Jul 2005

hi, everyone,my japanese skills now are getting better and better and i hope you huys are proud of me!
the school is very hard but now i can read some of the manga i bought and, most of all the restaurant`s neon signs!!
me and my classmates decided to do to eat out all together last night, evryone was agree even beacuse it `m nmore simple to get in to a restaurant and poin at the menu than get in to the supermarket and spend 30min just to find out wich is the expiring date written on the milk box...
anyway,we met at Shibuya, one of the main areas of tokyo, and the first step was to decide where to go to eat and WHAT!
now, the main problem when you`re in japan attending a japanese language school, the othet memebers are from those countries that sometimes it`s even easy to don`t know the geographic position...guys from corean, tibet, mongolia nepal and china..no one could speak english and the conversation was ( and still is) just in japanse and i can assure that is not easy at all..but very interesting !
the place selected aflter a long long discussion made of "haa..mmhhh2, "hey, how is in japanese ...", "I know i know, YES in japanese might be.." and so going on, was a small restaurant out from the touristic sight, placed in a tiny tiny road "created" from the space ao two HUGE skyscraper..i felt as a lilliputian infront of gulliver`s shoes..
we chose that place beacuse students abroad don`t classified themself as Turist and according to that, you have to behave as a real japanese, going in the same place where japanese people go, eat the same thing....
the restaurant was terrible.
it stank, there was just a salary man already drunk, tring to speak wiht the soy sauce bottle infront of him..it wasn`t the best of the place but with the philosophy "hey, i`m hungry this place is REAL JAPN let`s get in..." we got in.
the weiter (there was even the weiter!) gave us the menu totally written in japanese and with no picutre to point at..
after along silence where the menu passed from hand to hand, the weiter came and asked something that sounded like "what di you want to eat?". All of us went for the same thing..unvelivable..the cook was going to cook TEN dishes of the same food..
the weiter stared at us for a while and then to the cook..speechless.
We felt proud of our first step in the "lesson number two, at the restaurant"..but evryone was so scared about what could happend after that. I have to admit, i was ready even to see a smoked rat in soy sauce and sushi...instead arrived this big soup wiht noodle and beef inside,erbs and spicy taste. If there`s some itlain who`s reading now, it was like SPAGHETTI IN BRODO A NATALE...
i liked and i found out how terrible can be for your stomach if you drink, instead of the beer, the sake wich is, usually, drank after the meal. We came back home drank. the day after at school i saw the most scary face of my life. The faces were red, the eyes half closed and all of us couldn`t move much otherwise we had to rush to the toilet..at each break after 50minutes of lesson, we reachd the roof to take some air and a dark coffe...the breaks are 4 and frm the second people started to desapper heading to go back home.
hte mission was accomplished.
bye
ale

i always hated going to school instead when my japanese course started in tokyo, i was very happy!
the morning starts at 7 am to catch the train at 7.56. noe the japanese train, as evryone knows, are crowdy, very crowdy. i mean is impossible to breath and to move, you don`t need to handle somewhere, the people around you keep your body motionless.
anyway, the train arrives at the station at 8.45, then i decided to have a walk across the Kabuki-cho, the redlights area of tokyo. At night that place is full of averykind of clubbing, streapers, pachinco (a game very close to flipper, or sometithing similar). The lighs make the night become day, you don`t feel the time passing. Girls in school uniform walk around and salarymen with glasses run behind them towards the love hotel..
in the morning the landskape is totally different...those salarymen, plenty of sexskills the night before,now lay on the street, alone, with hte head through the automatic doors of the pachinko`s places..very strange.
i arrived at my first day of school 5 min before, had a seat in a nice classroom, with carpet and beautiful chairs, like the one you usually find in the principal`s office in your high school
the other classmates start to arrive..a couple of chinese, two coreans girls,an italian guy a french,colombian an\d one american guy. The italian, marco, is a photographer which came in japan to follow the girl friend, the french guy,nicolas,left hong kong where lives with his wife, to come to study japanese...the american guy was similar to Mr. Burns, of "the simpson"!really, exactly the same face and the same tall and skynny body, even the nose was the same!

then the teacher came in..this girl "bitchy-chan",as we used to call her, wasn`t (according with the name) the best of the teache..yeallow teeth always showed wiht a large smile, a voice very similar to the one you can hear infront of the shop on the sale-day, and this terrible personality! like those girls that want to teach to have a minimum of power on someone..
thanks god, the other teacher, a guy, was great. Saito-san, used to have twi jobs, when he doesn`t teach he`s a plummer..amazing!
after 50 min of lesson we had the first break. Whent on the roof for a cofee, we met the others schoolmates..Paul, Andrea, Luc,Bernard and many others! and it was funny to see how adult people as we are, can come to school with another spirit comparing wiht the high schools time! i was happy to go to school and learn japanese,then i realized that just few of the other people were really interested in the language as a personal passion. As Marco, the photografer which followed the girlfriend, there was a lot of guys in the smae situation!!Paul came to japan for his partner jeff, Andrea because his wife is japanese and many may others just for work!

