I haven't blogged here at all. I'm very bad at blogging, but I want to try my best at blogging once I get to Japan in 2013. And even before that, so I want to start with a kind of self-introduction.
Currently, I'm studying Japanese at an Icelandic university, and having a blast. I‘ve made a ton of new friends who share my interest, and every lesson is fun with my great teachers. My interest in Japanese started when I was around 13, I think. I got into manga, and later some anime, but have fallen out of that now. I have 300 volumes of manga though, and there‘s one series that I still follow, both the anime and the manga, and that‘s One Piece.
I think my interest dwindled after I gained more interest in Japanese music and culture, „collecting“ as many songs in Japanese as I could. From there, I came across this Japanese idol group called Arashi, through videos of their escapades in their tv shows on youtube.
You could say I kind of fell in love, haha. They‘re such dorks, and I call them „my“ boys, or the boys, as strange as that may sound. I „fell“ into the fandom in 2009 and have been a steady fangirl since then. <3 They make my life shinier, happier and fuller as well as help me better my Japanese skills each and every day. I think I should be honest here, since this is a somewhat „personal“ blog to state that I don‘t really like myself, my appearance that is. I think my personality is alright, though I wouldn‘t know. I know that this is something I shouldn‘t say but deep inside, I feel it and it can make my life miserable. I don‘t like seeing myself in pictures, and there have been many instances where I cry just looking at myself in photos. I wish I could fix this and just not care, but I can‘t. I lack confidence, and I know it. I am overweight but not obese, and even knowing that I still feel like the grossest thing walking this earth sometimes. Just before New Year‘s Eve, my mom wanted to buy some pants and a blouse, in case we‘d go to family gatherings or something like that, and in the dressing room I cried a little before I could pull myself together. I feel horrible in anything but jeans and a sweater, but even wearing those I can feel bad. It‘s horrible how much I attack myself with everything. I don‘t like my face either, and the glasses I wear don‘t help at all. In every picture I look like an (fat, ugly) idiot, so I always try to not have pictures taken of me. Whenever I see a camera, you could say that I basically run away in the opposite direction or hide behind someone. I wish I could stop doing this to myself, I really do, as well as gain confidence, but I can‘t seem to be able to do so. – end whining – I‘m sorry I put you guys through that, but I guess I needed some sort of outlet, despite my views of myself being stupid and immature. I‘ll turn to something „happier“ now. On the 5th, I‘ll be going to a endocrine specialist and have him look at my thyroid gland, for it may be underactive or overactive. I‘ve had this „problem“ with it for years now, can‘t even remember how long, but finally we‘re going to a specialist to have it looked at. I went to a doctor 2~3 years back and he said my thyroid was working well, just slightly bigger than normal, but me (nor my mom) accepted that outcome. Normally it stands out pretty obviously, but sometimes it expandes and makes it slightly... different for me to swallow anything. I‘m also losing a lot of hair, some days I lose more and some days I lose less. It‘s most obvious when I‘m showering, when I stroke my hands through my hair, my hands come back tangled in dozens of strands. The shower clogs often, and it‘s usually my hair that does it. I‘m also fatigued almost all the time, even though I slept for 6~8 hours. I also have anxiety problems and, though not so sure, depression problems. I‘m always stressed, one of the reasons being that I want to do well at school.... and I don‘t really think that helps with fatigue. After this test at school I got kind of depressed for at least a week. I felt tired, I didn‘t feel like doing anything, or just feel anything. It was strange. Apparently weight can also relate to thyroid problems. I don‘t really eat a lot each day so it‘s mysterious as to why I can‘t seem to lose the weight I want to. Meh. There are probably more things I can mention but I don‘t think yapping about them here helps. :/ On to much more happier stuff: Japanese, Japan and the boys! I love languages, and I fell in love with the Japanese language some 7 years ago. My mother tongue is Icelandic, and I managed to grasp the English language quite early in my childhood. But the interest in Japanese came at age 13, when my interest in manga and anime started as I mentioned earlier. Somehow it moved me, and I felt this kind of strange connection to it. I don‘t know what it was. I studied the language by myself for these last, almost 8 years before majoring in it at my university. I mastered the two alphabets, hiragana and katakana, and was able to read up to at least 400 kanji/kanji compounds before my enrollment. But I did „slack off“ the first 4~5 years before I really started willing myself to learn. One of my dreams is pass N2/N1 someday and become fluent at speaking and understanding. I hope I am able to believe in myself enough to do so.
I had the great honor of being accepted a grant to go to Japan for five weeks in the year 2010. I chose the 5 weeks rather than the 5 months so that I could gratuate at the right time and enter university, I just wanted to start learning Japanese right away. In the first days without a host family, I was placed in the intermediate Japanese study group, and felt proud of myself for knowing that much by learning by myself. The host family, Oshiki, I bonded with right away. They were one of the nicest people I had ever met, and more than happy to teach me the Japanese way of doing things, showing me around as well as teaching me historic facts, allowing me and joining in to watch shows with the boys and taking good care of me. I feel really thankful to them and I plan on meeting them again in Japan. Our only way of communicating now is through emails, or regular mails, and still they send me pictures and teach me things. Whenever I receive something from them, I feel happy, and I keep all the letters I have in a box. <3
I think I have run out of things to say at this moment. It seems that way. :P But I‘m hoping I can post here my advances at Japanese, school related stuff and then Japan stuff once I‘m there as a foreign exchange student. <3
//edit: it seems that the text above the Arashi image refuses to seperate even though there are breaks in the "edit post" part :< Sad.
