Tuesday for the first time in awhile I saw my tutor Ayaka and we went to Mr. Donut together, which is essentially the Japanese version of Dunkin' Donuts. I tried a strawberry donut on a stick and a macha crueller donut, which was essentially a crueller filled with sweet red azuki beans and azuki bean paste half dipped in green tea icing. It
was...interesting. Not bad, but very interesting.Ayaka said her and her boyfriend were looking to go America for next year's spring break, so she had me give her recommendations for New York City and Disney World, though I think she is leaning towards New York because I told her I might be able to come see her. :)
Friday after E.S.S. we went to a Ramen shop a little ways away from school since everything near school was full. I'd never actually had real Japanese Ramen (oddly enough) to date, so Yasu showed me how to eat it. In Japan, its good manners to slurp your Ramen...it says that you think the Ramen is tasty. I tried, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it/physically couldn't because I've been trained not to...Yasu laughed at me and told me its Japan so its okay to slurp...but its a really hard habit to break. Especially in the middle of a restaurant. Seriously! You try!
Gabi, one of the member's of E.S.S. brought her friend Mayuko to eat with us since apparently Mayuko wanted to join E.S.S., but as she is a third year student, she missed the traditional gateway into clubs. So as a hip, hip hurrah for having a new member, which quickly coordinated
an impromptu Nomikai at Rinda's place. I learned several Japanese drinking games; Pani-Pani, Seven-up, Takenoko and Rhythm 4; which were quite fun and surprisingly easy to understand. Their games have a lot less rules to them than American ones and do very well at making sure everyone is involved. We also played a game that I liked to call "Just how blind is everyone." when we realized that I was the only person in the room with 20/20 vision. I quickly tried on everyone's glasses and ranked everyone's eyesight best to worst. Takami wasn't to happy at coming in last, but was a good sport about it.I called it quits around 2:30 because I had early morning obligations, so Rinda took me home...but I found out from my Korean friend Yoojean that the party lasted until 8 AM. O_O Japanese people and their (lack of) sleeping habits...it still baffles me.
Saturday I was inducted as an International Ambassador of Ibaraki prefecture. As International
Ambassadors we'll go to local elementary and middle schools to make presentations about our cultures. We started out by getting inducted by the president of the Mito cultural center (individually...so it took awhile) and we were given a pin and a certificate stating the start and end dates of our "term" as cultural ambassadors. Then we watched some example presentations from students from China and Jordan followed by a light lunch and, what else?, introductions from everyone who was present...and there was at least 60 students from High schools and colleges across the prefecture. Aaron and I both agreed that there needs to be a rule that if there are over 10 people, you should NOT be doing introductions. It literally took an hour and everyone went on for a minute about all the things they wanted to do in Japan...no offense meant, but most of those people, I know I am not going to ever see again since they're from different towns, so I don't particularly care what they want to do in Japan, and I'm sure they don't really care that I'd like to visit Okinawa and/or Nagasaki. On the plus side, I did get to see Marie. =) It'd been a while!After I made it home from the induction ceremony, I met up with Yasu to go to UNIQLO, another cheap clothing store here in Japan...I think the closest thing I can compare it to is the GAP or Old Navy. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but...dressing rooms in Japan...are kinda weird. Instead of having separate changing areas for boys and girls, if you're lucky, the store has two little stalls that are just kinda hanging out in the middle of racks of clothes. They're either little cubicles with curtains (yes, that's right, no doors and no locks) or little stands that you step up onto and draw a curtain around you like the curtains in a hospital. Its very cramped and very unnerving that anyone could walk in on your at any time...though, they make you take your shoes off before you get in the dressing room, so I guess the shoes outside the curtain is a deterrent.
