Host Family Information

Ok, ok, ok... Right now, right about now, I'm totally looking like a virgin senior schoolgirl getting ready for her prom night and her first time sex. I'm nervous, excited, don't know exactly what to do, my heart is beating strangely. I received the family information about 20 minutes ago.

I know, I'm over reacting, yes I am. But, hell, I was so incertain about this trip that I didn't know where to put myself. Understand that I've been thinking about it for over half a year now and always had this fear that something might go wrong for no reason, maybe the Kudan institue wouldn't be able to find a host family, or that the trip would be cancelled cause they wouldn't have enough students. You know, anything Murphy might comes up with, the guy's pretty inventive sometimes. But those informaiton clearly means that next friday at 9:00am I'm taking my leave for Japan. How awesome is that?

So anyway, regarding the family:
I'll be at 30 minutes from the school. Which is really cool, knowing that my brother's going to be at 50 minutes of the school. I don't understand the adress for a second, I only know that I'll be in Tokyo directly.
It gonna cost me 11660 yens everymonth in transportation. Which would translate roughly at 100$us bucks, really roughly. Happy I'm there only two months, wouldn't want to go bankrupt cause of metro tickets, you know.
I'm gonna live with the Nakano family compsed of Miyako, the mother, 46 years-old, working part time, not specified where or what. Her Daughter, Aika, 24 years-old, nurse and according to the rapsheet(if I can call it that), she likes music. Ans, I know a guy or two who are gonna smile at this, there is no one else, I'm going to be the only man in the house.

Ok, I'll admit it, I thought about it. I'm like every manga/anime fan on the planet, I've read hentai, in fact I like hentai, and this is the best potential situation you'll see in every hentai in the world or almost. Really hard not to think about it. I've smiled at the information sheet. The idea is funny and entertaining, what can I say, I'm a wee bit pervert. Forgive me baby Jesus!

But that said, it's really not the point of this trip, I simply appreciate more to be with a mother and her 24 years-old nurse daugther then let say a father and his 35 years-old otaku/geek son.

So, anyway, I'm really excited (in a non-sexual way, mind you) to meet them both. I'll be happy to share those two months with them and I'm eager to know them more closely. It's gonna be fun, it's a totally new experience for me, I just can't be more excited....

Fuck now everything I write sounds dirty to me. I'm gonna stop now... better go check some... aw hell.

Cya

Japanese 101

Guess what? I felt like sharing my experience at learning japanese. Hopefully, this message on the english blog gonna be shorter than the one in french. I assume that most people that will read the part here are from AnimeNfo and already know a thing or two about japanese already. But I do have one or two things that been itching since I've been on the actual learning.

Yeah of course I knew there was different form of written japanese. Hiragana, katakana and kanji. Which was already something strange in my mind. Why in hell would you need three differents form of wrtting in one language. I mean what the hell was the idea? Who thought of that? And worst, who said to this guy that it was a great idea? "You're genius dude-san! Keep with it you'll be rich!" But hey, just before starting I started checking on it seriously it came to my mind that it was no more different than having capital letters for names or to start a sentence. So... maybe "Genius-san" was not that dumb, only different and special... special like little kid that have their uncle as father.

So anyway... I first learn that kanjis are drectly from chinese inspiration. Ok. Fine to me, I mean even Genius-san needed a source to start from. Ok.

Second, there is hiragana. Those little 46 symboles are actually inspired and are contracted form of.... chinese's kanjis.... again... Why... not? So I start on it. Five hours a day during one full week. I learn by heart every single symbols with every variation. 104 sounds.

And yes the kanjis are hard to udnerstand and read. But Genius-san thought about it, and the hiragan is the solution. Which is really, truly brilliant in fact. Cause it would have been a pain to try to explain every symbols to everyone everytime they see something they don't understand. It was intelligent, well thought adn certianly needed. The easy way to understand all this chinese gibberish. So yes, there is a seal of approval for Genius-san there.... except... except... that... he had another strike of genius.

Katakana.

Somewhere from his twisted, he thought, that in all wisdom, we needed a third form of writting. Yes, of course, obviously. Why no one thought of it before. We needed this third form for giving more dept to the writings. And in a xenophobe way of thinking, needed something to make minority apparent even when writing. And worst of it, you discover that these are the exact same 46 sounds your learned in hiragana but written differently. I am learning the same thing a second time for a different form of writing that don't even look like the first one. Oh my gog, Genius-san is probably the earlier version of Machiavel. I can't see no other explanation, or he was some kind of Satan's reincarnation maybe.

And even going through all that the absolute cherry on this fucking cake. Kanjis... have... two prononciations... depending if they are alone or complex. And I have to learn over 1500 of them to read a newspaper.

So, briefly:

46 Hiragana and variations (104 sounds)

46 Katakana and variations.

1500 Kanjis with 2 prononciations each (3000 words)

And I still can't remember every hiragana perfectly and even less for katakana.

I think I'm going to go cry in the corner now, close my eyes and hope that everything will be better when I open them again.

God, I really love this language (no sarcasm) the more I learn, the more I appreciate it.

Seeya.

Not yet gone

Ok... so here's a first post. And I don't have any ideas of what I'm supposed to say.
First if there is people from AnimeNfo coming here, please just leave a comment. Anything will do, just so I know that someone actually reading this.

Second, I'll try as hard as I can to write in proper english. For those who don't know, I'm french, from Quebec, not France, and even if I'm quite at ease when it comes to reading english, I'm not that good for writing it.

I first wanted to have one blog for both english and french, but I found I was either going to have really long posts, which I know I can cut, slice and arrange around the way I like, but still really long ones. And most people wouldn't want to go through a lot of french babling to simply tumble on the porrly written english part. So here's 13 Hours Later. The english counterpart of 13 Heures plus tard. Basically I'll write the same thing in both blog.

To the right is a list of Missions, that I call. Basically friends that goes :"You're going to Japan? Really? Could you find [insert object name here] for me?" or "Could you check on [insert events/places/cultural behaviors here] and tell me if it's true?" So, I'm gonna try as hard as I can to accomplish them of course. Right now there's only three but I know for sure more will be added before I leave. And I do hope so. I'm gonna be there two months, better have something useless to do no? If anyone have any missions for me just say so wither here or on the forum and I'll see if I can.

I don't know how many times I'm gonna post in this blog. It could be once every few days or several times every hour. I just don't know. As far as I know I can't tell if I'll have access to Internet other than webcafé or stealing wi-fi bandwidth from total strangers. I hope at least to be able to post four times a week. Maybe more, maybe less, depending on my free time and what happen exactly there. Also I'm not fond of pictures and mementos in general, so don'T expect to see lot of pictures here. Well... I say that, but I do believe that at the end of this I'll have over 100 pictures stuck in my computer and this blog.

So... well... hum...
=^_^= <-Kitty !

Stay Tuned