I’m at Karaoke with Brett, Katie, Liz, Sam, Priscilla, Chelsea, Julie, Rebecca and Rachel; we’ve been here since about 7. Today was a warm, sunny day, and even walking to the bus stop this evening was pleasant…I woke up at about 7 this morning, and made scrambled eggs for breakfast; I didn’t want to buy anymore milk for cereal since I’ll be going away tomorrow. I got to uni a little early, and took a final look at my vocab list before going into the test. Well, I think I did really well on everything except for the listening; even Saigo Sensei said it was difficult. Oh well, hopefully the other sections will bring up my mark. After that, I went to Katie and Sarah’s class to watch their skit; I couldn’t miss it for the world. I hadn’t realised until now, but their Sensei is my Sensei from last semester; Miyauchi. He remembered me, and was happy for me to stay and watch; he even gave me the slips of paper to comment on. As for their skit, it was absolute chaos in the best way possible. They basically condensed all three LOTR’s movies into 10 minutes, switching between about 10 different characters between them in fast succession; it was well done. Then they had a plethora of stuffed animals portraying the orcs, the Balrog, and Shelob; it was hilarious. I stuck around and watched the other two skits, but Katie and Sarah’s was definitely the most entertaining.
After that, I had a little bit of time to revise for the vocab quiz in Reading and Writing. Well, it wasn’t my best, but it wasn’t terrible either; last one too. We spent the rest of the lesson going over the grammar points. Then we had to complete the course evaluation for the class; I took this one to the office too. After that, it was time for Gender and Sexuality. Today we talked about the gay identity in Japan, before looking at a representation of lesbians in Japan with the animation, “Plicachan”. It was a clever, funny, and cute film, but also brought up serious issues about the way lesbians are viewed in Japan; it was really very interesting. And that was that, I was home-free; well, after picking up some bread for lunch. After lunch, I talked with my family for a good two hours, and then I got my blog up to date, before making dinner; it was about 6:30 by then. I had to hurry up, since we would be going to karaoke by bus at 7:50. I made, and then wolfed down a huge okonomiyaki, and then showered and dressed. Hugo is leaving for Tokyo tonight, so I wished him a good trip, and then went to meet the others… I don’t know how late I’m going to stay tonight, since I’ve got to get going for Hikone in the morning; I’ll see how I go…
Well, just for fun, it decided to pour with rain all day today; and heavy rain at that. This meant that by the end of the day, my jeans and jacket were quite wet; they’re hanging up to dry now. I’m just hoping the weather improves by tomorrow. I really wanted to get my hair cut today, but the relentless downpour completely put me off. Anyway, another Monday… I finally rolled out of the futon at 9, and hurriedly got ready for the day. I managed to get to class just in time, racing on my bike through the rain, icy drops pelting my face; okay, so I’m being a little dramatic. The test today went pretty well, although there was one sentence that I wasn’t happy about at all; I couldn’t think of the grammar pattern to use. Jo revealed to me later that I was a passive sentence; I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Oh well, I’ll still get part marks for it. The listening part was okay; not the easiest, nor the hardest I’ve had. And I remembered all the vocab words; that part seems to be the least of my problems now. I finished in a little over 30 minutes, and then went down to the lounge, and spent the next 1 and a half just chilling with Rachel, Sarah, and Katie; and Rachael when she came. I did do some kanji practice, and some readings for Gender and Sexuality, so I was at least semi productive.
In Reading and Writing, we started chapter 5, which contains a whole bunch of crazy kanji; it’s going to be fun learning them. After class, I went home (the rain even heavier now), and had lunch before basically crashing for the next 2 hours on my futon; I guess today decided to be a lazy day. Sooner then I wanted it was time to return to uni. Koto club started up again, at the regular time of 4:30. This was the first day for freshmen (and what a lovely day for them… not), so the uni was absolutely packed; especially all the food venues. I dropped my bag in the club room, and then went to the convenience store to get a quick snack. Getting back (snack already devoured), I was just about get started reading Hitman Reborn when guess who arrived; Brittney. She hadn’t been for weeks, so I was quite surprised. Also, considering that Midori and Mori Sempai, and Maarika all have classes until 6 (which is a real shame), so I wasn’t expecting anyone to turn up for a while. Another unexpected arrival was Riho; I think we met once before. She’s a second year student, and seems really nice, though a little reserved; well, I guess that can be expected from a Japanese girl.
