Japanese Oral Practice, which I'm heading to after lunch. So far my class schedule looks like this, with four periods of General Japanese (focusing on grammar on Monday and Wednesday with Hachiwaka-Sensei and Listening and Speaking with Ikeda-Sensei on Thursday and Friday), Japanese studies, Oral Presentation, The Structure of the Japanese Language, Japanese Literature, Introduction to Japanese Society and Culture and rounding out with 'Ningen to Bunka' or 'People and Culture' taught in Japanese. I have to say though that between the Japanese Studies, Intro to Japanese Society and Culture and 'Ningen to Bunka'...I'm going to be studying a lot of Japanese culture this semester. O_OJapanese Lit. is a really small; just Tony and I. Our teacher is an American and...certainly interesting, that much is for sure. We're reading Akutagawa and Mishima this semester and we have to order our text books online since the teacher didn't place an order for them at the book store and they're in English. The only problem with this however is that it costs more to ship the books to Japan than the books themselves ><. Luckily enough we were able to find one of the books in PDF format online and are working on finding the second. The structure of the Japanese Language I think is actually going to be a really interesting class I think, especially because the Japanese Program is primarily lit based. Our teacher (who is an American as well) was dumbfounded when we told him that Penn State had never explicitly covered the 'voiceless vowels' such as 'ます’and ’です'. I actually really wish there was a class like this at Penn State, because I feel like it will help me understand Japanese that much more. We spent the whole hour and a half discussing differences between English and Japanese, and decided instead of buying our text book and
using it as a door stop, our class was going to be a democracy in which everything is an open forum to discuss.Since there is a roughly even ratio of exchange students to Japanese, we got assigned partners who we will meet with weekly to discuss these sort of things with. In order to figure out who is whose partner, three of the Japanese students devised this odd paper chart called 'Amidakuji', with Foreign Exchange Students at the top and Japanese at the bottom...I couldn't really see how they did this, but they started at one name and started singing and somehow ended up at a name on the other end, and Tah-Dah!, you have your partner. I think they just pick a random line and go with it...that or its something like the mazes you get on the kiddy menus at restaurants. I still don't get how this worked..but they let me keep the paper! There isn't an exactly even ratio of Japanese to Americans, so I got two partners, Miki and Yuuki, probably two of the most similar to me and most outgoing. They're really friendly and even hugged me when they found out I was their partner :D.
Our homework assignment for the week was to meet with our partner and discuss what was hard for us when we started learning the other person's language. Because their schedules' are
different, I met with Miki yesterday and will meet with Yuuki tomorrow. Miki turned out to be really funny, and it turns out she studied for a year in Washington. Being in on American culture, she even friended me on Facebook! :D She also told me she wants to go to Kaoroke with me since I've never done it. :) It was also interesting to see when we talked that a lot of what we thought was hard in the other person's language, they thought either the same thing or something very similar, was difficult in ours.I also had lunch with my tutor, Ayako, on Monday. She's really quiet and shy, but I think I'm gradually getting her to warm up to me. She bought me a late birthday present and told me she wants to go shopping with me sometime soon and visit what I think is a petting zoo that specializes in cats. That and she wants me to come to the cafe she works at so she can make me a hot coccoa :)
Tuesday night we ended up having our Taco night as a Thank you for to our Korean friends, and we also invited Rola (my Palestinian neighbor) and Isshin, somehow cramming 9 people in
my apartment. After school Tony and I went shopping and found this awesome butcher just down the road where we got a kilo of taco meat for 1,100 Yen....which in case your wondering is really good for beef in Japan. We made some Taco Rice I brought from America and made some home made Spanish rice and mixed together the spices for the meat ourselves. When we first sat down, we had only cooked up about 2/3 of the beef and Tony and I thought we were going to have all these left overs to make Bentos the next day...but next time I looked at the bowls, I guess they all realized they liked it because almost all the bowls were empty and we had to cook the rest of the meat and heat up all the tortillas. They even demolished an entire bottle of El Paso Taco Sauce! O_o Needless to say there were no left overs and it took Tony and I an hour to wash all the dishes and clean up.I will say this though. It was very interesting watching them all being confused as I gave step by step instructions on how to assemble and eat a taco...I'm pretty sure Jun-Ho and Eun Yeung took a video of me on their cell phone ><. Asians really don't eat with their hands very often, so they were amazed when I finally said in Japanese that Tacos are a 'Hand Food'. They were also confused at first when I kept saying 'Taco' because in Japanese 'Tako' means Octopus and there was no Octopus..I ran into this problem quite a few times with my host sisters last time I was in Japan, and we always had to specify "My Taco or Your Tako?", so I wasn't exactly surprised. It was also highly entertaining to watch them eat tacos with their hands and then use chopsticks to eat their taco Rice. A truly very unique cultural experience. :) Yesterday, Rola, Tony and I recruited Li to help us get Internet at Yamada Denki after school. It didn't really feel like it, but we ended up being there for 4-5 hours trying to set up the contract and translate it multiple times. We set up internet via OCN that should be ready for set-up in (we think) 2 weeks that Rola, Tony and I are splitting, Rola will be here for two years for her PhD, so hopefully the Internet will be transferred to the Ami Campus next semester when she moves to work on her research. If not, we'll just split the cancellation fees when Tony and I leave...but hopefully soon we will have Internet in the dorms! And since we're splitting it three ways it should only be something like $20-30/month. Rola and Tony also bought cell phones (which contributed to why we were there for so long).
The Au (the Verizon of Japan) Lady actually remembered me from the last time I asked her questions (not that with my blonde hair I'm very forgettable), and told me to come back when I have my alien registration card. If I don't use it that much, it actually isn't that expensive, the kicker is just the cancellation fee because Japan operates on 2 year contracts for cell phones. I'm still working on trying to find a 'Pay-as-you-go' phone, but Japan doesn't seem to be to big on those.
While we were waiting for Au to start up the phones, we went to do Purikura at the Marui department store. Purikura are basically photo booths on steroids...or at least that's the simplest explanation I can think of.. You can pick multiple backgrounds, take multiple shots, and then when you're done, you can draw on them, write on them, change your hair color, eye color, give yourself a wig, hat, cat ears, insert the date and many other eye-catching, seizure
inducing items. I personally love them and think they're great. However the down side is that almost everything is timed and you have to be quick about it, because sometimes they give you three seconds to pose for pictures (resulting in our case in some cut off faces) You also have to be able to read some Japanese, have someone with you who can, or just be good at guessing. The nifty thing too is that they will send them to your cell phone if you input your cell phone e-mail.The Japanese also have this obsession with clear skin, big eyes and long eye lashes, and in these photo booths you never have to worry about looking unattractive in any of those regards...unless you're a foreigner, in which case you may look a tad creepy. The booth is all lit up with all these white lights that are specially engineered to make your skin look flawless and pearly white (or just make me look like a ghost) and your eyes look larger, like a foreigner...or if you're like me and have large eyes all ready, they will dominate your face. Japanese eyes are also really dark, so they illuminate them to make them look lighter....I have medium brown eyes and Tony has blue...so there were some pictures where our eyes almost looked like they were glowing O_O
I finally got the Internet at school to work and actually got to talk to all three of my family members at once so that was really nice :) I also signed up from some tour through the Foreign Exchange Student Center of a movie set in Mito that they finished filming at that will take place sometime May. I'm still trying to figure out where the Kyuudo (Japanese archery) and Film club meet...but so far, life in Mito, so good :)
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