Golden week.. and some pictures

Today arrived a little earlier, so I had a small walk in the campus before the class starts and took some pictures.

People are now preparing for the golden week holiday. (I made a post about Golden week last year. Click here to read the post).
The question you will hear the most these days is: "Golden week ni nani wo shimasu ka?" = "what are you going to do in the golden week?".
..For me, I don't know! .. but I should go somewhere, it's a shame that I have been here for nearly 3.5 weeks now and the furthest place I went to is my university ^^;
..And yea tomorrow is a holiday. It is SHOUWA NO HI, and it's the first day of the golden week.

KOI NOBORI in campus
KODOMO NO HI is coming soon

A registered one!

Went to Meguro ward office, and got my alien registration card :)

Clueless? --> See http://www.tokyo-icc.jp/guide_eng/proce/02.html

Twitter ♪ ... and some keitai talk

A new addition~
I like the twitter idea since sometimes I feel like sharing a small idea or thought, but feel that it is not worth a full blog post.
Twitter will be the place for these thoughts from now on.

...Away from the Twitter talk, I FINALLY got myself a mobile phone~ I should have done this much earlier but I was concerned about more important things.

I like it! Very Japanese-like.
The menu can be in English but as a proud nihongo student, I kept the menu in Japanese!
( ^_')b

In Japan there are 3 main mobile phone operators (Wikipedia mentions 4 operators but I've never heard of the 4th one):
-NTT DoCoMo
-Softbank
-KDDI au (This one's logo is co much similar to the Orange mobile operator in Jordan and other countries). See the picture below :

I made my contract with Softbank since it has been attracting so many users recently with their convenient price plans.
The great thing is that I paid nothing at the time of the contract. The handset price will be paid in parts over 24 months.

Finally beacame a real nihongo GAKUSEI

Today was the first day of the nihongo classes.
Based on the results of a placement test, I was placed in level 3 (out of 5 levels), which is good, I think.
I will have classes every day from 1:30 ~ 5:00 divided to 2 periods, except for Wednesday where there is only the 1st period and it finishes at 3:00.

This is my desk with my name on it in Katakana and Kanji. I am glad because people are starting to use this kanji for my name when they send me an email.
The class is fun. We are 11 students and there are 9 SENSEIs to teach us and they are assigned to the classes as 1 sensei/period.
The funniest part is the conversation challenge, where the teacher puts you in a certain situation(for example imagine that you need to take a day off tomorrow, go to the teacher, tell him/her and explain your reasons....) and all is video taped.
The fun starts when all students are done and playback time starts! Everyone would start laughing at their selves and their mistakes,(especially the politeness mistakes, and believe me, I am a pro in this type of mistakes !! XD ).
That's all for the nihongo class. I really like it so much! ^_^

Yasuda Auditorium standing high in pride

A Nice view. It's near a Japanese folklore museum.It is on my way to the station


A Mosque that I see when I go walking to Shimokitazawa; a nice shopping area with reasonable prices

That's all for today.

Rain in Japan..A different story

It can rain in Japan in all seasons.
That's what I realized today.
Seeing how it rains often recently and remembering the TSUYU season in summer last year.
So rain in summer, rain in spring. Winter and fall should have rain by default ==> JA~~N , rain can fall in all seasons of the year in Japan!

So, given the above information, you can guess that umbrellas are very essential to every one living in Japan.
You might imagine the relationship between an umbrella and an individual to be so close to the relation between a samurai and his katana :p
..Actually umbrellas have their own story too!

I just finished reading an interesting page (VERY interesting actually), about rain and umbrellas.
You will see the different types of rain falls, and different types of umbrellas as well.

It also includes some cultural notes.
Please check it out :
http://www.tjf.or.jp/eng/content/japaneseculture/14rain.htm

Internet in my room

Now that's great! Finally I can use the internet in my room. Notice the bandwidth I have below :D

This is approximately 60 times the bandwidth I used to have in my home back in Jordan.(I used a 128kbps line). And near 3 times the maximum bandwidth you can get there(2Mbps).
Not to forget to mention the nice price I pay per month, I pay 2730円 per month (= JD16) ^^

桜、、大好き～:: Sakura~ I love it so much~

*Note* I added links to the Japanese terms I used. Please click them and see what they mean. And for your convenience, I made them open in a new window/tab! :p

Today was such a full day. It is the week end and I can't just sit in my room doing nothing.
The weather was sunny and warm..that was great! So I went out for a walk and luckily found some nice sakura trees that are still fighting for survival!

I think anyone who sees me will guess that I am seeing Sakura for the first time, because I took like 3 or 4 pictures of each sakura tree I pass by! Actually I think that I have no problem in traveling all over Japan and taking pictures for all Sakura trees! I just love this tree so much... a new OTAKU category : sakura otaku(^_^)

At noon time, I was supposed to go to the AKAMON to meet S-san ;a participant in the Japan delegation that came to Jordan last September.
I haven't tried to go to the Hongou campus alone so far, so today was my first time and it was such a big success!^^
This is the Tokyo metro map.

All I had to do is to go from Shibuya station to Akasakamitsuke station by Ginza line(orange), then change to the Marunouchi line(Red) and go to Hongou san choume station. A walk for 7 minutes then here you are in front of the AKAMON. You can see on the map above.

