I suck at Japanese

Turns out, I suck at Japanese. Big shock.

My routine is apparently going to be: Get up, eat, take highway bus to Fukuoka City. The view from the bus is actually pretty spectacular as it crosses a bridge going over the harbour, my amazing photoskills notwithstanding.

"My blogger went to Fukuoka and all I got was this shitty picture."

 Walking through the metropolitan Tenjin I was like

The simultaneous-pic-and-selfie feature on my phone is amazeballs!

feeling very much like

while I was like

.

Thankfully, the buildings were very helpful and supportive.

ON-WAAAAAAAAARD!

And eventually, like mana from the heavens, it appeared!

"Multiple awards". Sounds promising! <3

OhmygodtheEntranceit'sRightHere!

 Anticlimactically, I'd given myself such ample time that the place hadn't actually opened yet. So I just hung out with a vending machine for a while.

I'd like to take a minute just sit right there
I'll tell you that this day turned into quite a social affair

Went in and had my placement test and interview. Which was embarrasing. Because I suck. Was not prepared for Japanese oral test, Icantellyathat. Thankfully, I got placed into the chapter 7 class after all, which was exactly where I belong according to the Japanese 1 course at NTNU. But I so need to brush up on my adjectives! Ugh! /shudder/

Fact dump: The style of GenkiJACS* is tiny little classes (8 maximum) arranged according to level, using the Genki textbooks (the same as the ones being used at NTNU, actually! Sweet! I'll totally get a textbook refund for bringing my own!). People can join at any monday (although complete beginners start in the first week of any month), and stay for pretty much any number of weeks. My accomodation is arranged through the school, and there are several options other than homestay as well. The school is tailored for westerners, and the students are primarilly European or American types.

*gotta mention that this is actually a "sponsored link", as the school offers a few freebies to people bloggin' about them. What, Han-Silly, you've sold out already? Yes, my friend. Yes I have.

Following my morning assigned traumatic experience, I went with three of my other first-dayers to splurge on some first class ramen.

Remind me to take you guys through the process of ramen-ordering at some point. It is literally half the fun.
(The other half is sluuuurrrrrppppiiiiing the noodles! :D )

Following this I had my first actually class; me, the teacher, and four other nice people. We mainly covered a bunch of Kanji that I was supposed to know for my exam in December, so I went out with a profound disquiet resulting from the ineptitude of my memory. But it was kinda fun too. But did I mention that I suck at Japanese?

To reward myself for sucking at Japanese, I took yet another group of nice people up on their offer to go for gelato and crêpes. Nothing like a shitload of calories to assuage a feeling of academic insequrity!

Whipped cream nutellastrawberry rollup extrrrrravvaganza.
It's like a burrito made of orgasms.
Every single Japanese crêpe deserves an episode of Epic Meal Time.
Because they are ridiculous. 

Then, because This is Japan Goddamnit, we went and had an hour of afternoon karaoke.

Can you guess the nationality of some of the people in the group? (Hint: German)

On my way home I had a snack outside a 7-eleven where I met Japan's only non-racist cat

and eventually shared an evening meal with my host mother, consisting of Japanese tangerines, Not-Bread and brown cheese from home!

YUM! (even with Not-Bread)

So that was a thing. Tomorrow is a national holliday in Japan, so I'll actually not be going back to school before wednesday. Instead, we're going on a field trip that I think will be very interesting, thought-provoking, and possibly horrible.

I will probably be a bit shaken after tomorrow, and be thinking about way more important shit than my own whateveritis. So I want to share one of my thoughts from today before it becomes insignificant.

Because it just so happens that the people I hung out with this afternoon all sucked a lot less than me at Japanese. They were actually really good at it, despite being (to all appearences) ranging from slightly to significantly younger than me. At first that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Why? Maybe because being good at something mutually valued is an easy way to find social confidence. Maybe because (and this is getting a bit personal) I tend to tally my own value by my achievements as they are perceived by my peers. But then I once again realized something profound, that I always kind of know yet tend to forget:

These people have all been studying hard and for a long time. Their achievements are entirely to their own credit, and in no way at all to the detriment of mine.

That's kind of important. However, to end on something less pretentious, here is a picture of me faking karaoke:

Peace out!