3 bedroom houses for 50,000 are difficult to find but not impossible. I found it in a free English language Kansai area publication at the library. The house was a ten minute walk from the Nishinokyou Kintetsu station. I moved from Shiga prefecture to Nara just for the cheap rental and looked for a job later.

Jen_Ai_Chan Wrote:What is wrong with the way we dress?
It gets pretty cold in the winter, and a nice, thick jacket and thermal underthings and big warm boots prevent the loss of limbs to frostbite.

I'm currently in Edmonton. While this winter is rather gentle, last winter regular dipped down to around -50C. On my way home today the LED temperature display at the trainstation said it was .1K (kelvin). A new record!

Anyways, it is still possible to be fashionable AND warm. The key is layering. I put 0 thought into my outfits other than warmth and I still get frequent compliments for being stylish .

FutureBlues Wrote:My rather longwinded point is: you don't have to give up ANY and ALL personality and independence in order to be part of a group.

I agree, but I disagree with "ANY", some sacrifices has to be made.
I'm not talking about "life dreams" and "big chances" sacrifices, neither minor things, but sometimes one have to sacrifice somethings for others, like a weekend but not a holiday or an hour only.
Honestly, I don't consider someone without a specific target to reach in life a person, but rather a walking frame, sorry to say so, but it's necessary to make your choices the way you want to be a person, that's what humans are! But giving up whole years or life dreams for the group isn't right, MAYBE SOMETIMES it is though, lol.

Ben_Nielson Wrote:I think everyone has something. That said, they're still a boring lot.

I think most foreigners who live in Japan really get fed up with the people they work with. Most of us work in schools (or maybe companies) full of middle aged people just doing middle aged stuff. It's boring. It's the same way in the west. I know I have this problem myself, as there's like a 10-15 (or more) year age gap between me and any of the teachers I work with. Nice people, but boring. I'd be in the same situation if I was working in a high school in the US.

I'm really confused! Sometimes I find those "interesting" people (as how they drag people easily and how they become like the head of most of the talking) pretty boring, while those overshadowed people VERY VERY interesting (I find some very interesting thinking or hobbies in them), sometimes I find others bored by what I'm talking about, but with many other people, talking about the same thing, I make a hot discussion (lol) and have a great time, why?
I think it's something personal, in my previous uni, I had very limited social life, but found 3 very interesting people, and now in my current one, I became a VERY social guy, and didn't find anybody interesting yet!!! I really think it's a personal thing to find some people interesting and others not.
And about those you found boring, Did you knew them well enough? Did you knew how they think and how they live?

FutureBlues Wrote:Japan, more than any country I've ever been to, is the land of black and white.

Wow this is the first time I read something like that (about the whole post, Honestly, they sound boring, but the way they are very different, they are interesting too, lool.

Edit: Reading all you posts, I think that life in Japan can be interesting, not ideal, but interesting, I'm looking forward to it.
And HEY!! what's bad about being talkative?? I don't like sitting with my mouth shut for 1:30 hrs/day in bus!!!!

Perhaps living with boring people around you all the time says more about yourself than about them.

zwarte_kat Wrote:Perhaps living with boring people around you all the time says more about yourself than about them.

My mother used to say "There's no such thing as boredom, only boring people."

Actually, turns out that my parents just completely failed to surround me with interesting stuff. Now that I'm an adult, I -never- have free time. I have hobbies that I've quit simply because I didn't have time for them and everything else.

But the point still rings true.

Thats why I quit videogames and have only touched my guitar like once in the past year. Other hobbies are more pressing

Play Japanese Guitar Hero?

That's nothing like a real guitar

I wonder if there is a Japanese ver of Rockband though. Is a good game for parties. Especially if you have the balls/blood-alcohol-level to sing o/

To be fair, it wouldn't be much like Japanese or video games either.

"Only old people use real guitars" -Stan from southpark.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Thats why I quit videogames and have only touched my guitar like once in the past year. Other hobbies are more pressing

I quit video games a long time ago, but I couldn't do without my gi'tar.

Jarvik7 Wrote:That's nothing like a real guitar

I wonder if there is a Japanese ver of Rockband though. Is a good game for parties. Especially if you have the balls/blood-alcohol-level to sing o/

They are coming out with one. It was mentioned last July, but no new news since. I am waiting anxiously, to say the least!

stehr Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Thats why I quit videogames and have only touched my guitar like once in the past year. Other hobbies are more pressing

I quit video games a long time ago, but I couldn't do without my gi'tar.

