The Informer

7.9.12

Japan Shmapan

So far, living in Japan has been an awesome experience. I've visited so many places and met so many people. The most difficult thing about living in Japan is the things we can and can't eat. Of course, it's hard to find halal food here; so, the only source of protein we can obtain is fish. It's really a tedious task to look at the labels and ingredients contained in each and every product we choose to buy because it may contain pork and all that shiz. Cooking has been a challenge for me because I have zero knowledge about cooking food. I did cook, but I simply threw random ingredients into the pan and prayed that it would turn out delicious, which fortunately did. I cooked spaghetti, fried rice, etc. Simple dishes; nothing fancy. I want to bake some apple pie but, unfortunately, we don't have an oven. Bummer.

I'll also be conducting my research here in Japan. Will be choosing a sample of Japanese TESL/TEFL students and asking for their written assignments to compare the grammaticality of their written work with that of Malaysian TESL/TEFL students. This will be a lot of fun as I can study the accuracy of both groups and see which is better. I have high expectations for Malaysian students since English is our second language as compared to Japanese students who study English only as a foreign language. I hope the comparative study I will conduct will impress my academic supervisor and that I get high marks for my academic exercise.

Praying is also hard here. Subuh is at 3-ish AM. We have class on Fridays during the time we're supposed to go for Friday prayers. Just now, we had to come very late for class just so that we could go to the nearest masjid (which was more like a small surau) to pray, which was 3 train stations away. Good lord! Everyone knows how punctual the Japanese are, right? I've been fasting. I'm trying to finish "puasa 6" and will be fasting every Monday and Thursday for 2 reasons, which are to gain rewards in the afterlife and to save some money. So far, I've saved quite a lot. I plan to save a few thousand ringgit when I return home to Malaysia so that I could SHOP SHOP SHOP and SHOP some more. Hahaha!

Speaking of prayer, we went to a Shinto shrine the other day as part of our "Religions in Japan" course. The only thing I could think of there was "Astaghfirullahal'azim!! SHIRIK UOLS!!!". LOL. We were "exorcised" of evil spirits and all that shiz. An exorcism is called "kiyomi" in Japanese and the Shinto priest swung some sort of stick that had strands of white paper stuck onto it. Before that, the priest recited some sort of prayer and stuff. We had to perform some sort of ritual as well. We had to clap 2 times, bow 2 times and then clap for the last time. Yeah, whatever.

I'm too lazy to upload pictures because they suddenly turn upright, so just look at what I've uploaded in FB.

Till next time, さようなら!

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