the people on my contract

the face character group for the 2008 winter contract has 33 people in it. theres 12 boys and 21 girls. 7 of the girls are from the US. and so are 7 of the boys. we have 5 english girls. and 3 english boys. theres 7 australian girls, and 1 australian boy. theres also 1 french boy, 1 girl from new zealand, and 1 from holland. so i reallllly have a variety of people in my group. it seriously doesn't sink in to your mind how big this world really is until you're surrounded by people who have lived a completely different life than you in a country that you've only learned about in school, or seen in the movies. i know that sounds silly. and of course you can think " okay i realize the world is a big place and that every country is different". but you only know half of it if you havent taken the time to really hear about it from someone who lives on the other side of the world. i've spent a lot of time talking to people from other countries about what its like to live there, and its the most fascinating thing ever. even just the little things like what's popular to eat in australia, or the slang terms teenagers use in england. seriously you guys i've learned so many random english pharases that we never use. of course there's obvious ones like calling a bathroom the lou. the loo? i'm not sure how its spelled. but theres others....

-they call toilet paper a "lou roll".

-they call a university a Uni. i think its cute.

-"i'll ring you later"

-they say "sound as a pound". haha

-they use "plush" to describe like really nice or pretty clothing.

-"wicked"

-everything nice is "gorgeous". as in "i had a gorgeous cup of tea".

-they call a hobo a tramp. so "i look like a tramp today" means frumpy clothes, no mini skirts and high heels. but then i remembered "lady and the tramp" and i wasn't so excited.

-the word "fanny" means "lady part". so don't talk about fanny-packs with an English person.

-instead of a middle finger you put up 2 fingers. like a backwards peace sign. so i guess when people use that in pictures as a "i'm a white person, but i wish i could pull off being gangsta" its offensive. 

-my friend says she watches the news all the time, and its like 90% american news and at the end they give a quick update on what's actually going on in their country. i think thats strange cuz i have no idea what's going on in England but she knows all about our war and political events. its weird.

 

for australians....

-they always use the phrase " i've fallen pregnant" instead of "i got pregnant". its weird.

-both england and australia have this AMAZING idea that america needs to steal. they're called "potato smilies". they're like french fries but cut into flat circles with holes missing to make a smiley face. and you get them everywhere for like kids meals and stuff. and you dip them in ketchup and they're just delicious. even japan sells them in stores. why doesn't america have this?!? i'm actually upset about it. 

- my australian friend uses "reckon" in like every other sentence.

my new zealand friend was talking to me about pasta and i used the word "noodle" and she didn't know what it was. apparently in new zealand they use the word "pasta" to describe an entire dish but they simply don't have a word for the individual pieces. 

-new zealanders call small hard-candy, like a jolly-rancher a "loli" and the british just call them "sweets". 

the biggest difference is that I'm surrounded by like 4 different accents. and its horrible but i'm starting to accidentally pick up a british accent. when they talk, they emphasize a different part of the sentence than we do, and i do it all the time now. i haven't picked up their proper way of saying everything, but my own sentences have a weird british sound to them. okay that sounds stupid and makes no sense, but i dont know how to explain it. haha. 

E-village doesn't just have 33 people living in it. we have an entire group of people here to be a shows in the park. some sing, dance, or do acrobatics. its really great getting to meet the other people on different contracts. but we don't see them much, because they have a different schedule. there's close to 100 people living here for all different things. our casting director said that apparently over 2,000 people auditioned for these 100 spots. so i feel super honored to be able to be here right now. not a moment goes by that i'm not completely grateful for getting this amazing opportunity. i dont know how i got so lucky. 

well thats it. i miss you guys. and i hope all is going well. by the way, i went for a jog this morning in the pouring rain. it was super refreshing, and i suggest it to all. it kind of sucks that you guys get rain like 4 days a year. but if one of those 4 happens soon, you should just go for it. love you guys. sayonara!

shanell

japanese phrase of the day: "hai" and "lie"

yes and no. you cant really shout "hi" to anyone when you see them, because they think you're saying "yes!". so i say "hello" a lot. and its weird, but a lot of times japanese people will say "yes" for nothing at all. like if a man is buying something he'll put the product on the counter, and the cashier will say "hai". and then the man will pull out money and say "hai" as he puts in on the counter. and the cashier will grab the money and say "hai". thats just a lame example, but you get the idea. when i was signing up for internet the man was pointing to each spot on the paperwork and telling me what information to write. he would say "hai" after i completed each one. i was kind of giggling on the inside. thats horrible. but i was. theres not much to know about "lie" except that each vowel is pronounced individually. so it sounds like "leeeA". 