So, I thought it would be a good time to set up downstairs in the practice room. Brittney and I both took down koto, but unfortunately when we got there, and I tried the key… it didn’t work; I guess that would make sense. So back up to the club room we went; I felt a pretty bad. We still got a bit of practice in though. Riho practiced sakura, and Brittney Hanagoromo. Soon, Brittney left, and was replaced by Natalie; she helped Riho a lot with Sakura, which was really great. At about 5:30, Kirianna also arrived, although she didn’t stay for very long; and Natalie and Riho were soon to follow. So, then it was just me again. I decided I would have a crack at Kagaribi, so I tuned it and got stuck into it; so difficult. Maarika arrived a bit after 6, and just sat as I played around. When Mori Sempai arrived we could finally get set up downstairs. She was so happy when I told her so many people had showed up today; she had been worried about the fate of koto club. Soon after getting set up, we had another unexpected visitor; Tami-chan. She’s from Puerto Rico, and was Maarika’s roommate during orientation week. Midori arrived soon after, and we all ended up chatting for a good while; a bit too long, as I really wanted to practice.
Today, Maarika and I got started on a new piece, which I can’t remember the name of, but nevertheless it was quite fun, and very challenging; it’s one of the pieces the girls have played before. I’ll get a photocopy of it tomorrow, along with Kagaribi; with the time I have left, I don’t think I’ll be able to get good at that one. Anyway, since it’s a duet, I immediately decided to take second koto; it seems to be a fact that the second part is always harder. Midori helped us a lot, so we had a general idea of what to expect from it. I’m looking forward to the sensei coming tomorrow, and hopefully she approves of us playing these pieces; last time she saw us, we were still on Hanagoromo. So enthralled in practice, we ended up finishing a little late; not that I had to be anywhere. After packing up, and saying goodbye, I rode in the rain for the last time today, and got home around 8. I went straight up to the kitchen, and made gyudon for dinner, catching Katie as she made her way out; she’s just received her certificate, and a generous sum of money for the article she wrote for a competition earlier in this semester. Ash and Rachel we also leaving, so I spent a little while talking with Julie, eating white chocolate and drinking Milo; great combination. At about 9, I went back downstairs, had a shower and then got settled in bed; I guess I felt I deserved a bit of a break. I’ve spent most of the night just playing bejewelled and uploading photos on dA. Well, hopefully the weather’s improved tomorrow, so that I may be a little more productive…
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.
I got a good night’s sleep, and was able to get out of bed at 7:30 this morning. This meant that I had a good hour and an half more to study for my lesson test, and it certainly payed off. I actually found this test much easier than the first one we had (even the listening was easier to understand), and was finished just after the half an hour point. I went over to the convenience store, and picked up a snack, before going back to the lounge, and hanging out with Katie, Sarah, and Cate, getting some more kanji practice in. Reading and Writing came round, and we made a start on the story in the book, and covered some more grammar patterns; all one’s we’ve come across before thankfully. After that, I was free. I did some grocery shopping, and then I went home, had a quick lunch, and talked with Rachael for a while in the computer room, before making my way out again. I was going to meet Ash in the CIE lounge, since she was going to Joshin to buy a new MP3 player. Since I had never been, I was interested in joining her; on my way back to uni, I took some photos of this beautiful tree in full bloom now (I don’t think it’s a plum blossom), in front of Komatsu.
Unfortunately, it was a bit past our meeting time (2:30) when I got there, and not finding her, I immediately went back to my bike, to see if I could be clever and catch up with her on it. Well, I didn’t see her the whole way there; I must have been too far in front. When I got to Joshin, which is basically just across from Midori, I waited there for a little while. There wasn’t much to look at in all honesty; it mirrored Midori in many respects. Still no sign of Ash, I contemplated just going home, before deciding that I might as well look around some more shops since I was out there. So, I continued up the highway (in the direction of Kappazushi and the Lake), and went in a few of the places Ash had told me about. The first was called FAN 倶楽部 (Fan kurabu – Fan club ~ this is an example of "ateji" - kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words. The kanji may or may not have anything to do with the original meaning of the word, and be chosen solely for phonetic value. In this case though, the kanji roughly translate as "together, fun, place", so you could argue whether that was a meaningful interpretation or not), and I had a field day inside. It sells second-hand clothes, books, guitars, CD’s, DVD’s, records, comics, games, and trading cards. The sheer amount of stuff they had was incredible.
I slowly made my way through the maze, looking for anything of interest to me. They had a corner filled with old poker machines, and a huge section with games from the Fami-Con (a.k.a the NES). There were thousands upon thousands, of Yugioh trading cards, some baseball cards, and I even spotted some Magic cards; that brought back memories. There were rows and rows of figures from every anime imaginable, all hanging up in little plastic bags, or displayed behind glass. In a cardboard box on the floor, I spotted some Final Fantasy books (my internal homing device doing its job), and found Final Fantasy VII: Official Establishment File, in relatively good condition. I contained images and information of the characters, and I thought it was a really good find; a collector’s item. Looking on the shelf above, I found some more Final Fantasy related books (mostly walkthroughs), and decided to pick up the one for FFX-2, since it was really cheap and compact. I browsed the rest of the store for a while, having a quick look at the CDs, and bypassing the rows and rows of manga, before making my purchases; I was very satisfied. The guy even gave me a discount on the FFVII book; score.
