The Eye of Patrick

Hello Yeh all,

I am updating again after a wonderful weekend. Firstly i will start off with my rage hehe… well you thought that person named Nic or the person i swore at in my last posting was bad, just realize the more crap he pulled after i posted. So i go to bed, and wake up and i see someone sleeping on our couch, guess who it is, it is him. He was sleeping on our couch because he was too lazy to go home and thought he could crash there, considering no one invited him that annoyed me. Then i hear he talked to my friend kevin and was like “do you remember seeing me come in” my friend is like “no” and he is like “neither can i, i was so wasted” Seriously those kind of people truely annoy me, people who think it is so cool that they forget what they were doing, it is not cool and when you do that in front of me, i feel more annoyed at you and all respect i have for you is less then i could ever imagine. Then supposely during his drunkeness he made a wonderful mess in the washroom that my friend had to clean up, plus he came into my room and pretended to be my friend and ask me questions, but i did not care and i blew him off. Then he went and took out the DVD from my friends computer and put his in to watch his movie, and pretends to think it is funny, my friend later said “my hate for him is so strong i could not enjoy it” then… what else… he did not say thank you, i swear this kid has no concept of manners. ERRRRRR, and i pity his host family who have to put up with him, he is too condending and thinks he is the shit, well he isn’t and i hope he rots in hell

My weekend… lets see… so i talked about friday then… saturday what did i do? Not much, i relaxed around my rez again (seems to be a trend) and then Rie came over and i went to have (JAPANESE PANCAKE!!!) okyonomiyaki (bad spelling) i had yakusoba which was wonderful, supposely this is kansai food and it was great. I will have to upload photos later. check my picture site if you want pictures, e-mail me and i can tell you the address. Which was nice, then we came back and everyone was lazy so i think we watched a movie. Oh right we watched the movie Ringu with Rie which was funny as she reacted so much to the movie, while for me it was not that scary, i think i have seen it enough times that it has lost its effect on me, though i bet if it was rainy and i was alone in my cottege on a stormy day i could get scared hehe… that is why i will never live alone.

then sunday? did i do something sunday? I am not really sure? did i people? who knows hehe… but monday i went a party with some people that we met at a Yakuniku resturant, it was interesting to see them outside of work. At first it was akward as everyone was not comfortable with each other, but over time peopel began to relax and have fun. I met some wonderful people there. They were very amazed that i had Japanese gf, which is not to amazing to me hehe… like i doubt people would be that excited in Canada, but i was happy to have something to talk about. There were other gaijans there who in my opinion were bad characters, they talked about getting drunk, slapped Maki jokely but was crued in my opinon and did not adjust there english to the fact that they did not speak it natively… but that is ok, sadly we had to leave early as i needed to get back.

but then… that is it… please ask me for my picture site, i really want to share….

people e-mail me

Oh also happy birthday my great love Mariko, so happy to be your bf on your 20th birthday.

MY BIRTHDAY IS OCTOBER 4TH

just a warning hehe…

Pat

And now on with my journal… today was umm… a interesting day to say the least.  I went to school where i had my hiragana and Katakana test, omg, it was friggin hard and i realized i need to study harder. But she gave me some sheets to study and stuff, and she let me use romaji (japanese writting using english characters) so that was vey nice of her.

Then i went to my other class, speaking, it is really getting busy now….

then i went home, and Howard, Kevin, Mohammed are like lets go to Osaka now, and ditch our classes, and i was like sure. As the classes are not too tough, this is the first time i have skipped a class since first year. So i probably won’t be doing that much. But i wanted to go to Osaka and purchase another camera. Just a little camera to use when i want to have fun and not take serious pictures as my better camera is too big to take for fun stuff.

But some how this idiot got invited on our trip, he lived here for like 3 days during intro and for some reason he thinks that means he still lives here. Whatever man, fuck off… so he is someone who has no personality except to annoy people and in the nanosecond i am in the same room as him i want to put a bullet to him But luckly he decided to go out with his other friends. And we met up with a girl named Risa. She was very nice and friendly. Mature and good personality. So that was nice…

Then on our way back to our residences, we took the wrong train, well actually the correct direction, just an express train that did not stop at our station. So we were on our way to kyoto, and we switched trains. But i was too exhausted to care hehe… so i just spent the whole train ride text messaging people.

We had curry and rice for dinner, yummy…

I think tomorrow i will spend it relaxing.

hello everyone, i am finally updating my journal again… i think it has been ages since i last updated my journal. I have been mixed with a feeling of lazyness and i do not know a feeling that it is not worth updating… no hehe it is lazyness and finding time to update it that i find is the problem. I mean when i have time i am too tired to update it, such an evil cycle of un-updating of journal hehe….