E-Village

okay so E-Village is the name of the housing area i live in. i love it. wow, where to start? okay.....

besides our 3 housing buildings we have....a conference room with tables and chairs. we had our orientation on the first day in there. we have a studio hallway. it has 5 rooms made for dancing with mirrored walls and a piano. and one sound room with drums, a piano, and other instruments. we can reserve a room to ourselves whenever we want. several of the people here who are talented dancers rent out the room, lets say every tuesday night at 9 or something and they teach a free dance class to whoever wants to come. which is really helpful, because its nearby, you meet new people, and its a different style almost every class. we also have a laundry room. it costs 100 yen to do a load in a washer or dryer. so with three loads of laundry its about 600 yen a week. the laundry room also has irons available to us. here's a picture...

 

now, for my room. i'm not going to post pictures of the inside yet, because i haven't put in my furniture yet. the girl living next door to me leaves from her contract next week, and is giving me all of her furniture for free. so until then my house is kind of empty. but you can see the outside! here's my view from my front door. i'm quite a few floors up so i can see pretty far.....

  

to the left.

  

directly forward. please notice that across the street from me is a babies 'r' us. soooo completely random. and its a HUGE one too. weird. and if you look just past the buildings you'll see the pacific ocean. we're really close to the shore. 

to the right. you can see the pacific ocean at the end on this side too. 

   

 

my hallway. just for kicks.

  

the view from across the street. 

okay i'm really excited about this....

firstly, my door was decorated when i arrived by someone on the old cast. 

secondly, i don't have a key to my house. instead i have a white plastic card that it scan over a screen next to my front door and it unlocks everything...

what's even better is that when i walk through the door i put the "key" into a pocket on the wall and it turns all my power on. so when i leave the house i take it with me and it turns off all my power. which is great, because that way they save energy. and when i get home all the lights turn on as i left them. i have my main light that dims so if i leave it dimmed it wont reset. it'll stay dimmed. (which sounds silly but i love it) and if i leave music playing on my laptop when i leave i can come back and push play and it will continue the song. its kind of fantastic. I'm basically amazed everyday when i come home. haha. 

E-Village is closed off to the public for safety reasons, so we use our cards and scan them at security to get the sliding glass doors to open. i admittedly feel really important when i scan my card and the doors move out of my way. haha. yah...i'm a dork. 

so thats the basics of E-Village. i pretty much love it here. paul, our supervisor, which is like a landlord i guess, is here almost everyday in the down stairs office and he's absolutely adorable! and he totally helps everyone with whatever they need. i definitely bought an alarm clock and the instructions were in japanese. so i took it to paul and he set it up for me. and he saw me at the grocery store while i was trying to communicate with one of the employees about soy sauce and he spent like 10 minutes trying to help me find everything i needed. he's just amazing. except he doesn't like it when i invite myself to hug him. i think its a "i'm your supervisor" thing. but whatever. mkay well its past 12 over here so i'm going to bed. i have a super busy day tomorrow. i'm going into the city to buy some things for my home. by the way my new thing is to name everything i own. and my new home is named shawna......cuz i miss her a lot. so i guess i'm surrounded by my best friend. its comforting. goodnight everyone! well, i guess good morning since its like 8 am for you. haha. sayonara!

shanell

i guess i'm gonna keep doing this...

japanese phrase of the day: sumimasen

it means excuse me, or i'm sorry. besides thank you, its the 2nd most used word in my vocab right now. you say it whenever you're moving around people. like in trains or in stores. but you say it like 10 times as often as we actually use excuse me in the US. oh! and its nice to bow a little bit when you say it. which i over use, because it excites me. 

basic details

okay so there are a couple of basic details about me living in Japan that you should know. btw, i'm in the mood to highlight random words. deal with it. its my blog, i can do what i want.

i live in Shin-Urayasu, Japan. Not Tokyo. the actual city of Tokyo is seperated into several section and they are almost all big urban city areas. not a lot of people actually live in the city. in Japan instead of counties they have prefectures. Chiba is the prefecture right next to Tokyo. Shin-Urayasu is a city within Chiba. So its as if Tokyo is LA county. and Chiba is the OC. Shin-Urayasu is the cypress of Chiba. understand? Tokyo Disneyland isnt in Tokyo either. its also in Chiba. its in Maihama which is the Anaheim of Chiba. Cypress is the nice residential area, and Anaheim is the touristy area. same with Shin-Urayasu and Maihama. does that make sense? here let me draw a picture.....




the only difference is that where i live is literally on the very outskirt of tokyo, so its only 3 train stations away to be in the big city. i hope the drawing makes more sense. thats the best way i can think of explaining it. haha. I'm such a dork. i draw a new picture on my white board every morning with breakfast. just because i can. 

