Дядя Валера! Хочу поздравить тебя с днём рождения! Желаю счастья, здоровья, всего наилучшего в жизни, удачи и успеха в бесконечной стройке дома. Так же надеюсь, что все в Украине наладится и мир восстановится. Надеюсь, что в ближайшие несколько лет нам удастся встретиться где-нибудь в этом мире, в Европе, Америке, Австралии или, например, Японии.
Надеюсь, что ты находишь время “играть” со своим компьютером. Я имею ввиду чтение техно блогов, испытание различных новых программ или аддонов, или даже покупку и добавку нового харда в сам комп.
Today we went hiking in the mountains, walking up a mountain to be precise. In a car with 5 people we drove to Kirishima National Park and climbed (walked) to the top of Takachihono-mine mountain. After waking up at 8am, gathering at about 8:45, a almost 2 hour drive to the mountain, our walk to the top began. Tip for anyone who wants to go up mountains in Japan, buy these sock things that cover your shoes that prevent pebbles from getting in, by the end of our descent my shoes were completely full with pebbles and that was really annoying a bit painful. Unfortunately it has been really cloudy the past few days in Kagoshima, so we didn’t get any view from the mountain, but when we were going down, we got to see the crater of the volcano (the mountain used to be a volcano), which was at least something! We also visited a farm there, which is apparently really famous for their ice-cream, but we didn’t have any, we just bought some souvenirs (food).
It was definitely a fun thing to do, and I would love to go there again when the sun is out so I can take some amazing pictures! I did take some, so here they are:
Today, on the 15th of April, most of world could witness the lunar eclipse. We managed to get some great shots of the full moon in yellow and red colors. It was another great event/gathering organized by our friend Çağcan, thank you for organizing. Looking forward to spending the next 6 months with you, Calvin and other ryuugakusei who will only stay for another semester, and the next year with all the other newbies like me. Also cheers to Enchan for the tripod, without it I would not have been able to take such beautiful photos, which you can find right here:
In other news, I have almost finished settling in. Just need to receive the credit card from Kagoshima Bank (which they said might take up to 3-4 weeks) and buy myself a phone sim from bmobile as SoftBank does not allow me to use my own phone… Aside from that, I am done. And so my new life in Japan has officially begun!
So here I am, in a new city in a (not so) new land, starting off my 1 year of exchange in Kagoshima University. This past week has been really busy. I can tell you guys, settling down in Japan is much harder than in Australia. Japan sure loves its bureaucracy, but I did manage to have fun with new made friends and I am sure that I will have even more fun from now on.
So basically this week I had to:
Check-in to my accommodation
Get a Japanese seal (inkan) for official documents
Get a residents card and register my current address in Japan.
Apply for health insurance and get the health insurance card.
Meet the professor who is in charge of the laboratory that I have been assigned to (I don’t have to do any research for the lab though)
Get my student ID card from Kagoshima University
Open a bank account in Kagoshima Bank (and get a credit card, which I had to specifically request)
Buy a bicycle (photos bellow)
Buy all the necessary things for home; like: microwave, cattle, toaster, rice cooker, monitor (for PS3 and Mac Mini) a few bits of furniture, groceries and other stuff. (no photos of room yet, will post up soon)
Attend a language assessment test (placement test) to determine which level of japanese classes will I be taking (advanced O.o)
Attend an orientation session for all international students
Enroll into non Japanese language classes (in my case programming classes)
Meet with the subject coordinators/lecturers to get their approval for my enrollment
Attend an orientation at the dorm for new residents in japan
Yes, that was a long list. I also attended 2 parties with the other exchange/international students and 1 party (hanami) with the people from my lab (who are mostly into anime, which is good). This whole week was full of experiences, which I am sure I will remember for the rest of my life, and thats awesome!
There are still 2 very important things I need to do this week. One of them deeply relies on how fast the bank can get me my credit card. If I get it this week, then I can finally put that credit card into Amazon.co.jp and order myself a pre-paid phone sim from b-mobile. If not this week then next.
Also yesterday we went to the beach to celebrate a birthday of a certain German guy named Calvin. He is an awesome guy and a very helpful sempai! Thats why I want to wish you all the best with your studies and personal life in the future; keep smiling Calvin! Photos from the event are in this flickr album/set.
Overall I have been having a lot of fun and I am looking forward to starting classes tomorrow (honestly I am). As always, I have photos here:
I have lived my whole life in a former USSR republic and I have never even given a second thought about the beautiful bus stops that we had. While traveling in the Belarus and Ukraine as well, I faintly remember seeing bus stops that were not just a piece of concrete covering travelers from the rain, but had sculptures and mosaic in them. Beautiful, beautiful bus stops. This man though, went out of his way to take photos of the most interesting stops around the former USSR. All I can say is that you guys should take a look at the video and if you can visit Russia, there is a lot of beautiful architecture there.
