FIFA 2018 Logo

October 31st, 2014

In 2012 it was decided that the next big world football event – FIFA 2018, will be held in Russia! And last week the official logo was unveiled from a place far far away. If you think of Russia, what comes to mind? Snow, bears, vodka and AK-47? Maybe for some of you, but for educated people, Russia is a symbol of feudal culture, old and deep history, and of course the conquering of space in the modern age. So the announcement of the FIFA 2018 logo, was made from the International Space Station on the 29th of October.

With this logo, the creators want to show the heart and soul of Russia, and I believe they did a great job with that.

Its 4 years away, but I am already excited to see how this whole tournament will play out.

Статья на русском и видео ролик с передачи Вечерний Ургант: rus.delfi.lv

Sharing is Caring

October 30th, 2014

This japanese ad for the PS4 and its new share functionality is really touching. It shows that anyone can be a gamer, anyone has the potential to be successful, and that anyone a choice in life. Watch it and see what I mean.

Poster Session

October 23rd, 2014

(hover over the image to reveal the controls for viewing the album)

I appologise for the huge delay of this post, but here it is. On the 1st of July Kagoshima University had their annual international students poster session. During this event, a chosen number of students make A0 sized posters and small speeches about their countries. The topics can include anything from just general overview to more in depth explanation of things like: events, festivals, government, education system, etc. Of course I was asked to take part in this as well, and so I prepared a beautiful poster about my hometown Riga. I talked about the geography, population, transport, food, sports and our gorgeous art nouveau buildings.

I had a lot of students and older people come up to me and ask me questions about Riga and Latvia, especially about the food (Japanese people love food). The old guy in glasses listening to my explanations of Riga you see in the photo album is the head of Kagoshima University. He said he went to Estonia about 30 years ago, but has yet to travel to Latvia.

I hope I can participate in more events like this one as not only is it good practice for my Japanese skills, I also really enjoy designing posters or signs, thats why I spent around 4 hours making my poster look that pretty.

Shimabara 島原 & Nagasaki 長崎

October 20th, 2014

samurai road

This weekend I spent together with my good friend Tac, who is currently working as a English teacher in the city of Shimabara as part of the JET program. We went around the city, a nearby hot spring and Nagasaki city.

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Typhoons in Japan

October 13th, 2014

vongfong

Another day another typhoon warning. And believe it or not, this is normal in Japan. Typhoon VongFong has made landfall onto Kyuushu at 9am this morning and is slowly making its way towards the rest of Japan. This is the 19th typhoon to affect Japan this year. Trust me, thats a lot.

When it first made the news, they were saying that its the strongest this year, that its a super typhoon. The university even cancelled all the classes! Well it reached Kagoshima this morning and went right through us, but aside from a bit of wind and rain, it was a pretty normal day. When the eye of storm was right above the city, it was beautiful. The sun was shining brightly, there were no clouds, no wind, no rain. Then 30 minutes later it went back to being all cloudy and moist.

And as previously, we ask ourselves, why did they make such a big deal if it was barely any different from a rainy day? I guess after years of being ravaged by typhoons, the people of Japan take them much more serious now. Whats important is that we are ok, and are going back to uni tomorrow.