みんな、お久しぶり！ Long time no see everyone! Okay, so I know I keep promising to update more, but despite all the time I have, I can't seem to get into my blogging groove. But I guess I can churn at least 1 post a week. I will most certainly try. So, I can't even remember what my last post was. Hahaha! But lemme catch you up with my current status. Before December 2017  The first time I took the test was back in July 2017 for the N4 level which I passed due to diligently studying for exams and memorizing kanji every down time I get even if it's just for 3 mins. So N4 was easy for me, but since then, everything went downhill. I was lucky enough to score plane tickets on sale and went home for a couple of weeks during summer vacation. When I got back, I was really tired of going to school everyday. It was so boring and I got caught up in a game on my smartphone. In short, I was barely studying if at all. Before we knew it, it was December and we needed to take the ...

Atarashii Kotoba O hisashiburi desu ne - It's been a while... Typically an expression used when you haven't seen someone, or something in a while. Konnichiwa - good day. Generic greeting for anyone. Usually used from 10 am till there is daylight. Hanami - sakura (cherry blossom) viewing Zairyuu card - Residence card issued to us when we first landed in Japan as ryuugakusei. Ryuugakusei - Foreign exchange student Yakuba - Town hall Kokumin Kenko Hokenshou - National Health Insurance card obento - packed lunch arubaito - part time job First Day High Konnichiwa!!! O hisashiburi desu ne! Wow, seriously, it has been a long time. Hahaha! Sorry for not updating you guys in a long while. Life as a working student here in Japan can be quite time consuming and basically, tiring. But, all in a day's work. Now, a lot has gone down since the last entry. We've experienced snow (for a day), our first hanami, we've also taken the JLPT N4 exams back in July, ...

For more information on Oarai International Exchange Academy, you can contact me via  Facebook  or  Instagram , or by commenting on this article.  Life in a different country is never easy. You are far from family, friends, loved ones, and the comforts of home. Everything might look fun and glamorous in picture-perfect pictures but those, are but moments. A fleeting glimpse at the everyday life of a person. We are the first Filipino student delegates of the Oarai International Exchange Academy ( 大洗国際交流アカデミー ), a Japanese language school set in the quaint little coastal town of Oarai in the Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. We came to Japan with minimal knowledge of the language and have been, since arriving, consistently learning and improving our grasp of the language. Life in Japan, in Oarai in particular, has been quite the adventure with all the ups and downs and everything in between. Our life here is full of discoveries, realizations, little victories, a lot of te...

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...