Germany

Well hello, and yes, I know I said I would be posting in a couple of days last time and yes, I know that was two months ago, but I'm here now, alright?!

I'm writing this blog post in my flat in Leipzig, which I'm sharing with Ash, looking out over Grünau, the suburb in which I live. It's fair to say that Grünau is the grimmest place I've ever lived. Just watch any episode of Shameless (which is nearly over for good now, wahh) and you'll get a good idea of my area. Just add East German communist buildings. I'll give a proper run down of my flat and area (with photos) in a later blog post, but I'll say now that although this isn't the nicest area, and although I have to get a tram for 25 minutes to get to university every day, the fact that this place only costs €160 (£135) per month, as well as there being some great people living in the same block, definitely makes up for it.

Today is the day that I receive the first part of my Erasmus grant. As with my flat, I'll do a proper blog post about this soon. As this blog was originally designed to be helpful for people wanting to study abroad, and the process is pretty complicated (too complicated actually...), I think Erasmus deserves its own post.

Moreover, soon I'll do a proper post about the university too. I like it now that I've settled in and everything has worked out fine, but believe me, there's plenty to moan about regarding the whole registration and orientation process. Trust me, this does need its own post.

I know these days I only ever seem to publish posts promising more posts, but I really am going to be doing one a day for the next few days. I've been meaning to get back into this blog for a while, and I've had a fair few people asking me to start again (I never realised you lot cared!), and due to the fact that I'll have plenty of time, with me only having one class tomorrow, and then Thursday and Friday off, I'm going to do one a day! Here's the list:

Wednesday 8th: My Flat & Grünau

Thursday 9th: Leipzig

Friday 10th: Erasmus

Saturday 11th: Universität Leipzig

I look forward! I've not really posted any decent posts since the Autumn of 2011, when I was settling into life in Tokyo (crikey that seems a long time ago now), but watch this space!!

James

Financial Situation & Takase Scholarship

Today I write to you about the one thing which stops people from enjoying themselves in life, albeit in a rather paradoxical way; money.  The problem is that I don’t have very much of it, which is quite a concern when I’m living in Tokyo.  My money situation for my year abroad is as follows;

The (repayable!) student loan I’ll get is £4244, which at current exchange rates just covers the various things associated with my accommodation; the deposit, monthly rent, utilities, and bedding rental.  After paying for all that with my student loan, I’ll have £26 left over.  Not good when you consider that the transfer from the airport to the guesthouse on the first day costs £25.

Besides my student loan, I have about £2000 of my own, in savings and left over wages from Rhythm & Booze, and that’s it!  I’m there for 10 months, so I somehow doubt that £50/week will be enough to survive off. Other than the basic every day survival-type things, there are of course all the other things I need to shell out for when I first get there, such as the compulsory Japanese National Heath Insurance (国民健康保険, or kokumin kenkou hoken), Certificates of Registration, a bicycle, and all that sort of thing. 

Well, the solution is obvious, you may be thinking; get a job!  But it is not so simple!  To work in Japan on a student visa you need a work permit.  As it’s in conjunction with said student visa, you have to go through the university to apply for it.  But the catch is that my university won’t let you apply for one for a few months, to let you ‘settle in’ and to stop you from becoming too overwhelmed by the amount of things you take on. All I want is a few hours a week doing some English conversation!  Apparently you can earn about £20 an hour just chatting in English!  Obviously I’d put preparation in, but it does sound like a quite a good deal.  Oh, and apparently British English is the new cool thing to learn in Japan, not the American English that everyone was brought up with…I’m not going to complain about that!  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how the whole thing plays out.

But there is still one other avenue to explore!  I got an email a week or so ago telling me that ICU had nominated me for a scholarship from the Takase Scholarship Foundation.  They only award it to 20 people each year, but those who get it receive ¥100,000 (£770) every month from October until June!  Obviously this would be an unimaginable help, so I really, really hope I get it.  I’ve written the required 500-word essay for it, which I’ve sent to one of my Japanese tutors to translate, and now all I need to do is fill in the associated forms.  I’ll find out whether I’ve got the scholarship or not in late September or early October, and I’ll definitely dedicate a post to that result on here!

That’s all for now! Oh, and sorry for the lack of pictures in this blog, I hope you made it to the end without getting bored! 

James

Japanese Student Visa Application

I have applied for my Japanese visa!  It’s scary how I can tick off all these little things on my mental checklist before Japan, and each one brings me a bit closer to going.  Leave my job. Check. Apply for visa. Check.  Next on the list is to apply for my Takase Scholarship!  But anyway, I’m just a few lines in and already digressing, so let’s get back on topic; my visa application!

