Arrival in Japan

My desk for the next ten or eleven months

I arrived safely in Japan last Wednesday after an eleven hour flight, most of which was spent crossing over Russia. When the sky was free of clouds, the view from the plane was rather stunning. We went over the more Northern parts of Russia, and most of it was just completely desolate, with nothing but mountains and what looked like glaciers. The plane had lots of different movies to choose from, including recent ones like the new Star Trek movie, which I watched, followed by the first Death Note movie. I spent most of the flight trying and failing to sleep, so I was exhausted but excited by the time I reached Japan.

Leaving for Japan

An aerial view of Tsukuba

I’ve mentioned it quite often, but this will be my first post dedicated to the topic. I’ve been studying Japanese language at university for the past couple of years, and for the third year of the course I’ll be studying not at my home university, but as an exchange student at a Japanese university. I’ll be there for about eleven months, and due to financial constraints I won’t be able to visit home while I’m there, so it should be quite an experience. I’ve also never been to Japan before, so spending nearly a year out there right away is quite a risk, but I’m positive it should be good fun overall. Obviously the main purpose of my trip is to improve my language skills, but I also plan to visit lots of different places and try to restrain myself from buying too many new figures.

My flight out is tomorrow afternoon, so I’m busy packing today. The flight leaves England at around 4.30 in the afternoon, and arrives in Japan at just after noon (Japan time) on Wednesday, where after waiting around for a bus, I’ll be going to meet a rep from the university. I’m going to Tsukuba University in Ibaraki Prefecture, which is outside of Tokyo but handily connected by a 45 minute express train service that goes to Akihabara. I was rather lucky to be awarded a scholarship, which is a very big help with finances and with any luck might allow me travel around a little with less worry about cost.

All of my figures are going back into their boxes today. I can’t take them with me because of the baggage restrictions and my desire to avoid using an expensive shipping service to get my belongings to Japan (I’ll have to use one on the way back, though) and I don’t want them to get too dusty, so back into the boxes they go. I’m thinking I might take one of my Nendoroids out there (probably Kaito or my recently arrived Sebastian) but other than that any figures I have in Japan will be those I buy out there. I’m hoping that if the cost of living isn’t too high I might be able to save enough money to get a Dollfie of some sort before I come back, since this is my best chance to avoid issues like international shipping charges and customs.

Over the next couple of weeks my updates to this blog will be rather sporadic, but I’ll hopefully have lots of photographs to share once I’m settled in and with internet access.

[Image source: Tsukuba University]

Manga Review – Ludwig II Volume 1

I was meaning to review this one weeks and weeks ago, but despite its supposed street date of June 10th I haven’t been able to get hold of a copy until now because for some reason Amazon never got any stock of it, and the other UK book sellers are only just starting to get it in. I’m hoping that it was just a temporary hiccup with their distribution, and not the beginning of a trend. This one is a BL manga of sorts, although like Higuri’s other work Cantarella it’s more of a re-imagining of history than anything else and I’d be hesitant to even call it romance.

The review will contain some spoilers.

Title: Ludwig II
Volume: 1
Creator: Higuri You
Publisher’s Rating: 18+
Publisher: DMP, Juné imprint
Edition: English language, American release
Price: $14.95

New Mac!

I’ve probably mentioned it from time to time, but I’m a big Mac user. I’ve never owned anything else in fact, because my dad’s an Apple fanboy so I’ve grown up around Macs. (I’m not one for OS wars, though – I can recognise the advantages and disadvantages of different systems and my general view is that everyone has different needs and they should get whatever they feel meets those needs best.) Personally though, I do love Macs and I can’t see myself owning anything else except out of complete necessity. So of course for my new laptop I went with a MacBook Pro (and that handy student offer Apple are running certainly did nothing to change my mind).

I bought the new laptop last week, since it needed to be done in enough time that it will be all running properly by the time I leave for my rather long trip to Japan. I found just over a week ago that I got a JASSO scholarship after initially being told that I wasn’t getting it, which will be a big help to finances when I’m over there, so my dad suggested that I get a slightly higher spec computer than I had originally planned. So instead of the lower-end 15-inch, I have the 2.66GHz version, with a 320GB hard drive. We were considering a custom-built one with a faster hard drive, but since they couldn’t do that in the Apple Store itself and we didn’t want to risk delays, I took home the standard model. I also have myself an 8GB iPod Touch, which I can get most of the money back on as part of their student deal.