On the way home from UNIQLO we stopped at Baskin Robbins for Ice Cream because I told
Yasu it was American, and with him anything American immediately equals must have/eat. We were trying to pick our ice cream when Yasu said "I've seen them before, but I've never been in a 31 ice cream before."...I just kind of stopped and stared at him, trying to figure out what he meant but eventually gave up. After I helped Yasu pick out the most American ice cream that he'd never heard of before (Cookiesn'cream and Rocky Road), we went outside to eat by our bikes, and that was when I understood what he meant by "31 ice cream". I do not for the life of me understand why, but apparently, in Japan, Baskin Robbins is called "31 ice cream" for the 31 in its logo. Literally. On the sign outside, underneath the logo it read in Katakana "31 ice cream". And to prove that I'm not kidding, here is the Japanese website for Baskin Robbins that Yasu looked up for me. http://www.31ice.co.jp/. Please also take a moment to notice that the url even has 31 ice written in it.Sunday was Aaron's birthday! And boy was it a fun day! Around noon, Marina, Tony, Rinda, Aaron, Horatio, his girlfriend Rin, Yuuki and I met at the Indian restaurant next to Big Echo
Karaoke for some lunch. It was yummy, but oh so filling and I couldn't finish...darn you all you can eat Naan! In the middle of lunch I was sitting there and all of a sudden my chair started vibrating/shaking, much like a table would when the person next to you keeps tapping their foot next to you. I looked to Aaron and opened my mouth to tell him to stop kicking my chair, when I realized...his leg...wasn't moving. And the shaking was still happening...And then I realized that I wasn't the only one who was vibrating...and slowly but surely I put together that there was an earthquake going on. And five seconds after I realized that, it was all ready over.I have to say as far as my first ever earthquake experience goes, it was mildly disappointing. I actually had to point out to my Japanese friends that it was happening for them to realize. It wasn't scary at all. the shaking was barely noticeable (nothing on the table moved at all). It was a just a really weird sensation...like my whole world was shaking and I knew that there really wasn't a whole heck of a lot I could to do stop it. And then, like I said, after 30 seconds...it was over. It was probably somewhere around a 1 or 2 on the Richter scale.
After that we rounded the corner and went to Big Echo to get our Karaoke on :) Rinda kicked things off with a bang by singing, as he called it, "his song"...and when he got to the chorus we figured out why. Its literally just someone singing a couple of lines and "Rinda, Rinda, Rinda" over and over again. I fell over laughing when he got to the chorus the first time since I had never heard it before. We tried later to do a duet, but seeing as he doesn't listen to much western music and I don't know a whole heck of a lot of Japanese music, we ended up singing the theme song to Ponyo, a child's movie. ^_^;. Horatio, Aaron and their friend Monica from Argentina 
(oh...which, by the way, Horatio is from Uruguay and Aaron is from Costa Rica) later rocked out Livin' La Vida Loca in Spanish, Tony and I had everyone laughing from our duets of "My Humps" and "Barbie girl" and Marina sang "They're not gonna get us" by T.a.T.u in her native Russian. It was quite a fun time. :)We eventually made our way to Rinda's house for Champon, which is apparently Rinda's comfort food that can really only be found in his home town of Nagasaki. Since I've heard about it so much and I all ready cooked him my comfort food (my family's candy green beans) I was excited to finally try Champon...You see, Rinda and I kind of have this running joke about our comfort foods. The first time I ever met
him, we were randomly placed in the same discussion group and he asked me what soul food was...so I went into this whole elaborate description of what soul food is...and then when it was his turn he said "My soul food is Champon." I stared at him and said "No...I just told you what soul food is. You don't have it in Japan." ...we eventually figured out he meant "comfort food"...and then Rinda promptly turned a lovely shade of pink,beating himself up for making a mistake while I just laughed at his reaction and told him not to worry about it.I don't actually know how you make Champon (the kitchens in Japan are really small, so Yoojean, Ji Yeon and I just kinda sat in his room watching some kind
of children's anime while Rinda and Keita cooked.), but I do know it was some kind of delicious ramen like dish with cabbage (have I mentioned they really like Cabbage here? They find an excuse to put it in everything), carrots, some kind of mashed fish that I normally hate but actually wasn't to bad hot and in the broth, some pork (they also really, really like Pork here. I think I've eat more meat from a pig in the last two months than I have in the last five years of my life!), bean sprouts and other misc. vegetables. It was very delicious, and I was very happy to finally get to taste his infamous "soul food" that Rinda's been raving about for the past two months.Well considering its now Monday morning and I have a very full day of school tomorrow, I should probably hit the hay. おやすみ！
just btw... I love love LOVE (like 0o0o0o0o0o0o0oooooooooo) the new backround!
ReplyDelete