ウリカの旅行記: December 2014

The holiday season is over, which is always a little sad, but I'm happy and excited for what 2015 has in store for me! If it's half as good as 2014 was, I think I can consider myself a very lucky girl! ^^

I spent Christmas evening pretty low key, which is not at all usual for me, so it was a little odd. We exchanged secret santa gifts in the dorm though and that was really fun! I'm glad I was able to make someone happy!

I have to admit I felt a little sad I couldn't be in Belgium to celebrate with my own family that night and even though me and some friends helped each other through everyone's own longing for home, I went to bed feeling kind of bleh.

But the main celebration of Christmas came on Christmas day and I have to say, that easily made up for the previous night! We got up and started away in the first floor's big kitchen, preparing a feastly Christmas brunch! I was in charge of pancakes (obviously haha) but there was all sorts of food! We ate until we felt sick and then some!

After that we pretty much spent the entire day watching Christmas movies in the common room. In pajamas of course! My wonderful Belgian buddy Marianne made a true Belgian style Christmas dinner that evening (and I helped^^) for about ten people in the dorm. It was really really lovely! I received some more random gifts from friends, which I didn't expect but was super thankful for! After dinner, more Christmas movies and an awesome Skype call home to the family and that was about it for Christmas. ^^

After that wonderful holiday, I left almost at once for Okinawa, but more on that in a next post!! <3

Much love!!

Ulrike

I just had a wonderful weekend and I thought I'd write about it. ^^

On Friday I traveled to Takatsuki-shi, where I had my first workday as a host at an English Café. It’s quite a far trip (around 50min by train/monorail) and the pay isn’t that great, but I figure it’s a good experience for me.

My job is to sit at the café and talk with the Japanese people that come in for a drink, that’s pretty much it. It sounds really easy but I can assure you it’s not. People who know me know that I can be quite shy and awkward around people I don’t know very well and even though I feel like I’ve improved considerably since coming to Japan, I’m still no conversational master.

Just picture this:

I’m sitting at a coffee table with about six Japanese people: two middle-aged women, a young man who’s just become a dad, two really old men and an extremely shy young guy. All of them have different backgrounds and interests and all of them differ in English speaking level. Everyone is constantly focused on me because I'm supposed to lead the conversation, making sure there’s no awkward pauses, making sure everyone gets to talk about the same amount so no one feels left out,… and this for two hours straight!

Also, I’m not allowed to ask them personal questions so sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s okay for me to talk about and what’s not. And I have to make sure to remember everyone I talk to by name and face, so that if they should return, I can thank them for coming again and pick up where we left off last time.

It’s really tricky!!

I had some trouble at times this Friday but my boss told me I did good for my first time. I think I’ll try to prepare more things to talk about for next time (and hope I can remember everyone I talked to ><”)!

Even though it’s hard, I want to keep doing this job for at least a little while longer because I feel like it’ll teach me some really useful skills, it’ll look good on a resume and the whole thing makes me feel more independent.

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On Saturday I had a great day trip with some friends. We visited the Ramen Museum which, at frist glance, doesn’t sound all that exciting but listen, listen okay!

Aside from learning about how ramen came to exist, you can actually create you own cup of noodles! I’m not joking!

Look at all those happy faces!!

It was so fun! You get to draw your own cup the way you like it, then pick out your choice of soup and ingredients and you can see the way they make it all right in front of your eyes. I highly recommend this place for a trip with friends. We all had a blast making our own ramen! And it only costs 300yen, that's ridiculously cheap!!

can you see the resemblance?


Afterwards what did we eat? Why ramen of course!!

After the Ramen Museum, we took the train to Minoh (箕面), which is famous because of its beautiful nature, its wild monkeys and its large waterfall. It was already turning dark by the time we got there (it turns dark extremely early in Japan.. I’d say it starts around 5pm).

Before getting to the mountain path, you walk through a little village and all along the road are small shops that sell various tourist goodies (I may have bought a lot of monkey related things). But the most remarkable thing they sell are deep fried leaves. Yes, deep fried leaves!

I've said before that the Japanese take their autumn leaves very seriously. They're so loved that they're made into little tempura snacks! They were pretty delicious. Not that the actual leaf has any taste but I mean, deep fried batter always tastes great doesn't it?

I bought myself a whole bag of these to eat at the dorm because, you know, gotta represent autumn whilst we still can!

The monkeys were probably already asleep when we got there and by the time we finished the hike to the waterfall it was so dark that we could only know it by the clattering of the water against the rocks. It was still fun though because we were about the only people in this otherwise crowded tourist attraction.

This is the best picture I managed to take of the waterfall!

We were so cold after visiting the waterfall that there was only one thing we could do:

Onsen!

Onsen(温泉), for those who might not know, is a traditional Japanese bathhouse. It’s just sort of like a nude spa I suppose. I’ve been wanting to go to one ever since I got here but every time people went my schedule prevented me from going so as you can guess I was really excited to go!

It was so relaxing! They had one bath area where the water was mixed with red wine and it felt so fancy, I loved it! Another thing I found really cool was that, after getting out, there was this area where you could sit and do your hair or apply your make up and they had so many beauty products that were free to use! Cleansing water, moisturizing creams, BB creams,… loved it!

Finally we sat and ate way too much food!

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN FRIES THIS BIG??

I ate until I felt sick. It was awesome!

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Finally, on Sunday (today), I went into the city with a bunch of friends. We went to karaoke, went to play some pool, won some prizes at the arcade, went to see the movie Interstellar in the theatre and had some kaiten zushi. It was, as the title says: wonderful!