Japanese Movie Theater!

If you enjoy watching movies, you can have a good time in Japan! The above is the sign and name of the Mint Kobe building near Sannomiya JR Station. At the 9th floor you can find the movie theater. On the 7th and 8th floor there are some restaurant and the remaining part of the building is a shopping center.

There are many screens... I think about 8 different shows at the same time. What is interesting is that all Foreign Movies, like Hollywood movies are in original Language with Japanese subtitles. Of course you can enjoy japanese movies as well, but they are quite difficult to understand as they might contains some jokes difficult to catch.

I always go on the "Movie-day", twice per month, on the 1st and on the 16th. On those days, it costs only 1000 yen (normal price is 1800 yen). Lately they had some movies in 3D, like Avatar that was really nice, but for 3D movies there is an additional service fee of 300 yen.

On "Movie Days" I go usually around 2 PM after school, and book a ticket for the 6PM show. At which time, I can still choose the seat i like. If the 1st or 16th is on staturday or sunday the movie theater is really full! When i went to watch Avatar, I could manage to get one of the latest tickets, even though i went there few hours in advance.

To find out more, check the official website here!

Meet Inada Sensei!

She is Inada Sensei. Full name "Inada Hiroko". She is our main teacher in the "C" class and we have her on Monday and Friday. Let's know her better !

She was born in Kobe but she is now Married and Living in Osaka. She has two boys that already finished the university and currently working.

She has travelled to europe before and visited Spain and Paris. She would like to visit Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and travel in Europe. One of her dreams would be to Travel around the world!

Her favorite food, among many, are Italian Food, Yakiniku, Sukiyaki, Syabusyabu and Sushi. When she has some free time, she likes drawing or hike on surrounding mountains.

Inada-Sensei is very dedicated to her job. She listen to her student when they have a wish and tries, if possible, to fullfil their wishes. One of the things we asked her at the beginning was to get more interesting things and readings...and now, every week, we get interesting articles on news and traditional things on Japan!

Her personal message to all current and new students:
一緒に たのしく 日本語を 勉強しょう！
[together-with fun-Japanese language-learn-let's]

Let's enjoy learning Japanese together!

Dormitory or Apartment?

If you are thinking of coming to study in Kobe soon, you might wonder what is like to sleep in a dormitory or what kind of acomodation to choose and what to expect.

Life in a Dormitory
What is the life in a dormitory like? You need first of all to think that in a dormitory, you will need to live togheter with many other different people and cultures. It might not be as easy as you think, but on the other hand, is the cheapest choice.

I've experience both, life in a dormitory and life in an apartment. In the dormitory, not everyone is sleeping, eating or watching movies at the same time. When I was in the dormitory, one of the students loved to watch Japanese Anime until 2 or 3 in the morning (he slept usually in the afternoon). Then other students enjoyed a nice dinner around midnight or 1 AM. Another one, because of the time difference, usually had a chat with his family after 1 AM.

It might be noisy. And you might need to clean up other people stuff, like Kitchen Pans, if you want to cook your dinner. Of course, the rule is that everyone has to keep everything clean, but since the age goes from 18 to over 35 years old students, not everyone is the same.

On the price side, on the other hand, is really convenient. Let's take a look:

Rent
Dormitory rent is 35,000 Yen for a double room and 45,000 yen for a single room. An apartment start at around 55,000 yen per month.

Fees
Gas, Electricity and Water are included in the dormitory base fees. Living Alone, you need to calculate about 4000 yen for Electricity, 7000 yen for Gas and about 3500 yen for Water in addition to the rent.

Furniture
Basic furniture and tools are included in the dormitory. For an apartment, you can rent one already furnished, but you will still need to get your own Futon (10,000 Yen) your own sheets (3,000 Yen) and various Pans and Pots (around 1000 yen Each).

Own Apartment
Of course in your own apartment you are more quiet, you can do laundry and cook whenever you want (in the dormitory, 5 or 6 people, you might need to postpone your dinner), and don't need to queue up in the morning for the bath. On the other side there is the cost to consider.

My suggestion is: Try the dormitory first, single room if possible, and if you don't like it you can find yourself an apartment. But something to know, if not otherwise agreed with the school, is that if you enter the dormitory, is normally for the whole period (for instance 6 months).

What many students did, was to stay at the dormitory 6 months and then they found and shared an apartment. Doing so, you can actually choose the people you want to stay with, and it might become cheaper to share expenses...

Late for school!

Today, i got late to school. These days are quite cold and in the morning it take a while before i manage to get out of my warm bed ;)

So, I got 3 minutes late to school. At Kobe Toyo Japanese College they are quite strict with attendance. If you get one minute late, you need to fill up the justification form. There is a rule that is explained on the first day when you get the orientation information. Of course, at that time I didn't know a lot of japanese, so i only caught 1% of what was said.

The rule is: if you get to school 4 times and are late below 10 minutes, it will count as a 1 hour. If you come 1 time but you are late more than 10 minutes, it will count as a whole hour. Your attendance is then recorded every day and at the end of the month you get the whole period statistics.

