I am a tropical girl. And I love it! I love the sun, the heat, the tan you get from walking from your car to the mall entrance. I love everything about the tropics. Okay, maybe not everything, because I do hate the flies and mosquitoes and the smell of dried sweat. But still, I am happy with the muggy temperature of my homeland. I was thrown into a whirlwind of events when I decided to go for my dream of going to study in Japan . And to add the cherry on top of my ice cream sundae, I was set to fly and arrive right smack in the middle of autumn. Not bad, cool weather, red leaves and all. And then the temperature starts dropping. And dropping. And... now, daily, we get -7 degrees Celsius every morning. Quick disclaimer...I am by no means an expert in surviving the freezer-like temperatures but this is a memoir on how I am currently surviving the sub-zero temperatures. So, how will a girl, who loves the sun and the heat so much, survive winter in a coastal town with a sub-zer...

Atarashii Kotoba Kirei - beautiful ~ja arimasen - negative form (this is appended to an adjective, noun, or adverb indicative of the negative version of said word) hai - yes iie - no kudasai - please arigatou gozaimasu - thank you very much sumimasen - excuse me gomenasai - I'm sorry ohayou gozaimasu - Good morning konnichiwa - Hello/good day Kirei ja arimasen! This is a side story of an on-going joke we have amongst the group. The next episode is still in the works. ;p Upon landing in Japan, we were armed with our very, VERY limited vocabulary of the Japanese language. Of course we know the basics such as: hai, iie, kudasai, arigatou gozaimasu, ohayou gozaimasu, sumimasen, gomenasai  and konnichiwa. We also know a few descriptors here and there, some we've heard from anime, some from friends and some from family members who have settled here in Japan. Kirei is an adjective used to describe something beautiful, clean, and pristine. But mostly, when re...

The Legend of the 711 Crew After arriving in Oarai and initially settling down in our respective apartments, one major problem hit us like a ton of bricks. We were hopelessly and totally disconnected from the net and have no way of communicating with loved ones, friends, families, enemies, and whoever else in the world. Now, I for one, was overly excited to share everything I'm seeing and experiencing with my family and my best friend. But since our phones don't have sim cards,don't work and were not really compatible with Japanese networks, (we haven't actually tried since prepaid sim cards are not really a thing here and they are not really big on selling just sim cards. I'll probably make a post regarding that as well...maybe soon.) we were, in a word, screwed. We had hoped that the apartments we were to be provided will have had internet set up for us, but unfortunately, they didn't. So here we were, miles and an ocean away from home, stranded in a sma...

Atarashii Kotoba (New Words) From this post forward, I will start the post with the  Atarashii Kotoba  section to introduce a few basic Japanese phrases, words, and expressions to help you with learning a little bit of Japanese while being entertained with the colorful life of Silak. Jiko shoukai - self- introduction The 711 Crew I arrived in Japan on the 9th of October 2016. I arrived here on an early morning plane with 6 other Filipinos for the commencement of our life as students in Japan . We were part of a program that allowed us to study and work part-time in an international language exchange school for the next year and a half. Now, before the trip, none of these 7 people (myself included) have ever met in person. We may have chatted online via Facebook once or twice, but we were complete strangers to each other. So to make sure everybody is on the same page with the subsequent posts of the future, we will be doing a quick jiko-shoukai  of the 711-cr...