Hey everyone, we hope you guys are fine! We are still following the settling in process and establishing a sort of every-day-life. This week has been extremely interesting for us as we had some important meetings.
Niklas was attending a two-day conference organized by his new department, however the conference didn’t take place at the university premises but at a beautiful location in the city center of Kanazawa. Japanese researcher as well as international guests were attending and giving talks. Some of the guests we had met previously at the weekend trip to Gokayama, so it was nice for Niklas that he already knew some of the conference attendants. On Monday evening, the conference dinner took place where I was invited, too! This time, we went to a Japanese restaurant called “Meatls” where lots of courses were served! Having dinner with a working group, it is often custom to order “all you can eat” offers where you are served with various dishes for a specific amount of time (usually 2 hours). After the meat only course on Saturday, we also had fish this time. And let me tell you, it was delicious! Some of the Japanese PhD students were explaining every course to us and showing us how to eat fish best with chopsticks. It was such a fun and interesting evening, we had a very good time. And the bus drive afterwards was not crowded. So, perfect evening. Niklas talk the following day went well and afterwards he was rewarded with a new dining table! It finally arrived at the furniture shop and we were able to fetch it and to build it pretty fast. The dining-on-the-floor times are finally over!
We are both happy to enjoy our meals while sitting at a table!
Niklas will write a separate post about his life at the university (of course with lots of pictures of the campus grounds that is located in the hillside of Kanazawa, in the green woods - very beautiful by the way) so I won’t give too much away now. Except that on campus, you will also have some warnings of bears walking around… One of the international guest researcher even saw a baby bear walking around one evening! Niklas will tell you more about the university grounds, the many cafeterias and other secrets soon.
I had quite a social week! As most of you know, I do not only want to find some part time job, but more importantly, I want to make new friends and learn about Japanese every-day life and culture. So, some months before I went to Kanazawa, I was browsing a facebook group called “Tandem Japanese/German” and asked if anybody who might live in Kanazawa, was interested in speaking German again and would like to meet with me as soon as I was there. That’s how I met Rumi, a Japanese woman living in Kanazawa, who was studying in Germany once and wanted to meet for talking German again (and teaching me talking Japanese). We met at a coffee shop quite close to our apartment and it was so nice! She brought fresh vegetables from her garden as a gift and let me tell you, those were tasting absolutely delicious! We had a wonderful time at the coffee shop and will meet again soon so I can train my Japanese skills.
On Tuesday, I met with a new acquaintance I had made the prior week: Risa is a teacher for English language and runs her own school in Kanazawa. I met her because she had a post on her website, stating that English speaking people in Kanazawa could come to her school to get some information about life in Kanazawa and interesting events. So, I decided to follow her suggestion and that’s how we met. And soon we realized that both our husbands were working at Kanazawa university and, even better, in the same department! How crazy is that? We definitely do live in a small world… We went to brunch together to a beautiful café near Kanazawa called Botanical Deck which served great and organic food. Together with her little son we spent a nice time at the café and talked about living in Kanazawa. It was really fun and I enjoyed it very much. She and her husband, who is from Czech Republic by the way, are well connected to an international community and know how it is when you start your new life in Kanazawa as a foreigner. I am sure this was not our last meeting. :)
Two days later, Niklas and I met Professor Sato and Professor Shimura, two professors for German language at Kanazawa university. How did we manage that? Well, it all started in Mainz… Our Japanese teacher Yukiko had organized a meeting at her home with another Professor (Professor Miyashita) who taught German language at Kanazawa University and who is now staying in Mainz for one year. He told us a lot about living in Kanazawa and he introduced us to his former colleagues who were happy to receive us at the university premises. We had a wonderful meeting with them. They showed us their institute and told us about their regular events where we have the possibility to take part. And they suggested to tutor the wife of a former colleague who wants to speak German again. I hope to meet her soon and to discuss the details with her. It definitely sounds like an exciting opportunity for me. During that day, it was raining heavily and we had troubles to get to our meeting without getting too wet. Luckily, most pathways at the university are covered by roofs and, even better, the main bridges that you have to cross in order to move from the northern to the southern part are all sheltered and you can even choose if you want to walk on the roof (if there is a sunny day) or use the tunnel. This will also be nice in winter when it is snowing and presumably very cold.
Using the bridge tunnel during heavy rainfall is really a good solution to walk around without getting soaked.
My Japanese class was also very interesting and this time I had the impression that I could understand more than the last time. Jay!
Back to school Franzi!
After class I did some sightseeing and visited the Ishiura Shrine. I really love the atmosphere you encounter at every shrine. Even if it’s located next to a very busy street, you enter the grounds and suddenly you get a peaceful and calm feeling. Truly impressive!
And by the way, this day was the first (and only…) day with sunny phases (as the picture below proves)! However, the sun only lasted some hours. Thre rain is never too far away.
I have also started yoga again! There is a yoga class close to our apartment and the trial lesson was great, although the whole class is in Japanese! But because the teacher tried to explain everything in English and because yoga is kind of universal, it was easy to follow the instructions. And I will try to learn some basic vocabulary (like inhale, exhale, downward dog pose, etc.) for the next time. ;-)
As you can see, we are both busy establishing our every-day-lives and try our best to get settled in a new network of friends, work colleagues and acquaintances.
Every-day-life stories
This time I want to tell you a little bit about the rainy season. In Japan, you can find all four seasons that we also know in Europe. Additionally, you experience a fifth season during mid June to mid July, the so called rainy season. We knew that we would arrive in Japan during this season but we though that it would rain a lot and that’s it. But no, let me tell you, it is a little more than that!
Rainy season comes with an extremely humid climate. You leave the air conditioned house and start to sweat, like immediately! And to all the women reading this: forget about make-up, forget about hair styling - it all comes to a non existent state after spending five minutes outside. The sky is cloudy all the time and there is a lot of mist in the woods or in the mountains due to this humidity and the warm temperatures. It looks really mystical and beautiful but it is not easy to endure.
But it’s not only the constant humidity that is making life difficult, the rainfalls can really be very heavy and, even more difficult, they can start without warning. You are standing for example at the bus station, expecting nothing bad and suddenly the sky opens up and gallons of water drop down. Without any warning. When I went to the university on Thursday, it was even more extreme than we had experienced so far. It was raining heavily for hours, walking around with umbrella was as good as walking around with no umbrella because the amount of water was so huge! I have never seen so heavy rain in my life, it was quite impressive. And it was very hard to find a way through the water without getting soaked when I went to the meeting with the professors.
So, if you will come to Japan one day during this time, be prepared for a climate that is difficult to endure and challenging. However, this is the reason why everything is so green around us. As you can see in our pictures, the nature is having a good time with all this water.
But, rainy season or not, we are planning some activities the next days together with our guests, so stay tuned for the next update if you want to know what we were up to!