When the Final Fantasy 13 games come out, Japanese version of course, I won't leave my apartment

http://kotaku.com/5012315/rock-band-turn...ertainment

Well crap. I guess I'm buying the accessories for the PS3 after all. I've current got all the stuff for the 360 version. -sigh-

I suppose there's a small chance the 360 version will be importable, but I -know- the PS3 one will be.

はじめまして。Big handshake to everybody in here. My name is ファビオ. It's my first post, but I had to start somewhere sooner or later. My story follows on briefly. I was born in Italy near Milan, lived there until 2003 then moved to New York. I really loved living five years in the city. It changed my life because I met my wife there in '05. We started living together in the East Village and then decided to get married. From Manhattan to Italy then back to her country. We've been living in Japan since last September.
On day one my level of japanese was limited to the ability of writing and reading kanas, without understanding a single word, of course. That was it. Didn't know how to count! Nowadays I am somewhere between JLPT4 and JLPT3, but still pretty poor because I can't have a conversation. I am on and off school lately, focusing more on self-study, but I will be back in April to finish off the course I’ve begun in Nagoya.
That said, my life as today is concentrated on the study of the language only. Don't have any friend yet. My wife is working most of the day and it's difficult for me to go anywhere by myself, considering nobody speaks English around here. As you probably anticipated I'm having a hard time at the moment, not just because of the so called “culture shock”, which I didn’t experience much, but more because I am "riding" alone most of the time. Having to say that I missed NYC and its totally culturally mixed society, more than anything, I can imagine settling down in a small city no more.
There's some things that really impressed me about this country:
1. Very rarely they raise their voice. I grew up speaking loudly and moving my hands in the process, but when I do it here, they look strangers and they just stare at my hands moving.
2. In large cities’ apartments the bathroom is right next to the entrance. I don’t know you but glancing at the hole first thing back home, lose me my appetite.
3. At any subway stop anytime, they never completely wait the other passengers to get off. If you do something similar in New York: “Getta f#*% out of my way… What’s wrong with you!” shouting.
4. I still have to find a Japanese word for “sex”, but they have a verb that means “talking to myself”. I’m wondering if you can use it only in monologues: you say to yourself that you talk to yourself, by yourself. Lovely.
5. My wife told me last year: <Don’t worry. There’s a lot of non-japanese in Nagoya.> The metropolitan area of Nagoya is 10 million, but when I walk on the street the few foreigners I saw, they look at me like I’m holding a gun. But I am the one that walks away scared speechless.
6. The JR train company employees. In Italy they don’t shaved in the morning, they’re rough and they’ve been known along as the Controllers. What they ought to do is making sure of two things: that you have a valid ticket or that you actually have a ticket. The JR train attendants gently provide information when asked to and they vow to customers right after entering in the car and right before leaving, even if nobody is looking at them as usually happens… when I am not in the train.

There’s much more to it, but it’s getting too long, so I’ll cut it off here. Hope you shared a laugh with me about all this. So long. Ciao and 気をつけて。

fabiomandrioli Wrote:4. I still have to find a Japanese word for “sex”

はめ／はめる, やる, セックス（する）, エッチ（する）, possibly a few others that I'm forgetting.

(Guess who translates エロ本 in his spare time?)

~J

する by itself also means sex, in the same way as English "do it".
食べる means sex too, and not just oral.

(Guess who has a Japanese girlfriend in his spare time?)

〜J７

Or why not simply use 遊ぶ?

I believe Tobberoth's girlfriend speaks Japanese as well ...

woodwojr Wrote:

fabiomandrioli Wrote:4. I still have to find a Japanese word for “sex”

はめ／はめる, やる, セックス（する）, エッチ（する）, possibly a few others that I'm forgetting.

(Guess who translates エロ本 in his spare time?)

~J

Oh, man. My very first translation job was translating pink manga from Japanese to English. Tough to keep concentrating on your job when the text is accompanied by all those cra~zy pictures! :o

性交する is "sexual intercourse".

If you need to tell them you want it, you're doing it wrong anyway.
How do you say: "Just do it" in Japanese? It's what I would like to say to a lot of Japanese people. Though I would think they'd understand the English phrase by now..

zwarte_kat Wrote:If you need to tell them you want it, you're doing it wrong anyway.
How do you say: "Just do it" in Japanese? It's what I would like to say to a lot of Japanese people. Though I would think they'd understand the English phrase by now..

いい靴。

俺と遊ばーない？

haha OK I'll try it out