study abroad has been a great experience of Human Sociology!!
bye guys
ale

the day after i met jo, the australian flatmate which will became the great friend he is.
we had an italian coffee, just to start the day in a nice way...
i knew that after one week my japanese course will start and i wanted to be a tourist before sank on the japanese life!
after studied the subway (is a real study, if you get lost in the tokyo`s subway could be a serious problem), i took my bag, set my misic,placebo, jeff buckely, muse,cake..i pressed play and the pearl jam started to sing..
to go to the station it was a nice walk, almost ten min walkin, but just eight if you walk trough the graveyard..is very different from the normal idea of cemetery..is like a park, open twentyfour hours, wiht people doing jogging in, walking dogs, reading books and light up incense of the tomb while, wiht the rest of the family, they`re having a picnic..amazing.
i took the train and i went straight to the imperial palace in the hearth of tokyo.
i`ve been studying japanese history in hte last 4 years, for personale pleasure or for university. I know almost everything about that:emperors, shogun, wars and battles but, from your desk in the opposite side of the world is a totally different feelings.
just infront hte main entrance of the castle, there`s a huge, huge, huge square,full of small white stones. is impossible to see the castle from the outside because the high trees where it`s hide in, for the walls and for the torrente floating all around.
"doughter" in my ears was the only sound comining. It seemed that the time never moved from thwthousands years ago..it didn`t matter of the cars running just infront of it or the subway rushing under my feet..that place is never been touched from the stream of the historical events..it was like the palace was lying on a leave,peacefully and annything seemd to disturb His quiet, never in centuries!
i came from a country full of history at every corner, my city, rome, his an aliving history book, but in such way She changed her "shape"..it became part of the normal life and everyone there seems to have missed what happend n the last three thousands years!
here was different. the Castle was still there, without no power,surrended to the political choices and to the epire,the same one that once kneeld infront of his look, but you can still feel the grat authority and breath the energy his briks have.
sorry if i`m being melodrammatic, but it`s exactly what i felt there.

i came back home with a bottle of wine to drink with jo and breandan. we talked about eachother`s life, laughd...then the joint started to have effect , isaid "good night guys, see you tomorrow"
...and so to everybody now...goodnight
ale

hi everybody,
i don`t know how tis adventure started but now i`m here, far form my italian country and from my worldwide friends.
i came to japan when i was 17 years old with my mother. it was love at the first sight..
the Lights of Shinijuku, yes it seems the title of a movie but is the first thing that came straight to my head! A cold night, if i remember, but those lights warmed me up.
it begun like that, walking trough the touristic and noisy streets of tokyo, was like being part of a Playstation`s game!walking into a river of people ehre you can`t stops without be sank in! it seems stupid but, it meant a lot to me. People, never seen that many people all together, neither at the Madonna`s concert...it was scary, everybody sharing the same air,the same sky and the same sunset light. it impressed me a lot, even now,id\f i think to my first step out of the hotel, i can feel how my own operson was totally melted with the others.
i promised to my self that i`ll study japanese and move there as soon as i finished my univ.
And so it was. i left rome on october of the last year, hgalf way through the univerity. I just needed a break, just to go and "see what`s going on down there". I just...left everything. I was 22 years old (now i`m 23) when i step into Narita AIrport. I was tired for the jetlag, but to excited to have a rest. No one came to pick me up, even because i didn`t know anyone at that time, and after i realized this,i had a shiver down my back and i start to...walk.
No language skills, no confidence with subways, no confidence with..anything.
From Italy I booked a room in an appartament to share with 2 flatmates in Kodaira, an area north-east of Tokyo, gust outside the city, you know, just to safe money.
I still don`t know how i reached that place..once i get there i met Brendan, one of hte two guys. He gave me a cup of tea, showed me how the house worked (waehing machine, hoven, and rubbish) then he left. I was alne, no telephone, no idea where i was, i missed my mother as never in my life. Really, it was panic, real panic. I just didn`t know what was going on and what was going to happend next..
i got in my room, opened my luggages, try to don`t think to take a taxi to the airport and go back home!
It was hard, very hard. I had a shower and, talking to myself, i decided to keep dancing.. i was in the dancing floor and keep dancing was my decision. my first step was reached. I did everything alone, the house and the school`s starting the week aflter..that`s it.
i sat on my futon, the jaglag came back straight to my muscles. i lied down,the homesick slowly went away, i close my eyes and a tear came out with a smile. "u`ll be fine.." said my mother from far away.