So to apply for a Japanese Student Visa, you will need the following;

·      A Visa Application Form (available online or at the embassy)

·      Certificate of Eligibility (authorised after passing the required modules at your home university, then issued directly by the Japanese government)

·      Letter of Acceptance from the Japanese university to which you applied

·      Photocopies of the Certificate of Eligibility and Letter of Acceptance

·      Passport

·      One Passport Photo

·      £43 (cash only)

Besides those I also took a pre-paid, self-addressed special delivery envelope so that they could post it back to me.  You can either go back to the embassy in person to pick it up, or do what I did if you live too far away from London to do that.  You get to the embassy, and after an airport-style security check (including showing them your passport) at the front door, you go through into a waiting area, and take a ticket with a number on it.  You wait for your number to come up on the screen, and then go to the specified counter where someone checks that everything’s in order and takes payment.  Very easy!  I applied on Tuesday, and it should all be processed by Friday, and sent out the same day, so I should receive it on Saturday morning! 

So I took the 9:45 train from Leeds to London Kings Cross, which arrived just before 12 o’clock.  In the station I then bought a day ticket for the zones 1 & 2 of the underground, before going a few stops on the Piccadilly line to Green Park.  From Green Park station it’s just a two-minute walk down to the Japanese Embassy.  From the front of the building hangs a big Japanese flag, which was quite useful considering I don’t know my way around London!  I could see the flag from the station!  I forgot to take a photo outside the embassy, so here’s one of Natasha Clancey there a few days ago ;) Oh, and yes, she really did wear a Hooters top to a serious government institution.

I happened to bump into Leeds students Amanda Brown and Paul Farquharson whilst I was in the embassy; I was wondering whether anyone I knew would happen to be there at the same time as me!

After all that I met up with Joe Holloway, who I’ve only seen a couple of times since we both left school (we both went to Bradford Grammar).  Despite some confusion as to which station we were meeting in, we eventually met up outside Charing Cross, near Trafalgar Square.  We walked up to Covent Garden for a spot of lunch, as Joe knew of a chain of restaurants called Fire & Stone.  Apparently it’s a southern chain, which specialises in pizzas with unusual toppings from around the world.  Have a look at the menu on their website here.  I had the ‘Lombok’ – seriously tasty!  And only £4.95 at lunchtime!  I'd never have thought hoi sin sauce would go with a pizza- but it did!  I guess it’s because there was no tomato sauce on the pizza base or something.  Joe had the ‘Marrakech’, which he clearly enjoyed;

After lunch we got the tube up to Camden.  The canal was, um, green.

Camden’s not as good as I remember if I’m honest :( I suppose it would still be good at night and not during the summer holidays, but it was just absolutely packed full of loud American tourists, bratty kids and tacky tat!  It had a few pretty bits still, however! It was about 28 degrees and humid by this time, and we were preeeetty toasty, so we decided to go and sit by the canal.

We then went to Cyberdog, which was interesting…I headed downstairs and was freaked out (those of you who know the place will sympathise, anyone else should look at their website).  Let’s just say, I got a chance to practice my Japanese reading with some of the products for sale downstairs.

After wondering round Camden for a bit, Joe had to go for an interview at Embankment, and I had to get back to Kings Cross, so after going to Covent Garden again for a while, we both walked our separate ways; Joe on to Embankment, and I walked back to Charing Cross to have another look at a statue of Oscar Wilde which had tickled me that morning.

After gradually getting hotter and hotter walking around London all day, it was nice to get back on the air conditioned train back to Leeds, which arrived (slightly late) back at 9:35. 

So there’s the story of my trip to London to get a visa!  Hopefully it was of some help if you are going to Japan and haven’t yet got your visa…it was a simple procedure, apart from having to get to the other end of the country that is!

In other news, I’ve done some more on the side bar of my blog; I’ve added links to the blogs of other people from the University of Leeds who will be in Japan at the same time as me, as well as the links of some good websites relating to my blog and Japan!  Oh, and have a look at the map I’ve got!  It’s been exiting (sad, I know) seeing how many people from all over the world have been visiting my blog!  Any flashing stars on the map are users viewing my blog at the moment.  Also, it’s now even easier to follow my blog (heh)!  I’d really appreciate it if you’d follow me, which you can do by clicking the ‘Join this site’ tab on the right side bar.  You can do it not only with a Blogger account, but with a standard Google one, as well as a few others.

That’s all for now, please stay tuned! 

James

Bye Bye, Rhythm & Booze

I have now finished my 18 months with Rhythm & Booze!  Working in an off-licence (or wine shop, depending on who I’m talking to) certainly had its ups and downs, but I’m actually missing it already!  I was quite upset when I got home this evening!

The people I worked with were great, and I got on really well with them all.  I suppose I will miss working there, or at least miss the regular income anyway!  Speaking of which, I’m getting quite concerned about money matters whilst I’m in Japan, but I’ll write another post soon about that whole deal (and the DS thing I promised in my last post!). 

