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hey everyone, i'm back to italy since 2 weeks and i already need to go back to "my" japan! i know, i might sund crazy to many people who look at italy as the trip pf theyr life, but i really can't be here anymore!!! i saw all my friends again and i went at lunch at my grandma's..that was GREAT! i don't want to tell u the menu, but, trust me, it was amazing! I even see my father again, and that was my main worry..
my father is a great man, genouros, smart and....gorgeous! but he has a problem, he drinks a lot, since always, since i have memory of it, since they divorced.
Maybe this is not the best situation to tell u this, but, i think i need to tell this, to write to someone who doesn't know me, who doens't judge.
anyway, he drinks more since when the split up, or maybe this is what is good to me to think, to make him "innocent"...His brain as totaly made of alchool, so his blod, i really don't know how it can be awake and walk...he starts to drink in the morning adding some "grappa" (kind of superalchoolic sake) OR whisky to coffee for breakfast, then he goes trough an undefined number of wines and beers, rum, liquors, as so on until bedtime.. he doesn't get crazy, i think he never touched me with a finger in all my lfe and never he will but he's totally lost the touch with the real world.
it looks like he lives in a totally different dimension...
I can feel it with his questinos about thinghs happened years and years ago, for example askning me if all my child teeth fell down of if i still going at junior high.. He lives anything never happend, he decides what to accept or not, if there's something he doesn't like, he decides to don't remeber it! I'm living in japan since 2 years and still, he doesn't know why i'm there. I'm living with my man, and he doesn't want to know it, e never asked me his name, he doesn't have idea what my university degree is about...thanks god he still remebers my bitrhday!
It's hard to write all this, i don't think i ever done it before, but i hope i'm making it clear!
He never gave one cent to my mum to rise me up, they got diverced when i was 15 because he lost everything he had gambling and with horse racings... I talked to him but he's like all the others drug addicted:"I don't drink that much, what are u taliking about? i can stop anytime, i just to know why u want me to stop drinking!" That's what he used to tell me whenever i tried to understaind his mind!
guys, i'm not looking for a reson why h became like this aflter the person he was, i'm not trying to know how to help bhim because i know that's impossible to change a person, i'm just trying to find out how I CAN MAKE IT! I mean, how am i suppose to see him destroying himself like this, powerless.
i'm 10.000 Ks far from him and i'ms cared of his mind, he loves me and most of all my mom, he's not stable, he might to something bad, very bad, i'm scared for those rifles on the top of the fireplace at his home...

hey guys..ive been in late to tell you my way on top of the FUJImountain!!!
appointment at Kawaguchiko at 9.00 pm. and start to go up atmidnight..
it was a warm night, 26 degrees, nice weather and alot of people all together ready to go. Before going the guide told us to bring something very very very warm to wear because it will be cold in the morning; then he checked how many people in the group and started to climb. The mountain isn't a green land with trees, streams of water or summer flowers...it's like a vulcano. Hard brown soil made of rock, all over, nothing else. i colud see the land skape around me thanks to the light on my hat bought jusr few meters before to understaind what i was doing and, most of all, to remember.
After a while, it was midnight. Me and my boyfriend stopped to have a rest for few minutes. I sat down on (guess where..?) a big brown rock...drank a sip of sportsdrinik and i turned my had on the way me walked trhough. I couldn't believe to my eyes..tousand of others tourist where behind us foe the same porpouse!All togehter, wiht thoise tiny lights, walking and singing in the middle of the nicht on the way to the TOP! i din't say anything, just twinkled to my boyfriend then went back to our mission. He was terribly tired and i didn't blame him! we walked silently for anothe hour and half without saying anything..everytime i left his hand to reach my backpack he took it back and take what i needed because scared i might lose the concentration and slide down the road. We walked always togher like that..
the moon started to get bigger and bigger..was almost "there" where we thought will be the TOP of the great mountain. The road seemed neverending. At 3.30 everyone was exausted and it cold..
We reached the TOp at 4.00 o'clock in the morning and the price for what we did was an amazing sunrise coming up from the hearth, overcrossing hills then the clouds..the sunrise became the sun while we were heading back to the real world from the Top of the FUji..

yes...i decided to dedicate a day to the sun tain,
i needed to feel some sun on my skin after the long and col japanese winter, i really started to feel sick for the lack pf sunshine. So i plannesd my day trip to the closest beach. I`m in Nagoya noa, living with my boyfriend, that means that i left the caotic and multinational city of tokyo and headed towards the fourth biggest city of japan, Nagoya indeed.
I went to Shinmaiko, the closest seaside to the city. I took the MEitestsu line and i reached the beach 40 min later. This area is not that big and the water isn`t tath clear..let me tell you that i refused to put mi feey in for the scary color of the water. But the envirnment was, and still is, very nice, with music, small bars and alot of young people. As many ot\f the european, american and australian`s girls, the suntain is part of a beauty treatment that in summer is almost a MUST to have a perfect browny skin. To reach the PERFECT result it takes at least 1 week and during that time a girl put herself under the sunshine for 3/4 hours per day, turning on her back every 30 min and trying to avoid, as less as possible, the terrible shadow of the swimm wear that cam give some problem for the final results. For this reason exist very small (very small) swimmwerar, made of nothing that allow a girl to have the same tained color all over the body. TGhe top less is another way but it is much better to don`t considere it in japan. So, as many of you might know,i come from italy and Italy ois a country where on the beach, as long as you`re naked, it`s fine or anyway, no one makes any problem for how a girl looks like wiht a swimmwear.
I was lay down on my stomac and i opened the string of the top pf the bikini just to be sure to don`t find any weird sign of it once at home..my god..i`ll never do it again. People strted to looked at me as a kid looks at the chocolate..like lions read to attack. But there wasn`t much of attack,actually no one tried to talk to me or asking the telephone number, as sometimes happend on the beach..
the stared at me, i felt bad, embarassed and..sad, i almost cried.
then a guy came to me and told me : "it`s better if you close your bikini..some one can asking you for a job..take care please, it`s dangerous.." then he left.
i didn`t know what to say or whta to think. Used as i am to western country where girls go around in topless or with tiny tanga, even when there are families around, now i was very surprised. My idea of japan was very different about this point of view..i mean, yhis country has the most reach trad of pornpography in the world, school girls used to wear the famous sexi uniform that drive men crazy at every corner of the world, any manga you can buy contains pornography with half naked character with child`s faces..and now because aforeigner girl is liying on her stomach with the back side of the bikini opened (that means without showing the breast) to take a little of tain on her back, can be confused as a prostitute??
that is very very sick. I had to leave the beach scared of the men around me, walking fast towards the train station without thinking how people have the lack of common sense and with no idea of the rest of the world.
i really hope this country will wake up soon other wise the lighthouse of a great turism here will collapse as a sand castle..

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