This is a good chance to introduce a great website that tells you about all the possible routes from a source to destination, then the decision is up to you (according to cost, time, number of transfers...). Click here and try it! (Press the "english" button after you open the page).
I think it will be very useful for anyone new to Tokyo metro.

The AKAMON (Red gate). It is one of the Tokyo University gates. This one is very famous..more famous than the main gate itself. A lot of people come and take pictures of it.

There, S-san introduced me to a group of friends and we did OHANAMI. I was really glad to do my first OHANAMI in TOUDAI Hongou Campus!
The sakura trees were in their HAZAKURA state(when it starts loosing blossoms and leaves start to grow), so with each breeze a sakura snow falls on us.
That was really fun, thank you minna!! ( ^_')b

OHANAMI

Sakura on my way back near my lodge

On my way back, I entered KOMABA KOUEN(Komaba park) for the first time. Its a park near my lodge.

I discovered some sakura trees that look like they had their MANKAI(full bloom) yesterday. I took some pictures but they weren't good because it was a little dark.(I wish I had entered this park from the beginning!!!).
So I decided to go there tomorrow very early in the morning and take good pictures before the blossoms disappear.

Other pictures I took today that are worth posting :

Shibuya Crossing..one of the busiest crossings ever.


This is in Shibuya too..Do you recognise the girl picture on the building? :D
It is the Sensei from the drama, GOKUSEN..lol some of my nihongo class students will definitely download this picture! ;)

And now I am in the lounge where we have free and fast internet, blogging about today.
Wow I really write much (@_@)..but you know.. I want to enjoy blogging while I still have time to do so!
See you next post!

うるさいな～ カラスさん！:: You are so annoying~ Mr. crow!

Hey again! This time's story hero is KARASU san, or Mr. crow!
Tokyo has a lot of crows. I once watched a program on TV about how they are considered troublesome because they keep missing up with and getting out food remains from the garbage.

They are as big as a cat, and I heard from the same program that there were incidents of crows that attacked babies.

Every day every day they start performing their "Concert" from the very early morning before any other bird starts singing.
But somehow, I feel thankful for KARASU san.. you know why?
Because I wake up everyday at 5 am before my alarm clock starts ringing ^_^

jaa mata ne!

Blogging from Tokyo!

الحمد لله!
アルハムド　レッラー！
Thank God for everything!

Before :

After :




I have been here for 2 days now, but strangely I feel that I have been here since a longer time.
Soooooooooooooooo many things happened during these days. To summarize :

- Arrived April the 2nd during night to Haneda Airport.

-The travel was really tiresome for me because I never slept.. I can't sleep in planes..the longest period I slept was maybe 15 minutes.

-At the Airport, my senpai T san and another friend were waiting for me. Also nihon taishikan no Y san was waiting for us. KANSHA SHITEIMASU!! :)

- The way from the airport to the lodge was as tiresome as my whole trip towards haneda..if not more!
We took (if i remember well) 2 trains and had to walk for like 20 minutes until the lodge. (imagine this is happening to someone who had been on 3 long flights, carrying all the luggage on the way to the lodge... I think that I really reached my body limits that day!! I have never been sooo tired. I'm glad that I was helped by my senpai and his friend..cuz I wouldnt have arrived alive to the lodge that night without them,,seriously!)

-SAKURA is just wonderful.. I think my arrival was just on the MANKAI (full bloom).
Yesterday sakura blossoms were perfectly in full bloom, when there is wind, they fly like snow~~ soo nice..but sad as well because they fall very quickly. You can see the difference in the amount of blossoms on a tree in one day period!
I knew that sakura disappear quickly, but I didn't know it was THAT quick!! :( Today, trees are with much much less blossoms. I think this means sakura season is over. I enjoyed it for 2 days only. And I didn't take a picture for me with them.sad~! .. I guess I will have to wait for next year. By that time I should have a better camera. The pics below are taken by the mobile camera.

Sakura in Hongou

Hachikou in the back. So many ppl blocking the view in Shibuya

-Today I learned that on the same line there can be more than 1 type of trains. I learned this the hard way when I got into an express train from shibuya. It doesn't stop on my station (komaba toudaimae)..so at last I found my self in medaimae　-_- this was one of the times that I felt really glad that I know some Japanese. I asked a lady in the station and she explained the thing for me. New lesson!

-A while ago I experienced an earthquake. This morning I read in the "life in Japan" manual about earthquakes, that Tokyo didn't experience a "MAJOR" earthquake for 80 years ..so you can imagine how i felt today~ kowakatta. Thank God it wasn't THE ONE.

Did I say "To summarize" ? ^^;
So many details, I hope it wasn't boring~
But from now on I will blog only about useful things and will keep the details for my own diary! lol

Actually I have many goals in my mind :
1) Most importantly my study
2) Improve my Japanese language
3) Know more and more about Japan

When I get the connection to my room, I will try to make my posts more organized.

ganbarimasu!

A new adventure!

A "wireless-ly" blogged post.
10:40 pm, Dubai airport
This is only the start of a new adventure with challenges as big as a mountain is.
more to come soon!
一生懸命頑張ります!( ^_')b

A song dedicated to my family and friends :




K-chan