But i am slowly getting used to Japan, i mean i enjoy Japan and love Japan, it is getting used to my school and meeting new people. I do not know sometimes i feel like i am not fully in japan yet, that i am still somehow stuck in a english speaking zone. I do not know may be it is because most of the exchange students who come to Kansai are americans or people from native english speaking countries so the chance of find the diveristy that i discovered at Trent is not possible. I have met many interesting and new people, and slowly working my way in to Japanese culture, meeting new people, getting there cellphone e-mails and stuff, saying hi to when i run into them…. i know i must be proactive, i mean i can not sit at home and say i want japanese friends or i want this, and expect it to come to me. I must go out and get it and do it. I tried to do that with the golf and photo club, i left a message with both group in the hope of getting involved with them. I will join a group for sure, as i do not know, i want to be more involved in school affairs.

This weekend is a long weekend, so i will be making a trip to somewhere around Japan, i will start to post pictures again.

So today, i went to school, i have a really interesting japanese teacher, he is japanese but has lived in Austrilia for 16 years i think he said and speaks perfect english. He is not someone i will become friends with, but he seems like someone who is kind and helpful, whenever you have a question. Though the Japanese class is getting very hard, as we are learning more and more complicated sentences. I think when i learnt Portuguese i was not moving at this speed. But it is good, even if i only remember half of the stuff that i am taught it is good, as i will be a more better student as a result of it.

In Japanese there is 3 different writting systems, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, and they are all used in a sentence. Hiragana is used for basic structure of a sentence, while katakana is used for words that are not able to be written or spoken using hiragana or kanji words. While Kanji is a verison of the chinese writting system.

Then after Japanese i went home, and relaxed for a bit. I had class at 9-10, 1-2:20 and 4- 5:20, so it was very spaced out. But the problem with kansai gaidai is that the english classes are very simple and boring. I mean they are not hard. I think the logic is that they want you to spend more of your time reading and studying japanese, then doing stuff you can probably do in your own country. So that is good.

Then after that i met up with Kevin and Rie and her friends and we played Cards in the CIE area(kind of like a lounge for students) it as nice. But we were getting hungry so we walked to Hirakatashi and had a dinner together at a korean resturant i think? atleast the meal i ordered was korean hehe…

yah i know short reply, and i feel bad, but i will update hopefully more often. I will post tomorrow hopefully, e-mail me people!

bye bye

Hello

So updating again….

today is saturday…. or sunday as it is past 12 but who is counting hehe….

Yesterday i was in class and then i get a message from KEVIN and he says you want to go to osaka and i am like sure… so we text message for a bit during class. I am really loving this text mesaging hehe… It helped to kill time during what would normally be a boring class. I do not know… i need to really build a schedule as the classes for the most part here are very simple. Most are intro classes for topics that i have been studying for 2 years now, so it is some what redundent. But the logic is that you should be enjoying japan more and studying japanese… at the moment i feel i do not have a pattern yet and i am going from thing to thing without any real chance to relax.

so hopfully tomorrow, i will plan out my schedule, or a rountine of some sorts that i can follow… i know Mariko would be happy with that as i have no idea on when to chat to her, so it results in chaos hehe… I still love her

But yah… yesterday… i went to Osaka with Mohammed and Kevin and we met Rie, who was one of my tour guides in the earlier trips to Osaka. She is a very nice and friendly girl, and happy to have met her. Mohammed was funny… he was very excited to purchase his digital camera, so all along the train ride to meet Rie he would talk about it, and once we met her almost the first thing after nice to meet you was “where can i buy my camera” hehe… so we went to the electronic shop and he purchased his camera. They have such an amazing selection there, i hope to pick up a smaller model for fun shooting… I seriously need to read my book on it more…. taking photos that is….

Then we went to dinner at some italian resturant… which was really nice, though they brought my pasta way to early, like 10 minutes before the other people got there dish, so i had to wait for 5 minutes, then they all said i should eat. I was hungry plus i did not want my meal to cool down so i had to eat early…but i was still hungry when i was done, so i shared a pizza with mohammed, which was good as i was not to hungry for a full meal, but hungry enough that i needed to eat…

so we eat and later on one of Rie’s friends, Lisa came and we met her, she seemed like a very sweet girl, she wanted to learn english so we chatted at the resturant for what seemed like 3 hours or so, it was nice converstation, i forgot for a second about all the stuff in my life and just enjoying a simple converstation with friends….

But they had to leave as both of them were busy (lisa and Rie) and so we made our treak back to Hirakata, it was not a problem. I love metro systems so it is fun to nagivate between the lines and such. As we had to switch from the metro to the Keihan line, which is more of a inter-prefectural line, it goes between Osaka and Kyoto and stops at Hirakata which is in the middle… which is nice… it is not too expensive.

So that was my yesterday….

I am finally enjoying japan, i mean i did… but i am enjoying hirakata, though i need to go out into japan more, i still feel to not japan yet… but may be that is because i have so many international friends, that it is not like going from Canada where you would have all canadian firends to another country. I have spent a majority of my studies in such situations, so the beauty of an international environment has worn off, and i am used to it…

I am good… tomorrow will be a simple day, of cleaning and studying…

take care,
pat