Another thing. the time difference. Japan is 16 hours ahead of the west coast. so to figure out the time difference you add 4 hours to your time and change it from am to pm. so if its 4am for you its 8pm for me. which makes talking to you guys really difficult because it has to be either really early or really late for me to talk to you. it feels awkward to be on the webcam and say goodnight to my daddy as he's just starting his work day. 

okay wow, the weather here is CRAZY. right now its moving from the scorching hot summer to typhoon season. so some days its sunny and hot, and others its pouring rain with strong winds. the weird thing is that even when its showering down the water is warm, and the air is really hot. i walk to work under my umbrella in a  tank top and i'm sweating because its so hot out. another thing, the weather is super bipolar. after it stops raining, ten minutes later the sun has dried up everything and you feel like you're on the surface of the sun. its just weird.

okay, I was put under the impression before i got here that the japanese understand quite a bit of english. NO. they take 8 years of english classes in school, but that doesn't help much. first of all they study more reading and writing than speaking. They don't have a lot of people in their society to practice their english with so they don't really know how to use it in a conversation as much as reading it. also, for those of you who took 4 years of spanish with me in high school, you know we didn't soak up anything other than "como estas" and "bien, gracias. y tu?". thats probably not even right. i wouldn't know. i didn't learn much. which is why i totally understand why the japanese didn't learn much english in high school either. it doesn't help that their language only has 107 syllable options and we have over 3,000. but i'll go over that later.

so how do i talk to the japanese? i pantomime. a lot. you dont really realize how many hand movements are universal till you have to carry a conversation with someone who doesnt speak your language. for example. usually when you dont know where to find something in a store you have to use your hands to explain what you want. when you ask for soap, you pretend to wash your hands, ect. but it gets really hard when you're looking for things like double-sided tape. i've officially experienced the most awkward moment of my life because of this. i was in the office section at D2, which is like the japanese version of Wal Mart and i couldn't read the japanese labels. the first employee i saw happened to be this adorable, little japanese man restocking items. i asked him if they had double-stick tape and i could instantly tell he had no idea what i was saying. i pointed to the tape and said "double-sided". he was baffled. how do you describe double-stick tape?!?  so i did what had worked for me so far. i began to pantomime. i used my hand as tape and i stuck it to a wall. then i stuck a paper to the other side. oh my gosh he was so adorable. he looked at me like " i am sooo sorry, but i have absolutely no idea what you're doing to your hand". it was super cute. so i continued to look like an idiot and stick things to my hand but that did nothing. i decided to make things awkward and include him, so i used his hand and stuck it to mine. it only got more awkward after that. but anyways, my last resort was putting up a 2 sign with my fingers and it totally clicked for him. he started cracking up. he grabbed my hand and redid all of the random pantomiming i had done, and laughed at how it completely made sense to him now. he grabbed the 2-sided tape that was right in front of me, and we seriously laughed together for like 4 minutes. me and this small japanese man had a complete bonding moment in the office aisle without having a conversation. that was pretty much the best moment of my life. i really dont think i'll ever forget that. 

the japanese drive on the left side of the street. they also stay to the left on sidewalks and escalators. it kills me. i'm gonna come home and people are gonna think i'm an idiot cuz i walk on the left side out of instinct now. by the way, i feel really weird being in the passenger seat of a car,sitting on the left, and making a left turn against a curb. its just awkward. random picture...

this post is kinda long so i'm gonna start a new one. but that only touches the tip on things i want to share with you guys. sayonara!

Shanell

i'm gonna be random...

japanese phrase of the day: arigato gozaimas. 

arigato obviously means thank you. but gozaimas is more formal so you naturally just say it more often to be polite. its like saying "thank you very much". but you wouldnt say it alone. just like you would never say "very much" by itself. just fyi. :) oh! and the "ai" in gozaimas is pronounced like "I". and the "a" in "mas" is dragged out. so its like "gozImaaaas. so that was random...... okay how many of you just said it out loud to your computer? haha.  

first post!

Hey everyone! okay so i've been asked by so many people how Japan is, and i never know where to start. there's too much about this country that i love to explain to every person who asks. so i've decided to just start a blog about all the things i see and love here. that way everyone can keep updated on how i'm doing. i wish i had the time to talk to everyone back home one at a time, but theres too many of you, and i dont have a lot of free time. i'm gonna do my best to keep in touch as much as possible but this way i know whoever i dont get a chance to talk to will still get some type of update. i miss all of you, and i would love to hear from anyone that has the time to just write me an email or something and let me know whats going on in your life. i dont want to fall completely out of the loop. if you dont have any of my contact information (email, sn, skype, ect.) just ask. i'd love more than anything to hear from you. i cant just post my info on my page for security reasons. there are a lot of crazy japanese fans that stalk the disney characters, so i cant post personal information on the internet. its weird. i'll probably go into detail on a later day. okay well i have A LOT to update already so i'm gonna get started. love you guys! sayonara!

Shanell

p.s. i dont feel like making the effort to make all my posts have perfect punctuation, and i hate capitalizing things. just thought i'd warn you.