(Photo from the window of my plane, you can see Mt. Fuji)
After a whole 4 years in the planing, 2 months worth of packing and preparation, and a 16 hour flight with 2 stopovers, I have finally reached Kagoshima! Here I will be studying as an exchange student for the next 10-11 months. A big big thanks to all my sempais who helped me out to prepare for this and a thank you in advance to the new sempais I have met here today, who will be helping me from now on.
I have settled into my dorm and just finished unpacking all my luggage. Now for some well deserved sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day of shopping and meeting with teachers.
Capcom makes a lot of good games like Street Fighter and Super Street Fighter and Ultra Street Fighter, and … well you get the gist. Nah, of course they have more good games and one of them is this puzzle detective game called Ghost Trick. It was recommended to me by my puzzle loving friend a while back and now I have finally finished it! It was a very interesting story with a nice plot twist at the end. I wouldn’t call it the best puzzle game, but it is definitely worth the time. I will write up a mini review without spoilers, because what fun is it playing a puzzle game when the story has been spoiled for you.
The story starts of with the main character (which you can see in the picture above), who apparently was killed and is now a ghost! And not your ordinary ghost, he has special powers, so called ghost tricks (see where the name comes from) using which he can possess small objects and manipulate them in various ways. Say there was a tire lying on the ground, by possessing it, he can move it a few meters to the right and that will open a path for him to possess mother object. That is not the only power, as you learn in the first 5 minutes of gameplay, he can also go back in time 4 minutes before a persons death and by manipulating objects, prevent it.
This is a very interesting concept and it makes the player think and puts a bit of pressure with the 4 minutes time frame. The mechanics are well implemented, I didn’t have any problem with the interface or gameplay. Some of the puzzles are challenging, but most can be completed without to much trouble. The animations are stunning, everything is so smooth and each charter has his own ‘move set’ - one does the panic dance, the other is this cool dude who flips his cape around and cute little puppy called Missile who jumps around.
Overall its a great game which was originally made for the Nintendo DS, and now has an iOS port! I somehow managed to buy all the chapters of the game for only $0.99 so I guess I am lucky. Now its $10.49, oh well. 7/10
Here is a nice trailer of the game to get you interested.
Visa and plane tickets have been acquired, packing has been done, all my boxes have been moved to my friend Tac’s and Lexi’s places, and now all the farewell lunches, dinners, and parties are now done. I have 1 day left in Sydney and then I am off to glorious Japan. Thank you to all my friends who took the time from their busy lives to meet me one last time this year, before I head off. Thank you for giving such a wonderful experience in so many different restaurants. Thank you to the anime club, drawing circle and JASS people (especially Ritchi) for organizing a farewell party last week before the Kyary concert. Thank you to all my friends from urbanest, all my Russian friends and my friends from back home for this last week.
Also it was Ruben’s birthday last week! Big happy birthday to Ruben-sempai! You’re now as strong as 28 bulls, as wise as 28 books, as funny as 28 puns, and as old as 28 new born babies. Wait wha? ^_^ High tea at the rocks was very nice, we should do it again, must try all the teas!. Good luck with your studies and see you in Japan! And please don’t run off to Singapore before I come back to Australia. Don’t leave me sempaiiiiiii~~
Well, I’m gonna go now. See you people in February 2015. I’ll keep posting, so please keep reading!
PS: This Kyary song sums up my feelings for leaving perfectly. Its not goodbye, it see you soon.
There are a lot of instant messaging apps around like: WhatsApp, Line, WeeChat, Viber, Skype, FB Messenger, etc. But this app caught my attention because of the promise they make. The promise of privacy. Telegram promises to provide the user with an encrypted messaging service that helps you protect your private information not only from the american government, but also from your friends. It has an option, similar to what Snapchat offers with its photos, a setting that will self destruct the message after a certain period of time, such as 5 seconds.
This app works very well and has a good iOS7 inspired interface. I tested out the self destruct message feature and it works brilliantly. To engage a secret chat, both users need to be online (similar to old Skype) and the messages will disappear after 5 sec (or more if you change it). Another reason why I got interested in this app is because it was created by the people who created Vontakte.ru (Nikolai and Pavel Durov) - the Russian Facebook clone. This means that this app is gonna be the most popular instant messaging service in Russia, so I have to get it! I recommend you all try it out and see how good its features are. There is also a TechCrunch article about it here.
Kyaaaaaaaryyyyyyyyy, one of the most ‘unusual’ J-Pop idols visited Sydney last weekend! It is the first time that Kyari visited Australia, and it seems that she rather likes it here! This one and a half hour concert featured all of her most popular songs, as well as some new and less famous ones. It was a very nice way to spend one of my last days in Sydney for 2014; together with my friends like Seb, Ruben, Clara.
Kyari is continuing her world tour now, and hopefully she will come to Sydney again next year! Better quality photos of the concert: here.