I’ll also miss the staff discount!  The shop was pretty cheap anyway, for example 3 500-600ml bottles of lager cost £5.50.  But my discount meant I could have them for £4.95; always good to keep it under a fiver!  I won’t miss the rude customers, however.  Obviously the majority were fine, but there always had to be the select few to ruin your evening, you know?  Although at least I’ve developed a thick skin after working there!  Every cloud and all that.

I know this is only a short post, but there’s not really a great deal to talk about!  Now I’ve finished working there, it definitely feels like I’m a step closer to going to Japan.  Putting all my affairs in order and what have you. 

I guess I won’t be seeing this view for a while!

Okay folkies, time for me to pop off!  Not doing a great deal tomorrow, just writing an essay to try and get a scholarship for studying in Japan, and then seeing Ayu!  Then on Tuesday I’m travelling down to London to apply for my Japanese visa!  I’ll definitely be writing a blog post on that, so look out for it on Tuesday or Wednesday :)

Oh, and happy August everyone :)

James

A Bit of a Catch Up

Hello again!  So here’s a quick round up of the stuff that’s happened since I made my last Youtube video.  To be perfectly honest I’m quite relieved I don’t have to catch up on all those videos I haven’t done yet any more as I can just write everything on here! Apart from the China one – gaah!

I finished my first year at university!  I can’t believe how quickly it went, either!  It’s going to be sad not being able to see all the people I got to know during the year, especially those off my course and those with whom I lived for the year.  Luckily I’m going to be at university in Japan next year with Green-san, Becci and Sally, as well as the Japanese friends I made whilst they were in Britain last year, so it’s not like I’m going off on my own :)  I’m flying from Manchester to Tokyo with Ash too, so that’ll be good.  We’re both taking our PSPs and Tekken so we can spend the whole flight fighting like the cool kids we are!

During the last term of the year we obviously had exams, which were scary!  But in the end I got enough revision done and was quite pleased with my results, especially in my core subjects.  I got 1sts in Basic Japanese Language 1 and Core German, and 2.1s in Basic Japanese Language 2 and Chinese.  There was a little moment of panic after my BJL2 oral exam, because I didn’t think I’d done particularly well, and in order to go to Japan we pretty much had to have at least a 2.2 to go without any complications.   But in the end it turned out I’d done well enough, so a couple of days after getting results I went down to STA Travel with Ash to book our first tickets.  I got a single from Manchester to Tokyo Narita, via Abu Dhabi for £363 with Etihad.  I didn’t get a return, as I still don’t know when exactly I’d be returning to the UK.  I just hope they let me into Japan on a one-way ticket!!

I suppose the worst part of finishing my first year at university was moving out of my house.  I really liked my room, and the people I was living with, and just everything about it really!  Well, I suppose if you’re being picky it could have been a liiiittle bit closer to the university, but I was fine with the twenty minute walk in the morning – it gave me valuable time alone with my iPod!  Seeing as I just worked out how to embed Youtube videos into these blogs, I might as well post my January video about my residence!

I really liked that house – look at the size of my room!  Lots of the rooms at that house were that size, and it only cost about £3400 for the entire year, self catered.  My room felt empty once I’d moved out!  Even emptier than when I first saw it, strangely enough.  I got this video on my phone the day I moved out;

I finished my exams on the 1^st of June, and had a little end of exams BBQ a few days after, which was nice. I didn’t really have any plans between then and going to Turkey with Ayu and a couple of friends at the end of June, so I just split my time between my home in Otley, and my student house in Hyde Park.  It’s only a 25 minute drive, which makes it easy enough to spend a lot of time at both.  Other than that I did some extra shifts at work, so that I’d have some more money for summer.  I couldn’t see Ayu until she’d finished her exams on the 27^th of June, so I had nothing better to do!  I went for Turkey for a week, and it only cost £145 for flights, transfers and an apartment for a week!  I was very impressed!  We were in Side, a lovely old historical town full of ancient architecture and ruins.

After that I had about ten days back in Otley, most of which I spent seeing Ayu and doing more shifts at Rhythm & Booze (yes that’s the ACTUAL name of the shop in which I work), before going to our holiday home in Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, with my parents and Ayu for a week, for my dad’s 50^th birthday.

That was really nice as well, but the weather was a bit dull for a few of the days.  It’s sad thinking it’s the last time I’ll get to go to Robin Hood’s Bay for over a year :(

Anyways, I’m tired of writing for the time being, so this will have to be enough for this post!  Tune in tomorrow where I’ll excitedly tell you about my new DS and moan about the Royal Mail sorting office at Sheepscar and a woman on eBay. 

I bet you’re wetting yourselves in anticipation.

James