The next place I went to looked, from the outside, looked like a regular shop, but the inside was of… devious intent. The front quarter of the store was just like any other typical DVD/comic book store, but behind the big black curtains with the 18+ logo in red was a world of naughty pleasures. Ash had told me this, so I decided to check it out just for curiosities sake, and it was indeed very enlightening. I just thought the whole concept was bizarre; why have a tiny portion of your store dedicated to non-adult goods (there was no one in that section), when clearly the whole purpose of it is to go to the adult section. It seemed almost like a façade to me; you really wouldn’t know what they were actually selling from just looking at the exterior. Anyway, I came out empty-hand, but full-minded (well…) and made my way back home. I decided to stop by Top World to see if I could find the Old El Paso Taco Kit, I’d seen some girls using at the dorm; they told me they’d found it there. And sure enough, it was there; along with all the other hot sauces. I was over the moon actually; they had Nachos sauce too. However, it was wickedly expensive, so I held out on that, and just bought one of the kits; tacos this week!
Getting back, I had a good look at my purchases, before it was time for dinner; chicken parmigiana. I noticed that Yuji had left his cookies out, and let him know as soon as I saw him. He was making them around lunch time, and let me try one; they were… interesting. I stayed up in the kitchen until just before 8, and then went down to the lounge for Hugo’s movie night. Since he has so many movies on his portable hard drive, he has decided to have a viewing night once a week; he rigged up his laptop to connect with the TV. This week we watched Leon: The Professional, a French directed movie starring Jean Reno, Gary Oldman and a very young Natalie Portman; this was her debut film. I found it really enjoyable, and moving. It finished just after 10, and had attracted a number of viewers including Simon, Yuji, and Alvaro; a success. After an orange in the kitchen, I came back down, and got my blog as up-to-date as possible, until it was time for sleep.
I can’t believe it’s already March; I’ve just realised now that I’ve got less than three months here! Anyway, another rainy day today; I really wish the weather would make up its mind… After getting ready, I rode to uni with Simon; it wasn’t raining at the time. We were a little early, so we sat in the lounge, while I went through my vocab. It was only when I got to class that i found out that in fact the vocab test was tomorrow; oh well, nothing wrong with a bit more study. Sensei played Angela Aki’s “Tegami” in class today, a song that I love so much. We had to fill in the blanks while listening to the lyrics, than he let us sing along with a video clip; really want to go to karaoke now. After class, I had an hour to study before my lesson test, and used it to its fullest; I sat with Sarah, Katie, and Rachel. When I got to the test, I was actually really surprised at how it was. Apart from one question, I felt confident about everything else, and I got all the kanji right; I was out of there in half an hour. I guess it helps when we only go through two chapters for each lesson test, unlike in Speaking where we go through three; so crazy. Just have to wait and see the results.
I went to Kirindo to get some groceries, and then came home, having just avocado on toast since I didn’t have any rice left; I’ll have to buy some at Sanko tomorrow. Then I napped for a few hours, before trying to check out the gym with Simon. I say trying, because we couldn’t actually get in there; all the gates were locked. I’ll have to ask Yuji about whether we can actually use it, because I did actually see people in there. I got back I got my blog updated, and did some homework, before going back out again. I was going back to the uni, to see one of Professor Hester’s screenings; every Monday he shows documentaries in the classroom. I had wanted to go see some earlier on, but for some reason or another, never got there. It makes it a lot easier now that I have a bike, that’s for sure. It just started to rain when I got to uni, and after a quick chat with Jacinthe in the bike parking, I made my way over to the CIE building and up to my Gender and Sexuality classroom; Simon was already there, with Jo. I was really surprised at the number of people who had showed up, especially since it was almost 6:30 by this point, and the documentaries are usually an hour. Usually, they’re about issues in Japan, but not this week. This was a documentary about Gay and Lesbian people in developing countries, titled “Dangerous Living: Coming out in the Developing World”.
It was very interesting, and quite moving, examining the lives of gay and lesbian people in Egypt, Honduras, Kenya, Thailand, Vietnam and a few other countries that have received little mainstream media attention. After it had finished, Simon and I rode home in the pouring rain; that wasn’t much fun. It was almost 8, so we went up to make dinner. On the TV, was the closing ceremony for the winter Olympics; I can’t believe it’s over already. So I enjoyed watching the rest of that, while eating my spaghetti. A number of singers and bands performed, including Michael Buble, Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, and Simple Plan. The lighting effects were again spectacular, and there were these really cool helium balls being bounced around in the audience, that would change colour on impact. It ended a little before 9, with fireworks. While the US got the most medals over all, Canada received the most gold; Australia got two gold, YAY!!! I stayed in the kitchen for a bit longer, and then bid everyone goodnight, before going to bug Simon in the computer room. Just about time for bed now, just gotta finish off some homework…