Attendance is important if you plan to stay more than one year. This because when you go to renew your VISA for another year, you need to show a good attendance to get your VISA renewed without problems. If your attendance is not good, they might deny you the renewal.

A funny story... the first time I had to fill-in the form, I didn't know that I had to bring a copy to the teacher in class...so i basically threw it away as i thought the copy was for my record... imagine the face of the teacher when i gave her my teared up late-justification-form ...

Movie Week!

This week was "Movie Week". Every now and then, we get Movie Weeks at school. We can watch a movie at school. It means that one movie is proposed and the same movie can be watched during the week at different times one or more times.

This week movie's title was "Arigato". The movie starts with the Big Earthquake that struck kobe in the 1995. In the movie, a man that had a Photo Camera Store, lost everything. Luckily, the whole family (wife and 2 daughters) survived safely. After the earthquake, they were thinking what to do. First they helped others and helped rebuilding the city. At the same time, the main character wanted to start again playing golf (he didn't play for many years) and become a Pro Golfer. Not an easy taks, since he was not that young anymore.

He trained hard, got big support from family and friends and finally, with all savings, went to tokyo for the Pro Golfer Exam. He finally made it and passed the exam.

It's not easy to understand a movie in Japanese, even after 1 year here. Is quite different than going to school and doing exercises. Luckily, there are subtitles (in japanese) so if you can read a little, can help a lot ;)

Lunch at School...Pegase Café!

Before coming to Japan, I've always had a lot of questions for which I didn't have an answer. For instance: How much, beside school fees, does life in Japan cost?.Today I will talk about "Lunch" costs.

In general, food in japan is not too expensive. You just need to be a little attentive on where to buy, and keep an eye on special sales. An example? You can buy 4 bananas for 250 yen, or, wait for the sale, and buy 20 of them for 200 yen. Prices might vary a lot. For a lunch, prices can go from 600 to around 1000 yen for a set.

What's a set? A set usually includes a bowl of white rice, a Miso Soup and a main dish. Plain natural water and sometimes green tea are free. A soft drink might also be included.

You might have noticed from the school's main website that there is a link to the Pegase Café. We get a huge discount there! 50% off!

There are usually 5 or 6 menus you can choose from. Normally with a choice of at least Fish, Meat and Pasta. The set includes a small salad, a soup (everyday different), a choice between bread or white rice (with some toppings) and a Soft Drink that can include (but not limited to) Orange Juice, Tea, Coffee (hot/cold) or coke in addition of a glass of water (refillable) that is brought to you as soon as you sit down.

If you are really hungry, you can get extra rice or bread at no additional cost. How much? for students, the whole set is 490 yen, which is really a bargaom given what you can get!

The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays. Lately, we found a nice sushi shop near Sannomiya JR station, where we can have 7 pieces of sushi for 700 yen and it includes a Miso Soup as well. The fish is really fresh, big slices and taste good! Normally, you get better deals for lunch than for dinner. In fact, dinner sets, costs usually between 150% or 200% than lunch sets.

I hope to have given you a little insight on lunches ;). Have questions about japan or the school? just leave a me a comment!

Fukubukuro

Fukubukuro (福袋) literally "lucky bag" is a "surprise bag" sold at the end of december. Most of the time, you buy it but you don't know what is inside until you open it.

Normally, if the price of the bag is, let's say 10,000 Yen, the content inside is of higher value. For instance, these days, they still had some lucky bags at a local electronic store for around 15,000 yen (150 USD) which were worth about 25,000 Yen (250 USD). They contained a Digital camera and a Digital Picture Frame.

There was a news some time ago, that in Tokyo, the Apple store had this kind of bags and were sold for around 30,000 yen (300 USD). Among all the bags (which mostly contained ipods and accessories) there were few of them with a bigger surprise. The lucky ones, maybe 3 or 4 people, went home with a shiny Macbook (worth over 1000 USD).

I guess, as our teacher said, probably next year, everyone will want to get a Lucky Bag at the Apple store hoping to be the lucky one ;)

Back to School!

We are back, well, almost all of us. Only about half of the class is back. I guess all our classmates are extending their holidays of few days ;)

Class started at full speed and tomorrow we have already the test for Unit 16. As you can see from the picture, the unit 16th talks about Hot Baths in Japan which are called 露天風呂 (ろてんぶろ). It's the first time I hear this word. Before I've heard about 温泉 (おんせん) which means Hot Spring. Apparently the first one is more to define a hot bath in the Open, while the second one is a more general term for a hot bath.

If you want to take a hot bath near Kobe, there is a well known place called "Arima" where they have many Onsens. I went there once. One thing you should know is that in Japan, hot bath are separated for man and women, and another thing is that you cannot wear anything, you have to enter the bath bare naked.

The temperature in Arima, when I went there, was around 42°C. I can tell you that I like to take a nice hot bath at home, but 42°C is really a lot! I could only stay in there like 5 minutes! (and it took me about 10 minutes to manage to enter it slowly!)

If you want to read more, you can find a wikipedia article and few links here.