Okonomiyaki! Yum yum!

Okonomiyaki is something terribly delicious!!! It deserves a blogpost. And the best thing is that you can prepare it yourself at the dining place. Though in Osaka we were not allowed to do it, but about that I will tell later ;)

So, the steps for making and eating okonomiyaki:

1. You order an okonomiyaki  with ingredients you like. You can have okonomiyaki with pork, seafood or beef. There are always vegetables, like cabbage, plus egg and sauce.

2. They bring you bowl with the ingredients. You mix the vegetables and meat with the egg and sauce.

3. When it is well mixed, you put oil on the frying table and pour the mixed ingredients on the hot "pan-table" (they heat the table).

4. You fry your okonomiyaki.. and try not to burn it!

5. Say hello to your okonomiyaki.

6. Ready! Put it on you plate, add okonomiyaki sauce (the best sauce in the world) and mayonnese and spices. Yum yum!

Yamaguchi Prefectural University

The school I go to is called Yamaguchi Perfectural University. It used to be a girls' school and still nowadays most of the students are females. So here you don't see many boys until it's lunch time... then suddenly the school cafeteria is full of (hungry) boys, heh heh.

The school starts every morning at 8.40 and ends at 17.40. There are not enough courses in English available, so we exchange students don't have the same schedule as the Japanese students. You have the same class always on the same day and time every week so the schedule looks much more like my high school-schedule than the one that we have in university in Finland. I cannot say which system is better.

The school is not very big and I like it. The campus is also quite beautiful so you have something to look at when you are at school.

Though classes stop at 17.40, many students don't go home but go to a club. There are many many different clubs, like for example ESS (English Speaking Society), hiking club, dance club, music club, sport clubs.... and so on.

I'm usually older than the students here. The reason is, I guess, that most student here do only the undergraduate degree while this is already my fifth year and I'm doing my master's degree. But students here are very nice and kind and they come to talk to you (after seeing that you are a gaijin, hih).

Tsuwano Part 2

I'm very sorry I haven't uploaded the blog for a long time! When the school really started, I haven't had much time for this, ごめんなさい!

Tsuwano is a really great place, and here some more photos of it.

                                                                           It's eel!

This is a riksha. I thought it was only for tourists, but I have seen only Japanese people ride one.

And then we climbed a mountain.

I like Japanese forests. They are so lush!

Un nuraghe!! :D

Friends!

I forgot to tell you that SP is well and that he has some new friends. One is Japanese (the yellow chicken) and the other one is American, from Kentucky ;)

It's quite easy to make new friends here in Japan, and that's very nice! I hope I will get many many new friends during these 5 months!

Tsuwano part 1

Last Monday we made a daytrip to Tsuwano. It was really an incredible day! We took the train in the morning at about 10 and arrived to our destination an hour later. The train was so full that some of us had to stand... a school class was going to pick apples so we had many little kids to keep us company during the trip to Tsuwano. The children here are so outgoing and they always wear a wiiide smile. They are so nice!

We saw so many things and I took so many pictures that I have to devide this post into more than one part... I'm afraid that internet starts to complain again if I download too many pictures at the same time..

Waiting for the train

Still waiting...

Yeaah! Finally in the train! Here we come, Tsuwano!

In Tsuwano

We were so lucky to have the Japanese students with us!

I hope the ducks and fish were not the next dinner....

So cute!

We fed the fish :P

We were very lucky because there happened to be a festival that day. We saw a traditional performance!!

See you in Part 2!