Winter Holidays!

It's time for some holidays! All students will have time off from December 19th to January 11th. Some of us (like myself) will go home to visit relatives.

It has been already 9 months since I came here and can't wait to see my family ;)

Happy Holidays everyone! and see you in January!

Kobe Luminarie

This year, too, there it was... The Kobe Luminarie! This Memorial is held once a year from the beginning of December for 14 days to remember the Big Earthquake that hit Kobe in 1995.

I've been speaking with some japanese and apparently at the beginning there was only the light show but after few years, food shops appeared all around and now is really a nice festival.

Every year, about 6 millions people visit it. The location is between Sannomiya and Motomatchi.

There are many shops all around and you can really enjoy the traditional Japanese food.

Traditional Food includes Grilled Squid, Salted Japanes Noodles, Okonomiyaki, and all kind of Grilled meat, like Yaki Toris

It was the first time for me to visit the Luminarie. It is really impressive how many lights have been arranged to decorate the city. If you have the chance to be around in Kobe during December, don't miss it!

Year end Party!

Last friday was the year end party! This is the last week of school before year end and starting around the end of this week, some of the student (like myself) will fly back home for the winter holidays.

So, last friday we had year end party with all the students. Two simple rules: (1) bring some food and (2) bring a 500 yen gift.

As for the gift, a song was played and while playing, we in circle, passed our gift to the next person on our side. It went on like this until the end of the song, at which point, the gift you had in your hands...was yours!

I got in mine some chocolate and mochi!

During the evening, Yamada-Sensei played a song with his guitar... even he forgot a little bit the song, it was nice to hear :)

Student's Birthday!

This week 6 students from the 'C' class had their birthday in November or December. As it is the custom, they got their gift from the school! A nice fruit pudding cake!

The one in the middle is Yamada-Sensei. He is a bright and smart Teacher that joined this school in April. He was kind of shy at first but now he is really an enthusiastic teacher!

The classmates in the picture are from 3 different countries: China, Singapur and Korea...

That fruit cakes really looks delicious... :p

Difficulty reading Japanese?

Learning Kanji, is one of the most time consuming activity. It takes long time and a lot of effort for students non coming from a country where Kanji are used. For Chinese or Korean Students that have a knowledge of Kanji (yes! Koreans use sometimes Kanji, too!), is still difficult sometimes to remember how to read them.

Sometimes, when you surf the internet, you would like to be able to read the kanjis or quickly have the meaning translated, but you don't want each time to look in your dictionary or go to google translator.

Fortunately, there is a tool out there that can help! Is called "Rikaichan" and is produced by Polarcloud.

This software instantly translates the kanji when you move your mouse over them, like in the following screenshot:

What do you need to use it?

1) You need to install Firefox as an Internet Browser (www.mozilla.org). It's available for Windows and Apple Mac, so you can install it on any Computer.

2) Once you installed firefox, open it and go to (www.polarcloud.com) and Install Rikaichan. Rikaichan is composed by the following modules:

- The Main Extension: The main program, you need to install this first
- The Dictionary: Install this, to have the Japanese dictionary installed
- The Name Dictionary: Install this to have a dictionary of all Japanese Family Names

Once you have installed the above, you can Open Firefox and and on any webpage, with the right-click on the page, you can enable Rikaichan.

From now on, whenever you move your mouse on a Kanji, a box will appear to show you how to read and the meaning!

JLPT Test in Kobe

Today a lot of the students took the JLPT test. I took Level 3. From our School I only met 4 students. We took the test in Kobe at the Kobe University.

The above is the Test voucher that is an identification sheet as well. Even though we had to bring another identity document, nobody asked for it. The test started at 9:45 and we finished at 14:35. It was not too intensive. Even tough the time frame is almost 6 hours, the test itself took about a little more than 2 hours. The remaining time were breaks, lunch and preparation. Before starting the test, it takes about 15 minutes. During that time, they check identities, we get booklets and answer sheets and wait for the actual test to begin.

This is the room were we took the test. In this room there were about 80 people. In total I could count 4 different classes of people taking level 3 (around 300 people in total).

One of the think that I could appreciate the best, was the Audio system. Very clear and crisp sound. You can see the big speakers at the front. When I took the level 4 in switzerland 2 years ago, they used a normal radio player which was barely audible.

Even though there will be some more little tests at school before the winter holidays, at least the biggest one is now behind :)

All Students Busy for the JLPT Test this week!

All students during the past few weeks have been busy to prepare for the upcoming JLPT test on next Sunday december 6th. There was a special class organized by the school to prepare for it. Last week we had a test-run for the JLPT at school. We took the 2008 test and hopefully gave us an understanding on where we stand for the real one on Sunday.

This morning, we got a surprise from the school. Each of the students taking the test on Sunday got a small "encouragement-gift". A nice wrapped bag containing candies and a warming patch. Unfortunately everyone got busy eating the candies and even my bag got empty before I could take a picture 残念（ざんねん）！

Thank you for the nice gift!