My quiet neighborhood

Me and my boyfriend lives in a apartment in a area called Ogura-cho. It's a five minutes bicycleride north from Kansai Gaidais east gate. It's a very quiet neighborhood where the only noise I can hear is the sound of a barking dog at the apartment opposite mine. Don't they ever listen to music? Laughing with their friends? or scream when Hanshin Tigers win a game? In Sweden we behave a bit different. We don't show the same regard and respect for our neighbors. In some way it is accepted to make noice at daytime and it's not until the night comes that your neighbours get upset if you make a lot of noise. It's very interesting differences. I don't think a quiet neighbourhood in Japan is about that they don't live their lifes, they just have another way of respect for each other. They don't make themselves remarkeble at the same way as we do. We have a big need to express ourselves and show other people our big personality. In Japan they show it in another way, with their mood, clothes etc.

Another thing I noticed is that my neighbors always have their curtains down. I have not even once had the chance to look into their apartments. I tried to discuss this with my speakingpartner Chiaki but she tought my questions were very difficult to explain. For her it's probably just a way of everyday life and a hard thing to explain and discuss with other people. She said that one primary reason why they keep their curtains down is because it's messy inside, or that they don't want to show other people how they live and how it looks like inside. She asked me why we open up at daytime and I said that we open up to let the light into our apartments. She tells me that Japanese people very often loves their home, it's a very intimate place where you don't what people to see you in action, sleeping, eating ect. In Sweden it's the straight opposite, people love to open up their windows/apartments to show their neighbors what they are doing, that they have fun or that they can afford things.  

It's very interesting how our way of thinking and acting are so different from eachother. 

Lost without Chiaki

Lost without Chiaki

The first day at Kansai Gaidai, the first time I checked my mailbox... I saw this beautiful pink hello kitty envelope. "Dear Marie, welcome to Japan I´m so happy to be your speaking partner." I felt her excitement in the letter. I couldn´t imagine how much fun we were going to have together and how much we could learn from eachother (and this is just in two weeks). I have to tell you, I would be lost in Japan without Chiaki. This blogpost is about me in Japan for the first time, without any preconceived thoughts, without knowing the language, Im just so curious about the people, the culture and everything in between.

Birthday child.                                                              

Tall swedish man. 

The birthdayparty

Chiaki invited me and Anders to her birthdayparty at her parents house. Both me and Anders applyed for a homevisiting family but we´re still on the waitinglist so we were both very excited to see how Chiaki and her parents lived. Everyone stood in the hall and welcomed us with a big smile. Present at the party was Chiaki, her parents, her mothers friend with husband and his twin. None of them spoke a word english except from Chiakis father who new maybe ten words. Everytime he wanted to say something, he looked at me, raised his hand and said: Maliiii, question. So there we stood, almost unable to talk with eachother, but with big smiles and with Chiaki as translater the night was awsome. We had the stranges food ever ( food I never would try in Sweden, but to be polite, I had everything on the table. We talked about everything from the reasons why relations between Japan and China is how it is, to how long swedish mothers stay at home with their children. I did´nt noticed  any big diffrences from Swidish familys, they were just a ordinary family with ordinary habbits. They were so friendly, happy and very curious about whats going on outside Japan. When we left after a perfect night, the hole family followed us outside of the house, huged us, begging us to come back. My first impression of Japan is that even if we don´t speak the same language or have the same culture, one can always find nice people to like and have a really good time with!

Just inhale Japan / Marie 

Curly hair can be fun if you never seen it before.