Day 191 - 9th of March

天気：雨天

Today was another miserable, wet day; and it was freezing. I rode to school this morning, in the rain, and actually got there quite a bit earlier than anticipated. So, I decided to go pick up a snack from the convenience store; blueberry Danish. In Speaking today Saigou sensei gave us another listening exercise, filling in song lyrics; 別の人 (betsu no hito – Someone Else) by Aoi Teshima. It was a really pretty, and sad song, and the lyrics were actually written by Goro Miyasaki (son of Hayou Miyazaki), who directed Tales from Earthsea; Aoi Teshima’s song, Teru’s theme was used in the movie. Then we started chapter 6; keigo! Having studied keigo (honorific speech) in Genki, this was more of a review, and I can remember most of it. After class, with an hour break, I went downstairs to the lounge, and sat with Rachel, getting my homework done. We were soon joined by Sarah and Katie, who were busy showing each other knitting patterns across the table; instead of just looking at the same laptop screen, they would send the files across to each other. Rachel was trying, and failing, to read a book for her literature class, that was supposed to be read by last Thursday; they really do have a heap to read though, it’s crazy.

Soon enough, it was time for Religion, where we talked about 創価学会 (Soka Gakkai – lit. “Value-Creation Society), a new religion derived from Nichiren Buddhism. The professor passed out a heap of magazines for us to look at, and comment on, and everyone seemed very suspicious. I think that’s partially the fault of the professor’s, for positioning us to view Soka Gakkai negatively (whether intentional or not), and partially because of the feedback we got from the first lot of interviews; some of the interviewees feared Soka Gakkai. And indeed, there are a few things a bit off putting about it. First of all, it has a political party, which is always a little troublesome. Secondly, a lot of what it does, what it stands for, and what was emphasised in the magazines (and the short introductory film we saw) didn’t seem very religious at all. There wasn’t really enough explanation of what exactly is expected of a member of Soka Gakkai member. The focus seems to be world peace, education, and ecology. So yeah, so far seems a little iffy, but we’re going to learn more about it on Thursday. After class, I stayed behind for a little bit, and told the Professor about my experience at Kansai Soka. Of course I hadn’t realised at the time, but in 2005 when I went to Japan for the first time, we actually visited a school one of their schools. Looking back on it now, it was probably the nicest (and wealthiest) of the schools we visited; that says something.

I checked my mailbox, and found my grades for yesterday’s lesson test in Speaking. I was really happy with my results; much better than my first test. Now I just have to keep it up! I rode home, and it wasn’t raining, it was just really cold and windy; not exactly an improvement. I ate some lunch, napped, and then blogged until dinner; I’m having a lot of trouble keeping up this week. I think it was about 7:45 when I went up, and I had put on rice almost an hour earlier; whoops. Tonight’s meal was easy; lasts night’s chicken and sauce over rice. I put it in the microwave to heat up, and then went to sit down with the girls; and Simon. I while after, thinking it had been long enough, I went to check my meal, and found the microwave still running. I quickly stopped it and opened the door to find a little bit of a mess; just a little. The sauce and even some of the chicken had spattered the sides. Rachel then told me she thought that that microwave was on the fritz; I guess she was right. Anyway, no harm done, I wiped up the mess, and enjoyed my meal. We didn’t talk for too long tonight, which was okay because I meant that I got my Reading and Writing homework done. After my shower, I found Hugo in bed, so decided to follow suit; a nice early night.