDIT: she had to quit because the owners were crazy, constantly increased her work hours, started insulting her all the time, broke the work contract (in fact, never signed any work contract!) etc.
this is their website (which she maintained): http://www.kaptensstallet.se/

it's about 50 minutes by bus from uppsala, then there's a 30 minute walk. the bus costs about 580 yen (for a normal, short bus ride a bus ticket is usually 450 yen).


linje＝line。「summer-times on our busses (starting) from 12(th) june」



neighbour's cows
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what's swedish like?







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students' day ("walpurgis")! the day for anyone who's ever graduated highschool/gymnasium. compared to other towns uppsala has the biggest celebration in sweden. first, the timer on this building hits 0, everyone puts on their graduation caps and then a men's choir sings. this year they sang in swedish and (for some reason) estonian.





after that, everyone does "hanami" except there's not really any flowers to "watch".
「forbidden to take with (you to this place)!：portable grills, furniture, glass」


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the head of our singing club is a priest so we meet at a church. we sing "sacred harp", 1700-1800's traditional american music. there's a club for this in tokyo too! unfortunately the songs are all in english, outside of the USA it's a pretty new thing. it's religious music but our group isn't at all tied to the "religion" (the american groups seem to be like that though; saying a grace before a meeting and whatnot).

how to sing:

a certain church in uppsala






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until now i've officially studied japanese for a year and a half. there's still a ton i don't know. if i speak rudely in it or something, please excuse me.

the courses i've taken until now have used the textbooks called "Genki" and "Tobira". as prep for the exchange, i started studying ahead in december and "finished" Tobira in february, then tried taking the JLPT (japanese language proficiency test) at N2 level (the lowest required for most "decent" jobs) july 2nd 2017.

i marked the kanji (not words) i didn't know on 2017.06.16:



study methods



a site where, when watching anime with japanese subtitles, you can click on a word in the subs to get its english definition





read amateur fiction stories while using a pop-up dictionary i create as i go

movie theater


hospital / clinics


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my wife and an exchange student went to a traditional farm. by bus it's about 20 minutes from uppsala.

fri＝free。luft＝air, (sometimes) sky。friluft(s)＝outside "in the open air"。muse(et)＝museum。gård(en)＝garden, yard, orchard。


sheep live here but we didn't see any


traditional fence. try to make your own!
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i eat stuff like fermented rye/oat/buckwheat waffles, salmon, sausages, potatoes, onion, and bananas. i also make my own nattou (fermented beans), kimchi (saurkraut), kombucha (fermented tea), and drink green tea and flavored "bubble water" (mineral water).

my wife and i quit eating processed foods 3 years ago and now we literally can't eat them without throwing up or getting insomnia and nightmares etc, so we can't eat table sugar, white flour, cooking oil etc or anything that contains them, such as ramen, (most types of) soy sauce, sushi rice. from all that we've read online, it's still a lot easier to find pre-made or restaurant stuff in japan on this kind of diet than in sweden or the USA.


whole-grain rice, fermented rye/oat flour, kimchi.


fermented waffle, raspberries, coconut cream


kombucha (green tea and honey, or nowadays I make it with dates instead of honey since it's cheaper and works better)

スウェーデンの動物 / svedaj bestoj / swedish animals



キツツキ / arbbatulo / woodpecker





豚 / porko / pig

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welcome! having taken 3 online semesters of japanese in sweden (högskolan dalarna), i'm going to japan for the first time in my life!

born in the USA, living in sweden. 25, married (wife is swedish). i like anime, manga, dialects, traditional stuff. i have "no iris disease" (aniridia) and was born with "Retinopathy of prematurity" (ROP), basically my eyesight's really bad but i'm not completely blind. when walking, in order to not constantly stare at the ground i use a blind man's white cane, but it's not necessary to walk! i might also wear sunglasses indoors.


（aniridia. it's me!）



ever since i was young i loved anime, manga, japanese games, and learning japanese along with living in japan was my dream. various stuff happened to get in the way of that but finally i managed to start fulfilling that dream as a university student.

my exchange is at miyagi university of education (MUE, 宮城教育大学) for one year. outside of twitter and online games i don't have any japanese friends, so my typing and reading's better than my speaking/listening. i chose MUE as my top choice because they're small and friendly towards disabled people, as i saw in some of their youtube videos i think it was.

languages：

• english：native
• esperanto：good (since it's easy). started learning 3 years ago.
• chinook jargon：not bad but not great. i don't realy use it. (it's the original language of my hometown area)
• swedish：i can do anything i want in it (doctor's visits etc) but aren't as good as a native. haven't ever had a job in sweden or taken classes taught in swedish, but i live with swedes.
• faroese：if it's text, i understand 95%. i studied icelandic for 2 years; faroese is a mix of that and swedish so i didn't have to study it (i'm worse at icelandic than faroese)

anime and manga i like：

devilman, hunter x hunter, parasyte, monster, hourou musuko, gintama, gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun, ganbare! nakamura-kun, kyou kara ore wa, neon genesis evangelion, yokohama kaidashi kikkou…

lived in iceland for 2 years


( why do i want to go to japan? )